Transcript
Speaker: Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: And I'm Michael Diaz-Griffith.
Speaker: And we're doing something unusual today.
Speaker: We don't have any guests, and we don't even have any objects, because this is another special episode about the coronavirus.
Speaker: And today, Michael and I are just going to sit back and reflect a little on what's going on in the antiques world and how this...
Speaker: this crisis is impacting us, impacting all of our friends in the trade, in the world of museums, in the world of collecting, what this means for all of us, for the world we live in, and for the future of dealing and collecting and studying these objects.
Speaker: Yes, and we're recording on Tuesday, March 31st.
Speaker: So as a bit of a warning, this will be released a little bit later in the week.
Speaker: And so some of the things we discuss may have changed by the time you hear us.
Speaker: But hopefully, the sort of spirit of the conversation and the spirit of processing all of these challenges that we now face will still be timely and relevant.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, things are certainly moving quickly, and it's hard to keep up in the news.
Speaker: But, you know, I think we're starting to see the contours of what we're facing, at least in the short term.
Speaker: And we can talk a little about what's happening right now in the world of antiques.
Speaker: And then, you know, I think we'll save our speculation for later in the episode.
Speaker: But we do want to talk about how we see the future in this moment.
Speaker: knowing full well that things will change in the coming weeks and months.
Speaker: But Michael, how are you keeping yourself occupied these days?
Speaker: Well, I think for many of us, a crisis actually brings on more work.
Speaker: And, you know, whether that's making alternative plans because all of your old plans have gone bad, or whether you're, you know, a parent and you're having to work from home with your kids by your side.
Speaker: You know, I know that some are feeling bored and...
Speaker: I am sorry for them, but I'm also a little bit envious because I feel like I've been almost frantic with work since this crisis began.
Speaker: Again, that's a good problem as well, because I think we all know people who've been laid off.
Speaker: But in our world, I think one of the first impacts to be felt very deeply was the cancellation of events.
Speaker: and fairs.
Speaker: And it really struck me early on as someone who's been very involved in the world of fairs over the past decade that these events are even more central perhaps than we had given them credit for being.
Speaker: You know, I think that
Speaker: you, Ben, are in the lucky position of still working in a gallery that has a shopfront.
Speaker: And it's a very cute shopfront and I love going in.
Speaker: But increasingly over the years, as we know and as we've discussed on this podcast, dealers have been forced to close their shopfronts.
Speaker: And so fairs have taken on this critical importance that they simply didn't have in the past.
Speaker: So to then see this cascading cancellation of all of the fares, I think has just been, it's been really unfortunate for the organizers and the beneficiaries of fares that have a charity component.
Speaker: But more than anything, it's just, it's brutal for dealers who rely on these venues for sales.
Speaker: Yeah, and the real problem here is not just canceling one or two fares, right?
Speaker: Which would present its own difficulties.
Speaker: But the notion that there are no fares on the calendar.
Speaker: I mean, even in the autumn, right, it's not reliable to schedule anything for the foreseeable future.
Speaker: We don't know when we'll be able to start opening things back up again.
Speaker: But for the foreseeable future, these dealers, Michael, as you say, who don't have shopfronts,
Speaker: They can't rely on being able to drum up business in a public forum like an antique show at any time in the coming three, six months, maybe more.
Speaker: Yeah, and this raises the question of the internet and the digital challenge that those who haven't already gone online face in getting their businesses online.
Speaker: But I think we'll have a lot of time to discuss that over the course of the podcast.
Speaker: But, you know, even just in terms of those canceled fairs, one of the, you know, as a former fair organizer, I think something that
Speaker: hasn't always been to the fore in the discussion is the risk that fares shoulder in signing leases, even in the best of times.
Speaker: And there's, of course, insurance to help offset various catastrophes under the force majeure clauses that we all have in all of our contracts, but they don't cover coronavirus.
Speaker: And I've been hearing talk about how
Speaker: You know, while that while insurance against COVID-19 obviously didn't exist, you know, two weeks ago, it is likely to exist in the future, but for a price and it's not going to be cheap.
Speaker: So, you know, all of the calculations.
Speaker: that the fares will have to make around whether or not to venture an autumn date are just really interesting to think about.
Speaker: And, you know, I really feel for everyone who's responsible for an event in that season, who's going to be thinking about whether to cancel or not, knowing that dealers rely on those events, but also, you know, because of their own fiduciary,
Speaker: responsibilities um you know having to make really tough decisions to protect their organizations from financial loss it's it's just very complicated and i think we've seen in the broader art world fairs all you know they've announced dates for the autumn this hasn't happened so much in the antiques world but it has happened in
Speaker: you know, with fairs like the Armory show or the Basel shows, they're announcing dates.
Speaker: And that creates confidence among their exhibitors
Speaker: and maybe a bit of a feeling of certainty in parts of the market, but those organizers don't know that they'll actually be able to pick up on those dates.
Speaker: Well, and the other aspect of that is even if the public health situation has advanced to a place where it's possible to have an event like that in the autumn, that doesn't mean that the economy is going to be in a place where any show is going to be successful.
Speaker: And although it creates a sense of confidence, perhaps today, the risk of running a show at which nobody is doing any business is a huge risk in itself because these shows are very expensive for dealers.
Speaker: So, you know, in many cases, I think it would really just be better to forget about the idea that you could predict when things are going to look up to the extent that you could have a successful show.
Speaker: Nobody knows that right now.
Speaker: You know, I mean, economists don't know what the damage is going to look like or what the recovery is going to look like.
Speaker: Epidemiologists don't know what the curve is going to look like.
Speaker: We don't have data, and we've never been in this situation before in the modern economy.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And I think –
Speaker: I was on the inside of the decision making process around the cancellation of the Philadelphia show, which I was working on press and PR for with great enthusiasm.
Speaker: And I was also helping to design
Speaker: what would have been a really fabulous loan exhibition curated by Alexandra Kirtley.
Speaker: And, you know, in those- From the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Speaker: From the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Speaker: And let's hope that that loan exhibition eventually, you know, that it lives to see the light of day.
Speaker: But, you know,
Speaker: the initial instinct was to postpone the show, right?
Speaker: As some in the contemporary market have done.
Speaker: And when fairs do that, they often don't release deposits, right?
Speaker: They, you know, they hold the deposits.
Speaker: And as the decision was made to cancel the show, you know, and this is true for many events in many different contexts, you know, it's partly because,
Speaker: We all know that we can't predict the autumn, but it's also in many instances a way of returning deposits to folks, right?
Speaker: And saying, you know, listen, we don't know what's gonna happen and we can't in good faith hold onto your money.
Speaker: And I think that the importance of handling this type of situation
Speaker: with that level of care just can't be overstated in the antiques market because we know how difficult everybody's margins are, right?
Speaker: I mean, even in the best of times.
Speaker: So, you know, I think that it's all about sort of organizational responsibility and leadership.
Speaker: And that's going to be important for museums, for fairs, and then on the level of galleries, you know,
Speaker: leadership decisions that are being made by owners who are forced to think about whether to retain staff, how they're going to, how they're going to proceed in this crisis that has a real human cost.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, and you and I have both been talking with people over the past couple of weeks to try to get a sense of how different businesses and organizations and individuals are responding and the measures that people are taking to try to cope with the situation.
Speaker: And I want to get to those in just a minute.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: But first, Michael, I think, you know, we've been putting out a lot of Curious Objects episodes in recent days, and that's not a coincidence.
Speaker: We have the time to sit back and reflect on what's happening.
Speaker: Tell me about your home life, Ben.
Speaker: I'm curious.
Speaker: I want to know if you're sipping wine out of any silver goblets or if you're staring at a wall.
Speaker: Where are you actually right now?
Speaker: I want to know where you're recording your side of the podcast from.
Speaker: So I'm actually sitting in the same place that I often sit to record Curious Objects material, which is at my little desk in my bedroom, in my one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment.
Speaker: And I've never been happier to have an apartment that's full of objects that I love.
Speaker: I feel like I'm really getting my money's worth out of my rent these days, but I also think I'm really getting my money's worth out of the small collection of antiques that I've invested in.
Speaker: In the course of an ordinary work week,
Speaker: I might have an hour or two in the evening to sit and really enjoy my candelabra or my flatware or my beloved silver teapot.
Speaker: And that's nice.
Speaker: It's nice to take a break.
Speaker: From the hustle and bustle of daily work, it's nice to be able to sit down and have a meal and derive the pleasure that I can out of these lovely things.
Speaker: But now, now that I'm spending 23 hours a day in this apartment,
Speaker: I mean, it feels like a lifesaver to be comfortable and happy and rejuvenated by objects that are aesthetically pleasing to me, but that are interesting to me for any number of reasons, historical reasons and reasons of craftsmanship and provenance.
Speaker: And just to have that companionship in an otherwise very isolating and quiet time, it's lovely.
Speaker: It really is lovely.
Speaker: It makes me think that I ought to spend more time at home even when I don't have to.
Speaker: Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker: I don't know if you have been having any Zoom calls or Skype calls where there's video.
Speaker: I'm sure our listeners have.
Speaker: But one of the really fascinating things about the experience of being on a visual conference call is looking or peering into people's homes and
Speaker: Through these videos, and I think one thing that's fascinating is, you know, without seeming too creepy or like too much of a Zoom stalker, you do get to see the sort of edges of people's domestic environments.
Speaker: And sometimes that means you get to see the art on their walls.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: I mean, we can discuss the business side of the internet and even of Instagram, you know, at another point in the conversation.
Speaker: But on this very human level, I think that it's just it's interesting to see more about how people live, right?
Speaker: I mean, even on just regular phone calls that would normally be very serious and buttoned up.
Speaker: I'm hearing my, you know,
Speaker: interlocutor, maybe a museum director, for example, washing glasses at the sink as they talk to me on speakerphone.
Speaker: Or I hear someone's kid, you know, come up to their kitchen table where the person is chatting with me and sort of demand, you know, grilled cheese sandwich or whatever.
Speaker: And it's, it's just, we think about sort of, um,
Speaker: the way that we've brought work home, but we've also brought our homes into our work in a funny way.
Speaker: And, you know, when I see people living in interiors that are warm and full of objects and art, it just, it's like, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
Speaker: And it reminds me that, you know, collecting for investment reasons, which we never recommend, but which many others do, you know, engage in, um,
Speaker: Doesn't take you very far in a time like this, right?
Speaker: Having all of your objects in a warehouse doesn't really cut it when you're in quarantine.
Speaker: And it also might not be much of a financial boon, right?
Speaker: So it's like a moment to keep your family close and your friends close, but also your objects close.
Speaker: And I felt the same way, Ben.
Speaker: Yeah, you know, and we'll talk about this later in the episode, but I have a suspicion, a sneaking suspicion, that a lot of people are going to come out of this on the other side thinking, gosh, I wish my walls weren't so white.
Speaker: Or just bare, right?
Speaker: I mean, if you've got a white wall, cover it in beautiful pictures.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: I'm sure that there are some dealers, even as we speak, posting their inventory online for the first time.
Speaker: So they'll have an even better selection to choose from.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: And there's been this amazing flourishing of online resources, some of which have just been recently created and others of which have been around.
Speaker: But people, including me, are just becoming aware of them now.
Speaker: You know, I knew of the existence of Google Arts and Culture, and, you know, I'd gone to that website once or twice, and I thought it was a pretty nifty idea.
Speaker: You know, Google has partnered with a wide variety of cultural institutions, mostly museums, who have made certain swaths of their collections available digitally, and Google has collated these
Speaker: and made them all accessible from the central site.
Speaker: And now in the last couple of weeks, I've spent hours and hours just pouring through this.
Speaker: I mean, it's amazing.
Speaker: It's dozens and dozens and dozens of museums.
Speaker: And in some cases, you just see photographs of particular works and
Speaker: And a little curatorial note about them.
Speaker: And that's interesting enough.
Speaker: But in other cases, there are whole curated exhibitions put together where you can scroll through photo after photo and watch a story come together around these objects or paintings or photographs.
Speaker: And as someone who craves beauty and interesting objects and artistic creations, you know, what an amazing resource.
Speaker: I feel like, you know,
Speaker: Well, Shrubsell's shop is a block away from the Metropolitan Museum, and I go there oftentimes at lunch.
Speaker: And I've always thought, what a treat that is to be able to go to one of the greatest art collections in the world and spend an hour there any day that I like.
Speaker: Well, here we have...
Speaker: dozens or hundreds of websites available, each one of which has dozens or hundreds or thousands of images.
Speaker: And gosh, I mean, any of us could spend as many hours a day as we like looking through these and educating ourselves and learning about how learning about museums I didn't even know exist.
Speaker: I mean, you know, I spent an hour today looking through the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Speaker: Oh, I love their online collections.
Speaker: And I would never have spent the time doing that under other circumstances.
Speaker: The National Museum in New Delhi, the Paris Opera is on there.
Speaker: They have a remarkable group of documentary photographs.
Speaker: I've talked about this on the podcast, but online collections have been my obsession now for like four or five years.
Speaker: And what's really striking to me is that
Speaker: you can often view the works in high resolution in the best of these collections, which, you know, almost makes up for the fact that you can't see them in person, right?
Speaker: Because, I mean, in some instances, you'd be separated from them by, you know, a distance of several feet.
Speaker: And so to just be able to, like, type in a search term, find things that are fascinating,
Speaker: find their stories, but also to just be able to zoom in as close as you want into the very heart of a picture or, you know, into the engraving of a silver object, for example.
Speaker: It's just, it's such a remarkable privilege that you sometimes don't even get when you're in an institution viewing objects in person.
Speaker: Um, and to just give a shout out to another kind of aggregator of digital resources that I like, uh,
Speaker: It's Europeana, like probably pronounced in a much nicer way in Europe where this site originated,.eu.
Speaker: It's an aggregator of online collections from institutions in Europe.
Speaker: And, you know, in the way that Google appropriately, you know, as a business in the American context of free enterprise has created Google Arts and Culture, you know,
Speaker: europeana.eu was co-financed by the eu but it's just remarkable you can find you know literally millions of objects and images with a single search term and get trapped in in the site forever frankly
Speaker: And it's, you know, it's interesting because these are just, these are kind of very basic databases.
Speaker: But another thing that we're seeing a lot of are, you know, virtual tours.
Speaker: And I've been having discussions with folks for years about whether it's, you know, cost effective or not to invest in a virtual tour of their smaller museum or of their booth even at an art fair.
Speaker: And, you know, a lot of people,
Speaker: many of us were excited about that technology and capability, but realistically wouldn't necessarily advise clients or friends or our bosses to, you know, to invest in what was at times a pretty expensive technology, a doodad, you know, that wasn't necessary for conducting business.
Speaker: Um, and, and yet now those virtual tours are surfacing and, um,
Speaker: Some of them are four years old and, you know, probably only ever got a couple hundred views when they were launched.
Speaker: But now they're these incredibly rich resources that thousands and more than thousands of people are looking at.
Speaker: So it's a kind of funny moment of vindication for forms of technology that were a little obscure or seemed a little bit extra that we now have time to sit back and really appreciate in a way that we didn't before.
Speaker: Let's take a quick break and then I want to come back and chat with you a bit about what we've been hearing from other people in the antiques world.
Speaker: More in a bit.
Speaker: As you know, Curious Objects is published by the magazine Antiques, the publication of record in the world of fine and decorative arts for almost 100 years.
Speaker: The folks at the magazine Antiques are as concerned as you are about COVID-19, and they are rolling out a series of online projects to help you cope while you're stuck at home.
Speaker: Check out themagazineantiques.com, where they post new and archival stories daily.
Speaker: One recent offering dissects the surprising explosion of cubism in Prague in the 19-teens.
Speaker: They've built a new page, Antiques of the Week, which showcases exceptional individual items from dealers who are still buying and selling even if their shows have been cancelled.
Speaker: There's also an Antique of the Day, selected by the brilliant editor-at-large Glenn Adamson, who was my guest on Curious Objects back in June of 2019.
Speaker: The Antique of the Day is posted on the magazine Antiques Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Speaker: And if that's not enough for you, they also have a weekly newsletter called The Wandering Eye.
Speaker: That's a compendium of topical, antiques-focused articles from across the web.
Speaker: It's a great read.
Speaker: And last but not least, subscribe to the magazine and get the upcoming May and June issue of the magazine Antiques delivered to your mailbox.
Speaker: That way, you are also supporting the United States Postal Service.
Speaker: Because, after all, there's nothing more comforting than curling up with a good magazine while you wait out the end of the world.
Speaker: Welcome back.
Speaker: And Michael and I are going to take a few minutes now to talk about what we've been hearing in the grapevine and from our friends and contacts across the world.
Speaker: And what better place to kick off than the firm that I have an intimate relationship with, Shrub Soul, where I work.
Speaker: And, you know, it's interesting to see...
Speaker: the effect that uncertainty has on a small business.
Speaker: We are staying active.
Speaker: We're all, of course, working from home, but we're actually working there.
Speaker: Turns out, as you've experienced, Michael, the coronavirus has actually, in some cases, created more work, not less.
Speaker: We've taken advantage of the opportunity to
Speaker: reach out to our clients in new ways, as listeners are aware from the special episode last week in which we featured a storytelling email that was part of a series that Shrobsle has been doing.
Speaker: But the shop is closed and the pace of business is much slower than it typically is.
Speaker: Most auctions are not happening, which means we're not buying very much.
Speaker: There are still clients out there who are interested in acquiring things, but it's a small fraction of what we're accustomed to.
Speaker: So both the buying and the selling sides of the business are dramatically reduced.
Speaker: So at this point, we're doing clerical work.
Speaker: There is, of course, a lot of clerical work involved in trying to sort through the economic situation, the tax situation, what we can expect from the $2 trillion stimulus package that Congress passed a few days ago.
Speaker: I'm trying to sort through what's in that, what it means for small businesses like ours.
Speaker: So again, you know, keeping ourselves busy, but essentially we're doing our best to freeze the business in a stasis.
Speaker: I think a lot of businesses across the country, and not just the antiques world, but across different fields, are in this situation of basically battening the hatches and trying to keep things more or less...
Speaker: you know, cast in amber until such a time as we can open our doors again.
Speaker: And I've heard similar stories from a lot of other dealers.
Speaker: You know, people are making sales here and there, but it's mostly a time of dormancy.
Speaker: Yeah, and, you know, everything we do is anecdotal, which is part of the charm and the fun.
Speaker: of the antiques world.
Speaker: So, you know, just as some auctions have been canceled, some have continued in an online format.
Speaker: And I've looked at sell through rates in some of those auctions that remained on the calendar and they were good.
Speaker: You know, the sell through rates were solid.
Speaker: People were buying the values that were achieved were not very good.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So proof that it's, you know, if one is in the mood to buy,
Speaker: in the spirit of our special episode with David Shorsch, you know, it's likely to be a good time to do so in the coming downturn or continued downturn that we're likely to face.
Speaker: But, you know, I want to believe that galleries are going to be able to cast themselves in amber, but I just got off the phone with a former colleague who told me that...
Speaker: in her gallery, almost everyone had been laid off except for her.
Speaker: And I think that, you know, we are going to see similar things happening.
Speaker: Interestingly, in the antiques world where people have contracted over the past two decades of downturn, some businesses may be a little bit insulated, right?
Speaker: Because if you've given up your store front, you don't have that overhead.
Speaker: If you're working out of your home anyway, you're kind of operating...
Speaker: in as cost-effective way as you can in the first place, right?
Speaker: So I'm hoping that kind of insulates people from the really serious losses that, you know, rent payers face.
Speaker: But I think that the larger galleries, you know, maybe not so much in the antiques world, but in the art world broadly, are going to be laying off people and...
Speaker: know in the market generally um i'm sure we'll continue to see sales and some auctions that continue online that do all right but as we know you know the sort of confidence in the market and in the economy at large has has everything to do with whether dealers can really succeed and in their businesses and
Speaker: Yeah, it's not likely that we're going to see that kind of confidence for a while.
Speaker: I was actually, you had this wonderful interview with Karis from Charles Ede a couple of episodes ago.
Speaker: And her colleague at the gallery, Martin Clist, described the atmosphere at Tafaf in Maastricht as if everyone were underwater, you know?
Speaker: So it's like, I think they had...
Speaker: you know, a reduction in attendance by X percent, but there were still people there.
Speaker: As we now know, they were giving each other coronavirus, which is a whole other story.
Speaker: But, you know, he describes the collectors who showed up, never mind the ones who canceled their trips, the ones who showed up as kind of moving in slow motion through the space.
Speaker: And I thought that was a sort of, I mean, it's kind of an eerie description, but...
Speaker: in a rather poetic way, it sort of speaks to how a downturn feels.
Speaker: You know, we're here, people are looking at works, they're maybe thinking about acquiring them, but like the pace, the tone, the atmosphere is just different during times like this.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, well, it's frightening, and there's no way around that.
Speaker: I mean, even those of us who still have jobs...
Speaker: we don't know what the future is gonna look like.
Speaker: I was talking with a friend of mine at an auction house who said, on top of the scariness of getting sick, there's the scariness of, will I still have a job after all of this?
Speaker: And for many, because the antiques world is dominated by small businesses and really by very small businesses with just a handful of employees,
Speaker: There are a lot of business owners for whom the question is, will I still have a business at the end of all of this?
Speaker: But I do think that your conversation with David Schorst the other day was a really great source of optimism for me because it's a good reminder that although there are ups and downs in the economy and ups and downs in the collecting world for all kinds of different reasons,
Speaker: You know, what we're seeing right now is not, this is a different kind of economic downturn than a typical recession or depression.
Speaker: I mean, the economic impact is enormous, but it's derived from an external problem, the problem of the virus.
Speaker: It's not derived from a structural problem in the economy.
Speaker: It's not that there are fewer people or fewer factories or that we're working less hard or producing less.
Speaker: I mean, we are now working less hard or producing less, but it's because of an external problem, which...
Speaker: we hope and believe will pass given some months.
Speaker: And so, you know, my hope is that as we start to eventually, one way or another, get control of the public health situation, that the fundamentals of the economy are going to rebound.
Speaker: I'm speaking way above my pay grade here.
Speaker: I'm not an economist.
Speaker: I like being an armchair economist as well.
Speaker: We both...
Speaker: Among our many various past roles, I think policy wonk is included on the CV for both of us in slightly different areas.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: And these days, of course, everyone is an epidemiologist, so we can all play at that.
Speaker: Listen, the debates in my household about whether to fashion homemade masks or not, I mean, they spill over into the evening hours, and then we have to drink quarantinis to get over the stress of the mask-related decision-making.
Speaker: It's a mess.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, I think that there are some models that predict that the economy will sort of bounce back and that this crisis will not become structural.
Speaker: There are obviously doomsday predictions that it will become structural.
Speaker: And, you know, we just have to hope for the best in that case.
Speaker: I do think that one of the...
Speaker: This is maybe getting a little bit too deep in the weeds with this economic speculation, so you'll have to forgive me, but something else I encountered today with the collector.
Speaker: And I do think it's relevant to discuss this kind of thing early on and to really think through it.
Speaker: This is someone who is a partner in a very large firm.
Speaker: So, you know, he's a partner who's responsible for the livelihoods of a couple hundred people, and they're going to lay some people off.
Speaker: And we were talking about his collecting practice and sort of how it's being affected, and he said, you know, I'll still have...
Speaker: the means to collect but do i want to attend every gala do i want to um you know go to every preview in the next year and and buy and then let my collection be seen in the pages of a magazine where for the first time in my life i've had to lay off this huge number of people no i mean he's really
Speaker: He was really out of the mood.
Speaker: And I think for good reason.
Speaker: And I think that that conversation just, I mean, it was a very humane conversation.
Speaker: And I was glad on a human level that he feels so responsible for these conversations.
Speaker: you know, now former staffers, the problem as always for the antiques world is that, you know, we need that guy to keep buying so that you don't get laid off, right?
Speaker: Like this is the circle.
Speaker: And I think that what I keep coming back to
Speaker: through that conversation with David and what I'm seeing online is that it's just more important than ever that anyone who's not on the internet in this market get on the internet pronto.
Speaker: Get on Instagram.
Speaker: get on Facebook, update your website.
Speaker: If you can make peace with some of the online marketplaces that allow your material to become discoverable, do it.
Speaker: Make peace with the trade-offs that are inherent in working with those platforms.
Speaker: If you're not comfortable with that, just double down on your own website.
Speaker: But get out there and be really active in pursuit of buyers of all kinds.
Speaker: you know, it's finally time to really confront the challenge of cultivating new and younger audiences.
Speaker: It's crunch time.
Speaker: Like, if we lose a generation of seasoned collectors who feel guilty for the reasons this fellow today was,
Speaker: You know, let's catch some of the younger people who haven't lost their jobs, who found the value of being at home anew in this crisis and who want to live with, you know, meaningful objects.
Speaker: I mean, lean into that.
Speaker: And I think that there are a lot of ways that people can do that.
Speaker: And, you know, it's been...
Speaker: an honor for me to work with a lot of antiques dealers over the past couple of years addressing precisely that challenge.
Speaker: But I feel like even though I was a proponent of going digital a couple of years ago, um,
Speaker: It's no longer about whether you're sort of pro or con.
Speaker: It's existential now.
Speaker: You know, we can't, no one can afford to lose a potential sales venue.
Speaker: And David spoke really eloquently to that.
Speaker: And I think...
Speaker: You know, he he spoke eloquently to that as a very successful dealer.
Speaker: And he was talking about people like Joe Kindig and Harry Aarons, who were also very successful in business.
Speaker: And in the case of both Kindig and Aarons, very moneyed.
Speaker: But the message shouldn't be that, you know,
Speaker: wealthy dealers whose immediate livelihoods aren't threatened should go and stockpile stuff.
Speaker: I mean, that has to happen where it can.
Speaker: I mean, anyone who is able to buy while the market is low should do it and make wise business decisions for themselves.
Speaker: But I think that the kind of meta point of that conversation with David is applicable for absolutely everybody, right?
Speaker: And it's
Speaker: While we're down, while we're in a trough, we have to be as innovative and strategic and positive and forward-thinking and really optimistic as we possibly can be, right?
Speaker: And that's how we'll make it through.
Speaker: And different strategies will work for different people.
Speaker: I love what Shrub Soul has been doing.
Speaker: with your Decameron-inspired series, Ben.
Speaker: You know, like, another firm would not have come up with that, right?
Speaker: You can't hire a consultant to come in and say, hey, Tim, hey, Ben, you know, create this storytelling series inspired by the Decameron.
Speaker: That came from your own, you know, intelligence, from your own culture, and the conversations that you've been pursuing at Shrub Soul,
Speaker: But you wouldn't have gotten around to it without this crisis, right?
Speaker: So it's time to sort of take all of that latent talent and thoughts and ideas and really apply them.
Speaker: And I think that separate from some of the specific conditions that I discussed with David, absolutely anyone can do that, right?
Speaker: Absolutely anyone can do what you've been doing at ShrubSail this week.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, in the words of Rahm Emanuel, you should never let a crisis go to waste.
Speaker: And I think that what we're seeing right now is the epitome of a trajectory that you and I have talked about on the podcast and elsewhere for years, Michael.
Speaker: which is that we no longer live in a world where you can rest on your laurels, where you can coast along doing business as usual.
Speaker: We didn't live in that world before this crisis, but we certainly don't live in that world now.
Speaker: We live in a world where if you want to do business in the world of antiques, and that means if you want to be a dealer, but it also means if you want to be a scholar, if you want to be a researcher, or even if you want to be a successful collector, you
Speaker: You know, it's not like it was in the 80s when you could run around to a bunch of estate sales and buy some nice looking things and bring them back to your shop front and put them in the window and mark them up 50% and give someone a discount and make a good profit.
Speaker: You know, that's a great business model.
Speaker: Essentially, it's a license to prim money.
Speaker: That business model, it's not as simple anymore.
Speaker: No, and it hasn't been for a long time, but I think that people have been positioned financially to weather a long downturn as long as it didn't totally crater like it may now, right?
Speaker: Yeah, and there's been a sense that you can cut costs, you can rent a smaller space, you can move out of a shop front and into an office, you can do all these things to keep your business afloat.
Speaker: But a lot of people haven't been asking the question, well, how do I future-proof?
Speaker: How do I build a business that has the potential to not just eek by and survive, but to thrive?
Speaker: And now we're in a situation where a business that eeks by is likely a business that's not going to eek by anymore.
Speaker: And I think it's absolutely crucial, as you say, Michael, at this moment, for all of us who are involved in this world to think very critically about what it is that we do, what we're bringing to the market, whether that's our connoisseurship or our Rolodex or our scholarly knowledge and education and background, whether
Speaker: But what is it about our skills and our experience and our resources that really makes us and the work that we do valuable?
Speaker: We're going to have to reckon with that in the coming months.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And OK, so can I be just a little bit controversial, Ben?
Speaker: Please.
Speaker: I love controversy.
Speaker: We can edit this out if it gets too edgy.
Speaker: I, you know, I've, we've both dedicated our lives to the antiques world.
Speaker: We do it for love, not money.
Speaker: And we believe in every dealer that we know, and we want them all to succeed.
Speaker: I have, there has been a consistent issue that I've identified in my work with dealers to try to help them move forward and quote, future-proof their businesses.
Speaker: And, you know,
Speaker: And this issue is really at the intersection of several topics we've been discussing.
Speaker: So we believe really strongly in the importance, the interest, the attractiveness of what, you know, a 20th century antiques dealer had to offer in
Speaker: when the market was at its height, you know?
Speaker: And I still love all of the characteristics of that kind of dealing.
Speaker: And you do too.
Speaker: And in some ways, we're throwbacks, right, Ben?
Speaker: I mean, like, you're not talking to the vanguard of, you know, the art world right here.
Speaker: But as millennials, we also are forced to,
Speaker: to pay attention to other things that are happening in culture and society.
Speaker: And I think that one issue is that
Speaker: those who enjoyed great success just doing their thing, doing what came naturally to them, leaning into their own strengths and expertise in the 80s and 90s, have had a hard time, in some cases, accepting that they will really have to do things differently and, even more importantly,
Speaker: really think about the consumers that they want to communicate with and in the context of business attract.
Speaker: You have to actually want to create new conversations with new consumers
Speaker: often on terms that are maybe not quite as natural for you if you want to future-proof your business.
Speaker: And all we have to do is look at the fashion world, look at the broader cultural landscape to know that every corporation does this, every fashion brand does this.
Speaker: Yes, they may maintain their heritage in the case of...
Speaker: you know, a fashion brand or a heritage luxury brand, it's critical that they maintain their heritage, their perspective, the characteristics that make them unique.
Speaker: But they also have to constantly check themselves to ensure that they are practicing due diligence so they know where the culture is headed and
Speaker: to ensure that they're speaking to that culture.
Speaker: And I think that, you know, in the antiques world, we're not always the best at meeting people where they are.
Speaker: We often want people to meet us where we are.
Speaker: And I think a big part of, you know, our work, Ben, has been acknowledging all of the value of where the antiques world is, right?
Speaker: We love it.
Speaker: We love it exactly as it is with all of its...
Speaker: all of its ways and I think it's really important to emphasize that here.
Speaker: But we also have to look to all of those older practices, all of our expertise,
Speaker: and the way we do things and think about how we evolve them for people who haven't been a part of the conversation.
Speaker: That means younger people.
Speaker: It means people of color who are not as involved in the antiques world as we would like them to be and for good reason because I think the antiques world hasn't opened itself up to them in the past.
Speaker: And I think that this is an important time to make some big decisions about
Speaker: how active we are in pursuit of that new audience.
Speaker: If we care about objects and we care about
Speaker: the the life of those objects you know as we move into the future if we want them to have homes with people who love them we have to go looking for those homes we have to go um you know out in pursuit of new people who can be turned towards this amazing pursuit of collecting that we're passionate about we can't just expect them to come to us
Speaker: And I'll stop going on about that.
Speaker: But I think it comes down to, you know, on a really concrete level, I've seen folks sort of try to generate like ads for some of the trade publications.
Speaker: And they'll, you know, they'll truck in sort of dad humor.
Speaker: And I love that.
Speaker: I love dad humor.
Speaker: I love my dad.
Speaker: I think it's hilarious to make like stupid puns and to kind of...
Speaker: talk to each other in language that's comfortable and familiar and humorous in the context of the antiques world does represent a sort of fun step forward.
Speaker: But, you know, dad humor that's very rooted in like a specific generation sensibility isn't necessarily going to translate to a 25-year-old.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: I don't think anyone should forsake their sense of humor or what they're good at.
Speaker: But it's a good time to take stock and think about, okay, if I want to try to appeal to a new audience, and not to appeal personally, but to get them turned on by the material, how do I talk to them?
Speaker: What young person could I turn to for advice about the tone I take on Instagram?
Speaker: If people aren't responding to my e-blasts, how can I, you know,
Speaker: strategize my message a little differently to see if I get a different response.
Speaker: I want to see that kind of self-critical attitude not because I don't love what traditional antiques dealers are doing.
Speaker: I do love it and I just want to make sure that they are able to communicate with the widest possible audience.
Speaker: I want for us all to be able to do that.
Speaker: And thinking outside the box, as cliche as that is, you know, it's something that historically our field has not been very good at.
Speaker: I heard an amazing example, actually from someone I was talking with a couple of days ago at the Detroit Institute of Art, who says that the museum there is actually...
Speaker: supplying PPE to local hospitals because they, in their conservation department, they have masks, they have gloves, they have all this protective equipment that it turns out is critically useful to struggling medical facilities.
Speaker: So, you know, this is not exactly within the normal purview of a museum, right?
Speaker: Museums are not normally asked to help in public health crises.
Speaker: But they realized they had a resource available that was usable in a very different context.
Speaker: So I just want to say kudos to the Detroit Institute of Art for taking that step.
Speaker: But it's an example, I think, that we can all be thinking about our place in the market in unconventional ways now more than ever.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And I think museums have really led the way in terms of developing initiatives that speak to other audiences or that, you know, bring the material we all love into communities in a democratic, very active way.
Speaker: And I think we could go on and on, but I think that our colleagues in museums really...
Speaker: have done a lot in the realm of education and digital initiatives that we can all look to now as inspiration as we think about how the market shifts to address, you know, a sort of generational challenge of communication, right?
Speaker: I don't want to debase what museums do by saying that they're kind of creating templates for business, but they've been uniquely concerned with how to communicate with a wide diversity of audiences.
Speaker: And the magical thing is once you're in communication with a wider group of people, you're connected to what's happening in the world, in the community,
Speaker: in ways that can motivate action, right?
Speaker: Like the dispersal of the personal protective equipment that some of the really forward thinking museums have been doing.
Speaker: It's like you start conversations around objects and that leads you to building a broader based community, right?
Speaker: And that's what we need in the market in addition to the museums.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I think we should move in the direction of wrapping up, but I wanted to talk for just a minute, Michael.
Speaker: Again, it's very early in this crisis and there's a lot that we don't know about how the coming weeks and months are gonna look.
Speaker: But I don't think it's too early to start at least hypothesizing about what we might start to see as the crisis ultimately resolves.
Speaker: How we might understand the antiques world to be changing in response to what we're experiencing right now.
Speaker: Basically, how are things going to look different on the other side of this?
Speaker: And the first thing that occurs to me, Michael, is just that
Speaker: Personally, this is an experience that's forcing me to rethink what I define as essential and what I define as non-essential.
Speaker: And it's going to be very interesting to look at my credit card bill for this month and next and who knows how long versus previous months and recognize that.
Speaker: what it is that I'm foregoing that I used to take for granted.
Speaker: And that, of course, is a central idea in collecting, right?
Speaker: Deciding what you're motivated to own, what you're motivated to go and see and to spend your time with and to look at.
Speaker: And
Speaker: That's actually a hopeful thought to me, that as people are spending their time in their homes with their furniture, with their objects, that we're going to start to realize how essential a lot of the elements of daily life are, that in other times we've sort of brushed to the fringes of our awareness.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: I so agree with that.
Speaker: In fact, a friend of mine, Sarah Bray, who's a former co-chair of Young Collectors Night at the Winter Show and a former editor of numerous publications in New York before she...
Speaker: sort of semi-retired to Bermuda, where her fiancé is from, and I'm supremely jealous of everything in that sentence.
Speaker: She made this really wonderful post this week saying that the experience of moving to an isolated island coupled with the coronavirus pandemic have really motivated her to
Speaker: to make a commitment to ask herself three questions before she makes a purchase.
Speaker: And I should add that Sarah has always been a proponent of antiques and vintage material for as long as I've known her.
Speaker: But sort of more than ever, she's asking, you know, is this non-essential item that she's buying not adding more waste to the world?
Speaker: So really giving body to this idea of antiques being green, right?
Speaker: Which, you know, I like that idea for a lot of reasons, but I don't think that the way we've deployed it in the antiques world has been very successful.
Speaker: It's just been too... We've only had the catchphrase.
Speaker: We haven't really had the practice of asking this question that Sarah has outlined.
Speaker: Is this non-essential item not adding more waste to the world?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Two, does this non-essential item support a small business or entrepreneur in my community that I can directly know or trust to be ethically employing or empowering artisans or, in the case of the antiques world, local talent?
Speaker: You know, like people like you, Ben, who know a lot about silver.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And three, is this non-essential item locally made or sourced and directly impacting my community?
Speaker: And I can't think of anything that does all of that more in our context than American antiques.
Speaker: So I loved this post that she made on Instagram of all places, right?
Speaker: I mean, here's a millennial on Instagram doing the work we're all talking about.
Speaker: And it really inspires... So this is set up as sort of three questions you ask yourself before you buy post-coronavirus.
Speaker: And an object that you're thinking about buying in Sarah's framework doesn't have to meet all three of those standards.
Speaker: I like that about this.
Speaker: It's not a restrictive or punitive approach.
Speaker: It's kind of...
Speaker: You know, it's favorable to consumption.
Speaker: You're asking, does this object take off one of these three rules?
Speaker: And if it does, then you let yourself buy it.
Speaker: But I love that she's saying that this moment in her house on this island has kind of inspired her to finally...
Speaker: take all that she's been thinking and feeling over these last couple of years of sort of rising awareness around antiques and vintage and sustainability and to activate it in her own practice as a collector.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: I think that's a wonderful framework and easy to apply, but really impactful.
Speaker: And, you know, it's applicable to every single purchase of an antique or vintage object, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So how to connect to others.
Speaker: Sarah's already converted, but how to connect to all of those who have the same ethical standards, the same ideas about value, and who've maybe been moved to act on them in an even more consistent way after this experience.
Speaker: How to connect with them, I think, is the question of the day in the antiques world.
Speaker: And I don't think there's one answer, but I think every business will have to be considering the question in order to succeed.
Speaker: I think that's a lovely idea, and I think it's a lovely note to end on.
Speaker: Michael, thank you so much.
Speaker: This has been a lot of fun.
Speaker: It's making me feel a little better, actually, particularly ending on a note of optimism like that.
Speaker: Sorry, go ahead.
Speaker: No, I mean, we have plenty of work to do, but it can be framed in a positive way, and I think that's important for our mental health as we confront a crisis.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Listeners, I hope you've enjoyed this.
Speaker: Stay tuned.
Speaker: We have plenty more content coming your way.
Speaker: And until next time, this has been Curious Objects.
Speaker: Cheers, everyone.
Speaker: I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: This is Michael Diaz-Griffith.
Speaker: Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
Speaker: Take care.
Speaker: Bye-bye.
