Art Basel in Miami Beach’s forthcoming edition (6-10 December) will feature stands from 277 galleries—an astounding number that, nevertheless, represents a 2% dip from last year’s 282 galleries. Exhibitors and attendees will benefit from an overhauled fair layout structured around five plazas that organisers say will provide “improved visitor flow and seating, eating and drinking rest points”.Among those 277 exhibitors will be 24 making their debuts at the biggest art fair in the Americas, with most of the newcomers based in the US. Among the first-timers are a dozen influential New York galleries, including Ortuzar Projects, Lyles and King, 56 Henry, Deli Gallery, Lomex, Mrs., Ryan Lee and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery. Also joining the South Florida fray for the first time are three closely watched Los Angeles galleries—Stars, Château Shatto and Luis De Jesus—plus several international entrants including São Paulo-based Galatea, Montreal-based Bradley Ertaskiran, Warsaw-based Galeria Dawid Radziszewski and Cairo-based Gypsum Gallery.“With new participants from Mexico to Poland and Egypt, and a programme both within and beyond the fair like we have never done before, there is an injection of freshness to the fair,” Vincenzo de Bellis, Art Basel’s director for fairs and exhibition platforms and interim director of the Miami Beach fair, said in a statement.Two of the first-time exhibitors—Paris’s Galerie Minsky and San Francisco’s Weinstein Gallery—will have a joint stand in the fair’s main sector devoted to the work of Leonor Fini, the Argentine-Italian Surrealist artist.In addition to the 24 newcomers, the fair boasts the expected lineup of powerful galleries, including the four global mega-dealers (Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace and David Zwirner) and many of the slightly smaller, merely international outfits like White Cube, Lehmann Maupin, Thaddaeus Ropac, Almine Rech, Mendes Wood DM, Lisson and Perrotin. The lattermost will no doubt be looking to continue its run of viral hits at Art Basel in Miami Beach, following Maurizio Cattelan’s banana sculpture Comedian in 2019 and prankster collective MSCHF’s gamified cashpoint, ATM Leaderboard (2022), last year.Of the dealers present at the fair’s 2022 edition but absent this year, the most notable is repeat Art Basel in Miami Beach exhibitor Mariane Ibrahim. The gallery’s solo stand of paintings by Amoako Boafo in 2019, concurrent with his star-making residency exhibition at Miami’s Rubell Museum, played an important role in the artist’s rapid rise to market prominence.Magalí Arriola, the director of Mexico City’s Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, will once again curate the fair’s Meridians sector for very large works, which this year will include 19 projects (to be revealed closer to the fair’s opening).The fair will be the first organised fully under the leadership of Noah Horowitz, who from 2015 to 2021 oversaw it as Art Basel’s director in the Americas. Now, as Art Basel’s global chief executive since last November, Horowitz returns to familiar territory. “I know first-hand the galvanising role our show plays within the creative ecosystem of Miami, the broader region, and the global arts community,” he said in a statement.Detroit gallerist Bridget Finn, who was recently appointed as director of Art Basel in Miami Beach, will be in attendance, but next year’s edition will be the first under her leadership.Also on Tuesday, the Untitled Art fair (5-10 December)—staged in a bespoke tent on Miami Beach a short walk from the main fair—revealed its participating galleries for this year, is 12th edition, which is poised to be its biggest yet, with 163 exhibitors (a jump of nearly 15% from last year). The fair is putting its diversity, inclusion and accessibility commitments front and centre with two overarching curatorial themes for this year’s edition, one focused on gender equality in the art world and the other addressing how the activity of curating is being transformed in the digital age. Fair organisers say these priorities are reflected in the gallery list, with 35% of exhibitors and 60% of featured artists identifying as female or non-binary.The fairs will unfold a little over a month before the first major contest in the race to be the Republican nominee for US president in 2024, in which two local men—former president Donald Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis—are the leading candidates. Based on past history, however, anyone hoping Art Basel in Miami Beach and its satellite fairs might provide an escape from the two men’s campaigns, the looming 2024 general election and Florida’s intensely polarised political discourse would do well to keep their expectations conservative.
