This summer will see the first iteration of Classic Art London (CAL, 23 June-6 July), a new visitor engagement campaign for pre-contemporary art galleries that aims to fill the void left by London Art Week (LAW).
The LAW board announced it would be winding down at the end of last year after a decade of promoting the capital’s historical art dealers through two events a year (December and late June-July) coinciding with London’s Classic and Old Master sales weeks.
Speaking with The Art Newspaper last month, the works on paper dealer and LAW chairman Stephen Ongpin said that the decision to wind the event down was sad but necessary: “I was very proud that during the pandemic we were able to pivot online very quickly. But we halved the participation fee, and when we restarted LAW as a hybrid event in 2021, we only raised the fee by half. Then we were hit badly in 2022 when two of our main sponsors pulled out. So, from then on it was very difficult financially, and we were struggling to produce the same standard of event.”
Ongpin added: “I think a collegial event like LAW needs to happen every summer in London, and if something similar did happen this year, I’d be very happy to participate, as, I think, would many other exhibitors. I’m just ready to be a follower, not a leader.”
The CAL campaign is being organised by Pippa Roberts and Silke Lohmann, the PR duo who worked on London Art Week from 2018 to 2024.
“Pippa and I started working on the LAW PR in 2018 and always thought it was a great initiative to shine a light on the pre-contemporary art market in London,” Lohmann says. “We—and many dealers—were saddened that LAW closed down in December and took the initiative to set up a PR and marketing driven campaign that would keep London galleries on the map and continue to give them the opportunity to share their expertise with collectors and curators world-wide.” With that in mind, Lohmann says, it was important to announce the idea in time for the first major events in the US art calendar, The Winter Show and Master Drawings New York, currently underway in New York.
“We have great respect for the dealers’ expertise and knowledge. Many are small one-person businesses that benefit from collaborative marketing,” Lohmann adds.
Karen Taylor, who has an annual summer exhibition in St James’s, describes CAL as “a welcome phoenix to rise from the ashes of previous endeavours.” Taylor has already signed up, as has Guy Peppiatt, a specialist in 18th- and 19th-century British watercolours and drawings. “It is an important time of year for us when many private clients and museum curators from abroad come to London,” he says. “An event like this gives them an added incentive to make the trip to view the many varied and exciting exhibitions and provides them with a focus to their trip.”
Tom Dawney, the gallery manager of Trinity Fine Art, which will also participate, says “this event serves to maintain the presence of London’s preeminent galleries on the art map, link them together and give them more visibility on the busy London arts calendar.”
Other confirmed participants include Charles Beddington, Nonesuch Gallery and Justin Raccanello.
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