Several months before the big art fair that takes place in Miami Beach each December, Art Basel announced a new director: Bridget Finn. The veteran dealer and gallerist has been named director of Art Basel Miami Beach, a role she will assume in September.
Finn “will lead Miami Beach’s publishing department because she continues to innovate, supervises the organizing team of the fair, cultivates and develops Art Basel network of galleries, collectors and artists of the Americas, and working in concert with Miami and South Florida’s world-class museums, institutions and cultural partners,” according to a statement from the fair. It will focus on strengthening Art Basel’s position as “Americas’ premier modern and contemporary art fair.”
Art Basel, which is owned by the Swiss company MCH Group, has faced challenges in recent years, along with most major fairs, as competition remains intense – a situation which has been further exacerbated by the pandemic, as most had to skip at least one annual edition. and in some cases more than one. Consolidation also continues, such as with the recent announcement that Frieze Art Fair has picked up both The Armory Show and Expo Chicago in a bid to expand its footprint in the United States.
Art Basel has also seen its own change in direction over the past year. Longtime Basel executive Noah Horowitz left in 2021 for a brief stint at Sotheby’s, after which he returned to the organization. Horowitz was appointed CEO of Art Basel at the end of October 2022, succeeding Marc Spiegler, who was its global director. Horowitz began his position in November 2022. Spiegler supported Horowitz through the end of the year, including through the Miami Beach show, after which he continued with Art Basel in an advisory capacity for the next six months.
Finn will be based At New York. She will report to Vincenzo de Bellis, director of fairs and exhibition platforms, and will work closely with Maureen Bruckmayr, Head of Business and Management, Americas.
Before joining Detroit-based gallery Reyes | Finn as Managing Director in 2017, she led the Contemporary Art Program at Mitchell-Innes & Nash for four years, and held several positions at the Anton Kern Gallery in New York. In 2008, as part of a collective of gallerists, she created the collaborative curatorial project space Cleopatra’s in New York, which later expanded to Berlin, working in collaboration with hundreds of artists and cultural actors producers for a decade.
Previously, Finn also served as Director of Strategic Planning and Projects at Independent Curators International (ICI) from 2010 to 2013.
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