Design Miami/ Basel closed last week, reporting a rise of 30 percent in VIP attendance on Preview Day over last year, with a total attendance of 28,700 over the weeklong show.
In attendance were 46 international exhibitors of collectible design. Shares the show’s executive director, Rodman Primack, “We have been especially pleased this year with the diversity and high quality of collectible design work exhibited at Design Miami/ Basel. The fair has always been a destination for private collectors, museum curators, and aficionados of design and architecture, but this year’s selection was considered by many to be of an even higher quality than previous years.”
Sales ranged in cost from $1,000 to more than $2 million, with Caroline Van Hoek selling works by Gijs Bakker, Giampaolo Babetto, Hermien Cassiers, Daniel Kruger, Nadia Morgenthaler and Lavinia Rossetti; Galerie VIVID selling five works by Ettore Sottsass, and Elisabetta Cipriani selling Ai Weiwei’s “Rebar in Gold,” among others.
“This year’s event will be remembered as a game changer, as it was about celebrating the past, working in the present and looking towards the future,” says Lee Mindel of Shelton of Shelton Mindel & Associates. “For example, at Galerie Jacques Lacoste, we were able to experience a space designed by Diego Giacometti; it wasn’t an object but a space in a library that he created. Carpenters Workshop Gallery exhibited many current artists and imaginative uses of new materials, including resins and curved lighting strips. At Dansk Møbelkunst, a relatively unknown modernist architect, the late Palle Suensen, demonstrated the unique relationship between the Danish cabinetmaker and the architect with his slatted wood bench; his brand of organic modernism was found in a pair of sconces whose perimeter baffle resembled the petals of a flower.”
Primack says, “The presence of a number of top design collecting institution curators on the show floor throughout the week has certainly underscored the sense that Design Miami/ Basel is a place to encounter the most important work in the market—a number of notable works make this clear.”
