Art Fair Booth, 2019
Richard Mudariki
OSART GALLERY
When Alice Amati attended the first art fair for her namesake London gallery last year, she stood for five days straight. The uncomfortable introduction to the art fair circuit wasn’t by choice; many fairs don’t include furniture as part of the booth fee, which presents an expensive conundrum for gallerists. “Hiring from fair partners can be extremely expensive,” the London gallerist told Artsy, and “shipping your own furniture back and forth from the gallery can be even costlier.” At NADA in Miami last December, Amati made do with a folding chair from a hardware store, bought on the advice of a gallery at a neighboring booth. Welcome to the not-so-glamorous side of art fairs.
Since Art Cologne became the world’s first contemporary art fair in 1967, these glitzy events have become a vital cog in the art market machine for buyers, sellers, and the art curious. With art fairs in almost every corner of the globe, attending the right ones and shaking the right hands can lead to big sales and an even bigger boost in recognition for a gallery and its artists. Sit them out, the received logic goes, and you risk denting your reputation—or failing to establish a reputation to stand on.
It’s the perceived influence of these events that led Capsule Shanghai founder Enrico Polato to attend a dozen international fairs in 2023, motivated partly by a post-pandemic yearning to reconnect with the global art scene. “At times, I felt compelled to participate,” he told Artsy, “whether driven by a ‘fear of missing out’ or the need to test the waters before making an informed judgment.” It was a bold strategy that succeeded in establishing his gallery abroad, but attending even just a single art fair can be a financial gamble.
According to conversations with nearly half a dozen small gallerists, the price of participating in an art fair can often stretch past $20,000, with booth fees at the top of their expense sheets—regardless of their gallery’s footprint. “At most fairs, small galleries are paying the same per square foot as larger galleries,” Tribeca-based gallerist Margot Samel told Artsy. “And often, the margins are so slim that even if you sell everything you bring to the fair, you barely make a profit. One bad fair could potentially lead to the closure of a gallery.”
There are government initiatives to offset fees for attending fairs, but these kinds of schemes solely benefit the galleries in that country and are beholden to fickle budgets and political shifts. For instance, a German pilot program that provided a subsidy of up to €12,000 ($12,512) to Berlin galleries so they could participate in two art fairs per year was announced in July 2023 and had exhausted its funding by that September. A year later, the Berlin government shifted course and approved €130 million ($135.59 million) in budget cuts to the culture sector, prompting alarm bells in the city’s art scene.
In another example, the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority launched a new grant in February to cover up to 50% of the booth fee at international art fairs for Dubai-based galleries. A similar program helped QB Gallery director Mikaela Bruhn Aschim, whose Oslo gallery tapped into Norway’s International Support for Galleries and Independent Exhibition Spaces (ISGIES) fund to offset the cost of attending fairs. While she noted that “we almost always go in minus after participating at an art fair,” with or without funding, the impact of attending can outweigh the cost. “The connections we can make at an international art fair, new exposure for the gallery and the artists, as well as potential future sales, makes it worth it.”
For LATITUDE Gallery New York founder Shihui Zhou, financial relief came via a stipend for last year’s Untitled Art, Miami. The gallery was picked by guest curators Kathy Huang and Jungmin Cho for the Nest section, which highlighted emerging galleries and shaved thousands of dollars off the booth fee. Other such schemes include Art Basel’s sliding scale pricing system, where larger galleries pay more per square meter, and Frieze New York’s Focus section, which offers galleries up to 12 years old a subsidized rate thanks to its Stone Island sponsorship.
But the reality is that these programs are the exception, not the rule. And while the price per square foot of booth space is relatively fixed, the same can’t be said for everything else. “Adding a few wall washers or spotlights can easily cost $1,000–$2,000, electrical outlets range from $200–$600, [and] building extra walls can run anywhere from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars,” Samel told Artsy. “[Sometimes] you show up at the fair and immediately have to spend extra money because the provided lighting is insufficient for your presentation.”
Alongside these hidden fees, transporting the actual art can easily balloon out of control. Gallerists must navigate everything from country-specific tax regulations and storage fees to the issue of bringing back unsold art, resulting in a final round of expenses to cover crates, customs, and return shipping. The result is a significantly risky proposition that, even when financially successful during the fair, can still fail to offset the price of participation. “Achieving a sold-out booth is rare. In some cases, even a complete sellout wouldn’t cover the costs incurred,” Polato told Artsy.
Still, art fairs remain a core part of the circuit for many galleries. More than 350 of them took place last year, with some 69% of gallerists surveyed in the Artsy Art Fair Report 2024 saying they planned to participate. That sentiment carries over to the collector’s side, as well: The Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2024 found that 60% of collectors expect to attend the same number of fairs in 2025, while 28% hope to attend even more. Attendance isn’t just encouraged for small and mid-size galleries hoping to make connections, secure sales, and establish their name—it can be essential. “I don’t really like doing math because it’s kind of scary to see how much we actually spend on these things. But honestly, it’s all part of it,” Zhou told Artsy. “It’s really just a lot of resourcefulness, problem-solving, and pure willpower. We somehow make it work, and that’s what keeps things thrifty and exciting.”
While embracing unpredictability can lead to creative solutions, there are structural changes to fairs that could hand small galleries a lifeline—especially now, as the art market weathers slowdowns and snap policy changes such as tariffs. One frequent suggestion was for an increase in special sections and discounted booths for young galleries, especially at larger fairs. “QB is too old for that now, but at the beginning of the gallery, this was something that made it possible for us to go [to fairs],” Aschim told Artsy. Another prime target for reform is transport costs. Gallerists called for streamlining logistics to allow multiple galleries to share resources and a push for fairs to work out flat rates with logistics companies, offsetting at least some of the unpredictability.
For all of the logistical hurdles and mounting expenses, the reality is that small galleries can’t afford to opt out—but they often can’t afford to keep up. Art fairs are a cycle of high-risk investment and uncertain returns, offset by the draw of building a reputation and meeting potential clients. “While sales are an important measure of success, fairs for young galleries showcasing emerging artists offer more than just immediate transactions,” Amati told Artsy. “[They’re] also a rare opportunity to meet collectors, curators, institutions, and journalists over just a few days—connections that might otherwise take months to establish.” It’s a gamble that comes with the territory, but without structural changes to lift small galleries, the art fair system may continue to reward those who can afford to lose.
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