Galleries go online as world of art adjusts

"Digital engagement is already here, especially in the last six months and even more so these past three months. All galleries are now online, art fairs have also gone online, you can't really escape the online trend," Hui said.

"But the challenge now is, how do we present ourselves. At every gallery, artists can express their creativity and collectors can go online as well. There is almost an overflow of information and visuals in the digital space."

With this in mind, Hui said they need to take note on how to present content and engage with collectors.

The pandemic has also forced other galleries to accelerate their online presence and at the same time it has given them the opportunity to launch newer and improved sites.

Stephen Ongpin, owner of the Stephen Ongpin Fine Art in London, was already in the process of overhauling their website and online viewing rooms before the virus hit.

"Our old website was looking a bit dated, so we decided in January we wanted to update it to have a lot more features and make it a bit more user friendly," he said.

While gallery owners have been saying that online is no substitute for seeing works in person, the lockdown has encouraged them to find new ways to make online businesses work.

"We make sure that the images in our catalogs and the images on our website are extremely accurate in terms of how they reproduce the work of art," Ongpin said.

"We wanted to allow someone on a computer to really zoom into an image and see the detail and see the quality of the craftsmanship and see the pen strokes or brush strokes."