Each year 30,000 visitors arrive in Miami for the Art Basel fair. Many are art dealers and art collectors looking to buy or build relationships. But Art Basel in Miami Beach is also the art market’s trade convention or annual Christmas party, take your pick.
In this podcast, we speak to 8 different attendees about why they come to Art Basel and what they do at the fair. You’ll hear from auction house professionals and appraisers, art lawyers and magazine publishers, the creator of Artsy’s activation and a museum director.
Featured in this podcast are:
Kenny Schachter: perhaps the only serious collector, dealer and advisor who also writes extensively about the art market. Schachter details his strategy for obsessively extracting every relevant piece of information out of the fair.
Elena Soboleva: Elena leads special projects at Artsy and details the year-long planning and execution of Artsy’s signature event, this year an immersive experience of VR and music at the Faena Art Time Capsule Geodesic Dome featuring site-specific works by Rachel Rossin, Jon Rafman and Jacolby Satterwhite.
Jonathan Binstock: The director of Rochester, NY’s Memorial Art Gallery details his trip to the fair with members of his board. He explains how museum groups interact with the fair, the dealers and the subtle negotiations between supporting collectors and furthering the goals of the museum.
Naomi Baigell: Athena Art Finance’s head of marketing talks about the fair as a community of like-minded art market professionals who mix the demands of work with a common experience of a career in the art market.
Judd Grossman: The principal of Grossman LLP explains why he’s on hand at the art fair to help his clients with the inevitable last-minute legal problems that arise between the myriad of participants in the art market.
Mari-Claudia Jimenez: Sotheby’s head of Trusts & Estates explains why she arrives earlier and earlier each year to Art Basel in Miami Beach and it matters that art professionals attend.
Kimball Higgs: Winston Art Group’s Contemporary art appraiser and advisor talks about his strategy for tackling the fair.
Laurent Moïsi: The publisher of Whitewall magazine talks about how Art Basel in Miami Beach has shifted from parties to content as he arranges the distribution of 60,000 magazines to hotel rooms in the days before the fair opens and organizes the Lexus Art Series at the Faena hotel.
Sponsored by Christie’s Education New York: