Last summer, Frieze surprised the art world by announcing that it was adding two of the biggest art fairs in the US, The Armory Show and Expo Chicago, to its roster of major market events in London, Los Angeles, New York, and Seoul.
As Kristell Chade, executive director of Frieze Fairs, told ARTnews recently, that growth lead the art fair organizers to restructure and expand their VIP leadership team. In the past, there had been only one global director of VIP relations. Now, starting with Frieze London, which opens Wednesday, there are regional heads for the US, Europe, and Asia, which Chade said will help Frieze more effectively manage VIP outreach and experiences.
In 2022, Frieze London’s first VIP day suffered interminably long, seemingly motionless lines that led to frustration for the fair’s most important attendees. As one art advisor in attendance told ARTnews, the situation seemed to result from a faulty or disorganized ticketing system, leading some collectors to threaten to abandon the fair altogether. “It was like waiting for a sneaker drop,” the advisor, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said. “You couldn’t see the end of the line.” Whatever went wrong that year seems to have been fixed, as Frieze’s fairs since, including in London last year, haven’t seen similar complaints.
The VIP restructuring, according to Chade, is about making the organization better as a whole, one better suited to matching the size of Frieze’s global operation. “The intention was very much to accompany the growth of our fairs and our footprint globally,” Chade said. “With our new acquisitions it became evident that we needed a regional strategic approach to the way we are engaging with collectors and institutions worldwide. The main objective is to deliver the best collectors from across the world to galleries across all of our seven fairs.”
The new VIP team, consists of Brooke Kanter, who is based in Los Angeles and oversees VIP relations in the Americas, Minju Kweon, who oversees VIP relations and business development in Asia from Seoul, and Leonie Mir, who is responsible for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Kanter and Kweon both worked as VIP consultants for Frieze in the past. Kanter is a staple of the west coast art scene—she was founder and chair of the Kids Art Museum Project at the Hammer Museum, on the board of LAXART, and worked for nearly a decade as a vice president at Christie’s. Kweon is the veteran of the group, having worked for more than six years with Frieze as a VIP consultant in Korea, before which she was the fair manager of Art Busan. Mir is the newest addition to Frieze and brings with her expertise from her time as a senior specialist and director at Christie’s London and her work with top galleries like Thaddaeus Ropac and as an advisor and a curator.
