Art Basel’s hometown fair will return in June with 287 participating galleries, 22 of which will be participating for the first time. It will be the first edition of Art Basel in Basel (June 11-16) directed by Maike Cruse, who joined as director of the exhibition last July. In addition to new leadership, the fair will also have a reimagined public sector, with its Parcours programming focused on a single track and overseen by a new curator.
The fair’s 287 exhibitors this year are firmly in line with its 285 entrants in 2023 and 289 in 2022. The first 22 exhibitors are spread across three sectors, with five debuting in the general Galleries sector: Taipei’s Tina Keng Gallery, the MadeIn from Shanghai, Gallery from Paris and Barcelona Mayoral, Gallery from Los Angeles and New York Karma and Yares Art from New York and Santa Fe.
Seven other galleries that have previously shown in other sectors will “graduate” to the main section, including New York’s Garth Greenan Gallery, Los Angeles’ Commonwealth and Council (which also operates a space in Mexico City) and Paris’ Galerie Crèvecoeur.
Half of the new ones will debut in the Features sector, where the stands are dedicated to historical art presentations: Almeida & Dale Galeria de Arte de São Paulo, Bank based in Shanghai, Thomas Brambilla from Bergamo, Larkin Erdmann Gallery from Zurich, Galerie Le Minotaure of Paris, the Belgian gallery Maruani Mercier, the Wendi Norris Gallery of San Francisco, the Parker Gallery of Los Angeles, the Meredith Rosen Gallery of New York, the Third Gallery Aya of Osaka and the local Galerie Mueller of Basel.
The other six first-time participants will be in the Statements sector, which hosts individual stands by emerging artists: South Korean gallery Wooson, Jakarta’s ROH Projects, Oslo’s OSL Contemporary, Berlin’s Nome, Vienna’s Felix Gaudlitz gallery and Galerie Anne of Paris -Sarah Bénichou.
For visitors not closely following the shifting power dynamics of galleries moving between fairs and within fair sectors, the most visible change at Art Basel this year will probably be its free public art sector, Parcours, which in past years it was scattered around Basel. . This year it will be concentrated entirely on the Clarastrasse, the main thoroughfare that connects the fair grounds, Messe Basel, with the banks of the Rhine.
Parcours will be curated for the first time by Stefanie Hessler, the director of the Swiss Institute in New York, taking over from Samuel Leuenberger, who had organized the fresh program since the 2016 edition of the fair. This year’s public art show will feature empty storefronts, operating businesses, outdoor spaces and a hotel along the busy street. Additional all-day programming is also planned for the Hotel Merian, located on the north side of the Rhine diagonally opposite the famous Hotel Les Trois Rois, throughout the fair.
Art Basel has revealed details of its upcoming flagship fair as the firm, and its owner MCH Group, prepare to hold the first large-scale edition of Art Basel in Hong Kong since before the Covid-19 pandemic. That fair, which will take place at the end of March, will have 243 exhibitors, compared to 177 in 2023 and a whisker above the total of 242 in 2019.
