Move Over, Miami: Where Silicon Valley Collectors and Art Insiders Really Buy Their Masterpieces
One little Miami Beach event tends to get all the attention, but beginning with the spring art fair season, sales and shows in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles offer better places to begin—or add to—a blue-chip collection.
Last December, mayhem seemed to hit an all-time high at Art Basel Miami Beach, the art world’s annual Floridian bacchanal. Traffic choked the streets. No one could get a cellphone signal. And the media seemed more interested in covering the onslaught of celebrity and fashion-brand parties—Leonardo DiCaprio here, Cartier there—than, you know, the art. In other words, pure pandemonium.
Art Basel Miami remains the best known art fair and a place that draws longtime insiders and a growing class of Silicon Valley collectors alike. But as Sarah Stein-Sapir, a Manhattan-based art adviser whose clients span the worlds of tech, finance and consulting, pointed out, “If you want a more sophisticated entree into the art world, Miami might not be the best place.”
Instead, consider some other events that start with the approaching spring art market, which does present a number of superior options. The fairs “can be a lot of fun and can give a great snapshot of what is going on in the art world and the art market,” said billionaire venture capitalist Jim Breyer, a longtime trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.