Post WTC attack - Art Basel Miami Beach postponed
by Sue Williamson
Six weeks before the scheduled opening of the premiere of Art Basel Miami Beach on December 13, the organisers have postponed the event for a year, citing the "current situation in the United States".
In a press release from the management of the art fair, reasons are given as "the unpredictable prolongation of the unsafe circumstances in US since the September 11 terrorist attacks, warnings of potential attacks in the future, the anthrax incidents, and the state of war." Related dangers and increased difficulties in air travel as well as goods traffic and insurance are also named as causes for the postponement.
This would have been the first time that Art Basel, Europe's most important art fair, was staged in Miami, and the loss to the Swiss organisers is estimated at some $4-million. The fair will now take place from December 5 to 8 2002.
Johannesburg's Goodman Gallery, a frequent exhibitor on Art Basel in past decades, had planned to show a number of the gallery's top artists, including Zwelethu Mthethwa, Tracey Rose and William Kentridge. Asked how the postponement had affected the gallery, director Linda Givon said this week: "Under the circumstances we have to remain advised by people who are more in touch with the situation in America. Yes, it has cost us money but with a larger view in mind, had we gone it could have been more disastrous. So we propose to present Art Basel Miami Parkwood, a little of what we would have shown in Miami, on view at the Goodman Gallery. It's not a substitute but at least the artists' works will be on show. We are disappointed but we will go next year, the world situation allowing. This is a time where we live from week to week and from day to day."
Over 150 of the world's leading galleries as well as about 50 art journals and cultural institutions had confirmed participation in the first Art Basel Miami Beach, drawn by the impeccable reputation of its European parent fair. It was at Art Basel that artists such as Mariko Mori, Vanessa Beecroft, William Kentridge, Pierre Huyghe, Elisabeth Peyton, Gregor Schneider, Jorge Pardo, Ugo Rondinone, Kara Walker, Manfred Pernice, Ernesto Neto, Ghada Amer and many others appeared to a greater public for the first time, before they became art celebrities.
Many artists had planned special projects specifically for this first Art Basel Miami Beach, all of which will now have to be postponed. However, for the die-hard fair goers who will be heading for Miami anyway, fair or no fair, the organisers have promised "a special visit".
