For its delayed opening in its new space, the gallery has put together a benefit exhibition, “Artists for New York,” comprising art donated from artists. The proceeds will go to 14 not-for-profit arts organizations across the city. “We’re not doing a party, we’re not doing a press event—nothing,” Payot says. “It’s the opposite of an event-driven opening.”

The large gatherings that animated the art world will be missed, dealers say, but they stress that openings have a minimal impact on sales. “It’s a celebration of creativity and an artist having worked hard,” says Payot. “Does it generate energy, and does this maybe then lead to some sales? Possibly, but it’s not that linear.”

Lower East Side dealer Miguel Abreu is going even further. Dinners “lost their utility” long ago, he says. “Collectors didn’t want to go to them anymore. They were sick of them; they were invited to 60 a month. Any pleasure in it was stripped away,” he continues. “At our openings in the last few years, there were fewer and fewer collectors, it was all artists and friends.” (For pair of openings on Sept. 10, Abreu invited anyone who attended to go to a nearby park for tacos.)

… For Now
“One of the most beautiful openings I can remember happened in January for Noah Davis, a young artist who passed away very early,” says Zwirner. “It was his first major show in New York, and it was endlessly exciting to the extent that the catalogue sold out, and we had to reprint it.”

Now, he says, “you do much better with artists where the audience is already strong. It’s hard to introduce brand-new work that people aren’t familiar with, because you have a limit on how [interest in] the work can spread at this moment.”

Zwirner says he hasn’t made any changes to his exhibition schedule, for which there’s already a significant, Covid-19-related backlog. “We haven’t adjusted our program, other than that we’re showing everyone we couldn’t show for the last six months,” he says. “The rescheduling has been a little bit of a nightmare to make sure you can get everyone on deck.”

The real issue, he says, is that “we’re primarily a brick-and-mortar business. I never like to say it, but we’re part of the world of retail, where you come in and you want to experience the object.” When collectors have come through the door, he says, “everyone is wearing masks, and we have safety protocols, but we’ve actually stood in front of the artworks with clients, and sold them.”

Openings, Zwirner continues, are part of that in-person experience. “It’s a beautiful tradition: You celebrate the artist, you see friends, you go gallery-hopping. It’s so New York, it’s so quintessential, and I want it to come back.”

Boesky, too, says she wants to return to a world of gallery dinners—but old-school dinners, like when I opened in 1996,” she says. “I would just cook them, and then it became this whole other animal: seated dinners that cost $50,000. I don’t enjoy going to a lot of those. It just feels obligatory.”

Goodbye to All That
Dealers uniformly agree that things shouldn’t go back to the way they were.