This year LISTE celebrates its twentieth anniversary of existence. The fair was inaugurated in 1996 in the city of Basel, Switzerland, under the initiative of a generation of young galleries looking for a platform to market themselves in the context of the Art Basel fair. The first edition of the event included the participation of 36 galleries from 12 different countries. Both emerging artists and the young galleries that represented them eventually became well established and the standard-bearers of contemporary art worldwide, such as—then unknown—artist Elizabeth Peyton and the Galerie Neugerriemschneider in Berlin; Galería Kurimanzutto in Mexico; Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in France; and Team Gallery in New York, among others. This year, the jury selected 79 galleries from 31 different countries, out of the 300 applications received. The anniversary will be celebrated with a cocktail reception on June 15, just hours before opening to the public, and with a party held that very night also to mark the occasion.