David and Lee Ann Lester’s association with the media company dmg has hit the rocks and in future they will be “spending more time with their boat.” They will continue to co-organise the New York Fall Fair but apart from that, their role has been taken by the newly recruited Swiss fair organiser Lorenzo Rudolf, the man behind Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach.
The Lesters sold their company, which created the Palm Beach International Art and Antique Fair, a Texan fair, ArtPalmBeach, ARTform and the Javits Center event, to the media group dmg only last year, for a reported $18 million. Now, however, dmg have brought in Mr Rudolf, who in 10 years built up Art Basel to the world’s premier contemporary art fair. He left it in 2000 for the Frankfurt Book Fair but so missed the art world that he jumped at the dmg offer to return. Mr Rudolf also conceived and set in motion Art Basel Miami Beach, which debuted last December to applause. He will relocate to Florida and will co-organise the Fall Fair with the Lesters for the next two years. The Texas Fine Art Fair, slated for 3 to 9 April, has been cancelled because of the management changes.
“We invented new structures for fairs, made a new forum for showing art,” said Mr Rudolf. His key to building successful events is “institutional involvement”, meaning that he works closely, well before the fair, with local museums, trustees and prominent collectors to create a programme of events around the fair, the formula that proved so successful in December.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'Lesters out, Art Basel supremo in'