How the Lévy Gorvy gallery reinvented itself during the pandemic

It’s been over a year since I interviewed art dealer Dominique Lévy for CNNMoney Switzerland. During that 2020 conversation, Lévy gave a brutally honest assessment of how she saw art galleries and art fairs moving forward. The interview was picked up by  the international press, including The New York Times, Financial Times, Artnet, and The Art Newspaper. Even noted New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz Tweeted it out. Now I've done a follow-up interview with Lévy.

“I got a lot of heat for saying Art Basel will not happen,” she tells me about the reactions she got after our last interview. At the time, she predicted what in the end happened: Art Basel, both the Basel and Miami editions, was canceled, just as the Hong Kong edition was. 

But this didn’t stop Lévy and her team. The gallery Lévy Gorvy, co-owned by her and Brett Gorvy, reinvented itself. Lévy tells me about opening a space in Paris in fall 2020 and about organizing pop-ups in Palm Beach and Aspen, as they quickly moved to where their clients had sheltered. 

She also reflects on the short success of Art Basel’s online viewing rooms, but that the only way forward is a place where the physical, digital, and experiential come together. 

Lévy believes that fairs will be more important locally but that they will no longer be international blockbusters. She decided not to participate in Frieze New York earlier this month and admits that she is even questioning whether to participate in art fairs at all in the future. “I really believe that we need to slow down,” she says. 

But this doesn’t mean that good things aren’t happening. In fact, she sees the slowdown in the art-fair circus as a positive. “Business has been incredibly strong this year without the noise,” she says. “And if business is strong without having that whole cahoot—we are not damaging works of art, we are not spending and wasting….There has been less production of catalogues, paper, shipments—all this is beautiful. And it doesn’t mean less art, and it doesn’t mean less creativity, and, guess what, it doesn’t mean less money either.” Hear why in our recent conversation.