Dialogues for a New Millennium: Amanda Coulson

Amanda Coulson is the executive director of the VOLTA contemporary art fair in Basel, Switzerland and VOLTA NY in Manhattan. Former editor of the International Edition of Tema Celeste magazine, Coulson continues writing for a variety of art journals, and represents this new breed of art critics and curators that have engaged actively during the last years with art fairs. We discuss her art fair experience and expectations.

A CONVERSATION WITH PACO BARRAGAN

Paco Barragán - I remember that the first time we met during ARCO in 2002. You were by then working freelance for magazines like Tema Celeste and Contemporary. What memories arise when you think of that hectic but intense time of arts writing?

Amanda Coulson -Well, it’s very funny to remember how differently I was treated when I was solely a critic/curator compared to now, also an art fair director. As a writer you are more courted in a different way and given a certain amount of intellectual respect; you are certainly more deeply entrenched in “the scene” because of networking and just being constantly out. Seeing everything possible is 75% of the job. You work for yourself, so there is a lot of independence, but it’s also tough always having to sell yourself as a freelancer. However, I do still write, and I think that this engagement with the art world on another level, from a different perspective than just ‘the market,” is vital to my point of view and really informs my work as a fair director.

P.B. -Times were quite different back then. What is it that you recall most of the art and art structures of that time?

A.C. -Well, I was living in Milan, Italy so I have a very particular memory of what was happening there and in Italy in general, which was honestly not very much as far as contemporary art goes! The art world back then was much smaller-fewer biennales, fewer art fairs-and while people bemoan all of these additional events, it’s born from a fundamental point: there are just so many more artists and galleries. I mean, think of where Berlin was 12 years ago and what it symbolizes today! Before there just wasn’t this mass. The art world was a smaller neighborhood in general rather than this big gleaming metropolis it’s become.

THE ADVENT OF THE ART FAIR AGE

P.B. -Let’s recall that the year 2001 was a crucial year: Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB) was cancelled due to 9/11. But, strangely enough, one year later the advent of ABMB meant the final consolidation of the art fair as absolute protagonist in the art world.

A.C. - Yes. I actually attended that 2001 Miami Non-Fair event. Sam Keller was smart enough to know that a lot of people still had plans to be there and so he organized some impromptu things but, yes, that was the end of the “neighborhood” feel to any of these things. Then it all shifted into high gear and become very glossy and party-oriented. That’s not to say fairs previously never had a party scene, but somehow it wasn’t the main event in the way it became. But I don’t think you can blame the fairs themselves: Sam was always brilliant at taking the temperature of a time and responding to it, and the advance of the art fairs were really just a response to a given situation.

P.B. - Art fairs have kept growing since then, and not only in the West (VOLTA in Basel and New York, ZOO in London, PHOTOMiami, etc.), but especially in China (Art Shanghai, Art Hong Kong), Puerto Rico (CIRCA PR), Bogota (ArtBogota and La Otra), Dubai (Art Dubai), etc. It seemed like every city wants to have a signature fair.  How was this move from art critic to art fair director?

A.C. -The move from art critic to art fair director was bizarrely quite organic, mainly because none of us really ever intended this to be a business. It’s not like I woke up one day and decided to do it. We were all fairly idealistic and just thought “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to do this project with a few galleries”… VOLTA started out with only 23. But, as I said, we hit a nerve or responded to a need, or what have you, and it just gradually grew.

I suppose the biggest change is, as I mentioned, how some people will treat you. There is an intellectual pecking order in the art world, which I find quite absurd, and somehow it’s that the less money you make, the more serious or intellectual you are.

P.B. -I see three periods in VOLTA’s life: the very beginnings of the fair (the first 3 years) when the fair was small and like a friend’s club as a result of the initiative of the galleries Voges & Partner, Kavi Gupta, and Wohnmaschine. And the second phase is when you start working at the fair, and the fair enlarges a little bit due to the success it’s generating. Do you agree in this appreciation?

A.C. - Yes, sure, completely. The reality is I was always there but more behind-the-scenes. The first year the founders were totally involved-up ladders and hauling crates-and I was more behind-the-scenes in the office and running PR. This was because it was their baby and also because of our actual babies: we had a 2-year old at the time and we discovered I was pregnant with our second child on VOLTA’s opening day! So, it was indeed their brainchild and they were super-involved in the first few years, while I was juggling the writing, curating, fair, and kids, but, as it grew up, VOLTA became a full-time job and the founders needed to focus on their galleries and then, as our kids grew up, I could take on more and more, arriving at this role.

P.B. -The third phase starts when VOLTA is being bought out by Merchandise Mart (MMPI), that also took over The Armory Show, Art Chicago, NEXT, and Art Toronto. Both fairs VOLTA Basel and New York experienced a considerable enlargement.

A.C. - To continue the child analogy, basically VOLTA grew up. That’s not to say we’ve lost our vision. We are maintaining it but within a structure that is easier to work with. Yes, we expanded to New York, but I love that show and we never could have done it without Merchandise Mart behind us. I was actually against it at first but then, when I pushed myself to come up with a format that I could stand behind, I felt had a reason to exist in NY, and I got really excited. I love the solo show format. I think the fair really has a great focus and is a valid addition to Armory Arts Week and creates a great complement to our sister fair, The Armory Show. In New York, we haven’t grown at all since we founded before the crash. There are more exhibitors every year but that’s only because the booths keep getting smaller!

VOLTA Basel did get a bit too big last year; that I’ll concede. But while everybody wants to blame it on MMPI I can honestly say it wasn’t from any pressure there. It was my exhibitors who’d been pushing for two years for a new location that would allow for bigger booths. They were all complaining 25 sq. m. was too small, so I found a bigger location and then the crash happened; everybody wanted a 15 sq. m booth. Then we lost our sponsors-there goes 75 sq, meters of lounge space-so I had far too much space and not enough galleries prepared to take large enough booths to keep the numbers down. Then literally weeks before the fair, people were dropping out and we had to fill spaces really willy-nilly … It was a perfect art fair storm, not something really planned. This year we are in a smaller location and, with 79 galleries, we’re back down to a good number that takes us back to our original mandate.

P.B. - Isn’t it surprising, not to say contradictory, that in the actual times of severe economic crisis, some art fairs like Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB), The Armory Show or even VOLTA have been growing in numbers of participating galleries? I would rather have expected the contrary. How do you explain this? Isn’t that diminishing the exhibited quality?

A.C. - I can’t speak for the other fairs but course I can speculate! I think times of difficulty are also times of opportunity; for example, after the mortgage crisis it was the best time to buy a house. In Miami I would speculate that now some of the satellite fairs are weakening precisely because galleries of that level don’t have the cash flow of the majors, so it’s hard to fill space. ABMB considered they could take the cream off the top and perhaps then lessen the amount of competition. It might not kill NADA and I’m not saying that’s their intention, but if NADA took up galleries from Pulse and so on, it might bring the 23 art fairs down to 12 and somehow they could take control back to the week.

There is a risk to this-if you lose the visitor confidence maybe existing won’t matter any more. But most of our visitors and galleries are savvy enough to see the situation. And let’s be honest, in these times many galleries go for the “easy” install, which from my point of view was a problem at ABMB, not only the size.

ART FAIRS AND FAST CURATING

P.B. -A complaint heard many times is that art fairs look like malls with unchallenging, bad presentations and easy not to say bad quality art.

A.C. - Yes, that’s to a certain extent true, but let’s be brutally honest: an art fair is a mall. A gallery is a shop. An artist is a producer of commodities. Of course that’s not all they are by any means, and I say that to be a Devils’ Advocate, but this idea that a fair has to be like a museum or a show is just trying to dress mutton up as lamb. Yes, I am trying with VOLTA to bring some kind of curatorial position to vet the work, to try and make a vague context, but let’s not pretend I am curating a stand-alone exhibition.

So I suggest everybody stop judging fairs as if they were supposed to bring some new insight or deep experience, as you might get with a gallery or museum show. Fairs exist for galleries to present themselves to new clients and to sell work.

P.B. -In this sense, art fairs have hired more and more curators to conceive special projects (i.e. Frieze projects and special sections), and more and more curators have found their way to selection committees like VOLTA. How do you interpret this “curated” art fair trend and what has been in your opinion the benefits of it, if any?

A.C. - I do think there has been a benefit, for sure. For one, it brings in more curators who may see artists at booths they will put in institutional shows, and also artists, who feel less like a commodity and perhaps more able to be part of the whole discourse of the event if there are lectures or films or projects. Certainly people think a lot harder about their booth presentations, I think, with a tendency toward solo shows or more tightly-curated booths. Projects like Unlimited or Frieze Projects-a vague attempt to give a glimpse outside the market context-are great and allow for a deeper understanding of a certain practice, though I don’t have the kind of sponsorship dollars to pull off something like that.

P.B. -Can we consider the art fair as just another curatorial platform with its own rules in terms of conceptualization, duration, presentation and the possibility of “fast curating”?

A.C. - I loved the idea of “fast curating” that you introduced at CIRCA, where a curator sped around and put together an “On the Spot” show at a pre-dedicated booth out of exhibited works that had to be taken on temporary loan from the galleries. It was a great way to contextualize the works. But aside from that I do think it’s almost impossible to really curate an art fair in a deep way. You can mostly control the quality of work; you can control, sometimes, what is placed where, you can counsel the galleries on their individual booths, but ultimately you are dealing with 80 curators, and we can’t honestly pretend we can get 80 people to work together in a coherent fashion in this context.

GALLERIES IN SEARCH OF NEW STRATEGIES

P.B. -It is a common remark that galleries don’t sell these days in the gallery, and that less and less collectors visit the gallery premises. Do you share this opinion?

A.C. - Not entirely. A good gallerist has a network of loyal clients that he or she has built up and can sell to “from the gallery” (even if they’re not in the same city). A lot of younger galleries only remember the times when having a gallery meant opening the doors and having stuff fly off the walls, so many aren’t as well schooled in running the gallery from the gallery, in reaching out, knowing a client’s taste and sending unsolicited offers, in follow-up. Yet there’s no debate that people in general have less time, and therefore the temptation for a collector to go to three fairs a year and see a variety of work from around the world is certainly more time- and cost-effective than flying to Berlin/Paris/London (let alone Düsseldorf/Marseille/Liverpool)… so I am sure that actual gallery visits are down.

P.C. -I just read a survey among Spanish dealers from arteinformado.com, a Spanish arts website, stating that the overall conclusion is that there are not really sales at art fairs but contacts. From my own experience with PHOTOMiami and CIRCA Puerto Rico, I would say that maybe 30% of the galleries at art fairs have good sales and that the remaining 70% have few or no sales. But still many galleries keep going to art fairs. How do you explain this?

A.C. - It’s simple: a contact becomes a future client. Good dealers know this and again, part of it comes with age and experience. When I started out working in galleries 15 years ago, selling two works at a fair and having a book full of new contacts was a really good fair; no one went in expecting to make a profit. Covering expenses was already a big deal.  Galleries realized that the expense was a PR expense, like an ad in a magazine. You don’t spend $6,000 on an Artforum ad and expect someone to come in and buy something as a result; you are creating your persona. But the boom turned fairs into these cash machines and people got used to that.

P.B. -I think that at this point many dealers are confused and only focus on art fairs being incapable of finding new ways of selling art, and this situation hinders art fairs from changing, as up till now most of them just act as real estate agents hiring space from galleries but hardly adding any value. Art fairs do need to reinvent themselves.

A.C. - Well, I do think they should be a little more adventurous at fairs! What I also find really surprising is how, even with the evident economic benefits, galleries don’t want to share booths or go in for a double presentation. I am talking about galleries sharing artists and such, not just random people. But again, it’s something they really don’t want to go for. So until their minds open up it’s hard to make changes in the fair context. They want their little white box. They want their sign. They want the same old catalogue even if it is totally obsolete as an object.

I think that several fairs have reinvented the fair as much as one can for the time being… As far as main fairs go, a fair like Artissima in Turin is amazing in how they create so many great film and theater events and that it becomes a cultural event in the city, as does FIAC in Paris with events like Jeff Koons at Versailles.

P.B. -It was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for your time.

Paco Barragán is an independent curator and an arts writer based in Madrid. He is curatorial advisor to the Artist Pension Trust (APT), New York. Some of the shows he has curated most recently are “Cinema X: I Like to Watch,” MoCCA, Toronto, 2010; “The Non-Age,” Kunsthalle Winterthur, 2009. He is the author of The Art Fair Age (CHARTA, 2008) and editor of Sustainabilities (CHARTA, 2008).