Analysis
Can You Even Fathom How Many Dealers Are Coming to Miami This Week?
How big a deal is Miami fair week? We crunched the numbers.
How big a deal is Miami fair week? We crunched the numbers.
Brian Boucher ShareShare This Article
If you feel like Miami Art Week is completely out of control, we understand. There are good reasons for that.
With a bonkers 20 or so art and design fairs, all orbiting around the 14th edition of Art Basel in Miami Beach, it’s one of the biggest weeks in the global art world’s calendar. As many as 4,000 artists will be represented at the main fair alone.
How can we even begin to wrap our minds around the behemoth that is Miami Art Week? Can you even guess how many dealers are descending on Miami over the coming days?
Well, we’ve done the math so you don’t have to.
Listed in order of size, here are the fairs happening this week, with the number of dealers showing at each one, and the sum of all the dealers at the end.
Scroll down right away if you must.
Spectrum Miami: 180
Art Miami: 125
Scope: 120
Untitled: 119
NADA Miami: 105
Pulse: 82
Art on Paper: 60
Miami Project: 60
Satellite: 54
Pinta Miami: 50
Red Dot Art Fair: 47
Aqua Art Miami: 46
Design Miami: 36
Fridge Art Fair: 34
X Contemporary: 28
Superfine: 8
That’s 1,566 dealers, hoping to move untold millions of dollars’ worth of works of art and design.
If you took a mere five minutes with each dealer, that would total nearly 6,000 minutes, or 96 hours, or almost 2½ 40-hour work weeks just taking in the booths. That doesn’t account for meal times, bathroom breaks, or gabbing with the friends and colleagues you run into in the aisles. Just going booth to booth to innumerable booth, for 2½ weeks.
Did we mention that the fairs are open for only a few days? Get ready to make some tough choices.