September marks a new era for La Biennale Paris, the fair formerly known as the Biennale des Antiquaires, founded in 1962 and run by France’s Syndicat National des Antiquaires (SNA, the National Federation of Antiques Dealers). In addition to—and in spite of—the new name La Biennale Paris, announced last November, this is the first edition of the fair to be held as an annual event, with new leadership.
“Everybody remembers the only annual biennial,” jokes Christopher Forbes, the American publishing magnate and collector who was named the president of the Biennale Commission, which oversees the event, last November, and says he was nominated before the change was made. Forbes replaced Henri Loyrette, the former President of the Louvre Museum, who served as the fair’s president for only one year.
The new leadership also includes the Paris-based dealer of 19th-century European paintings, Mathias Ary Jan, who became the SNA’s new director in November after the group voted to end the tenure of Dominique Chevalier. Chevalier oversaw the shift in the fair from a biennial to annual event, and also the fair’s takeover of the art fair Paris Tableau in 2015. (And though Forbes is of the new guard, he says Chevalier was one of the people who encouraged him to take up his new position.)
While the new name is a splashy (and somewhat befuddling) transformation, Ary Jan emphasised a more substantial change at a press event held in New York today (27 June) to announce details for this fair: a ramped-up, more rigorous vetting process for this year’s edition. The fair was already vetted, but Forbes points to the scandal of fake 18th-century furniture that badly rattled the French antiques world last year—and involved two of the fair’s major, regular exhibitors, Kraemer and Aaron galleries (who did not present in the fair's 2016 edition).
There are 92 exhibitors so far confirmed to participate in the Biennale Paris 2017 from 12 countries, mainly in Europe, but also a gallery from Mumbai, Nirav Modi, which specialises in jewellery, and from Singapore, Singva Blue Horizon specialising in 19th-century decorative arts. (113 galleries participated last year.) Interesting objects to be presented include a tambourine painted by Manet after a trip to Spain (1879, Galerie Berès, Paris) and a 19th or early-20th century Kifwebe mask once owned by Lucien Lefèbvre-Foinet, who sold painting supplies to artists including Brancusi, Matisse, Modigliani and Picasso, shown by the Paris-based Galerie Ferrandin. The objects on show will span 6,000 years.
The fair will also show around 130 works from the Barbier-Mueller Collection—an array that includes Jeff Koons, the 18th-century French painter Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, a Samurai helmet and African art. The exhibition honours Jean-Paul Barbier-Mueller, the Swiss collector and founder of the Musée Barbier-Mueller in Geneva who died last December aged 86.
