Art Basel cancels its in-person Miami Beach fair

Art Basel has canceled its in-person Miami Beach edition for 2020. The September 2 announcement cited the pandemic’s effects on large events and international travel, while outlining plans for online viewing rooms in December for galleries accepted to the fair.

The decision removes a major gathering from Miami’s year-end art calendar. The fair normally depends on people traveling between cities and countries, then meeting within a concentrated exhibition setting. Those conditions cannot simply be reproduced by changing a date on the calendar.

The digital program will provide another way to encounter participating galleries, but it is a different format rather than the same event transferred intact. Looking at work online changes scale, movement and the possibility of unplanned conversation. For Miami’s cultural community, the announcement brings clarity about the convention-center fair while leaving the broader task of sustaining artistic activity through a disrupted year.