WORLD’S FIRST ONLINE ART FAIR LAUNCHES SATURDAY, JANUARY 22 AT WWW.VIPARTFAIR.COM
VIP ART FAIR SHOWCASES MORE THAN 2,000 ARTISTS AND 7,500 ARTWORKS, RANGING IN PRICE FROM LESS THAN $5,000 USD TO MORE THAN $1 MILLION USD, FROM 138 GALLERIES FROM 30 COUNTRIES
NEW YORK, NY, January 20, 2011—VIP Art Fair launches its inaugural edition on Saturday featuring 138 leading contemporary art galleries from 30 countries, with more than 2,000 artists and 7,500 works of art in inventory. Works on view at the Fair range from more than 50 pieces priced above $1 million USD to more than 100 artworks valued at less than $5,000 USD.
To date, visitors from 126 countries around the globe have signed up to participate including Russia, China, Ghana, Afghanistan, Uruguay, New Zealand, and Lebanon.
The Fair runs live, exclusively online at www.vipartfair.com for one-week only, from January 22 to January 30, 2011.
Co-founded by New York-based dealers James and Jane Cohan and Internet entrepreneurs Jonas and Alessandra Almgren, VIP Art Fair re-configures the traditional art fair model for the Internet. Similar to traditional art fairs, VIP Art Fair is a platform for the leading contemporary art galleries to offer works by critically acclaimed artists to their existing clients, as well as to new audiences worldwide. All acquisitions are arranged directly between the dealer and the collector.
Browsing the Fair is free. All visitors can experience the thrill of discovery as they travel between galleries from diverse locations such as Sydney, Shanghai, Cape Town, Athens, London, Reykjavik, New York and Sao Paulo. Visitors can click from work to work in each gallery’s virtual booth to access artworks by such established artists as Richard Prince, Francis Bacon, Urs Fischer, Sarah Lucas, Lucien Freud, Damien Hirst, Subodh Gupta, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Beatriz Milhazes, and by the most exciting emerging artists working today.
VIP Art Fair is uniquely versatile in its presentation of more than 90 monumental scale installations, 75 video/multi-media works, 360 photographs, 500 paintings, 400 sculptures and 100 drawings and works in other media. Access to in-depth information, presented in a variety of languages, combined with enriched viewing provides a substantive and rewarding experience for art collectors and enthusiasts alike. Visitors can search for an artist by name and follow a trail of the artist’s work through the Fair. They can also create tours of their favorite works that can easily be shared via email and social media.
As with the traditional fairs, VIP Art Fair is providing VIP Passes to more than fifty international museums for distribution to their curators and high-level patrons. Notable participating institutions include the Whitney Museum of American Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Whitechapel Gallery, Art Institute of Chicago, Serpentine Gallery, Kröller-Müller Museum, Mori Art Museum, Tate (American Patrons Group) and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
DATES, HOURS AND LOCATION VIP
Art Fair is only available online at http://www.vipartfair.com. The Fair opens on Saturday, January 22, 2011 at 8:00 a.m. EST and concludes on Sunday, January 30, 2011, at 7:59 a.m. EST.
FREE ACCESS AND VIP TICKET BENEFITS
VIP Art Fair is free to browse, though registration is required. On the vernissage days, January 22 and 23, the cost of a VIP ticket is 100 USD and 20 USD thereafter. A VIP ticket allows for unlimited access to the following special features for the duration of the Fair:
integrated chat and messaging system for live interaction with galleries;
eligibility to view galleries' private rooms;
price ranges for each artwork, and ability to search within certain price ranges; and
access to the VIP Lounge, which features tours of the Fair created by well-known collectors, curators, critics, and fellow visitors; regular updates on new works added by galleries and access to behind-the-scenes coverage of the Fair; Art21-produced video tours of artists' studios and a series of video tours of notable private collections, including Takeo Obayashi (Japan), Thomas Shao (China), Yang Bin (China), Howard and Cindy Rachofsky (Dallas), and Joel and Sherry Mallin (New York).
PARTNERS
Art insurance specialist AXA Art Insurance Corporation is Lead Partner of VIP Art Fair.
The Fair’s relationship with AXA Art allows for access to expertise on the benefits of art insurance– a necessary collection management tool that helps to protect collectors’ investments in acquiring art and cushion the impact of loss or damage to their treasured items should the unexpected occur. During the Fair, AXA Art’s in-house experts will be available to address questions submitted by the VIP Art Fair’s online collectors.
Van Cleef & Arpels, the French jewelry Maison renowned for supreme design and exceptional stones for over a century, is Associate Sponsor of VIP Art Fair. Van Cleef & Arpels will be presenting all tours offered by museum curators and prominent collectors in the Tours section of the VIP Lounge.
The Fair’s Creative Programming Partner is Art21, the award-winning producer of films, educational resources and public programs about contemporary art. For the inaugural edition of VIP Art Fair, Art21 is showing a selection of their films, including nine world premiere exclusives, featuring 18 artists in their studios or installing work in sites worldwide. These videos featuring Bruce Nauman, Paul McCarthy, Cai Guo Qiang, and Cindy Sherman, among others will be on view in the Fair’s VIP Lounge.
VIP Art Fair’s Media Partner The Art Newspaper is reporting on the Fair with video coverage of the opening party in NYC, behind-the-scenes coverage of the Fair, and the latest art market news, all available in the VIP Lounge.
VIP ART FAIR The inaugural edition of VIP Art Fair—an acronym for “Viewing in Private”—is the first-ever to take place exclusively online, for one week, and features 138 of the world’s leading contemporary art galleries from 30 countries. With a power-packed list of international dealers, art collectors and enthusiasts will be able to browse works by renowned artists and the most exciting emerging artists working today, all from the comfort of their own home. The vibrant presentation of artwork, enlivened with streaming video and dynamic zoom, along with the ability to connect
WWW.VIPARTFAIR.COM