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Art Basel is a for-profit, privately owned and managed, international series of Art exhibition whose annual flagship event has long been considered the largest and most prestigious fair of the contemporary and modern art market. Art Basel started in Basel, Switzerland in 1970. Since then, it has added annual satellite fairs in Miami Beach in the United States; Hong Kong, and Paris. Starting in February 2026, it will also host its first Art Basel event in Doha, Qatar.
The annual fairs bring together galleries, collectors, and artists for exhibitions, sales and programming. They also serve as an anchor for numerous other art fairs that simultaneously operate in parallel in the host cities.
Art Basel's parent company is MCH Group a Switzerland-based marketing company. Over recent years, the organization has adapted a strategy of moving Art Basel from being a series of industry fairs to being a lifestyle brand.
While the exhibition halls host many of the meetings between gallerists and prospective buyers, much of the activity around an art fair is understood to take place through social activities like private dinners, cocktail parties and late-night hotel gatherings.
Parallel but alternative art fairs that take place concurrently in Basel include Liste Art Fair Basel, which was founded in 1996; Volta, which was founded in 2005; Photo Basel, I Never Read, Art Book Fair, Basel Social Club., June Art Fair, AfricaBasel and AfrinovArt.
As of 2025, Art Basel launched the Art Basel Awards, which honors a range of people in the art world, including those who perform a supportive role for the actual creative individuals. In addition to artists, it recognizes curators, institutions, philanthroposts, journalists and fabricators.
During the fair, the hotel Les Trois Rois becomes a congregation point for the art world’s upper echelons.
There are two dozen satellite art fairs with different curatorial focuses. Prizm and Pinta focus on art made by the African diaspora and Latin Americans, respectively. NADA, or New Art Dealers Alliance, highlights up and coming galleries which can often offer an early look at future art stars though its aesthetic has been described as "throw-it-all-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks." The Untitled is also a curated selection of up and coming galleries.
The event was started in 2002 after efforts of local collectors to convince Art Basel fair organizers and local Florida government officials that Miami was a logical stop in the art world circuit. The inaugural Miami fair was originally scheduled for 2001, but was delayed after the 9/11 attacks.
Due to its geographic location, Art Basel Miami Beach fair highlights Latin American galleries, artists and institutions.
Art Basel Hong Kong grew out of Art HK, which was originally launched in 2008 by MCH Group, Angus Montgomery Arts and events organizer Tim Etchells. sparking investor interest in Hong Kong. MCH bought it out in 2013 to create Art Basel Hong Kong.Anny Shaw (13 July 2018), Art Basel owner to launch contemporary art fair ART SG in Singapore next year The Art Newspaper.
Among the alternative art fairs that take place concurrently to Art Basel Hong Kong is Supper Club, a collective gallery effort whose participation fees run a fraction of the main Art Basel Hong Kong.
The new event was called Paris+ par Art Basel, in part because the seven-year contract between Grand Palais management company and MCH Group that the fair should not be branded “Art Basel, Paris.” Nonetheless, the fair was fully branded Art Basel Paris starting in 2024.
Unlike the other fairs, Art Basel Qatar is structured as a partnership. It is co-organized with Qatar Sports Investments, a government-run investor that supported the FIFA World Cup in 2022, and QC+, an enterprise that operates under the government entity Qatar Museums. While Art Dubai had already been a prominent regional art fair that was two decades old, the Qatari government had spent significants amount of money to attract globally relevant events to counter the diplomatic isolation from neighboring states .
==Gallery==
In its inaugural year, the Basel show attracted more than 16,000 visitors who viewed work presented by 90 galleries from ten countries. 30 art publishers also participated.
In 2000, Art Basel created Art Unlimited, a section for monumental artworks in the field of sculpture, installations, video art and performances in Messe Basel's newly built Hall 1.
Art Basel Miami Beach was first introduced in 2002 by the organizers of Art Miami.
In 2007, Ocean Drive launched the Art Basel Magazine with Sarah Harrelson as editor-in-chief. The same year, fair events in Russian started to appear.
All three of the 2020 Art Basel editions—Basel, Miami, Hong Kong—were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.Scott Reyburn, Art Basel Cancels Hong Kong Fair The New York Times, 6 February 2020
Art Basel's 2022 expansion included Paris+ par Art Basel, replacing the long-standing FIAC art fair.
In the 2022 edition of Art Basel Miami, the American art collective MSCHF debuted ATM Leaderboard, an installation displaying a real-time ranking of the bank balances of users, with a pictures of their faces.
Galleries pay for their space. As of 2019, the smallest galleries pay Swiss franc 760 per square meter for a booth at the flagship Art Basel, and the largest galleries will pay CHF 905 per square meter. Prices rise relative to each additional square meter.Anny Shaw (3 September 2018), Art Basel introduces new booth pricing structure to subsidise younger galleries The Art Newspaper.
Since 2015, BMW and Art Basel have presented the BMW Art Journey Award to honor promising emerging artists from around the world. Originally, the artists were chosen from the Discoveries sector in Hong Kong and the Positions sector in Miami Beach, but it later expanded. The chosen artist can select a destination almnost anywhere in the world to create new works.
In comparison to the Venice Biennale, Art Basel was described by Georgina Adam as "less curatorially ambitious, less sprawling, better focused, easier to navigate". The capacity to exhibit many large-scale works also makes Art Basel stand out in the art fair world.
Curators of the Unlimited section, which features large art pieces, have included
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