The gift was the first stage of an initiative started by Brown and Richardson, who created the AND1 Mixtape film series, begun in the late ’90s, which documents a traveling basketball competition. The pair aims to teach professional basketball players about art, not only as something to be appreciated but also as something that will appreciate in value.  

“The art world has never really been explained to a lot of professional athletes. They may have seen paintings or pictures their whole lives, but it was never taught that they could get involved with art from a financial standpoint,” Richardson told ARTnews. 

Rookie One Court is organized by Think450, the for-profit wing of the NBA players’ union, the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA). Along with giving NBPA members control over their likeness and intellectual property rights, Think450, which is named after the total number of players in the NBA, has long been involved in teaching financial literacy to players and their fans.  

“One of the things we’re trying to teach a lot of these players is the value of owning things that accumulate value,” Que Gaskins, Think450’s president, told ARTnews, “as opposed to a depreciating asset like a car.” 

For Gaskins, teaching players to appreciate art is a step toward establishing financial savvy and literacy among players, many of whom fought hard to make out of impoverished neighborhoods.   

“What we are trying to instill is knowledge, getting them comfortable with different things that we think they will have an interest in and showing them that there are ways to create opportunity, generational wealth,” Gaskins said. 

The initiative makes perfect sense for Brown. As the vice president of the NBPA, Brown has been a fierce advocate for social justice and has become well-known for his support of Boston’s black community. Earlier this year, after he set a record for the most lucrative contract in NBA history, $304 million for five years with his Boston Celtics, Brown said he wanted to combat the wealth disparity in Boston and launch a project that would bring a “Black Wall Street” to the city, in part by promoting education in science and technology in underrepresented minority community high schools. 

Meanwhile, Richardson appears to be an ideal partner for Brown. He has gained a strong reputation for his creative advertising agency The Compound, based in Red Hook, which he has run for over a decade. Richardson also once ran an art gallery out of The Compound’s former home in the Bronx, which will soon reopen in Red Hook. In the past, he has acted as an art advisor to NBA players who want an entrée into the art world, like Kevin Durant and Malcom Brogdon. 

Richardson approaches his advisory role much the same way he does all his creative work, with the belief that combining creative influences from different areas will bring about something new and interesting. Collecting, he said, is part of a basketball player’s DNA as much as the originality of their game. Richardson pointed to sports trading cards and comics as collectibles often pursued by young athletes, which later beget collections of jerseys and trophies. And that’s not including the high prices fetched for sports memorabilia from the self-same NBA stars. Earlier this year, Sotheby’s held an auction dedicated to memorabilia, which featured a signed pair of sneakers once worn by Michael Jordan during his last championship season with the Chicago Bulls in 1997–98. They sold for $2.2 million, becoming the most expensive sneakers ever publicly auctioned. 

“In our culture, we’re looking at sneakers as collectibles, and there’s a direct line from that to collecting art,” Gaskin said. Hip-hop is another strong influence on the rise in art collecting, he added. “I think Jay-Z obviously played a big role in having people understand the power of art, the uniqueness of it as a collectible and as an investment vehicle,” Gaskins said.  

In 2018, Jay-Z and Beyonce featured over a dozen major art pieces in the Louvre for their “Apeshit” music video. That came five years after the rapper co-starred with performance artist Marina Abramovic in the music video for “Picasso Baby.” In 2021, Jay-Z and Beyonce, in an advertisement for Tiffany’s, posed in front of a rarely seen Basquiat work, Equals Pi (1982). The couple are known to have an extensive art collection in their 30,000-square-foot home in Malibu, California. Beyond that, Kanye West, Drake, and other major stars have prominently featured or worked with major contemporary artists in recent years. Earlier this month, Kendrick Lamar featured Henry Taylor paintings in performances at Lollapalooza and elsewhere, blown up to stadium size. 

These influences have spurred a trend that has seen major athletes looking to the art world for inspiration, identity, and, of course, investment. Serena Williams has amassed a top-notch art collection in her Florida home that includes KAWS, Radcliffe Bailey, and Titus Kaphar, and her sister Venus Williams served as a model for a recent painting by art market darling Anna Weyant. Six-time NBA All Star Amar’e Stoudemire is a Basquiat aficionado, and ten-time NBA All Star Carmelo Anthony’s collection includes household names like Banksy and Shephard Fairey. 

Through Richardson, Brown was motivated to explore the art world and has begun building a collection of his own. In fact, the limited edition Rafa Macarrón print gifted to the top rookies during the Rookie One party was acquired from Richardson’s mentor, the art dealer Lio Malca, who recently opened a new gallery at 60 White Street in Tribeca. And it’s through Richardson that Brown learned to think of art as, not only an investment but something personal, an extension of himself. 

“As I grow and mature, so does my taste for art and culture,” Brown told ARTnews. “Passing that knowledge down to rookies gives them a chance to get involved when their influence is at its peak. The younger generation are the next influencers of this world so giving them art hopefully gives them the inspiration to learn more but to also develop their view on life.”

It may still be summer, but the major auction houses already have their sights on November’s biannual evening sales. The biggest estate in play at the moment is that of longtime Whitney trustee and art collector Emily Fisher Landau.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s are going head-to-head for the artworks amassed by Fisher Landau, who died this past March at age 102, according to numerous dealers and advisors with knowledge of the negotiations. (She is survived by her daughter, Candia, who is also a collector and philanthropist.) The collection could rake in between $375 million and $500 million, several dealers told ARTnews, with the star being Picasso’s Femme à la montre (Woman with a Watch), a painting nearly five feet tall from 1932, considered by many to have been a pivotal year in the Spanish painter’s practice. In 2018, the Tate Modern even held an exhibition centered on Picasso’s work that year. In 1932 he also painted Nu au plateau de sculpteur (Nude, Green Leaves and Bust), which sold for $106 million at Christie’s New York in 2010, at the time a record for any work sold at auction. Femme à la montre could end up beating the current record for Picasso: $179 million for his 1955 harem scene, Les Femmes d’Alger (Version “O”), at Christie’s New York in 2015.

A painting like the Fisher Landau Picasso “will hopefully demonstrate that the market has not come down” over the past few months, dealer Brett Gorvy told ARTnews. Gorvy was cohead of Christie’s contemporary art department when both Nude, Green Leaves and Bust and Femmes d’Alger sold (he ended up in a bidding war on the latter artwork with fellow Christie’s specialist Loic Gouzer). Meanwhile, an art adviser who asked to remain anonymous told ARTnews that the Picasso could reinvigorate the market after wobbly sales in May, when the Gerald Fineberg collection, up for sale at Christie’s New York, didn’t quite reach expectations and featured lowered reserve prices.

Despite the lackluster Fineberg results, Christie’s has something going for it in the battle for the Fisher Landau collection: the house holds the current auction records for Picasso and Ed Ruscha. In 2019 Christie’s sold a 1964 Ruscha text painting, Hurting the Word Radio #2, for $52.5 million. The Fisher Landau collection has a similar text painting from the same year, Securing the Last Letter, which shows the word “BOSS” in all caps, with a vise gripping the final S.

Sotheby’s, meanwhile, holds the record for Cy Twombly, $70.5 million for a 1968 chalkboard painting—but only by a smidge: Christie’s sold a 1970 chalkboard work in 2014 for $69.6 million. The Fisher Landau holdings contain at least one stellar Twombly, an 8-foot-wide painting that the artist started in 1964 and revised in 1984.

Fisher Landau started collecting art in the early 1970s, after a well-publicized burglary of her jewelry collection brought a hefty insurance payout. She went on to amass some 1,500 works, including pieces by Mark Rothko, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Andy Warhol, who painted her portrait. Selections from the collection were shown last year at the Norton Museum in Palm Beach, where Fisher Landau had a home. The Picasso, which had been on loan to Miami’s Perez Art Museum in 2018, hung front and center.

In 1991 the collector opened the Fisher Landau Center for Art in a 25,000-square-foot former parachute factory in Long Island City, Queens. It served as a home for her collection and a museum that was open to the public. The center closed to the public in November 2017.

Fisher Landau donated 367 works to the Whitney Museum in 2010, where for years she had been a trustee. The gift was estimated to be worth between $50 and $75 million, and features pivotal names in American art including Jasper Johns, William Eggleston, and Ruscha. The gift also gave a glimpse into the depth at which Fisher Landau collected: there were 14 works by Robert Rauschenberg from between 1950 and 1990, four by James Rosenquist, including the mural-size House of Fire II (1982), and an impressive 44 works by Johns.

Sotheby’s and Christie’s did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

The deal had been in the works for more than a year, well before Araújo died unexpectedly last September at 81.

“When this all started, Emanoel was alive and very well,” Shainman said. “It wasn’t about taking on an estate; it was about taking on this amazing person. It was all planning for a show that was going to happen with him coming to New York.”

He continued, “We had so many plans. We immediately had the idea to do collaborative shows back and forth” between the Museu Afro Brasil in São Paulo, which Araújo had founded in 2004 and run until his death, and Shainman’s three gallery locations, including his Upstate New York space, the School. (Next year, the gallery will open a new space in Tribeca.)

Shainman was introduced to Araújo’s work by fellow dealer Graham Steele and ARTnews Top 200 Collector Bob Rennie, a longtime Shainman client. The pandemic prevented Shainman from flying down to São Paulo to meet Araújo in person, so they communicated over Zoom. “Although they were Zoom calls, believe it or not, we had an amazing connection. He was an extraordinary person—he was glowing. We were so glad to meet each other.”

In many of Araújo’s works, variously colored shapes intersect and collapse into each other, ultimately creating altogether new forms. He pushed the bounds between painting and sculpture, making shaped canvases from wood that were wall-mounted as well as ones that were freestanding.

“His work encompasses so many things,” Shainman said. “I just have such a total fascination with it. There’s an energy that the pieces have when you look at them. It almost brings you energy—it’s bigger than the thing is. The more you spend time with them, the more they reveal themselves. They’re both simple and super complex simultaneously, so there’s that tension.”

The exhibition at Jack Shainman Gallery in the fall will survey much of Araújo’s career, with pieces from as early as the 1970s up to 2021. They range from a large circular sculpture in mostly black with pops of red (Redondo e raio vermelho, 2017) to an untitled 2017 work that features multiple red and gray shapes passing back and forth through each other.

“Many of the works were spoken about and chosen with him before he passed,” Shainman said, noting that the gallery had begun to ship some to New York. “Honestly, I chose works that were my favorite. The estate gave us carte blanche, and we will be showing top-notch works.”

Araújo was also an influential teacher and the founder of the Oscar Niemeyer–designed Museu Afro Brasil, in Ibirapuera Park, not far from São Paulo’s famed Biennale Pavilion. The museum’s collection of more than 6,000 objects ranges from painting and sculpture to ceramics and engravings to historical documents and photographs, all showing the impact of Black people on Brazilian society.

“He was a mentor to so many young artists,” Shainman added. “He put the money up and bought their work—talk about creating a support system. That was a huge part of his identity.”

Prior to founding the museum, Araújo served as director of the Museu de Arte da Bahia (1981–83), director of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (1992–2002), and Municipal Secretary of Culture for São Paulo (2005). He was the subject of a midcareer retrospective in 2007 at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo and a survey in 2018 at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) as part of the museum’s “Histórias afro-atlânticas” program.

Outside his home country, Araújo is not as widely known, though his work is in the collections of major international institutions, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Tate Modern in London, and the Museum of Sydney. Part of the gallery’s charge with the new representation is to bring Araújo’s art and contributions to a wider audience.  

“I’ve always loved introducing something into the arena that’s not really known or not thought about,” Shainman said. “Emanoel had a whole career in Brazil, so although his work isn’t really known here, it is bringing something in on such a high level. In some ways he got overlooked because he was doing so many other things in addition to making his art.”

In an effort to lower costs meant to uplift the buying and selling of NFTs, the two companies cut royalties for artists when their NFTs’ ownership changes. The loss of income, however, could have adverse impact on the creation of new works.

This news comes as NFT trading volumes have already fallen by 97 percent, from $17.2 billion in January 2022. Last month, auction houses Sotheby’s and Phillips saw staffing cuts amid a softening art market.

Between August 2021 and May 2022, Nansen data showed that cumulative monthly royalties reached $1.5 billion with a peak of $269 million in January 2022. Last month, royalties totalled a mere $4.3 million.

The NFT platform Blur launched last October, offering a zero-fee marketplace which it opened would incentivize trading. Bloomberg reported that the platform now holds over 70 percent of daily NFT trading volume on Ethereum, and is thus forcing other exchanges to follow its example.

It’s unclear how this will impact the creation of and market for NFTs.

“For me, he changed everything. I was a total follower of his theories, of his conceptual ideas,” Ropac told ARTnews.

A year later, in 1983, Ropac set out to launch his own gallery in Salzburg, located, he said, “on the wrong side of town.” While the Austrian city still buzzed in the summer as other parts of Europe shut down for the season, it wasn’t art focused. “It was totally dominated by music,” he said.

Now, at the age of 63, Ropac isn’t pining for the old days. He’s more interested in answering bigger questions about how to continue to serve the artists he’s been cultivating for four decades. He considers how to promote artists in a market that’s grown into a behemoth since he first entered it. While Ropac has signed up, and held on to, some of the most prominent names in the game, he said his roster’s range is a product of instinct rather than calculation.

ARTnews caught up with Ropac on the eve of his 40-year anniversary exhibition, which spans the works of 70 artists across his two Salzburg locations and runs until the end of September.

(This interview has been edited lightly for clarity and concision.)

ARTnews: Tell me a little bit about your gallery’s origin in Salzburg and what the scene was like when it opened.

I had my big eureka moment with an installation of Joseph Beuys in Vienna, Basic Room Wet Laundry (1979). It was irritating and kind of shocking. It was when I really started to become aware of contemporary art. Then I started to think of organizing exhibitions with friends, but more like an artist space, because I still felt the calling of maybe being an artist myself. Nineteen eighty-two was this incredible year. There was an exhibition in Berlin, which was called “Zeitgeist” curated by Norman Rosenthal in the center of Berlin’s Martin-Gropius-Bau, in a courtyard. Rosenthal at the time invited all these incredible international artists to be part of it. When I left Berlin in 1982, I had my wish list.

AN: So when was the turning point?

I wanted to go back to Austria and just open a gallery and show some of these artists that I discovered while in Germany, and my first idea was Vienna, but somehow, I didn’t really connect with Vienna. I found a book that the Austrian author Oskar Kokoschka wrote called the School of Seeing. He opened the academy in Salzburg just for the summer for two months every year in 1953. He kind of declared a very open Academy where you don’t need to bring in your work to be accepted.

AN: The gallery’s roster has around 60 artists, and it feels wide-ranging in terms of art historical influences. You represent younger artists who focus on technology like Cory Arcangel to less commercial cult figures like Valie Export, as well as the Rauschenberg estate. Tell me about how you shaped the roster after all these years.

I was very taken by American art. That’s the reason I wanted to meet Warhol, and I met Rauschenberg and … then-younger artists, like Basquiat, who I had three shows with during his lifetime. On the other hand, I always knew it would be German and Austrian art. I think it was done a lot by instinct. At least, I had to have the feeling that I somehow understood the work. I always picked the artists I had a fascination for.

AN: You started to develop alongside some of these artists.

[Georg] Baselitz was the longest. I had my first exhibition in 1984 and then with Baselitz, just a drawing show in 1986. I was still too young. The gallery was too small. But then from the ’90s on, we really started working together.

AN: How did things progress? You expanded to Paris, where some of the artists were already represented.

I became … for many of these artists a gallery to really work very intensely together with. They started to take me seriously. This was a process of the first 10 years where I was trying to get my footing. I opened in Paris because after a while, Salzburg felt like a small town. It was outside the summer season, and artists expected that audience. I didn’t want to go to Vienna or Berlin, because I felt I was already here in the German context. Paris was just, for me, the right place to move, but also really to get closer even to the artists.

AN: The business was very different back then.

Back then the market was not so relevant. You know, artists didn’t even expect that you sell a lot, you could not even disappoint them.

AN: The gallery represents a few major artists’ estates, among them Elaine Sturtevant and Donald Judd, that gives the roster this kind of institutional edge. Tell me about how some of the relationships formed with artists that led to these representations.

Sturtevant for example, I met her in the 1980s in New York. She moved to Paris and I worked with her until the end of her life; it was almost natural that we would work with the estate. Beuys of course was the one artist I admired so much. I felt very honored when they decided to work with us. The only artist estate we represent now [with which] we hadn’t really had a personal relationship was Donald Judd. You know, for me, minimalism is one of these movements that were entirely invented [in] America. This really is the movement, in my view, which added the most American flavor to what happened in the late part of the 20th century.

AN: You manage a much bigger team now. The market has changed drastically. Your business has expanded to Seoul. Was expansion always the goal?

Expansion, it’s not a necessity, but it’s a possibility. So because you want to give your artists the best infrastructure, you want to give them the best possible representation. It’s a bit of a race also, I have to say, especially in Asia. For me, to expand in Europe was somehow natural, to go from Salzburg to Paris, because we felt we can really give our artists the best possible service in Europe.

AN: So to grow is more about considering new audiences?

I don’t feel I do it because I need to do it and we need to grow. I think it gives you different horizons into an entirely different audience. It’s not necessarily the business which comes from it, it’s more to kind of keep the artistic side up with some new challenges, because we have to develop the program. But we also need to understand a different cultural environment. The strongest exchange I felt in Asia was really in Korea. I feel there’s a level of sophistication [there that] is almost unparalleled. I go to collectors’ homes there and … see a Judd sculpture, and when I ask them when they acquired it, [they say] they bought it in the ’80s, just when it was produced. It’s exciting to be there.

AN: Building new audiences in Asia has its challenges.

There are more risks involved. It’s sometimes also the Wild West. It’s more about how to come to a different culture with the right respect. How do you understand an artwork? America and Europe grew together in the art world very closely. In Korea, artists were not always impressed by Europe and America. They developed their own language early on, in the avant garde, in the 1950s and 1960s, where they maybe looked to Japan a bit, but otherwise they developed their own language. You have such very different starting points.

AN: The business is much larger now. It changed a lot.

When I started, there was America and there was Europe, and the European artists wanted to be shown in America, and American artists, in Europe. It was very insular. People didn’t look to Latin America or to Asia. But this show in Paris, Magiciens de la terre, at the Pompidou Center in 1989 did. And for me, it was one of these few shows … that became mentoring what I wanted to do. You had artists from Pakistan and Korea, and I remember I saw this artist Lee Bul from Korea in the early ’90s. You know, I contacted her and then we started to work together. All these steps were done really [because I was] fascinated by an artist’s work and just want[ed] to go into this artist’s universe.

AN: Are there any parts of the art world today you’re skeptical of?

The level of speculation [that] entered the market, I would have never thought this would be possible. We had to learn to be so careful how we are placing the work, and it also became difficult. I don’t want to undermine the importance of art fairs in what we do. But this speed also is dangerous because it can build careers so fast and it can also blow careers, because maybe there’s too much pressure on the artist. Often, we have to think how we do this so there aren’t these victims of the speed of the market.

The long period between the initial exhibition and acquisition of the 16-by-45-foot flag was mostly due to logistics. “The reason we’re able to do it now is because Pope.L thought about the work in an evolving way and eventually came to think that there could be multiple ways that this work be installed or presented,” said MOCA senior curator Bennett Simpson, who also curated the 2015 exhibition. “The money side of it wasn’t the issue with this acquisition, and we didn’t do any special fundraising campaign for the acquisition.”

Trinket was made specifically for the 2015 exhibition showcasing new and recent large-scale installations by Pope.L. In addition to the custom flag, the performance and sculpture work involved theatrical lights and four large-scale industrial fans — the type used almost exclusively on Hollywood film sets to create wind or rain effects. The high-powered air from the fans caused the 51-star flag to eventually fray and fall apart over the course of the 14-week exhibition. MOCA described the effect as “a potent metaphor for the rigors and complexities of democratic engagement and participation.”

A version of Trinket was also featured in Kendrick Lamar’s performance at the 2015 BET Awards.

While MOCA had been interested in acquiring Trinket soon after the exhibition, the large specialty fans repeatedly came up as an issue. In addition to their high price (Simpson would not specify the amount beyond “It’s a lot of money”), they are limited to one vendor located in the San Fernando Valley. “You can’t just buy them at the Home Depot,” gallery owner Susanne Vielmetter told ARTnews.

Simpson said the necessity of the industrial fans to Pope.L’s original vision of Trinket came with other curatorial considerations, such as audience capacity, insurance, and safety. “Wherever you do this, the building is full of moving air, and you can’t really have other works of art in the same space,” he said. “It’s not like you can do an installation of Trinket in a group show.”

The acquisition of Trinket was able to go forward after Pope.L came up with two alternative ways to install the immersive work in addition to the original concept shown in the Geffen Contemporary space. The first alternative was the large flag folded in the same manner presented at military funerals and displayed in a plexiglass box. The second alternative was installing the flag on a long wall in a shredded and ripped state. “And only one of them involved renting these huge fans and setting up the building to run the huge fans and have the flag fray over time,” Simpson said.

The museum’s acquisition agreement for Pope.L’s work means if MOCA does plan on installing the flag with the fans again for 15 weeks (or another time period), the fans would be rented, Trinket will fall apart and those materials will be disposed. “Therefore, if we want to stage it again, we would have to have start with a ‘new flag’,” Simpson said. “And that’s fine. The actual piece of fabric is kind of like an exhibition copy, in a way.”

One way to understand MOCA’s acquisition of Pope.L’s Trinket, as both of an object and a concept, is to consider how museums have begun to acquire performance art. “How do you acquire things that are impermanent, that are ephemeral, that change over time?,” Simpson said. “How do you take care of something that is, that will be different every time you decide to display it? Or show it or share it? I think that there’s a different answer for every work, there’s no kind of over-arching, right way to do something like that.”

“We just basically acquired the rights to do this again, and again, and again, according to a set of agreed upon rules or guidelines.”

Simpson said being able to finally acquire Trinket was an important opportunity for MOCA to add a major work from its exhibition program into its permanent collection, especially given that the show did not publish a catalog or travel to other institutions. “It’s like double dipping,” he said. “It affirms the museum’s work in multiple ways. It makes me proud of the museum, makes me proud of the work that we do.”

Trinket was conceived by Pope.L in 2008 after press coverage over politicians wearing American flag lapel pins, and whether that act demonstrated or signaled their patriotism in the right way. The massive size of the work is the opposite of a lapel pin, and its title refers to something small and cheap. For Simpson, the fact that the American flag continues to shift in meaning with each national election and events like the insurrection on January 6, means Trinket will continue to be meaningful in the future.

“Pope.L talks about this work as a time-based work,” Simpson said. “That it’s a kind of duress that is happening in time, and that the flag changes and falls apart, it changes over time, from the pressure of the winds. I think that’s beautiful and poetic but it will always be the case with this with this artwork. There will always be an artwork that demonstrates change.”

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to the name of the artist.

Amara Antilla will organize the In/Situ section for large-scale and site-specific works that are spread across the fair, while Rosario Güiraldes will curate the Exposure section, dedicated to solo and duo artist presentations by galleries in business for 10 years or less. They will both work closely with Kate Sierzputowski, who has been promoted from director of programming to artistic director.

Antilla has been senior curator at large at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati since 2019. Based there and in Washington, D.C., Antilla has organized several exhibitions and commissions at CAC with numerous closely watched artists, including Steffani Jemison, Kahlil Robert Irving, Nora Turato, and Carmen Winant; an exhibition there featuring the work of Tai Shani debuts this fall. Antilla has also cocurated group exhibitions like “Artist-Run Spaces” and “The Regional,” a survey focused on artists from the Midwest. Prior to CAC, Antilla served in various curatorial roles at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, where she worked on exhibitions for Simone Leigh, Alfredo Jaar, and the MAP Global Art Initiative.

Güiraldes was recently appointed curator of visual arts at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and is a critic in the Department of Painting and Printmaking at Yale School of Art. She was most recently an associate curator at the Drawing Center in New York, where she organized solo exhibitions for Xiyadie, Fernanda Laguna, Ebecho Muslimova, and Guo Fengyi, as well as the group exhibition “Drawing in the Continuous Present.” Prior to joining the Drawing Center, she organized a survey on the collective Forensic Architecture that debuted at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art in 2017, and then traveled to the University Museum of Contemporary Art in Mexico City.

“Throughout my career,” Güiraldes said in a statement, “I have focused on contemporary art of the Global South, and now that I’m also based in the Midwest, I’m excited for the opportunity to bring that expansive worldview to the Exposure program, while at the same time foregrounding the vibrant artistic communities from the Greater Midwest.”

The fair’s 2024 edition will be the first one since Expo Chicago’s acquisition—along with the Armory Show in New York—by Frieze, which stages fairs in London, New York, Los Angeles, and Seoul. Under the new ownership, Frieze will operate the two fairs as separate divisions, retaining their teams, and sharing certain business operations.

In a statement, Sierzputowski said, “Expo Chicago is an international art fair deeply rooted in the cultural ecosystem of Chicago and the broader Midwest region, and this year we are thrilled to have for the first time two section curators [who] represent institutions from our region, while also bringing incredible international expertise and perspective to our programs.”

Finn has an extensive and varied résumé in the art world, having worked in galleries and on curatorial projects. After over a decade in New York, Finn moved back to her hometown of Detroit to cofound, with Terese Reyes, the gallery Reyes | Finn in 2017. (As part of a mutual decision by the two partners, Reyes | Finn will wind down operations this month.)

In the time since, Reyes | Finn has established itself as a gallery to watch, with notable appearances in several US art fairs, including the past two editions of Art Basel Miami Beach. (The gallery’s solo presentation of LA-based artist Nikita Gale in the fair’s Positions section was named one of the 2022 edition’s best booths by ARTnews.)

“Art Basel Miami Beach has been the cornerstone of the creative ecosystem in the Americas for over 20 years,” Finn told ARTnews in an emailed interview. “The show is at the physical and cultural juncture of North and South America. It is hard to overstate its importance for galleries, artists, and art communities in the region and well beyond, and the vital role it continues to play for cultural discovery and exchange.”

While in Detroit, Finn launched an initiative to support the city’s art scene called Art Mile Detroit that featured digital exhibitions from the city’s galleries, institutions, and artist-run spaces. She also started Flourish, a fundraising effort that included a charity auction at Christie’s to support research for STXBP1 disorder, which her daughter has.

Prior to Reyes | Finn, she led the contemporary art program at the blue-chip Chelsea gallery Mitchell-Innes & Nash from 2013 to 2017; served as director of strategic planning and projects at Independent Curators International (ICI) from 2010 to 2013, where she is now a board member; and had several roles at Anton Kern Gallery from 2007 to 2010. She also cofounded the collaborative curatorial project Cleopatra’s in Greenpoint with several other dealers, including Bridget Donahue and Colleen Grennan (now a senior director at Pace); that venture lasted from 2008 to 2018, the length of the enterprise’s lease.

“Firstly, Bridget is beloved among the galleries and artists of her generation,” Vincenzo de Bellis, Art Basel’s director of fairs and exhibition platforms, said in an email to ARTnews. “She is an inspired leader and thinker and is deeply committed to creating opportunities for galleries, artists, and art communities, which she will carry forward as the Director of our Miami Beach show. Bridget brings to this position a deep knowledge of the gallery ecosystem, an intimate understanding of the North and South American art markets, and an extensive art-world network across the region.”

Finn’s first edition will be the 2024 fair, while the 2023 show will be led by de Bellis, to whom Finn will report to. The application period for this year’s fair has now closed, and the full exhibitor list will be announced in September.

Speaking of her vision for as the new Miami Beach fair director, Finn said in her email, “Of course the first step will be to intake before I can dig my heels in in the Director role. I am excited to work closely with our team and our many collaborators in Miami Beach, as we look to continue to build on the show and its offering for our galleries, collectors, partners, and local and international audiences now and in the future.”

Finn’s title—director, Art Basel Miami Beach—is technically a new role; the Miami Beach fair was previously led by Art Basel’s Americas director. The fair has been without a dedicated leader since July 2021, when Noah Horowitz left Art Basel and then joined Sotheby’s, prior to returning as Art Basel’s CEO, also a newly created position.

This represents a broader leadership change at Basel, with each fair having a dedicated director, all reporting to de Bellis, a former curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis who joined the company a year ago. In that time, the fair has named dedicated directors for the Hong Kong and Basel fairs—Angelle Siyang-Le and Maike Cruse, respectively. (The Paris+ fair named a standalone fair director, Clément Delépine, about seven months before the inaugural edition launched.)

Speaking of the structural changes, Horowitz said in an email, “This structure enables us to deliver the highest quality show in each city that is both a draw to international exhibitors and audiences and relevant to the local and regional culture.”

In announcing Siyang-Le’s promotion to director of the Hong Kong fair, Art Basel also said that Adeline Ooi, who had long led that fair would retain her position as Asia director with a focus on “steering the strategic development of Art Basel’s initiatives” across the region, like its upcoming collaboration with Art Week Tokyo in November. At this time, Horowitz said that Art Basel does not plan to create an Americas director as part of the new structure, nor are there any plans to launch a new art fair.

“Delivering the best art fairs globally is our primary mission,” Horowitz added. “We are firmly committed to exploring how to grow our brand through compelling value propositions to both existing and new audiences.”

McClodden will have her first solo show with the gallery at its Bermondsey space in London next February and will also feature in the inaugural exhibition at the New York space, a group exhibition titled “Chopped & Screwed” and curated by Courtney Willis Blair, White Cube’s senior director in the US.

With an expansive practice that spans film and video, painting, sculpture and more, McClodden is perhaps best-known for her participation in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, for which she won that edition’s Bucksbaum Award for her video installation I prayed to the wrong god for you (2019). Her work often deals with the human condition and one’s relationship to their identity, filtered through her own lived experiences and her close study of and research into various archives.

Her work has also featured in major exhibitions like the Prospect 5 triennial (in 2021–22), “Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America” at the New Museum (2021), and “Speech/Acts” at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2017). Her commission for an exhibition dedicated to the work of late artist Juan Francisco Elso, is currently on view at the Phoenix Art Museum after debuting at El Museo del Barrio in New York. She has also won the Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant in 2022 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019.

“Tiona Nekkia McClodden’s meticulous practice is undeniable and we’re proud to be her global representation,” Willis Blair said in an email to ARTnews. “She stands apart in her remarkable investigation of desire and ritual, and it’s clear she’s a singular artistic voice of her generation.”

McClodden is also currently the subject of a solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel, which opened a few weeks before this year’s Art Basel. The show focuses on notions of tension, control, and mercy—specifically how they relate to breathing and the flow of air—and features a number of new works.

In an interview with ARTnews on the occasion of the exhibition, McClodden said that with her exhibitions and work she hopes people leave with “something that is hard to shake off. That’s as much as I can gauge because I want to set things that are hard for me to shake off.”

McClodden has previously been represented by Company gallery in New York for several years and briefly joined Mitchell-Innes & Nash, where Willis Blair was partner until she departed in January to head up White Cube’s New York space.

In an email to ARTnews, McClodden said that the decision to join White Cube came “after much consideration and extensive conversation with a range of gallerists worldwide over the past year” and that she has “studied and revered” and ultimately been influenced by a number of the artists on the gallery’s roster, among them Doris Salcedo, David Hammons, and Tracey Emin.

“I felt strongly that White Cube was the best fit for my practice and for me,” McClodden continued. “The only studio visit I granted during my work production for my current Kunsthalle Basel solo exhibition was with White Cube’s Susan May, which lasted over three hours. It was one of the first times that I felt I was fully seen in a studio visit, and it was a beautiful exchange of knowledge. I met with Jay Jopling and had a brilliant conversation that I cherish greatly. White Cube is the only gallery where I personally met almost every person I would be working with: from the desk to the back office to the bookstore. Each of them felt deeply invested in what they do in a very important way to me.”

She added that she was also looking forward to working with Willis Blair again, whom she said “has greatly influenced how I position my work in the art world. She has been a figure in my life that has pushed my work to hold the space it does now.”

When Art Assembly, the fair’s organizer, announced Tokyo Gendai last June, many cast their focus anew on the Asian art market, viewing the launches of this event, Frieze Seoul, and Art SG in Singapore (also an Art Assembly fair), all with 12 months of each other, as a sign of increased action in the region. This speculation was later buoyed by the loosening of restrictions in Hong Kong, the longtime art market center for Asia, where Art Basel’s fair there appeared to return to normal after three years of pandemic restrictions.

Frieze Seoul seemed to prove a success, though some reports stated that Art SG didn’t see too many sales. And the strong return of a full-on Art Basel Hong Kong in March proved that Hong Kong still holds the blue-chip power in the region.

To learn more about the upcoming first edition of Tokyo Gendai and the possibilities for Japan’s art market and scene, ARTnews spoke with Magnus Renfrew in early June.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

ARTnews: When we spoke almost just over a year ago for the announcement of Tokyo Gendai, you said, “The art market across Asia is maturing and is reaching a new stage, where different constituencies around Asia deserve their own art fairs.” Do you think that’s still the case? Has anything changed, for better or for worse?

Magnus Renfrew: We haven’t even really scratched the surface of the potential of Asia. It’s home to half the world’s population and to many of the fastest growing economies in the world. It has an ever-expanding collector base and incredible potential. Historically, the strongest markets in Asia were in Taiwan and Korea, and obviously mainland China is becoming much more active. Southeast Asia has a population of about 700 million, just about the same size as Europe. So logic dictates that it should have one major art fair that can cater to those audiences.

Likewise, in Japan, I think there’s huge opportunity because there are incredible galleries. There is very rich, cultural production. There’s real respect for arts and culture. The recent tax-regulation changes make it much more possible for international galleries to engage more actively with Japan. We’re pleased that we’ve been granted bonded status, which reduces the friction for those galleries that are wanting to engage with audiences from Japan. There’s a real opportunity here. Japan is also the fourth biggest economy in the world—or third, depending on how you measure. And Tokyo, after New York, is the second wealthiest city on the planet, with a very high degree of spending on luxury goods. We’re optimistic—as has proven to be the case in other places that we’ve operated—that a fair can act as a catalyst to expand audiences and collector bases.

You mentioned recent tax-regulation change. What are those and how do you think they will affect the international art market operating in Japan, at least during the short term of the fair?

Historically, it’s been necessary to pay 10 percent GST [goods and services tax] upfront, when bringing working into the country for an art fair. In 2020 and 2021, there were reforms to the tax regulations which would allow organizers to apply for bonded status, and that would mean that galleries would only have to charge tax at the point of sale. If galleries were bringing in several million dollars’ worth of work, for example, a 10-percent deposit was a big cash flow issue. So now it’s possible for international organizers, such as ourselves, to apply for bonded status, which we’ve done successfully. I think it’s opening up the possibilities for Japan to take a greater place within the within international art market.

How do you see this fair working within the Japanese art ecosystem and how it operates? Why did you feel it so necessary to launch a fair here? Is there a void you feel you are filling?

I think there has been a great desire for the art scene in Japan to engage with international audiences, and I think the fair is going to be a great way for them to be able to achieve that. Having to pay the GST upfront has meant that it’s been difficult to organize fairs here before, but I think now we’re moving into a situation where there is a genuine need for an art fair here. Art fairs, especially high-quality art fairs where there’s a high degree of selectivity, can play a major role in helping new collectors to engage with art because there’s a sense of confidence that they have through the imprimatur of quality that such a selection process has.

The Japanese galleries were instrumental in the early success of Art HK [the predecessor fair to Art Basel Hong Kong that was cofounded by Renfrew], and I’ve had a very good relationship with them over the last 15 years or so. They’ve also been very active in our fairs elsewhere in Taipei and Singapore. So, we have a very strong support base among the Japanese galleries, and we’ve been working on this for about five years now, consulting extensively with with collectors, curators, and galleries who’ve been incredibly generous with their support and advice. There’s a lot of excitement here. In May, we had an event in Tokyo with our lead sponsor SMBC [Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation], where we were able to introduce the wealth managers to the Japanese galleries. We’ve also been organizing tours of galleries for SMBC to help introduce them to the gallery programs. We very much see this as a collaborative process. This year is definitely the first step on a longer journey, but I think galleries really see the point of what we’re trying to achieve and we’ll be building it together.

In the lead up to the launch of Frieze Seoul, all eyes seemed to be on Seoul. Every few weeks, it seemed another international Western gallery was announcing an outpost there or expanding their existing presence in the city. And that’s continued in the year since. That hasn’t been the case for Tokyo as much.

There’s a lot of interest. You do have Blum & Poe and Perrotin here, who are very active. And there are a number of other major galleries that have been exploring the possibilities. the change in the tax regulations is something that’s is going to potentially be a game-changer. In some ways, the galleries are doing their due diligence now. Many galleries that aren’t participating in the fair for the first edition will be attending with an eye to future participation. I think those sorts of opportunities will develop as the scene develops, as the fair develops, and people have greater interactivity with Japan.

The past nine months have been characterized, definitely in the US and Europe but also globally, by the specter of a looming recession. In May, there was talk of some slowing down in the New York auctions. Is that a concern for the fair?

Obviously, the art market isn’t immune to greater global economic trends. I look back to our launch period for Art Hong Kong in 2008 with Lehman Brothers as its lead sponsor. What we saw during the global financial crisis was that, in some ways, these things accelerate trends that are already happening. In some respects, the global financial crisis accelerated the tipping of the balance of economic power to Asia. And I think in this post-pandemic moment over the next few years, that’s going to there’s going to be another further move in that respect. I think people are increasingly going to be looking to explore new markets and expand their collector bases. In Europe and the US, the markets are already at a certain degree of maturity, whereas there’s a huge scope for development for the markets in Asia. When I first started trying to persuade galleries to do the fair in Hong Kong, they were saying: Why Asia? Nobody’s saying that now.

How did you settle on the first week July for the fair, about three weeks after Art Basel in Switzerland?

There is never a perfect time on the calendar. There’s no doubt that the global art calendar is packed already. There is a sense that that moment is post-Basel but pre- the close-down for the summer in mid-July, where everybody is still very active. There’s an opportunity to make the most of that particular moment in Asia. Historically, the Japanese holiday period is in August. But, by the strength of the response we’re getting in terms of VIP registrations, which is a bit above where we have been anticipating for this stage of things, that the timing is okay.

What numbers are you anticipating them for VIP registrations and overall audience?

We don’t really divulge VIP numbers, but in terms of overall audience that we’d be hoping to welcome, around 25,000 visitors over the four days of the event. We’ll see how that pans out. We were very pleasantly surprised by the strength of the attendance in Singapore where we exceeded our expectations. We will never know until the doors open, but early indications are looking promising.

How do you see Tokyo Gendai comparing to the other Asia fairs in Art Assembly’s portfolio, like Art SG in Singapore or Taipei Dangdai, particularly in terms of how galleries expect to do? We’ve definitely heard that galleries didn’t make a significant number of sales in Singapore, and they weren’t pleased with that. How would you respond to that?

I don’t fully accept that characterization. As with any fair, particularly a first-year fairs, there’s a full range of experiences. We’ve had many galleries who have expressed that they did well. There’s also been a lot of activity reported to us in the weeks and months since the fair took place. Increasingly, art fairs are a touch point on the calendar to help you to engage with collectors that can translate into business in the weeks and months post-fair as well. We’ve had exceptionally strong interest from galleries wanting to return. We’ve also got some great applications coming in from new galleries. Many of the galleries are taking bigger stand sizes than last year.

Undoubtably, it’s a building game. People recognize the incredible potential for the Southeast Asia market and also Singapore’s increasingly relevant position in every aspect. In some places, it is truly regarded as neutral territory in Asia. English is commonly spoken. Chinese is commonly spoken. There’s has been a huge influx of wealth into Singapore. In 2016, there were, I think, 70 family offices. Now there’s over a thousand. There’s been a huge influx of mainland Chinese. Property prices have been going up considerably. There’s a real recognition of the increasingly important role that Singapore has to play. The case for Southeast Asia and the case for Singapore is very strong. We laid some great foundations in the first year, and the galleries that are committed for the long-term understanding that potential. For example, when we first started in Hong Kong, in almost every meeting that we had, people said, “Hong Kong is a cultural desert. It will never work.” So, we’ve been here before.

Can you talk more about your approach to this building game? Is it about converting wealth that might be spending on other kinds of high-value items—cars, wine, watches, luxury fashion—into buying contemporary art?

With the different fairs, they each have their own natural catchment area to them. With Singapore, it is Southeast Asia and a bit of Australia and India, and how you can bring those communities together in Singapore and connect them with the rest of Asia. We have an extensive network of VIP relations representatives, with people on the ground in Jakarta, Manila, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, and we have our existing fares in Shanghai, New Delhi, Taipei, Tokyo, Singapore, and Sydney.

In the autumn, ahead of Art SG, we are having a roadshow of VIP events around Southeast Asia—Sydney, Jakarta, Bangkok, Manila, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur—that we’re also inviting the galleries to be a part of that process. The reason why we do those events is to get collectors to come to the fair, and we decided that we should bring the galleries in at an earlier stage of the process so that they can lay the groundwork and establish connections with galleries that they can then re-engage with at the fair. We also have an active new-to-buying-art program of seminars to engage with aspiring collectors to reduce the intimidation factor. That’s one of the key objectives for us is to reduce the intimidation factor in terms of engaging with art and culture. I think sometimes the art world is not particularly good at that. We see that as being very important for expanding the audiences in Asia.

With regards to Tokyo and Singapore both launching this year, how do you determine the success of a fair? How do you make decisions about the likelihood of a second edition, or perhaps five years down the road?

What we’re doing is the results of a huge amounts of research, due diligence, and consultation with galleries, stakeholders, collectors, and the local communities, so we take a long-term approach. It’s not something that’s done lightly. We have a multi-year plan and outlook for all of the fairs that we organize. In terms of what success looks like, it’s whether or not the galleries want to come back. That’s primarily measured by their benchmarks for success: the opportunity to make sales, to provide a platform for their artists to gain greater exposure, to engage with existing collectors, to engage with new collectors that they haven’t met before, and to establish contacts that can then be built on if that immediately does not result in a sale. that has some leads that can be worked on over a period of time.

What should visitors expect to see in Tokyo, both in and out of the fair?

Within the fair, I think the quality of the work is going to be really high. That’s a testament to the seriousness with which the galleries are taking this opportunity. At the fair, we have a great talks program and, in addition to the different sectors, we also have an exhibition of female Japanese artists. It’s also a great opportunity for Japanese collectors to see work from elsewhere in Asia and also from major galleries from the US and Europe.

For international visitors, there’s going to be a very strong presentation of the best Japanese galleries and the work of Japanese artists at the fair, but also an opportunity to discover Japan. One thing that’s been interesting for us is that while we’ve been saying that we want to help to build the market in Japan, I think that Japan’s got probably the widest psychological catchment area of anywhere in Asia. Most people want to go to Japan to experience Japan. And for those people who do know Japan within the region, there’s a huge affection for Japan and people are looking for an excuse to come. Post-pandemic, there’s a real appetite for the people to reengage with Japan. This is an exciting moment.

Prior to the fair, we have excursions to different parts of Japan, which has been partially supported by the tourism board. There are trips to the Odawara Art Foundation’s Enoura Observatory, Naoshima Island, Kyoto. The night prior to the fair opening, we’ve got Yukata Night in Roppongi, where galleries are coordinating openings, and a gallery night at the Terrada Art Complex on Friday. We’re very grateful to Mr. Obayashi who’s opening up his guest house, designed by Tadao Ando, to showcase his private collection.

That does sound robust.

It’s really the team has been working extremely hard on the ground here. It’s a testament to their hard work and the support of the local scene that we’ve managed to get such a robust program together. There’s a real appetite for this to work. It is the first, and these things can take time, but we see the incredible potential here. We want to be a part of the process. Whenever something like this is launched, it will take some time for it to fully set in.

Correction, July 6, 2023: An earlier version of this article misstated the current number of exhibitors at Tokyo Gendai. It is 73, not 79, the original number when the fair announced its exhibitor list in April 2023.