Survey warns a third of French galleries may close before 2021

Our daily round-up of news from the art world 

A third of French galleries may close due to coronavirus before 2021 | The trade association of art dealers in France (Comité professionnel des galeries d’art) has warned that a third of French galleries may be forced to close before the end of the year due to coronavirus. This is based on the findings of a survey of the association’s 279 members, which suggests that a total of €184m will have been lost between March and June. Americans for the Arts, meanwhile, has released results from a survey of 11,500 US organisations, which estimates that a total of $4.5 billion has been lost due to the crisis.

New method for dating pottery sheds light on London’s agricultural past | Researchers at the University of Bristol have developed a new technique for the radiocarbon dating of pottery, it was announced yesterday. The technique has been used on a collection of Early Neolithic pottery excavated by archaeologists in Shoreditch in London, dating the fragments to a window of 138 years around 3600 BC. One of the researchers described the newly dated collection as ‘the strongest evidence yet that people in the area later occupied by the city […] were living a less mobile, farming-based lifestyle during the Early Neolithic period’.

Hauser & Wirth to open art-tech division | The mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth has announced the launch of ArtLab, which the news release describes as a ‘research and innovation arm exploring projects at the intersection of art and technology’. The first initiative will be a tool for modelling exhibitions in virtual reality (VR), to be unveiled with a VR show later this month.