Nazy Vassegh, the chief executive of Masterpiece London, says she has sought to “recalibrate” the UK capital’s unashamedly lavish, cross-disciplinary fair since her appointment in 2013.
While the fair maintains its premise of mixing older art with new, a previous emphasis on luxury goods—unpopular with some who, ironically, felt it cheapened the tone—has been scaled back. Vassegh says that a focus on the “three pillars of art, antiques and design” will give the fair a “stronger identity”. With stricter selection criteria for exhibitors now in place, visitors “won’t find modern pens” at the seventh edition, which opens to the public tomorrow (30 June).
The organisers have also taken steps to bolster the fair’s requisite educational programme, which will be led by a talk on British decorative arts by curators from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The changes have done no harm to the attendance figures. The fair drew a record 40,000 visitors last year, in part due to the “word spreading”, Vassegh says. “We’re still only six years old.”
As with most young fairs, there is some flux in the list of 150 exhibitors, with 23 new names appearing this year. These include the Dutch gallery Axel Vervoordt, which offers a stylish mix of Modern art and design with antiquities, as well as Tornabuoni Art and Cortesi Gallery, two of the recent wave of Italian post-war and contemporary art galleries in London.
It is crucial to strike the right balance of disciplines that “curators and collectors want to buy and that the culturally inclined public want to see”, Vassegh says. Modern and contemporary design is one area that will grow in prominence at this year’s fair. Another newcomer, the Stockholm-based design gallery Modernity, has chosen to attend Masterpiece as its first non-specialist fair.
For Jonathan Green, the director of Richard Green gallery in London, Masterpiece is “a good-looking fair, improving slowly but surely”. Whether participation results in hard sales is a matter of debate—or rumour—but last year the gallery sold around ten paintings. “We take a huge stand and put our best foot forward with the works that we take,” Green says. “With that level of investment, we expect to do a few million pounds’ worth of business. You get out what you put in.”
• Masterpiece London, Royal Hospital Chelsea, South Grounds, London, 30 June-6 July