Art Basel Announced Intercontinental Exhibition to Celebrate 50th Anniversary

In 2020, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, Art Basel will stage an ambitious contemporary art project, with individual facets unfolding at all three fairs — beginning in Hong Kong next March, continuing in Basel in June, and concluding in Miami Beach in December 2020.

The international project will be organized by an intergenerational curatorial team with different cultural backgrounds and perspectives, under the artistic direction of renowned Berlin-based curator Kasper König. Christina Li, curator of Hong Kong’s presentation at the 58th Venice Biennale 2019, will curate the Hong Kong presentation; König will take the lead for the Basel intervention, where the fair was initially founded in 1970; and Hamza Walker, the Executive Director of LAXART in Los Angeles, will direct the Miami Beach edition.

In the coming months, the curators will commission international and local artists to develop interventions around the topic of the fair as a marketplace and as a historical site for exchange, trade and competition, addressing the production, circulation, mediation, and consumption of contemporary art in a global world. Further details on the project, including the artist list will be announced in the fall of 2019.