Hauser and Wirth Opens Up Its Website to Host an Indie Art Fair That Had to Cancel Its Basel Edition

Hauser and Wirth has become the latest mega-gallery to offer its
platform to smaller dealers looking to find an audience during the
lockdown era. In August, the gallery will host a virtual edition of
the June Art Fair, the indie upstart that
launched its first edition in Basel
last year.

After June canceled its 2020 edition alongside Art Basel and Liste, it
needed a virtual home, and Hauser and Wirth agreed to host. (This
is particularly helpful since neither “June fair” nor “Art Basel in
June,” the event’s original name, are easy to Google, seeing as the
much more famous Art Basel fair also historically takes place in,
well, June.)

“We were focused on how to reach the widest audience, and
substitute that experience of Basel, which would otherwise in some
ways feel completely irreplaceable,” fair cofounder Esperanza
Rosales told Artnet News. “The alliance came from a desire to
transcend these obvious challenges, to collaborate and experiment
with different formats and views, and to open dialogue about how
best to serve the art viewer in this current climate.”

This isn’t the first time one of the world’s largest galleries
has volunteered itself as a hub for smaller dealers. Earlier this
year, David Zwirner began hosting
“Platform,” a dedicated series of viewing rooms featuring two
artworks each from smaller galleries in New York, Los Angeles,
Paris, and other cities. It’s also not the first time a gallery has
stepped forward to host a suddenly homeless fair—Zwirner (yet
again) stepped forward in collaboration
with collector Peter Hort to host galleries from Volta after it
was displaced from its venue in 2019.

Each dealer participating in June will present works by a single
artist. Sales inquiries, Rosales said, will take place directly
between the gallery and the collector. In the past, some have questioned
whether host galleries are opening up their websites not only to be
good samaritans, but also to receive valuable information about new
clientele, like email addresses and names. Rosales said it had not
yet confirmed what sort of data clients would need to provide to
enter June virtually.

Galleries participating in the fair,
which will run from August 20 through 31, include: The Breeder
(Athens), Document (Chicago) Embajada (San Juan), Green Art Gallery
(Dubai), The Green Gallery (Milwaukee), and Misako & Rosen (Tokyo).
The fair, which is being presented in conjunction with Art
Review, will offer additional content about each dealer on the
magazine’s website.

June was cofounded by Christian Andersen, who runs an eponymous
gallery in Copenhagen, and Rosales, who owns the gallery VI, VII in
Oslo, to offer a laid-back, hip
alternative to Basel’s more formal offerings. The
inaugural event was held in a Herzog and de Meuron-designed
building across the street from Art Basel.

“By hosting the fair on our digital platform we aim to increase
the exposure and audience for the participating galleries,” said
Neil Wenman, a partner at Hauser and Wirth, in a statement. “New
digital endeavors are challenging the art landscape and redefining
how we can all connect.”

The post Hauser and Wirth Opens Up Its Website to Host an
Indie Art Fair That Had to Cancel Its Basel Edition appeared
first on artnet News.