Art Basel has announced that Maike Cruse, director of Gallery Weekend Berlin since 2013, will be the very first director of its Swiss fair. Cruse will take up his new duties on July 1, shortly after the 2023 iteration of the annual summer event ends in mid-June. She will be responsible for leading the Basel team responsible for setting up the fair and overseeing its network of galleries, collectors and business partners.
“Maike knows the art world intimately and has a deep relationship with our global community of galleries, collectors and institutional audiences, having headlined art fairs and Gallery Weekend Berlin for many years,” said Noah Horowitz, CEO of Art Basel, in a statement. . Cruse was Art Basel’s communications manager from 2008 to 2011. She is the third director Horowitz has hired to support the organization’s various fairs since he took over. income to take the reins from longtime Art Basel CEO Marc Spiegler in October 2022. The company last year appointed Clément Delépine as sound director newly created Paris+ and called on Angelle Siyang-Le to direct Art Basel Hong Kong. The organization is currently seeking a director to oversee its Art Basel Miami Beach fair.
Cruse is well known in the Berlin art world, having directed Contemporary Berlin Art from 2012 to 2016 and its successor, Art Berlin, from 2016 to 2019, when it farm due to financial difficulties. She has also held positions at the KW Institute of Contemporary Art and the Berlin Biennale.
“I have attended every edition of Art Basel over the past twenty years and have always been in active contact with the fair as director of Gallery Weekend Berlin,” Cruse said in a statement. “I am truly honored to lead this preeminent exhibition in the art and culture city of Basel, to lead its next chapter and to help ensure that Art Basel remains the most important platform for galleries around the world. .”
