As we continue our spotlight series, we speak with MASSIMO DE CARLO Registrar, Margherita Divari, to see how the gallery, with four locations internationally, has adapted since the outbreak of Covid-19.
For our clients that don’t yet know Margherita, Margherita joined the gallery last year and mainly manages their London operations, whilst also working closely with the team in Milan to coordinate exhibitions across the various gallery locations in Paris and Hong Kong and is the main point of contact for MASSIMO DE CARLO’s artists internationally. First up, we asked;
We are a gallery with locations in Paris, Milan, Hong Kong and London so ensuring that we are adhering to the government guidelines at any one time was always a priority. However, as many of our galleries were forced to close for long periods, we accelerated the opening of our virtual space – V Space. The idea for V Space was originally born in Hong Kong, where our gallery there had to close during the riots, so we were already working on a solution to show works to clients that weren’t able to access the gallery in person. Covid-19 simply accelerated this project for us. Our aim with V Space is to provide clients with a fully immersed 3D experience so that you feel like you are actually in the MASSIMO DE CARLO space. It’s much more interactive than simply scrolling through PDFs and, if you’d like, you can also wear special 3D glasses to bring the space to life further. Our clients have really loved it and I think it’s a space that we’ll continue with into the future.
That said, now that the world is opening back up, seeing art in person and within the gallery will always be important to us and our clients and that won’t change. You can see our current exhibition, Portraiture One Century Apart, at our London Gallery now.
Since we have locations in Europe and the UK, we had been preparing for Brexit for a long time. When the transition period finished earlier this year, we had a clear plan in place so it was no surprise that Brexit meant that, unfortunately, we had to complete more paperwork and pay increased duties. Many of our works are also now on TA, which naturally results in more work for our shippers, such as Queen’s. Where we can, we always try and consolidate our shipments to make the transport of works both more environmentally friendly and economical, but it is still more expensive for us to import and export works to and from the EU than it was previously. That said, it’s all now par of the course and we’ll continue to work out of our various locations for the foreseeable future.
As I mentioned above, we always aim to consolidate shipments where we can as that helps us to bring down our carbon footprint dramatically. When transporting works between our galleries in Milan, Paris and London, we also often prioritise road transport over air. It can take a little bit longer but it’s much more friendly on the environment and it works well if we can book onto a shuttle service going to those routes anyway. For large shows, such as Art Fairs, we often try to ensure that we are planning ahead so that we can ship our works via sea freight, which we all know is more environmentally friendly. However, this isn’t always possible due to the time that it takes and it may be something that we look to encourage more moving forwards.
We’re also very conscious about the packaging we use so we work closely with our shippers to limit this. For us, recyclable materials, such as cardboard is always prioritised and we keep the use of bubble wrap to an absolute minimum. That’s why it’s great working with Queen’s as the team work with us to advise which packaging solutions will keep the work safe whilst also helping to limit our environmental impact.
If you would like to know more about how we at Queen’s are working to reduce our Carbon Footprint, you can view our Carbon Plan here. For shipping, storage or installation requests, your Queen’s contact remains at your disposal. Alternatively, please contact [email protected]
