Jen Roberts and the sister fair to Art Basel
By Harriet Mays Powell
Art Basel Miami returns this year at the tail end of November, bringing with it an audience that could approach the 80,000+ visitor mark that it hit pre-pandemic. Last year, when the international art fair returned to Miami Beach after a 2020 shutdown, some 60,000 visitors attended, hungry to visit its 253 galleries from 36 countries.
About half the audience also visited an adjacent global fair called Design Miami, a huge, tented venue of interior “rooms” with collectable, functional pieces – like furniture, lighting, and ceramics – designed by masters in their mediums from around the world. There will be some 50 exhibitors this year, and while the majority are from Europe, galleries from Mexico, Brazil, China, and South Africa will participate. More than 42,000 attendees are expected, about a quarter from overseas.
The Design Miami fair was first held in 2005, so this year marks the 18th iteration for the six-day event. For the past seven years, Jen Roberts has led Design Miami as its CEO, transforming and expanding the fair to new locations. Formerly a decorative arts dealer in New York City, where she co-directed the annual Salon Art + Design fair held at the Park Avenue Armory, Roberts was lured to Miami by Craig Robins, the developer cum art collector who first brought Art Basel to Miami’s Design District and then created Design Miami.
Design Miami was hatched when Robins asked the then-director of Art Basel if they would consider including design, says Roberts. “But the gallery committee of Art Basel said they didn’t want design. However, that said, they would support a design centric fair it if he went ahead. And so, it was launched in 2005.” Now, says Roberts, “We are the official sister fair of Art Basel. They show fine art, and we show collectible design.” Not only does Design Miami take place each year across the street from the Miami Convention Center, where Art Basel Miami is now held, it also tags onto the flagship fair held each June for Art Basel in Basel, Switzerland, where this “most prestigious of the art fairs” started.
On its own, the Design Miami fair continues to grow. Last year Roberts launched its first production in Shanghai, which she says is “an exciting and fabulous new market for us,” and where it will return again in March 2023. The new venue she is most excited about is Paris, currently slated for the fall of 2023. “Paris will become an enormous success and could possibly end up being the fair to rival Miami,” says Roberts. “Next year we will have four shows in four different countries, on three continents!”
We spoke with Roberts in her minimalist yet welcoming apartment in Miami Beach to discuss her vision for Design Miami. “The biggest change I’ve made to the fairs is the introduction of a curatorial director who brings ‘thought leadership’ into the fray,” she says. Many people “think of art fairs as just real estate deals, where we’re just selling space and people show up with their wares. But it is actually very important that we curate and set the stage for the most innovative thinkers in the field.”
Roberts’ current curatorial director is Maria Christina Didero, an Italian design consultant, curator, and author, whose job includes choosing a theme. Each year there is a theme for each show that is “important for everyone to focus on,” says Roberts. For example, in the past there was a focus on the elements – in Basel, the theme was earth, in Miami, the theme was water. For the Basel fair last June, the theme was: “The Golden Age – Rooted in the Past.” For Miami’s upcoming fair it’s: “The Golden Age – Looking to the Future.”
Roberts notes that all the fairs “show the characteristics of their locations.” Art Basel in Switzerland “as you might imagine, is our serious, more staid, Northern European-feeling show, as it is the oldest and most prestigious fair.” Unlike Basel, Switzerland, “Miami is kind of wild [and] contemporary, where anything goes.”
So, where does Miami stand in the pantheon of the world’s great art centers? “It’s a cultural tropical mecca,” says Roberts, “always pushing the boundaries.” And where does she draw the line between the age-old question of what defines “art” versus what defines “design?” While that distinction is muddled by the fact that an artist can be a designer and a designer can be an artist, her rule of thumb is “to qualify as design, it must have some kind of functional purpose.”
Design Miami has another platform for smaller exhibitors called “Art Curio” which is based on the concept of a “cabinet of curiosities.” This platform, Roberts says, “allows a wider group of people to show in smaller spaces at more affordable prices.” Citing two examples of Curio exhibitors, this year there will be objects created by a Russian tin guild that uses a technique normally reserved for building facades, and a group of “incredible Romanian goldsmiths in which each vessel is created by hand and is super beautiful.”
Roberts also notes the renewed interested in craftsmanship, in everything from Shaker-style furniture to ceramics and glass. “There has always been this tug of war between design and craft. For example, you might be designing things and be a craftsman, and doing things that are handmade. [Then] there are people I consider great craftsmen who are making what we consider great design.” She cites American woodworker Wendell Castle, whose “pieces are highly desirable and at the top of the market, but they were made by hand.” She says his chest of drawers exhibited last year was one of the most important pieces in the show.
Looking to the future, Roberts is “very curious” about what’s happening in Colombia and keeping her eye on “the many interesting creatives from Brazil.” In the meantime, with a total of 35 galleries and 14 Curios exhibiting at the upcoming fair, Roberts says the event is bursting at the seams: “We have the demand, but we had to turn down people because we just don’t have the space….Yet!”
