Spiegler. (Courtesy PMC)

Art Basel, which has three annual contemporary fairs to its name, in Basel, Switzerland; Miami Beach, Fla.; and Hong Kong, announced today that is planning to make some changes to the organization of its leadership, with Marc Spiegler, who currently co-directs the Basel and Miami Beach editions with Annette Schönholzer, being promoted to director of the complete fair trinity.

Mr. Spiegler, a former journalist who joined Art Basel as a director in 2007, will chair a four-member executive committee that will be made up of himself, Ms. Schönholzer in the new role of director of new initiatives, Magnus Renfrew in the position of director Asia, and a director of resources and finance who will be named later. Earlier this month, those three directors were awarded the number 16 spot on Art Review's annual Power 100 list.

Mr. Renfrew previously directed the Art HK fair, which Art Basel's parent company, MCH Swiss Exhibition (Basel) Ltd., purchased a 60 percent stake in back in May 2011.

The changes will not go into effect until the director of resources and finances—who will be charged with "optimizing Art Basel’s structures to support a growing and dynamic team," according to a statement from the company—is named.

Simon Denny. (Courtesy Baloise)

It's raining money over there at Art Basel! Someone just snapped up a Richter that was reportedly priced above $20 million at Pace's booth. On the more modest end of the spectrum, young artists Simon Denny and Karsten Födinger are set to receive checks for 30,000 Swiss francs ($31,300) as the winner's of the fair's annual Baloise Art Prize, which goes to the best contributions to its Art Statements section.

In addition, the Baloise Group—its a Basel-based insurance and pension company—will acquire a number of works by Messrs. Denny and Födinger for the Hamburger Kunsthalle, in Hamburg, Germany, and the MUMOK, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, in Vienna. So those 30,000 Swiss francs are really just a bonus.

Karsten Fodinger. (Courtesy Baloise)

The prize's jury has picked some solid winners over the years, including Alejandro Cesarco (2011), Simon Fujiwara (2010), Nina Canell (2009), Tris Vonna-Michell (2008), Jim Drain (2005) and Aleksander Mir (2004).

This year's jury—comprised of Brigitte Kölle, Karola Kraus, Thomas Koerfer, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Martin Schwander—released statements explaining the works, which we present in their complete form in the space below, accompanied by photographs:

'Simon Denny investigates the changing role of the media and television in an age of rapid technological progress. In his large-scale installation Channel Document, he addresses the restructuring of the media and its social consequences. At the core of his work is the threatened existence of the television channel TVNZ 7, whose objective is to provide non-commercial, digitally broadcast programmes on current affairs. State funding of the channel has been cut off and despite numerous public petitions, the end seems inevitable. The artist has commissioned a documentary on the redesign of New Zealand's passport that marks the last step in the time-line of the channel. The video, which follows the structure and style characteristic of TVNZ 7, is screened on Samsung's latest flatscreen monitor.'

"Channel Document," Mr. Denny's installation. (Courtesy Baloise)

"Defensive Reinforcement," Mr. Fodinger's installation. (Courtesy Baloise)

'Karsten Födinger is a sculptor whose site-specific works make no attempt to conceal the character of the buildings and their imperfections. Often constructed out of simple building materials, his works are visual embodiments of physical forces. A cross between architecture and sculpture, they are informed with the tension between stasis and movement, diagonal and horizontal, mass and void. The piece on view at Art Statements makes reference to a historic event in Basel: the cataclysmic earthquake of 1356. Födinger„s sculptural intervention of horizontal and vertical wooden beams both stabilizes and obstructs the interior of the art fair stand, creating a paradoxical spatial configuration.'

(Courtesy myartguides.com)

The Schaulager Museum in Münchenstein, Switzerland has opened a Herzog & de Meuron-designed outpost just next to the 43rd edition of the Art Basel art fair, The New York Times reports.

Here are a few more details from The Times:

Visitors can listen to the history of the Schaulager on earphones; see short films about the problems and preservation of contemporary works by artists like Robert Gober; or peruse what Ms. Oeri calls “shop windows,” glass-fronted displays filled with many of the original materials that went into making some of the seminal pieces in the foundation’s collection. There are props used in Cindy Sherman’s photographs; a model of a rat by the German artist Katharina Fritsch; impeccably crafted everyday objects that the Swiss duo Fischli Weiss made for their films or photographs or sculptures; and a computer keyboard that the artist Paul Chan used to program his light installations.

The pop-up serves as something of a preview of the actual museum, which is closed for renovations this summer.

(Courtesy Lucy Reynell/Flickr)

With the 43rd edition of Art Basel set to open this week, art-market reporter Georgina Adam has written a great piece for the Financial Times about the workings of the fair's selection committee, the group of dealers that decides the event's list of exhibitors each year. Since galleries stand to net a huge portion of their annual revenue at Basel, the selection process is an understandably tense affair.

Claes Nordenhake of Galerie Nordenhake, which has outposts in Stockholm and Berlin, and London dealer David Juda offer some insights into the work that is required of selection-committee members:

“Being a selector is a serious job, people don’t believe the amount of work it entails,” says Nordenhake. “You have to devote up to 21 full days for meetings, there are planning sessions in the summer. And then, when you’re totally hung over, you have to be up at 8am for the morning visit every day of the fair.” Juda says you “burn out” after about six to eight years.

Ms. Adam also has a bit of an update on the rejection last year of Berlin gallery Eigen+Art, which is returning to the fair this year. Click over for that.

In related news, last week Art Basel released the names of the dealers on the selection committee for its 2013 Hong Kong edition. Make sure to say hello to them when you run into them in Basel!

Hong Kong. (Courtesy Christopher Lance/Flickr)

The Art Basel team is wasting no time in revealing what it has in the works for the Art HK fair, which it recently announced will operate under the Basel name in its next edition, running May 23–26, 2013. (Art Basel's parent company bought a 60 percent share in Art HK's parent company last year.)

Today it released the selection committee for the fair, which will include about 250 galleries, roughly the same number as Art HK, which presented 266 in its latest edition. The list of selection committee members includes David Maupin, of Lehmann Maupin, which plans to open a gallery in Hong Kong. The complete list is as follows:

-- Emi Eu, Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore
-- Shireen Gandhy, Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai, India
-- Suzie Kim, Kukje Gallery, Seoul, Korea
-- Maho Kubota, SCAI THE BATHHOUSE, Tokyo, Japan
-- David Maupin, Lehmann Maupin, New York, United States
-- Urs Meile, Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing, China & Lucerne, Switzerland
-- Massimo De Carlo, Massimo De Carlo, Milan, Italy
-- Zhang Wei, Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou & Beijing, China

The Basel group has brought on experts for emerging galleries—Atsuko Ninagawa of Tokyo's Take Ninagawa and Finola Jones of Dublin's mother's tankstation—and for modern art, Mathias Rastorfer of Zurich's Galerie Gmurzynska.

Like the Art Basels in Miami Beach and Basel, Switzerland, the fair will boast a number of specially curated sections beyond the main gallery section: Insights, Discoveries and Encounters. Details from Art Basel's news release are below:

The Galleries sector will present 180 leading modern and contemporary art galleries from Asia and across the world, selected on the merits of their gallery programs. The sector will present exhibitions from the 20th and 21st centuries, displaying paintings, drawings, sculpture, installation, prints, photography, film, video, and digital artworks.

Insights will present curatorial projects developed by galleries specifically for the show. The sector will exclusively feature galleries from Asia and the Asia-Pacific region and will present works by artists of those regions, including solo shows, exceptional art- historical material and strong thematic group exhibitions.

Discoveries will provide a dedicated platform for emerging contemporary artists from across the world. Galleries will primarily show completely new work and special commissions for the show, featuring one or two young artists from their gallery program.

Encounters will be dedicated to presenting large-scale sculpture and installation works by leading artists from around the world. The sector will provide visitors with the opportunity to see works of an institutional scale, presented in prominent locations within the Galleries sectors throughout the two exhibition halls.

(Photo courtesy Andrew Russeth; quarter courtesy Dan Rosen)

David Zwirner gallery is bringing a lot of fine art to Art Basel next week. So much, in fact, that it has printed an entire separate catalogue to advertise it.

At roughly the size of half of quarter, and a quarter of the size of the complete Art Basel catalogue, the Zwirner catalogue is obviously not dedicated only to the Basel booth (though that will feature a hefty array of work by Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, John McCracken, Carol Bove, Stan Douglas, Suzan Frecon, Neo Rauch and Al Taylor). It also serves as sort of a yearbook of past exhibitions at the gallery.

Ben Thornborough, a spokesman for the gallery, said it's the biggest the gallery's ever done. They started putting these out for Basel in 2009 and, to his knowledge, Zwirner was the first gallery to ever distribute such a book.

At nearly 100 pages, this edition overflows with installation shot double trucks as well as information like provenance, past exhibitions and associated literature.

“It definitely shares a similar aesthetic with that of your standard auction catalogue,” Mr. Thornborough said. “But we would always provide that information to potential buyers on a fact sheet anyway.”

Looks way better than an auction catalogue, at any rate. Make sure you stop by the booth to snag one of these!

Art HK. (Courtesy Paddy/Flickr)

Annette Schönholzer and Marc Spiegler, the co-directors of the annual Art Basel fairs, announced today that they are readying a Hong Kong edition for May, 2013, which will replace the city-state's popular and fast-rising Art Hong Kong fair. (Last year, the Switzerland–based MCH Group, which owns the Art Basel fairs, grabbed a 60 percent stake in Asian Art Fairs Ltd., the parent company of Art HK.)

Magnus Renfrew, the director of Art HK, has been appointed as "Art Basel's Director Asia," according to a statement released by Art Basel, meaning that he will run the Hong Kong fair, which will be on view May 23 to May 26 in 2013. Art Basel says the fair, which takes place at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, will feature about 250 international galleries.

Many of the world's top-flight dealers may soon find themselves on the road for months at a time, with major fairs in Brussels, Cologne and Mexico City during April, Frieze New York taking place in early May, Art Basel's Hong Kong entry situated at the end of May and the premier Basel fair taking place in its namesake city in mid June. And Armory Week, of course, continues to offer a plethora of fairs in New York in early March.

Asked by The Wall Street Journal about the May timing of the fair, which is situated around Hong Kong's spring auctions, Mr. Spiegler noted that the convention center is tightly booked throughout the year with various events but he allowed, "This is an issue we’ve been working on."