{"id":57367,"date":"2026-04-29T02:00:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T02:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/57367\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T02:00:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T02:00:28","slug":"on-the-eve-of-art-basel-miami-beach-a-case-of-the-jitters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/57367\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Eve of Art Basel Miami Beach, a Case of the Jitters"},"content":{"rendered":"

A foreboding air greets the 23rd edition of the Art Basel Miami Beach<\/a> fair opening this week, capping a year of sluggish sales that were financially devastating for many galleries. As collectors, curators and dealers swoop into South Florida for Wednesday\u2019s V.I.P. preview, some analysts have pointed to the $2.2 billion results<\/a> at the marquee November art auctions in New York as evidence that the market has found its footing. But that is little comfort to the spate of pre-eminent galleries across the country that have already<\/a> closed<\/a>, including many thought to be blue chip and resilient to even a steep downturn.<\/p>\n

The Basel fair itself has seen an unprecedented 14 of its originally announced 285 galleries withdraw from participating. Some shuttered their doors permanently, while others decided the often six-figure outlay to exhibit was now too risky a gamble. Another 12 galleries were subsequently tapped to fill those vacated slots.<\/p>\n

One of the originally accepted dealers who pulled out, New York\u2019s Miguel Abreu, told ArtNews, which reported<\/a> eight gallery withdrawals in October, that after exhibiting at both Frieze and Art Basel Paris earlier that month, \u201cThree fairs in the fall would be too much,\u201d and \u201cfrankly, last year in Miami for us was less than stellar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Addressing that sentiment, which is one quietly echoed by employees at several other withdrawing galleries, Bridget Finn<\/a>, the director of Art Basel Miami Beach, acknowledged that such reassessments were \u201cexactly what we expect in a cycle like this.\u201d She said the slump was already in the rearview mirror, pointing to \u201ctremendous momentum\u201d at Art Basel Paris and November\u2019s auction results as proof of \u201crenewed confidence at the top end of the market.\u201d She added that this uplift was \u201cvery much carrying into Miami Beach.\u201d<\/p>\n

Art Basel, at the Miami Beach Convention Center, along with its surrounding sea of satellite fairs and special events referred to as Miami Art Week, has long served as a barometer for the health of the art market. That has been especially true for Miami\u2019s local talent who have grown up in Basel\u2019s backyard and basked in its cultural afterglow. Seven of the city\u2019s galleries have been selected to exhibit at this year\u2019s Basel \u2014 only 2 percent of the total, but still more than those representing any city in the United States besides New York and Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Miami\u2019s status as a thriving art city is precisely what drew Julia and Max Voloshyn, the co-owners of the Voloshyn Gallery<\/a> based in Kyiv, Ukraine, to open a second outpost here in 2022 rather than in New York. In the wake of Russia\u2019s invasion of their country that year, making a dramatic global splash<\/a> became as much a political imperative as a financial lifeline for their now-isolated artists \u2014 especially with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, insisting there was no such thing as distinctly Ukrainian art. It was, like all of Ukraine\u2019s culture<\/a>, he claimed, simply part of Russia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did eight fairs all around the world this past year,\u201d Max Voloshyn said, sounding exhausted just by the memory. This December marks Voloshyn\u2019s debut at Miami\u2019s Art Basel, and they\u2019ve chosen to showcase World War II-era work by the Ukrainian-American painter Janet Sobel<\/a>, whose 1950s canvases are often credited as a direct inspiration for Jackson Pollock\u2019s drip paintings.<\/p>\n

These earlier pieces depict her homeland under siege using a poignant mix of folkloric icons, Yiddishkeit, and eerie figuration. \u201cShe was imagining what life was like from abroad,\u201d Julia Voloshyn explained, \u201cand while the invading soldiers were German and not Russian, it feels the same for us now.\u201d<\/p>\n

A similar desire to be in the creative thick of it, regardless of market shifts, is shared by Dennis Scholl, a former nonprofit arts executive turned artist, and one of the city\u2019s veteran collectors for over 50 years. Art market crashes<\/a> are as familiar as the city\u2019s boom-bust real estate cycles, he said. In each instance the market eventually rebounded, but \u201cyou couldn\u2019t figure out you were on the way back up again until after it was over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scholl does believe the worst is over, and not only because his own history-minded assemblages are having their own time in the sun: Riffing on events from his \u201960s childhood, such as the moon landing, they were exhibited at the Piero Atchugarry gallery<\/a> (another of the seven in Miami at Basel) and are now showing at both Columbia University\u2019s LeRoy Neiman Gallery<\/a> and the Hollywood Art & Culture Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Other Miami artists are also having banner years. Last February, the Fredric Snitzer Gallery, the only local art space in every edition of Basel\u2019s Miami fair, sold out its show of 13 of Ema Ri<\/a>\u2019s densely rendered and abstracted landscapes<\/a>, at $15,000 each. Citing the sale of another 19 of Ri\u2019s paintings since then, Snitzer dismissed the gloomy feelings other dealers were privately expressing as shortsighted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the 48th year of my gallery,\u201d Snitzer said. \u201cFor 30 of those years I was dying, operating hand-to-mouth.\u201d He added, \u201cIt depends on what you have to sell.\u201d He cited a waiting list for Hernan Bas<\/a> paintings \u2014 works that Snitzer will also be selling at his Basel booth for $225,000 \u2014 \u201cat prices far higher than my first house.\u201d What was unfolding in the gallery world coast-to-coast, he continued, was \u201ca healthy, natural thinning of the herd in terms of quality,\u201d brought on by a glut of dealers pushing often-forgettable work.<\/p>\n

Surviving that weeding-out process is foremost on the minds of Miami\u2019s younger galleries and alternative spaces, with some 13 exhibiting at the New Art Dealers Alliance<\/a> and Untitled<\/a> satellite fairs \u2014 the main feeders for dealers hoping to jump up to Basel and its top tier collectors.<\/p>\n

Katia David Rosenthal, of KDR<\/a> gallery, one of the busy newcomers, said the key was keeping her operation lean, with only a single employee. KDR\u2019s current show spotlights the Miami painter Susan Kim Alvarez<\/a>, whose swirlingly Day-Glo portraits split the difference between whimsical and monstrous. In addition to exhibiting at NADA, Rosenthal\u2019s late 2023 move into a space in Allapattah \u2014 Miami\u2019s newest art neighborhood \u2014 seemed ambitious, especially after she had spent the previous two years running a \u201crenegade\u201d gallery out of the tiny first floor of the rented cottage she called home in nearby Little Havana. But despite upsizing, she said she still counted the cost of every lightbulb.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of galleries where people took outside money to play with,\u201d Rosenthal said, noting the post-pandemic expansions many gallerists embarked on with new investors and dramatic architectural build-outs, racking up now-untenable expenses. \u201cI built my gallery by myself with no funding from anyone,\u201d she added, \u201cand I still run my gallery that way. There\u2019s no other voice except my own that is turning the page.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aurelio Aguil\u00f3 and Mayra Mejia, the co-founders of Homework<\/a> gallery in Little River, initially took Rosenthal\u2019s philosophy to its extreme. Having previously worked at Manhattan galleries facing soaring rents, Aguil\u00f3 said, \u201cthe tremendous overhead cost of having a brick and mortar space bred the idea of having a nomadic gallery that relies on participating in fairs to get their name out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet after four years of fairs and pop-up spaces, the appeal of sinking roots \u2014 and an art-friendly landlord willing to offer a rental below the neighborhood market rate starting around $24 per square foot \u2014 was just too great: Homework took the plunge this fall and signed a lease. In addition to showing intimate photographic slices of Black Miami by Rosco\u00e8 B. Thick\u00e9 III<\/a> at the Untitled fair, Homework\u2019s new 2,000-square-foot space will have an installation by Ilsse Peredo<\/a>, tracing her travels to Bhutan and elsewhere. Their market timing, however, would seem less than auspicious.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a gallery showing emerging artists,\u201d Aguil\u00f3 said. By their very definition, \u201cthere\u2019s not an established market for them; uncertainty is with us all the time.\u201d And if the overhead becomes unmanageable? Aguil\u00f3 sounded unfazed: \u201cThe gallery won\u2019t disappear. We\u2019ll just pack it up, reassess and start doing pop-up shows again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nina Johnson\u2019s thinking is headed in the other direction. Her eponymously named Miami gallery<\/a> opened in 2007, but this year marks her debut as an exhibitor at Art Basel. Even with a first-timers discount, she said her total expenses were roughly triple of what she was previously spending to show at NADA, where standard booths are about $14,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have always believed that when a lot of people are feeling timid, it\u2019s a good opportunity to be bold,\u201d Johnson said. Her Basel booth features relatively untested artists alongside well-established figures, including the acclaimed Miami filmmaker Dara Friedman<\/a>, who is now taking a turn into beguiling sculpture.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s gallery itself hosts \u201cAcid Bath House<\/a>,\u201d a group show curated by the critic Jarrett Earnest. \u201cIt is rooted in what it means to be part of and making work inside a queer community,\u201d Johnson explained. \u201cIt\u2019s a show that would be beautiful in New York, but it takes on a new resonance when you open it in Florida, where books are being banned and we\u2019re not allowed to say the word \u2018gay\u2019 in public schools,\u201d she added, nodding to recently enacted state laws restricting<\/a> classroom discussions.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s own take on pre-Basel market jitters? \u201cI don\u2019t necessarily think of it as a dip, I think of it as a re-evaluation,\u201d she said, leaving gallerists asking themselves: What matters to you as a dealer? Why have you chosen to show this particular work? \u201cIt can\u2019t be purely economic, there\u2019s more efficient and less stressful ways to make a buck,\u201d she added with a laugh.<\/p>\n

For Johnson, the answer is always about \u201chelping buoy artists and their work. We think of fairs as being separate from that conversation and they\u2019re not. Or they certainly shouldn\u2019t be.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A foreboding air greets the 23rd edition of the Art Basel Miami Beach fair opening this week, capping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[31951,1203,1936,31954,77,25715,31957,31959,30071,3917,31956,10061,31955,31964,31961,31962,31965,31952,31953,31958,31963,31960],"class_list":{"0":"post-57367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basel","8":"tag-abreu","9":"tag-art","10":"tag-art-basel-miami-beach","11":"tag-bas","12":"tag-basel","13":"tag-conventions","14":"tag-dara","15":"tag-dennis","16":"tag-fairs-and-trade-shows","17":"tag-florida","18":"tag-friedman","19":"tag-gallery","20":"tag-hernan","21":"tag-janet","22":"tag-julia","23":"tag-max","24":"tag-miami-beach-fla","25":"tag-miguel","26":"tag-new-art-dealers-alliance","27":"tag-scholl","28":"tag-sobel","29":"tag-voloshyn"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116485529467099508","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}