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Meanwhile high-end galleries clean up without showing much, if anything, thats risky or innovative.
Look at the basic cost for doingthis weeks Frieze New York.A large booth costs $125,000.
A gallery can sometimes pay another $15,000 to $18,000 to build out the booth.
On-site handling costs can run another $5,000.
One dealer told me he paid $350 to have an electric socket installed at the Armory Show.
Many people will object, Yes, but galleries make lots of money at fairs.
The big ones almost always do.
But, as you move away from the upper-crust galleries sales can be scanty.
If a gallerydoessell less-known or less-expensive work the dealer is still all but guaranteed to take a major loss.
First-time fairgoers often have a hard time getting past a half-dozen booths before burning out.
Everyone talks about these problems.
Since 2001 Freire has done 78 art fairs so he knows whereof he speaks.
I havent met a new person in Basel in at least ten years.
All this strikes me as about right.
So what about the claim that an art fair can make half-a-years gallery operating expense in a single weekend?
Freire counters, Fairs accounted for this gallerys biggest financial loses.
At fairs youre seeing businesses in the balance.
This is a rotten system.
None of this applies to megagalleries or to many of the larger galleries.
For these galleries the system may be exhausting but its working fine.
Attend the opening day of any fair and youll see why the big galleries like this system.
Their booths are buzzing with gaggles of well-shod people you dont recognize and celebrities with entourages.
Youre seeing a shinier parallel art world acted out before your eyes.
The camouflage of choice then is art fair as resort and mercantile Burning Man.
All agree that things need fixing.
Here was my boilerplate pitch.
In a friendly huff, I said, Youre killing the geese that laid the golden eggs!
and talked about how fairs are charging way too much for booths at fairs.
Then I suggested cutting booth fees by as much as 40 percent.
I dont have to tell you the agog silence and wry smiles this met with.
Especially because the current system benefits these galleries the most.
I continued that the burden of profit shouldnotfallexclusivelyon the backs of galleries as it does in the current system!
Carnegie Hall doesnt charge Yo-Yo Ma exorbitant prices to perform there.
Carnegie Hall pays him!
Again, each proprietor looked at me like I was mad.
I said that the procedures for gallery inclusion should be changed too.
Now, galleries apply, filling out costly applications describing what theyre bringing to the fairs.
These proposals then are judged by a jury of their peers.
Let alone longtime vendettas.
Numerous middle-size and smaller gallerists have told me that their proposals were rejected for being too boring.
Im not alone in my squawking.
Marc talk about disconnect!
Im not the art fair bogey man.
But all this is triumph-of-the-system talk.
