Art Basel Paris

Art Basel Paris, which officially launched in 2024, is an industry art fair that takes place in October of each year in the Grand Palais exhibition hall in Paris and is a satellite offshoot of the flagship Art Basel fair in Switzerland.

Prior to 2024, the festival was known as Paris+ par Art Basel and took place in a temporary space near the Eiffel Tower.^[1] The current fair displaced the French-managed Foire Internationale d'Art Contemporain (FIAC), which had had occupied the October art fair slot in the Grand Palais for close to half a century in 2022.^[1][2][3][4]

The director of the fair is Clément Delépine.^[5][6][7]

History

FIAC had long been the flagship French art fair, until a surprise announcement from the management company of the Grand Palais in January 2022 that Art Basel's parent company would instead take the calendar slot later that year.^[1]

The announcement that the native-run FIAC being displaced by a Swiss-managed art fair was met with shock and ambivalence by the Paris-based art community as it meant the demise of a cornerstone of Paris art scene. Philippe Boutté, a Parisian gallery director, called it "sad and violent".^[8]

Initially the conference was named Paris+ par Art Basel in large part because the seven-year contract between Grand Palais management company and the management of Art Basel stipulated that the fair should not be branded "Art Basel, Paris".^[1] Nonetheless, the fair was fully branded Art Basel Paris starting in 2024.^[9]

As the Paris fair under Art Basel management became more established, it began to pull high-end American collectors away from the flagship Swiss fair.^[10] Art Basel management noted that is in part because Americans preferred the Paris in the fall over a mid-sized Swiss city in the summer.^[10]

Paris Art Week

The October art fair anchors what is known as "Paris Art Week" which includes satellite fairs such as Paris Internationale, Asia Now and the Salon.^[11]

In 2024, it also included a free, public program of exhibitions and installations held in at least nine venues across the city with the fashion brand Miu Miu as an official partner.^[6]

Sections

Art Basel Paris is broken into a number of specific sections.

The Emergence section features "radical work by emerging talents" and is located on the balconies surrounding the central nave of the Grand Palais.^[12]

There is also a significant amount of public programming, which is accesible free of charge. These include installations in notable Paris locations, such as the Place Vendôme, which became an outdoor gallery in 2024 for German artist Carsten Höller's Giant Triple Mushroom sculpture.^[13]