Art Basel has announced the galleries that will participate in its marquee Swiss fair, the first to be staged since June 2019. The fair will bring together 273 galleries from 33 different countries at the Messe Basel. The fair will welcome public from September 24–26, with three VIP preview days beginning September 21.
As with its Hong Kong fair in May, the forthcoming edition of the fair will have a hybrid format, which will include satellite booths operated by locals for gallerists who will not be able to travel to Switzerland for the fair because of travel restrictions.
For Messe Basel’s 2021 edition 24 galleries will be participating at the fair for the first time, including Hong Kong’s Edouard Malingue Gallery, Paris’s High Art, London’s Union Pacific, Pristina’s LambdaLambdaLambda, Buenos Aires’s Walden Gallery, and Cardi Gallery of Milan and London. Several New York enterprises will also be first-time participants including Bodega, Bridget Donahue, Company Gallery, Garth Greenan Gallery, Kasmin, and Queer Thoughts.
Art Basel is one of the world’s top art fair. Many mega galleries and blue-chip outfits will participate again, including Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace, David Zwirner, White Cube, Lévy Gorvy, Lisson, Thaddaeus Ropac, Gladstone Gallery, Victoria Miro, Spürth Magers, David Kordansky, Petzel, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Jeffrey Deitch, and Jack Shainman as the previous editions.
Once again, the fair will be divided into four sections: Galleries, the fair’s main section with 221 galleries; Feature for single- or duo-artist presentations from 24 galleries; Statements for 18 solo presentations of emerging artists; and Edition, which will have 10 galleries focusing in prints and editioned works. Details for the fair’s other sections Unlimited (for large-scale installations), Parcours (for site-specific works and performances around Basel), and Film will be announced at a later date.
In June, the country relaxed many of its restrictions for non-essential travel for those who are vaccinated from certain areas, including Europe’s Schengen zone, the United States, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. The U.S. State Department currently lists Switzerland as a Level 3 – Reconsider Travel destination.
In a statement, Art Basel Global Director Marc Spiegler said, “While the pandemic has been a time of resilience and innovation, it has not always been one of discovery—patrons have often not been able to discover the work of new artists; likewise, galleries have not had ample opportunities to meet new collectors who can start to engage with and then later sustain their programs. That’s why it’s so important to be able to stage our show again in person, while at the same time building upon the digital innovations of the past year to continue engaging the broadest possible audiences worldwide.”
