Shipping issues have impacted several galleries exhibiting at Art Basel Miami Beach this year, resulting in some down-to-the-wire installs, as well as valuable instances of exhibitor collaboration during a competitive art market week.
Art Basel said in a statement to The Art Newspaper: “There were a small handful of exhibitors who experienced delays with their shippers, which is an issue that Art Basel recognises many galleries are increasingly facing in the post-Covid-19 era. To mitigate delays to installation, Art Basel dispatched our team to support exhibitors and their shippers.”
On the morning of Tuesday (3 December), one day before the fair opened to VIPs, the Brussels gallery Xavier Hufkens was still waiting for half of its stand to be sent by air freight from Belgium. “It’s the first time since the gallery opened almost 40 years ago that something like this has happened to us,” says a director at the gallery, who asked not to be identified.
Aided by quickly sourcing works from across its network in the US, the Xavier Hufkens team managed to finish installing a stand full of art just one hour before doors opened to VIPs. While three works arrived the day of the opening, one-third of the presentation intended for the fair is still back in Belgium, the director adds. “The shippers offered to send the rest of the work to Miami by Monday (9 December) but obviously there is no point in receiving them then,” they said, declining to name the shipping company.
The gallery Thaddaeus Ropac faced similar issues. The Art Newspaper understands that numerous works on its stand—from which it reported sales of more than $13m on VIP day, including a 1990 Robert Rauschenberg ink-on-brass painting for $2.3m—did not make it to Miami from Europe, where the gallery has spaces in Paris, London and Salzburg. A gallery spokesperson confirms that “an important part of our shipment didn’t arrive”, but declined to comment further.
Shaping up without shipping
Likely the hardest hit gallery by shipping issues this year has been Vermelho from São Paulo, whose entire stand has not arrived in Miami in time for the fair. “Brazil is known not just for football and caipirinhas, but also bureaucracy,” says the gallery’s director Maya Beiguelman.
Vermelho’s team realised on Saturday (1 December) that the works would not come on time, Beiguelman explains, as a Brazilian customs official had requested to further inspect the shipment, removing it from its intended flight. The gallery’s staff were forced to think on their feet and quickly gathered material from various storage sites in the US and artist studios across the world. Painted silk for a work by Iván Argote was able to be sent from his Paris studio and assembled on site; a suite of photographs by Claudia Andujar was “luckily already in Miami” due to an exhibition the artist had received at the city’s Institute of Contemporary Art in 2021.
As a contingency, Art Basel also allowed Vermelho, which is mainly a primary market gallery and therefore, under the fair’s guidelines, must show a presentation representative of its programme, to exhibit secondary market works that it had in its inventory. One such piece, the 1992 painting Portrait of the artist’s mother by Daniel Senise, was sold on the VIP day for an undisclosed price.
Hearteningly, Vermelho’s time of need elicited many collaborative gestures from fellow exhibitors. PPOW offered to loan a Carlos Motta drawing; Vermelho managed to get three drawings by Motta from his New York studio in time for the fair. Gomide&Co and Galeria Estação also offered to lend work and installation assistance. Beiguelman says: “This week has reminded us of how many friends we really have. We are very lucky.”