The Art Newspaper

Starting local, going global

Art fairs are an essential opportunity for newer collectors to expand their horizons

By Georgina Adam. From Art Basel daily edition
Published online: 15 June 2011

Visitors to the Hong Kong International Art Fair (ArtHK), where local collectors bought work by western artists; inset, Mexican collector César Cervantes

The Mexican art collector César Cervantes started his career by buying local artists—until 2000, when he first visited the French art fair Fiac “on the advice of Jumex heir and collector Eugenio López”, he says. The trip was decisive: in Paris he met On Kawara, and the visit shifted the direction of his collecting. Now in Cervantes’s home there are works by international artists including Jimmie Durham, Monika Sosnowska, Roman Ondak, Claire Fontaine, Jim Lambie and Anri Sala, as well as Latin American names such as Damián Ortega, Minerva Cuevas and Gabriel Orozco.

Cervantes’s story is repeated again and again among collectors, particularly those from regions that are only newly buying contemporary art. As dealers vie to expand into emerging markets, seek out new artists to bring to their clients and tap into wealthy new collectors for their own artist rosters, the role of art fairs is essential. And they give the still highly fragmented dealer community a way of striking back against the powerful auction houses, which are also avidly mining the seams of gold in new economies. “Art fairs reflect the same energy and activity we see in the salerooms,” says Iwan Wirth of Hauser & Wirth (B12/2.0) “In Asia, for example, they present the only opportunities for galleries to meet new clients.”

“At the recent Hong Kong art fair, several collectors bought works by western artists; they crossed over from collecting Chinese contemporary art,” says the Beijing- and New York-based collector, and Hong Kong fair adviser, Richard Chang, adding that “big international fairs bring a type of ‘attitude’ to developing new markets by generating buzz and excitement.” Antonia Carver, director of Art Dubai, agrees, saying that the “dealer and collector Rami Farook of Traffic started buying at our first fair five years ago. He did Sotheby’s education course, started collecting local art and has now switched to contemporary art.”

“Typically, people from recently emerged economic regions start by buying their own art, often 19th-century; they then move to local contemporary art, and then on to international contemporary; fairs are crucial in this process,” says Philip Dodd, chairman of London-based agency Made in China, which develops major projects with Asia. Dodd is also an adviser to the Hong Kong fair, in which Art Basel now owns a controlling interest.

This deal, which is agreed and will be finalised on 1 July, sees Art Basel make its second expansion, this time into Asia. The fair is the trail-blazer for developing new markets; it was the first international contemporary art fair to spawn an offshoot, partly to target an emerging market. Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB), first held in 2002, was both an expansion into the US, the world’s biggest art market, and a way of tapping into the potentially lucrative Latin American market. Many collectors in the region were triggered into buying international contemporary art as a result of this fair. “It’s through the fairs that collectors become exposed to a new sort of art, and it changes their points of view,” says Buenos Aires-based Mauro Herlitzka, a director of the Pinta fair. He previously collected old master paintings and “sold everything” to collect Latin American art.

Essential VIPs

“There is no doubt that ABMB enabled dealers to come into contact with new collectors they wouldn’t have met any other way,” says top adviser Allan Schwartzman, whose clients include the Brazilian collector Bernardo Paz. Paris dealer Patrick Seguin, showing this week at the Design Miami/Basel fair, says: “It’s evident that these fairs have not only stimulated new markets, but they have also enabled dealers to become better known on the international stage.” He cites Mexico’s Kurimanzutto (N1/2.1) as “one of the best in the world”, and says the gallery “has gained far more visibility thanks to fairs”.

So, how do the fairs plug in to these new markets? The essential weapon in their armory is the VIP programme, which brings in local collectors, taste-makers and the leading personalities of the target region. Basel kicked off its VIP programme in 2002 with just two representatives: now it has 15 “VIP relations” consultants, covering European and Latin America as well as China, the Middle East and India, and has just added new ones specifically for Brazil and Mexico. And every fair, even small ones, have some sort of a VIP programme, often including visits to local collections, museums, dinners and other events.

The India Art Fair (previously India Art Summit) has “hosted collectors’ evenings in various cities—Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad—which have been very successful in the past,” says its director Neha Kirpal. “This year, we are launching a collectors’ circle,” she adds, “a membership-based initiative aimed at increasing awareness and access to art among new collectors. In the lead-up to the fair, the Collectors’ Circle members has access to a special programme of events, studio visits and private viewings that culminate in the VIP programme of the art fair.”

Just as important, and linked with the VIP programmes, are museum tie-ups, which give access to the institutions’ databases, key supporters as well as adding prestige. “One of the ways we measure the success of a fair edition is by the number of museum groups who visit,” says Art Basel co-director Marc Spiegler; Basel attracted some 60 such groups in 2010, and Art Dubai had the same figure this year.

ABMB has established a highly fruitful relationship with Miami’s Museum of Contemporary Art (Moca) from the beginning and this year they co-celebrate their tenth (for ABMB) and 15th (for Moca) anniversaries. Moca offers art fair activities for its members at all levels, from private tours of the fair for its top patrons, to walk-arounds with its teenage members. And according to director Bonnie Clearwater, the link-up enabled the museum’s already established reputation to reach a far wider public, both domestically and internationally. “It brought in collectors from Latin America that we didn’t know, as well as introducing new artists to our existing circles of supporters,” she says.

The final piece in the jigsaw, but no less essential, is education, and in developing regions this is the key to nurturing a future generation of collectors. “The international art fairs are one of the fastest ways to learn about contemporary art and its scene,” says art adviser Christina Heekyung Kang, who is based in New York but has many Korean clients. “All the major galleries come and show their artists’ work in one place. It may seem chaos for newcomers, but it is the best way to train the eye and learn about trends and the current market.” But, she notes: “Asia in particular needs more access to contemporary art, and more educational programmes are essential.”

Such programmes are a notable feature of the major art fairs and crucial for developing new markets. They offer established collectors a way of enlarging their knowledge (and hopefully acquisitions) by introducing them to new artists from the region, as well as guiding novices on how to collect—and they go both ways, promoting art from lesser-known art centres, as well as putting western art in context.

Dubai’s Global Art Forum, a platform for debate and discussion run in parallel to the fair, has featured Ziba Ardalan, director/curator of London’s Parasol Unit Foundation, on commissioning, supporting and exhibiting international contemporary artists—a very apt subject in a country that will soon be buying massively for its Saadiyat Island museum project—and Michael Danoff, the collector and former director of the art programme at Neuberger Berman and Lehman Brothers, on building a contemporary art collection, as well as a panel entitled “The Next Ten Years of Contemporary Art in the Middle East”.

“Education is crucial for us here in the Gulf,” says Carver. “Our fortunes as a fair are wrapped up in it, as there is very little in the way of art education in the region. And our programmes have been a catalyst for the local gallery scene, as well as nurturing young collectors. There is a real thirst for education here: all the talks are completely oversubscribed.” Carver is particularly focused on 20- and 30-somethings in the Gulf, who she says are already collectors: “They are highly educated and have a very international outlook on the world. I see their potential as being immense.”

Emerging markets

“Particularly in emerging markets like India, art fairs are able to engage a large cross-over audience,” says Neha Kirpal. “India Art Fair, for instance, is the only international event of its kind—in scope and scale—in the entire country; it has received interest not just from galleries and the art community but from non-art audiences.”

David Maupin, from Lehman Maupin gallery of New York (J9 /2.1) freshly back from doing the Hong Kong art fair, adds that “the reputation of art fairs is very important in new markets, and this is how we have met new people as well. The big fairs give a sort of endorsement, just as the auction houses do with their catalogues and publication of prices. The fairs give buyers a comfort zone to meet people from the gallery—and of course they don’t have to travel.”

For Schwartzman, however, an art fair is not necessarily the best place for novice collectors to see art. “In some ways it’s the worst environment to learn about art,” he says. “With all of the visitors, the frenzy, the number of works in the booths, there’s too much to see. It’s not the same as engaging with the art. But on the other hand, a fair can open a door to something you didn’t know existed. There hasn’t been an edition of Art Basel in which I didn’t come across something…With my longest-standing client, Howard Rachofsky [the Dallas philanthropist and collector], who is noted for his collection of 1950s and 1960s Italian art, we bought the first work at Art Basel.”

“Even for experienced collectors, the art fair is often an opportunity to see fresh works, new talent, or artists in a new context,” agrees Kirpal. “Looking at such a breadth of art under one roof also sets a relative context for it all, encouraging people to look at what they typically may have missed…and pushing their understanding and interest in new directions.”