With only two months before its marquee Swiss edition opens, Art Basel is hoping that a new initiative will help ensure that people make the trek to the Messeplatz to see art in-person.
“Basel Exclusive,” as the fair is calling it, has a relatively simple premise: galleries will withhold at least one work, but up to their entire booth, from the PDF previews that they send out to clients ahead of the fair. Per a release, the initiative is meant to lean into one of the Swiss fair’s “defining strengths — discovery of the most exceptional works, in person, at the highest level.”
The initiative is open to any gallery participating in the main Galleries sector of Art Basel, which runs from June 18–21, with VIP preview days on June 16–17. So far 170 out of 232 exhibitors, or just under 75 percent, have signed on. The fair expects this figure to continue to rise in the coming weeks.
They range from mega-galleries Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace Gallery, and David Zwirner to blue-chips like Gladstone, Lehmann Maupin, Lisson, Matthew Marks, Paula Cooper, Thaddaeus Ropac, and White Cube. Secondary market–focused dealerships like Galerie 1900-2000, Helly Nahmad, Landau, Mayoral, Pace Di Donna Schrader, and Van de Weghe are also set to take part.
In an interview with ARTnews, Vincenzo de Bellis, Art Basel’s chief artistic officer and global director of fairs, characterized Basel Exclusive as a “gallery-led process” that came out of conversations with exhibitors over the past several months. The fair began to formalize it as an addition to the Basel fair last month during Art Basel Hong Kong, and exhibitors were officially invited to participate last week.
“We all recognize the fact that we live in a digital world that is very much driven by the distribution of images and of artworks’ images,” de Bellis said. “But at the same time, we also know the importance of seeing things in person, and that’s true for all the different constituencies of our industry. And therefore, we wanted to make a point altogether about this.”
He added, “It’s great to remind people that if they don’t come [to Basel], they won’t see certain things in person.”
De Bellis said that the idea of Basel Exclusive dates back to last fall as the fair was prepping for Art Basel Paris, where it debuted the early-access, invite-only program called Avant Première. For it, galleries were given a certain amount of tickets that they could distribute to select clients, who could preview the fair the evening before the first VIP day.
“It’s two sides of the same coin,” de Bellis said. “We are, effectively, a platform for galleries and collector to get together, and they wanted to have more time to see things, and also to see things that otherwise they wouldn’t be able to see.”
To meet those needs, which are specific to the context of each fair it organizes, Art Basel introduced Avant Première and now Basel Exclusive, respectively. Put another way, Art Basel Paris, with the draw of the French capital, has slowly been taking over as the company’s best-attended fair and as such it needs to do a certain amount of crowd control to reward the VIPs who will actually buy. Basel, on the other hand, appears to be waning in its ability to draw top collectors, especially Americans, to the Swiss city. Introducing a new form of scarity that requires in-person attendance might be just what the fair needs to pull them back in.
While Basel Exclusive is open to all galleries in the main section, they aren’t required to participate. “We don’t want in any shape or form for people to feel forced to participate if this is not a business model or a decision that makes sense for them and for their business,” de Bellis said. “That’s the first very important thing: it needs to work for them.”
The choice for which work or works are part of Basel Exclusive is up to the galleries, but de Bellis said that Art Basel’s request is that the works need “to be something with importance and weight within their program.”
Because of the breadth of galleries participating, the works can range from pieces straight from an artist’s studio, made expressly for the fair, to secondary pieces that either are fresh to market or are on the market for the first time in years. The prices will also likely range drastically from as low as five figures to seven or eight, depending on what the galleries are holding back.
While Art Basel might not selecting the works, it will tell galleries if certain works aren’t up to snuff, according to de Bellis. “We have very open conversation with the galleries,” he said, “ and we will say, ‘That doesn’t meet the parameters of what we have created together and that you have agreed on.’ I genuinely don’t see that happening because it would be counterproductive.”
De Bellis said that galleries participating in Basel Exclusive will be labeled as such on both the printed and digital forms of its floor plan and that the selected works will have a plaque in each exhibitor’s booth denoting them as such.
The biggest question of all regarding Basel Exclusive will be how exactly the fair can ensure that galleries don’t reveal these selected works to even a handful of their top clients. After all, the purpose of sending out previews in advance is a marketing tool, with the hopes that getting the word out there will translate into actual sales.
“There’s a certain degree of trust that happens between us and the galleries,” de Bellis said, before relenting, “we can’t prevent—nor do we want to prevent them from doing what’s important for their business. … I have to respond very transparently, can I control if a gallery sends that specific work to one or two or 10 clients? I can’t.”
To that effect, Art Basel is asking more directly that Basel Exclusive works don’t go out as part of a gallery’s widest, or even its second-widest, distribution of its previews. In essence, then, Basel Exclusive is more of a request than a demand for “a preservation of certain kind of exclusivity,” according to de Bellis, that is being put into place at the request of the fair’s galleries.
The full list of galleries participating in Basel Exclusive, as of April 23, follows below.
303 Gallery
Alfonso Artiaco
Almeida & Dale
Almine Rech
Annely Juda
Anthony Meier
Anton Kern
Applicat-Prazan
Arcadia Missa
Barbara Wien
Ben Brown
Bene Taschen
Bernier/Eliades
Berry Campbell
blank projects
Bortolami
BQ
Buchholz
Cardi
carlier gebauer
Carolina Nitsch
Casas Riegner
Casey Kaplan
Catriona Jeffries
Chantal Crousel
Chemould Prescott Road
Christophe Gaillard
Consonni Radziszewski
Contemporary Fine Arts
Continua
Crèvecœur
Croy Nielsen
David Kordansky
David Zwirner
Deborah Schamoni
Eigen + Art
Elvira González
Emalin
Esther Schipper
Eva Presenhuber
Experimenter
Foksal
Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel
Franco Noero
François Ghebaly
frank elbaz
Frith Street
Gagosian
Galerie 1900-2000
Gisela Capitain
Gladstone
Gomide&Co
Gray
Gregor Staiger
Greta Meert
Haas
Hauser & Wirth
Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert
Helly Nahmad
Herald St
Hollybush Gardens
hunt kastner
James Cohan
Jan Kaps
Jenkins Johnson
Jessica Silverman
Jocelyn Wolff
Kadel Willborn
Kalfayan
Karma
Karma International
Karsten Greve
kaufmann repetto
Kerlin
Kiang Malingue
knust kunz
Konrad Fischer
Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler
Krinzinger
Kukje
kurimanzutto
Lahumière
Landau
Larkin Erdmann
Layr
Le Minotaure
Lehmann Maupin
Lelong
Lévy Gorvy Dayan
Lia Rumma
Lisson
Luxembourg + Co.
Magazzino
Mai 36
Marcelle Alix
Marianne Boesky
Martin Janda
Massimo Minini
Massimodecarlo
Matthew Marks
Maureen Paley
Max Mayer
Mayoral
Mazzoleni
Mendes Wood DM
Mennour
Meyer Riegger
Miguel Abreu
mor charpentier
mother’s tankstation
nächst St. Stephan
Nagel Draxler
Nathalie Obadia
Nils Stærk
Nordenhake
Offer Waterman
OMR
Ortuzar
P.P.O.W
P420
Pace Di Donna Schrader
Paula Cooper
Pedro Cera
Perrotin
Peter Freeman
Phillida Reid
Pilar Corrias
Pippy Houldsworth
Plan B
Prats Nogueras Blanchard
ProjecteSD
Raffaella Cortese
René Schmitt
Rüdiger Schöttle
Sadie Coles HQ
Sies + Höke
Silverlens
Skarstedt
Société
Sprovieri
Sprüth Magers
Stampa
Standard (Oslo)
STPI
Taka Ishii
Take Ninagawa
Tanya Bonakdar
Templon
Thaddaeus Ropac
The Approach
The Breeder
The Modern Institute
The Third Gallery Aya
Thomas Dane
Thomas Schulte
Thomas Zander
Tim Van Laere
Tina Kim
Tokyo Gallery + BTAP
Tornabuoni
Trautwein Herleth
Tucci Russo
Urs Meile
Van de Weghe
Vedovi
Vitamin
von Bartha
White Cube
Xavier Hufkens
Yares
