Urban salon: art fairs

Andy Pratt gave a paper at a the Urban Salon held at LSE on May 17th. This panel  discussed the relationship between art festivals and cities, exploring the way that contemporary art serves a particular function for the urban imaginary. Especially given the proliferation of the art biennial in cities outside of Europe and North America, this raises questions about audience, representation,and the spatial politics of cultural production. Contemporary art and its attendant symbols, references, institutions, actors, and immense wealth of resources, shapes cities in powerful ways. How do scholars from different fields assess the risks of exploitation, or the impact of aspirational politics?

Andy spoke about the emergence and nature of the global elite art fairs (such as Art Basel) based on research that he has been doing on the global art business drawing on case studies of London, Singapore, Hong Kong and Venice. The salon was chaired by Dr. Hyun Bang Shin (Department of Geography and Environment, LSE). It was curated and introduced by Dr. Julie Ren  (Department of Geography, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Department of Geography and Environment, LSE)

The other panelists were:

• Cecile Bourne Farrell (Curator of Douala SUD2017 triennale, Doual’Art, Douala, Cameroon)

• Dr. Andrew Harris (Department of Geography, University College London)

• Dr. Adam Kaasa (School of Architecture, Royal College of Art; Co-founder of Theatrum Mundi)