Noah Horowitz, the new director of Art Basel in Miami Beach, is committed to building on the Florida edition’s reach—both globally and locally. The fair and its city are “coming of age together”, he says. But there is also a very real infrastructure issue over which Horowitz will preside: the $600m overhaul of the Miami Beach Convention Center.
Phase one will begin shortly after this year’s fair closes. The renovation of the 58-year-old building and its surroundings to 21st-century standards will not be complete until 2018, but the aim is to finish the bulk of it by the 2017 edition of the fair.
Meanwhile, Horowitz is in talks with Miami’s museum directors to find ways in which the fair can “meaningfully contribute” to their work. One example is a collaboration with the Bass Museum of Art that enables the large-scale sculptures created for the fair’s Public section to be kept on site until January. He will also draw on his experience in directing the experimental (albeit unsuccessful) online VIP Art Fair in 2011, helping to build Art Basel’s competitive digital presence.
Horowitz comes to Art Basel from New York’s Armory Show, which he helped to revitalise as its director from 2012 until summer 2015. But has the Swiss fair shot itself in the foot by taking on the Armory’s saviour and thereby strengthening Frieze New York, its main rival in the US? Marc Spiegler, the director of Art Basel, acknowledges this potential impact, but not in relation to his fairs’ competition with the Frieze events. He says: “When we make such pivotal hires, they are purely based on finding the best person for Art Basel’s shows, not considering potential knock-on effects for other fairs.”