Art Basel 2022 took off in Switzerland on June 16. The three-day event came alive after the two-year pandemic pause.
This year 289 famous galleries from 40 countries and territories took part in bringing alive the global art community. Art Basel is an annual for-profit international art fair held in Basel, Switzerland, Miami Beach, Hong Kong, and, beginning in 2022, Paris. The event collaborates with local institutions in the host city to assist create and promote art programmes.
To reach out to the biggest potential audience both on-site and online, the 2022 edition has used hybrid physical and digital formats. The show, vividly splashed in the webbed world, comprises captivating presentations in all specialities: “Unlimited,” a section dedicated to monumental projects, featured large-scale installations that are larger than regular art show stalls; “Statements,” a section dedicated to solo presentations from emerging artists; “Feature,” a section dedicated to curated works by artists from the 20th and 21st centuries; and “Parcours,” a section dedicated to site-specific works throughout Basel’s Old Town, curated by Samuel Leuenberger.
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, were the rage at the Art Basel. This world of digital assets is taking off and the world’s leading contemporary art fair endorsed this futuristic turn.
Art Basel is defined by its host city and region. While a central programme is integral to its curriculum, participating galleries, artworks on display, and parallel programming is developed in collaboration with local institutions for each edition.
A bit of History: Basel gallerists Ernst Beyeler, Trudl Bruckner and Balz Hilt founded Art Basel in 1970. The Basel event attracted almost 16,000 people in its first year, who saw work from 90 galleries representing ten nations. Thirty art publishers also took part in the event. The Basel fair had about 300 exhibitors by 1975, five years after its inception. And having 37,000 guests from 21 different countries to see the participating galleries was reason to make it an annual show.
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