“We are looking to develop new relationships,” said James Cohan, whose Manhattan-based gallery was among the first blue- chip spaces to sign up. “If we meet five to six people, new collectors or would-be collectors, it would be a big victory.”
While there’s nothing stopping a billionaire from launching his own art fair, expanding from its regional confines is a difficult task.
“You don’t build a world-class art fair overnight,” said Michael Plummer, a principal at advisory firm Artvest Partners in New York that owns Spring Masters art fair. “It requires operating losses in the first years. It requires dealers do well and sell art.”
New Art
Art Basel, with editions in Miami, Hong Kong and Switzerland, is the global market’s main trade gathering. Its 46th edition in Switzerland in June featured $3.4 billion of art and lured 98,000 people. Art Basel Miami Beach, which takes place each December, is the largest contemporary art fair in the U.S. with 267 participating galleries that paid as much as $90,000 for a booth.
In Seattle, booths cost $5,200 to $15,600. Allen said his goal is “to bring vibrant, exciting new art” to the city, citing Art Basel Miami Beach as an example.
“Maybe next year we’ll start breaking even,” he said in the interview.
The fair’s co-producer is Art Market Productions, based in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. The company, which runs seven fairs including Texas Contemporary and Art Market Hamptons, was started six years ago by Max Fishko, 32, and Jeffrey Wainhause, 44.
$4,000 Shovel
Kucera’s gallery will offer a $4,000 snow shovel by local artist Buster Simpson as well as a $50,000 collaged print by William Kentridge, who had a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2010.