Sandy has had a devastating impact on New York. The city, its citizens, infrastructure, and businesses endured a ferocious hurricane that swept through early this week. The entertainment and creative arts industry is also reeling, incurring losses from delays and damage that could reach many millions of dollars.
Across the city, film premieres, television productions, concerts, and shows were cancelled or postponed as Hurricane Sandy blew. Power outages and transportation issues added to the chaos. Few performances were only delayed or moved to a safer venue. Some theatres and arenas of New York, however, remain shut, currently unsafe to return to. The city has revoked all filming permits, affecting popular television productions like Smash, Gossip Girl, and Elementary and interrupting progress on major movies.
The Metropolitan Opera and Radio City Music Hall were closed. While Broadway Theatres had been ready to reopen yesterday, the off-Broadway community, with most of its theatres located in lower Manhattan, will need to wait for the next curtain call a while longer.
‘It
could get really big, especially with Broadway,’ Paul Bassman, president of Doodson Insurance Brokerage in Dallas told Marketing Daily. ‘There’s a lot of people affected by this.’
Those who could continue made do. Performing to empty seats, David Letterman and David Fallon recorded their late shows without an audience for two nights after the storm first hit. Denzel Washington was not deterred from making his guest appearance on the Letterman show. He turned up in a yellow raincoat joking that he swam to the Ed Sullivan Theatre.
In the days following, several galleries and museums wrote to Huffpost to exclaim that no artworks had been damaged by the winds or the floods, including New Museum in downtown New York. Sadly, owners and employees of galleries lining streets such as 10th and 11th Avenue in Chelsea were faced with the gruelling task of sorting through the items that were irrevocably damaged.
‘We must have had at least five feet of water in the basement,’ Churner & Churner gallery owner Rachel Churner told The New York Times.’To be honest with you, we’re not even sure yet what
happened down there.
There’s a lot of stuff that’s just not going to be salvageable. The fury of the water was tremendous. We were definitely
caught off guard.’
Elin Ewald, head of O’Toole-Ewald Associates, a top art damage appraisal company, noted that this is the ‘worst disaster affecting NYC – and its art – since 9/11.’
‘And the sheer increase in public art and art ownership in the past 10
years, which I think was largely a result of 9/11, means things may
prove much worse,’ she told The Guardian. ‘I especially recall dealing with the destruction by
Hurricane Katrina of one whole collection of master art – these things
can be truly heartbreaking.’
Yet among all the tragedy there was still those who felt they’d escaped the worst of it.
Andrew Freiser, gallery owner of Fredericks & Freiser, was saved a lot of damage thanks to a border of electrical tape around his doors and windows, which greatly reduced the amount of water that got into the building.
‘Who’d have thought?’ he said. ‘We were very lucky.’
Entertainment venues outside of New York have also been greatly affected. Atlantic City’s boardwalk was reportedly destroyed by the hurricane, and it remains unclear when its casinos and venues will be back in business.
But while Sandy was wrecking havoc through New York’s art scene, those lucky enough to have power were getting creative themselves. That’s right, hurricane Sandy is now a meme sensation, taking the internet over by storm (no pun intended). You can check out some of the greatest meme creations sparked by Sandy right below.
