How art fair selection committees work

From Art Brussels to Arco (Madrid), and from Art Basel to Artissima (Turin) and Frieze (London), the principle is the same : galleries pay (from just under €400 to more than €900) to submit their applications. A small group of gallerists, appointed by the fair’s organisers and gathered as a committee, is responsible for reviewing the applications — first individually, then collectively — according to criteria left to their own judgment. The discussions, sometimes heated, inevitably contain a degree of subjectivity, which Arco tries to temper through a scoring system evaluating various parameters, such as the gallery’s artist roster and its artists’ institutional presence. The challenges differ from one committee to another. Some must be highly selective because the fair receives far more applications than it can accommodate — as with Art Basel Paris, which received nearly 700 applications this year. Other committees have a more proactive mission: identifying interesting galleries and convincing them to participate when the fair struggles to fill its aisles. “When I was part of the Fiac committees, the challenge was to convince serious and important galleries to take part”, recalls Olivier Antoine, director of the gallery Art : Concept. A time-consuming commitment The ethics of a system based on the judgment of a dozen professionals voting for or against their peers — and competitors — can be questioned. This is one of its inherent limits. Another constraint is time. Hours must be devoted to keeping up with gallery news and reviewing proposals calmly. Members must meet deadlines, be reliable, have legitimate experience in the field, and master at least one foreign language. “As a result, the natural pool of potential committee members tends to be quite small”, notes Philippe Charpentier, co-founder of the gallery Mor Charpentier and a member of the Art Basel Miami and Artissima committees. The composition of committees must also ensure good geographical coverage in today’s globalised market. Ideally, expertise is complementary. For instance, the strong presence of Portuguese galleries at Art Brussels was linked to the participation of Lisbon gallerist Vera Cortês in the fair’s committee. Everyone agrees on how time-consuming the task is when done seriously. Some fairs, such as Art Basel, compensate committee members with a daily allowance, while others, following Artissima’s model, deduct a fixed amount from their participation fees. Others merely reimburse travel expenses for the deliberation meetings. What motivates those who agree to serve on these committees? The role has an “honorary dimension” says Niklas Svennung, director of the Chantal Crousel Gallery, formerly on the Fiac (Foire internationale d’art contemporain, in Paris) committee and now a member of Art Basel Paris’s. “As a French gallerist, it’s also interesting to defend the scene you belong to.” Although it represents “a lot of work”, Isabelle Alfonsi, co-founder of the gallery Marcelle Alix and advisor to the “Emergence” section of Art Basel Paris’s selection committee, did not hesitate: “It allows me to support deserving young galleries.” There is also the excitement of accessing the backstage of the organisation, gaining a “macro” view of the market. “We talk about the entire European art scene; it keeps your curiosity alive. You can also see trends taking shape, like the wave of figuration that swept through recent years”, observes Loïc Garrier, director of the Paris gallery Ceysson & Bénétière and a member of the Art Brussels committee. “We also witnessed the arrival of Asian galleries in Miami”, adds Philippe Charpentier. Being on a committee also brings influence — ideally, to be used positively. “I helped bring the Allen Gallery into Art Basel Miami’s ‘Nova’ sector and Pavec into the ‘Survey’ sector”, says the president of the Professional Committee of Art Galleries proudly. Committee power, however, can also be used to exclude. “From 1996, when I first participated, until 2006 when I returned, I was excluded from Basel for ten years”, recalls Nathalie Obadia, who explains this sidelining: “I was showing painting, I wasn’t a trendy gallery, I wasn’t part of the contemporary art networks…” In retrospect, she acknowledges that she fought hard against this repeatedly renewed exclusion. “At the time, doing Art Basel was a label !”