Art Fairs and the Changing Art Market

Art Basel, which begins in two weeks, promises to be especially lively this year. Many curators and collectors will come directly from the Venice Biennale, which begins on June 10. After the recent, record-breaking auctions at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, people are feeling confident about the continuing strength of the market.But for dealers, a strong market brings its own challenges — above all, how to gather enough good material to take advantage of the opportunity a fair presents. In a panel discussion last week presented by the Art Dealers Association of America, several dealers described how they address this problem and where fairs fit in the overall landscape of the art market.There has been a tremendous proliferation of art fairs in recent years. There will be close to 20 satellite fairs, such as Scope and Pulse, happening around Art Basel Miami this coming December. Art Basel is one of the older fairs, established in 1970. Like Art Basel Miami, it is owned by MCH Swiss Exhibitions Ltd., a private company that runs numerous trade shows, including a major watch and jewelry show called Basel-World. The company’s income comes from exhibitors’ fees and sponsorships; it does not take a percentage of sales.One topic that arose early on the panel is the slightly mysterious process of how galleries get into a fair. Even with the proliferation of fairs, admission to the top fairs is very difficult. “The number of people who apply are many more than the places,” a co-owner of Luhring Augustine, Lawrence Luhring, who is on the dealers committee that selects exhibitors for Art Basel Miami, said.Nor are the criteria completely transparent or straightforward. A co-owner of CRG Gallery, Carla Chammas, said that her gallery, which represents emerging artists, has been on the waiting list for Art Basel for nine years. “I have a feeling that art fairs are kind of like the Ivy League,” Ms. Chammas said — in that selections are not based simply on merit, but on more complicated factors, such as who you know, and the committee’s need to achieve a certain diversity among exhibitors.Getting material is particularly hard for secondary-market dealers, the director of the Richard Gray Gallery in New York, Andrew Fabricant, said. The competition from auction houses is intense. “A collector says, ‘Why should I take my painting to a dealer when I can go to an auction house and get a guarantee and the majority of the upside?'” Mr. Fabricant said.Nor does offering to take a painting to a major fair offer a particular incentive for a seller to sell through a gallery, Mr. Fabricant added in a later interview. “It’s less appealing,” he said. The major reason a collector would choose to sell through a gallery rather than at auction is to have a more private and discreet transaction — but this is not the case at a fair.So how do dealers solve this problem? “No one has a great solution,” Mr. Fabricant said. “Because the market’s in such flux and values have gone so out of whack, [you’re] basically just reacting, you can’t plan a strategy.”The pressure of the growing number of art fairs is tough on primary-market dealers, as well. Normally, a dealer will ask an artist to produce a particularly special work to take to a fair. “But it’s hard to say that five or six times a year,” Mr. Luhring said.“Some artists are resentful of fairs,” Ms. Chammas said. “If they give pieces to five different fairs, that’s a show they can’t have” (and, unlike an exhibition, art fairs don’t show up on an artist’s résumé).Still, not attending the fairs —and thus missing out on the opportunity to meet new clients and get yourself seen — is not an option. “It’s to be in the loop and stay in the loop,” Mr. Fabricant said on the panel. “And, if you’re out, it’s hard to get back in, particularly with the rapacity of the art world right now and the pace at which everything’s happening.”The moderator, the art consultant Allan Schwartzman, raised the issue of auction houses trying to dip into the art fair business. This year, Christie’s had a booth at Maastricht, as did a gallery, Noortman Master Paintings, that Sotheby’s recently acquired. The consensus on the panel was that Christie’s, at least, did badly at Maastricht. A co-owner of Mitchell-Innes & Nash and former worldwide director of contemporary art at Sotheby’s, Lucy Mitchell-Innes, said that Christie’s brought “everything they hadn’t sold over many years, and they went home with it.” She described Christie’s circular booth as looking like “a Polish nightclub.” Mr. Fabricant said others had compared it to a French toilet (presumably one of the public kind). He also noted that both of the Christie’s representatives who worked at the stand at Maastricht quit the company soon after.“It’s the best thing that could happen to dealers,” Ms. Mitchell-Innes said of auction houses participating in fairs. If auction houses bring their clients to art fairs, the clients will see all the other options they have. “It’s a huge leveler,” she said.To submit an event for consideration for the Calendar, please wire the particulars to calendar@nysun.com, placing the date of the event in the subject line.

Art Fairs and the Changing Art Market

Art Fairs and the Changing Art Market

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