Will the India Art Fair change in terms of its focus and business potential after Swiss company MCH acquired a controlling stake? Gargi Gupta talks to stakeholders
It was a big announcement but the Indian art world has mixed feelings about how Swiss exhibition organisers MCH's acquisition of a 60.3 per cent controlling stake in India Art Fair (IAF) will pan out in the days to come.
"Much will depend on the programming, whether they retain the 'regional' flair of the art fair," says Sunaina Anand of Delhi's Gallery Art Alive, which has been part of every edition of the fair held thus far.
"What I'd like to see is more international buyers come in as a result of this connection," adds Renu Modi of Gallery Espace in the capital.
A century-old company, MCH is among the world's biggest exhibition organisers and runs Art Basel, the world's biggest art fair in the Swiss city with more recent franchises in Miami and Hong Kong as well. The IAF acquisition is the first under a new vertical the company set up last year for 'regional fairs'. Clearly then, despite the fact that Western art dominates the fine art market – accounting for 57 per cent of the auctioneers' turnover for 2015 according to Artprice's The Art Market in 2015 report – 'regional' art has become sufficiently large to be exciting. No wonder, Marco Fazzone, managing director of the new venture, cites "India's fast growing economies" as one of the reasons that made IAF an attractive investment.
As for IAF, since it started in 2008, founder Neha Kirpal has grown it into the world's fifth largest art fair with 80,000 visitors last year. It's the biggest fair in south Asia, its success spawning a series of fairs, biennales and the sort in the entire region. It's also had healthy participation from museums known to collect Asian art – MoMA, Guggenheim, The Art Institute of Chicago, V&A and Palais de Tokyo – besides collectors from within and without, including China.
Even so, Delhi galleries hope MCH's acquisition of IAF will mean big things for the fair, in terms of more international exposure and buyers, which would help the Indian art market, especially contemporary art, climb out of the slump it plunged into post the global economic downturn of 2008.
IAF, until now, has been a more or less desi show; a good four-fifths of its programme always comprised local galleries. Last year, under the curatorial direction of international director Zain Masud, the local focus expanded to include South Asia – Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Kirpal is emphatic that the new ownership will not have any impact on IAF's programming. "IAF's focus is on Indian art, on growing the appreciation of and buyer interest in it locally and among international buyers," she says. The next fair is only a few months away. "The new thinking in programming will be reflected only from the 2018 fair onwards," says Kirpal. Zain Masud, who was international director of IAF, left soon after the last edition. In her place, IAF may bring in a panel of artistic advisers, but Kirpal isn't decided on that yet.
"In these days of interactive websites, online galleries, IAF's website could do with an overhaul," says Rudranil Ghosh, a curator.
That would be a change everyone would welcome.
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