This edition marks the first under the helm of Bridget Finn, appointed last year as Art Basel Miami Beach's first director since 2021.
Today (July 9), Art Basel Miami announced the exhibitor list and program for its 2024 edition, which will take place December 6-8, with VIP preview days on December 4 and 5. This edition marks the first under the helm of Bridget Finn, appointed last year as Art Basel Miami Beach’s first director since 2021 when Noah Horowitz left the role (he is now the fair’s CEO).
Art Basel Miami 2024 will host 283 galleries from 34 countries and territories, with nearly two-thirds of exhibitors hailing from the Americas, including the United States and Canada but also featuring voices from Central and South America, including Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru and Uruguay. Unsurprisingly, it should be said, as this edition has always kept a particular focus on Latin America and its Diaspora, while engaging and resonating with the extensive Latinx community in the city.
In a statement accompanying the announcement, Finn said: “We have an exceptional roster of galleries participating in our Miami Beach show this year, coming from all corners of the Americas, Europe and Asia. The proposals in Nova, Positions, and Survey are of exceptional quality and ambition, and galleries in the main sector will not be holding back come December, bringing their best of the best to this all-important fair in the world’s leading art market. We needed to carve out a more equitable path to participation for small and mid-sized galleries entering the main sector of this show, and the proof is in the extraordinary number of newcomers joining this edition. We remain super agile and attuned to the changing and individual needs of our galleries and their artists. We are committed to creating an ever-missed experience for them, collectors, museums and foundations, major cultural partners and visitors from Miami Beach and worldwide.”
Notably, the 2024 edition of Art Basel Miami Beach will have the largest cohort of new entry galleries yet, with 32 first-time participants. Art Basel Miami’s introduction of a new smaller booth option has created a more accessible and equitable starting point for smaller and younger galleries to secure space in the central section, resulting in 25 more exhibitors at the fair, marking a significant increase in the capacity of the central section compared to past editions.
With a new total of 227 exhibitors, the fair’s main section has attracted for the first time some leading galleries from Asia, including Hong Kong powerhouse Pearl Lam Galleries (Hong Kong, Shanghai), which will present an overview of the evolution of abstract painting in contemporary China, and Korean gallery Leeahn Gallery (Daegu, Seoul), which will show a selection of Korean contemporary artists that include postwar masters and new contemporary voices whose practices critically engage the legacy of Dansaekhwa or Korean monochrome painting. Also from South Korea, another local powerhouse, Gallery Baton (Seoul), will showcase a curated reflection on the global environmental crisis through a cohort of both Korean and international artists, including Suzanne Song, Rinus Van de Velde, Yuichi Hirako, Doki Kim, Liam Gillick, Jimok Choi and Claire Fontaine, whose work gave the title to the current Venice Biennale. Finally, San Francisco-based Gallery Wendi Norris will set an exciting dialogue between Spanish Surrealist Remedios Varo’s paintings and the work of Cuban-born contemporary artist and recently named MacArthur Fellow María Magdalena Campos-Pons, who just had a broadly acclaimed survey at Brooklyn Museum.
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Other newcomers in the Galleries section include exhibitors that were in the Nova, Positions or Survey sections in 2023, such as the local Miami gallery Central Fine, Meredith Rosen Gallery (New York), Edel Assanti (London), Daniel Faria Gallery (Toronto), Alison Jacques (London) and two African galleries: Afriart Gallery (Kampala) and Rele Gallery (Lagos, London, Los Angeles) jointly presenting six artists from the continent who incorporate in their work materials sourced their respective communities.
Finally, there are also two galleries from South America that made their names with excellent research into their respective local scenes: Buenos Aires-based Isla Flotante featuring a three-part presentation of Argentine artists Valentina Liernur and Valentín Demarco, and the Columbian gallery Instituto de visión (New York, Bogotá), with a presentation of six women artists from the Americas reflecting on the relationship between nature, territory and the body.
Among the returning exhibitors, Luisa Strina, the longest-running contemporary art gallery in São Paulo, will celebrate its 50th anniversary with a booth paying homage to the gallery’s history, including works by Venice Golden-lion awarded and recently rediscovered artist Anna-Maria Maiolino, among others. Bortolami (New York), James Cohan (New York), kaufmann repetto (Milan, New York), Anton Kern Gallery (New York), Andrew Kreps Gallery (New York) and kurimanzutto (Mexico City, New York), which just recently opened an ambitious new collaborative exhibition space upstate called The Campus, will also return to the fair as veteran exhibitors in Galleries, each bringing works by artists from their respective programs.
Meanwhile, the Nova section will offer a premier platform for 21 younger galleries to present a curated selection of works created within the last three years, providing collectors with a platform for discovering works fresh from the studio. Among the exhibitors in the section worth keeping an eye on are New York dealer Charles Moffett, who will present a collaborative project by Kim Dacres and Melissa Joseph, respectively pushing the expressive potential of materials such as rubber and felt, and Parisian gallery Galerie Allen, which will feature an intriguingly themed booth ‘sanctuary amongst the grotesque,’ featuring paintings by Jacqueline de Jong (who just passed away), aquarium works by Hong Kong-artist Trevor Yeung and hand-blown glass sculptures of tongues by Tarek Lakhrissa. Gallery Nosco from Brussels, whose program centers on artists and artistic practices from Latin America, will also bring a worth-checking selection of geometric abstract works by Peruvian Alberto Casari, Venezuelan Magdalena Fernández and Portuguese Marcelo Moscheta. Finally, Gallery Vacancy (Shanghai) will present visionary paintings and sculptural installations by Henry Curchod, Michael Ho and Chen Ting-Jung.
Positions will be dedicated to solo showcases of emerging galleries and artists, while Survey will feature highly singular curatorial proposals of historically relevant works created before the year 2000. In Position, plan to check out the booth of Gordon Robichaux (New York), which will introduce to a broader audience the work of Chinese-Spanish-Filipino-American performance artist and activist Agosto Machado, a crucial figure in the cultural underground scene of 1960s Downtown New York. Also very promising is the proposed presentation of Buenos Aires gallery Piedras, with a selection of Argentine artist Jimena Croceri’s ergonomic and performative sculptures, which are inspired by the cavities within and between human bodies and revive historical references to Amerindian Muisca metalwork.
Art Basel Miami Beach’s version of the Unlimited section in Basel, Meridians, will present ambitious installations and projects that transcend the traditional art fair booth. The selection is curated for the first time by Yasmil Raymond, an independent curator and outgoing Director of Portikus and Rector of the Hochschule für Bildende Künste-Städelschule. Raymond also served as a curator at the Dia Art Foundation, where she organized similarly ambitious projects with installation-based artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Jean-Luc Moulène and Allora & Calzadilla, as well as at MoMA, where she is co-curating the exhibition “Judd,” among others.
To complement the presentation across the fair’s aisles and create a space of open discussion on some of the main themes that will emerge, Art Basel Miami Beach’s renowned Conversations program will return with a series of discussions curated for the first time this year by American writer, editor and educator Kimberly Bradley.
Despite the recent and altogether unexpected news that Republican governor Ron DeSantis is cutting funding for art in the state, the city’s vibrant cultural scene will still provide, as per usual, a series of high-quality must-see exhibitions across its institutional venues, primarily thanks to their patrons’ support. Among the week’s must-sees, the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) will host a significant group exhibition on experimental artistic practices dating back to the critical years of the Chicano Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. At The Bass Museum, visitors will find a 30-year survey of Gagosian-represented artist Rachel Feinstein, marking the first significant show in their hometown. The museum will also unveil the first public museum installation of Brazilian-born artist and São Paulo-based artist collective assume vivid astro focus (avaf): “XI,” gifted by the late arts patron and collector Rosa de la Cruz and her husband, Carlos de la Cruz.
A complete list of participating galleries is available on Art Basel Miami Beach’s website.
