BERLIN'S ART SCENES

It's not looking good for Berlin's art scene, if you believe the newspaper headlines. This spring, Die Welt, a German daily, called the city an ''art metropolis in decline.''

The Financial Times said the art world had ''said goodbye''.

These dire proclamations were spurred by the announcements that three prominent art collectors with art on public view here - Julia Stoschek, Thomas Obrecht and Friedrich Christian Flick - were departing, taking there collections with them.

It was just the latest bad news : In December, the Art Berlin fair folded; in February the international maga gallery Blain Southern, which had a space in Berlin, announced it would be closing.

Yet, art in Berlin goes on - perhaps in a more-established, less hyped way than during the German capital's cheap, come-one, come all halcyon days.

From the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 until the early 2010, when rents began rising sharply. Berlin was a hotbed of unregulated experimentation and exuberant hedonism.

But along the way, the art scene grew up. Several once-scrappy gallerists, like Esther Schipper, who arrived in 1992, are now global art-market players. Artists with bases here, such as Olafur Eliasson, Hito Steyerl and Tomas Saraceno, have become bonafide stars.

''There are great artists living in Berlin, so you can't start saying that everything is dead,'' the gallerist Philomene Magers said in an interview.

The exhibition ''Local Talent,'' running through recent Saturday at Spruth Magers, a gallery Ms. Magers co-founded and operates with Moniks Spruth, is a direct reaction to the negative buss, Ms. Mager added.

The gallerists invited the artist Thomas Demand to curate a show, on short notice, of works by artists living and working in German capital.

On view are works by 25 Berlin-based, including some long term residents - Mr. Ellasson, Tacita Dean and Thomas Struth - as well as a number of emerging artists.

Exhibition logistics were easy, Ms. Magers said. ''We drove a truck to the studios, picked up the works and brought them to the gallery. Everyone was here.''

More than 5,000 visual artists from around the world are based here, according to the statistics compiled by the city authorities. Despite high-profile closures, there are still more than 300 galleries, and before Covid-19 restrictions, there were public art talks nearly every night.

The Honor and Serving of the Latest Operational Research on The World's Art scenes, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Kimberly Bradley.