The Latin American Art and Collectors in Art Basel Miami Beach and other fairs

The opening report in The Art Newspaper daily edition about Art Basel Miami Beach on Thursday December 2nd featured a statement by Ricard Akagawa-one of Brazil's top art collectors-on the increasing number of emerging art collectors from his country interested in international contemporary art. The Financial Times also reported Friday December 3rd about the opening of the show as a "good start (...) with an increased turnout of Latin American collectors, and particularly Brazilians. The event (...) has become ever more focused on the two Americas: "It's the gateway to South America," said Damiana Leoni of the Italian gallery Magazzino. (The Art Market: Confidence in Miami, Georgina Adam, FT.com). The presence of Brazilian galleries was the largest from Latin America that participated with a booth at the show. More so, this years' fair feature presentation documented the artistic collaboration between Vik Muñiz and Rio de Janeiro's garbage pickers titled "Waste Land," screened during the first week of December at the Colony Theatre on Lincoln Road. The escalating number of collectors from Latin America has been a repeated confirmation overheard at booths and read in the printed media throughout the show. Early sales were attributed to the "up & coming" new collectors from Colombia and Brazil who bought pieces such as Juan Araujo, CGAC, 2008 and Adriana Varejao's Monocromo Cru #3, 2010, exhibited at Lehman Maupin (priced at US$ 100,000) as well as her other piece A Grande Curva, 2010. In addition to purchases of pieces from Latin American artists, collectors from the South American hemisphere have incorporated key pieces to reinforce their international collections not only at Art Basel Miami but also from the satellite fairs such as Pulse, Scope and NADA Art Fair. The upcoming line-up of art fairs for 2011 such as ARCO, Madrid (February) and The Armory Show, New York (March) have already planned a special attendance of galleries participating from Latin America in an effort to lure the growing number of collectors from that region. ARCO's SOLO Projects (special project spaces) curated by Luisa Duarte (Brazil), Daniela Perez ( Museo Tamayo, Mexico) and Julieta Gonzalez (TATE , London) will focus on Latin America. Latin America is the special invited country in this edition of Armory Show, which also commissioned Mexican artist Gabriel Kuri to create their visual identity for 2011. Among the museum representatives who visited Art Basel Miami Beach last December was Anne Strauss, an associate curator in the department of 19th century, Modern, and Contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with a very specific goal: catching up on Latin American contemporary art, an area in which she said the Met was "way behind. (...) The Met was interested generally in becoming less Euro-centric and more global," reported Kate Taylor for the New York Times on December 2nd, 2010. Strauss had recently traveled to Brazil for the 29th edition of the Sao Paolo Biennial and also visited Inhotim, the collection of Bernardo Paz. Yet, she continued to express that "Art Basel Miami Beach was 'indispensable' as a way of further educating herself about the current trends in Latin American art, and would save her multiple other trips abroad."