The Art Angle Podcast: Can Art Basel Make Paris the World’s Art Capital Once Again?

This week, editors Naomi Rea and Kate Brown explore the controversy surrounding Paris's art fair landscape.

The Grand Palais Éphémère on the Champ-de-Mars. Photo ©Wilmotte et Associés.

Welcome to the Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News that delves into the places where the art world meets the real world, bringing each week’s biggest story down to earth. Join us every week for an in-depth look at what matters most in museums, the art market, and much more, with input from our own writers and editors, as well as artists, curators, and other top experts in the field.

The art world was caught by surprise earlier this year when it came to light that Paris’s long-standing art fair, FIAC, was being ousted from its precious October slot at the formidable Grand Palais in Paris. It turned out that it was none other than the biggest fair titan of them all, Art Basel, and its winning vision for the French capital, that would be taking its place.

Enter Paris+, Basel’s newest fair, which hopes to be a bridge between the French institutional landscape and the art industry. The timing for Paris could not be better: dealers have been clamoring to open up shop in its arrondissements just as a string of premier new museums have opened their doors.

Ahead of the fair’s inaugural opening on October 20, London-based European market editor Naomi Rea and Berlin-based Europe editor Kate Brown sat down to take a look at the dramatic events that led up to the takeover, and offered their predictions for what to expect of this major market moment.

 

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