Early Adopters of .art Domain

As one of the early adopters of the .art domain name, HOHMANN was featured in art.art's 5-year anniversary celebration of those holding a .art domain from the beginning. The relationship between art and the digital world is discussed in this short interview with Christian Hohmann.

HOHMANN.ART | Hohmann Fine art is a contemporary gallery which also offers advisory services. The gallery holds an inventory of thousands of artworks by emerging, mid-career and blue-chip artists which can all be consulted online, in the showroom or at fairs.

What is your biggest accomplishment of the past 5 years?
From a business point of view, I feel that our biggest accomplishment was the purchase of a building for the gallery because it freed us from the ever-increasing rent spiral and allows us to invest into our infrastructure.
In terms of art projects, I believe it was our placing of several Julian Voss-Andreae sculptures in public spaces and the installation of the David Cerny babies in front of the Palm Springs Art Museum that were most consequential. Also, maybe our very successful participation at Art Miami got us noticed nationally. We always battle the stigma of our location. People don’t expect a high-end gallery in a vacation town

Looking back to 5 years ago, how did the importance of a digital presence has changed?
For us, the digital presence has been important for a while, because we have a large number of clients that are not local and the website is our window to the world. We started investing heavily in our internet presence from the beginning, but COVID pushed it forward even faster. We were forced to develop and adapt much more rapidly.
I believe strongly that it will be increasingly hard to remain relevant if your digital presence doesn’t match your physical presence because fewer people will actually come to the gallery before making a buying decision. Our website was originally hohmannfineart.com, but I managed to get a trademark for my family’s name HOHMANN, so when .ART became available I jumped on it and used the change at the time to redesign our web presence. Obviously we own dozens of other domains with our name, but hohmann.art remains the number one because it speaks for itself.

What’s one thing you would change about art in the digital world? (Or digital in the art world)
My biggest complaint about the artworld in the digital realm is that dealers, artists and third party websites that showcase many galleries or artists have not understood the primary objective of our profession: For artists, it is to create something special and for dealers/galleries, it is to communicate to collectors and clients why it is special by means of presentation and education. Instead, most dealers, artists and websites just think in terms of volume and upload any and every piece they have. As a community we have not yet learned how to translate the in-person experience of going to a gallery or an artist studio into a similar digital experience. I wouldn’t welcome clients to the gallery, immediately drag them into my warehouse and show them every single work of art by every one of my artists, right? We need less volume and more quality.

Source: art.art

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HOHMANN
44651 Village Court #142
Palm Desert, CA 92260
Mo - Fr 11 - 5

Appointments are not required but greatly appreciated, especially if you are coming to see a specific item because not all works are on display. 

 (760) 346-4243 - www.hohmann.art/visit