LONDON.- London Art Week is launching a new online platform for Summer 2020. LAW Digital will take place from 3 – 10 July 2020, with a Private View on Thursday 2 July. The format enables London Art Week to retain its unique community of international art dealers, auction houses, museums and sponsors, all working together in the creation of a special event online. LAW Digital has been created to augment the experience of London Art Week’s in-gallery exhibitions, talks and shared scholarly values; real-life shows will take place if possible.

A unique collection of enticing London Art Week virtual viewing rooms will be curated according to category of art and present works from all participants side by side. These mixed exhibitions will allow clients the chance to come across works from a wide variety of dealers as well as auction houses; presented together for the first time, the virtual presentations will create a new experience in the viewing of pre-contemporary art for sale. This exclusive format will also provide participants with a greater chance of being discovered by new clients, therefore increasing potential sale leads.

London remains at the heart of the global art market, and London Art Week is a focal point for dealing in early art, Old and Modern Masters and fine pre-contemporary works. With innovative thinking London Art Week is working to support its friends and colleagues overseas and around the UK, allowing them to maintain for Summer 2020 an exchange of views, news and scholarly information that typically accompanies a gathering of international dealers, experts and auction house specialists, even if meeting in person may not be possible.

Stephen Ongpin of Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, Chairman of the event, notes that “London Art Week has been a growing success and this Summer we expected to see the highest number of participants and gallery exhibitions yet. The current Covid-19 pandemic may have curtailed this, but it has instead given us an opportunity to explore how our community can work with one another in these difficult times and explore new opportunities. We feel London Art Week Digital will offer a platform to dealers around the world to join forces and offer their best works to a varied audience of international collectors and curators.”

Viewing rooms will provide extensive information, bringing the scholarship of participants to the fore. Invaluable research and expertise in the guise of online catalogues and essays will be freely shared, bringing new knowledge to a wide audience. LAW Digital is not designed as an online shopping portal; clients will be encouraged to make direct connections to dealers, fostering one-to-one conversations to create new personal contacts.

Each dealers’ presence on the London Art Week website will be augmented to display up to 25 works; interactive features will include a search facility for dealers and art disciplines; ‘Discover More’ buttons leading viewers to find similar works offered by other participants, and the inclusion of videos describing works for sale in greater detail.

Podcasts, videos and editorial features will be published via a News & Features page at www.londonartweek.co.uk and timed, online events are planned. These will include contributions from major museums, such as The Wallace Collection and The Courtauld, as well as in-depth interviews with, and articles by, dealers, curators and auction house specialists. Features on individual highlight works for sale during the week will be added regularly.

A virtual online ‘flick-through’ catalogue replaces previous printed editions. This new digital publication will be distributed far more extensively than in the past, reaching a worldwide audience of collectors and museum curators, sharing the catalogue in a way not previously possible.

“This is a positive and flexible strategy and I fully support a virtual London Art Week” comments Lowell Libson of Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd. “It is something many of us have been exploring and the current circumstances encourages us to embrace this technology sooner than anticipated.”

Jorge Coll of Colnaghi adds, “The dealer community is facing a difficult situation at the moment. An online version of LAW…will help us keep a united front and promote the high standard of works for sale by London Art Week dealers.”

Alexandra Toscano, Vice-Chair of London Art Week, who has been involved in LAW and its predecessor events since their inception, adds, “Should circumstances in the UK change, London Art Week retains the flexibility to have physical exhibitions as well. This may mean a much smaller event, given the unlikely chance that our overseas participants can travel here as they do normally, but we feel that London galleries need to work together to ensure London stays the centre of the art world, while giving our fellow dealers from abroad as much support as we can.”