Art Basel trials online gallery marketplace with a philanthropic edge

Art Basel is piloting an online selling platform for galleries to coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach next month. Collectors will be asked to donate an additional 10% (or more) of the price of a work of art to either the International Committee of the Red Cross, which provides humanitarian protection around the world, or the billionaire collector Jorgé Perez’s The Miami Foundation, which invests in the Florida city’s community.The venture, titled Access by Art Basel, will not become a year-round selling platform for galleries that exhibit with the Swiss art fair franchise, confirms an Art Basel spokesperson. It is unrelated to a potential permanent digital marketplace that was hinted by a number of job advertisements last year.“We cannot yet say if and how it will be implemented at forthcoming fairs,” says Art Basel’s chief executive officer, Noah Horowitz. “The goal was to deliver a product that connects our galleries and their artists to an expanded global collector audience through a digital platform that has a philanthropic component baked into the technology for immediate and significant impact.”More than a dozen galleries are taking part in the pilot launch, including Hauser & Wirth, Pace Gallery, Spruth Magers, Luhring Augustine and Fredric Snitzer Gallery. Prices for works being offered are in the low- to mid-range ($25,000-$285,000), with artists such as Hernan Bas, Katherine Bradford, Rafael Delacruz, Jenny Holzer and Angel Otero among those available; the works will be on view at Art Basel in Miami Beach, though only available to buy online. Art Basel will not charge any platform fees or take any share in the sales. As Horowitz puts it: “We wanted to deliver a platform that meaningfully and effectively supports the causes that matter to our galleries and their artists, while allowing them to remain the beneficiaries of 100% of the sales.”Horowitz has experience in digital selling platforms with a philanthropic element. In September 2022, while he was Sotheby’s worldwide head of gallery and private dealer services, Horowitz launched Artist’s Choice. The primary market channel was debuted during Sotheby’s Contemporary Curated sale in New York that month and, for each work sold, 15% went to a charity or institution of the artist’s choice.Horowitz says the project was “a big success with all lots selling above their estimates” (no further Artist’s Choice sales have been held since). The Art Basel chief executive notes how artists, galleries and collectors today are “increasingly engaged in the world around them, and this informs how they engage in the art market as well”. He adds: “Access tackles this from the perspective of an art fair, providing a distinctive approach to marrying commercial and philanthropic concerns around the sale of primary market works.”