MCH Group, owners of Masterpiece, London’s premier art and antiques fair, has cancelled the 2023 event. The fair was scheduled to take place from 28 June to 5 July.
The Swiss events company, which also owns Art Basel, has revealed, “Escalating costs and a decline in the number of international exhibitors mean that the event is not commercially viable.”
The fair was started as a continuation of the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair, which was pushed out by the hotel in 2010. MCH Group bought the already established fair in 2017, purchasing a 67.5% stake, at a time when the fair considered expanding the brand to new locations. MCH Group has wholly owned the fair since August 2022.
Founded in 2010, Masterpiece was one of the world’s leading multi-disciplinary art fairs, bringing together over 140 of the most distinguished art dealerships and galleries worldwide. Showcasing the finest works of art, design, furniture, jewellery and more, from antiquity to the present day, the fair was held on the beautiful grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London, from late June to early July.
Attracting established international collectors and the culturally curious, Masterpiece welcomed over 40,000 visitors over eight days. The fair offered an unparalleled opportunity to discover exceptional works for sale from exhibitors spanning every significant discipline. Scrupulous vetting and thoughtful juxtaposition allowed one to encounter beautiful works of art, have one’s eyes opened to the unfamiliar, and buy with confidence.
In addition to hundreds of exhibitors’ presentations, visitors could also explore the curated sections, including the Sculpture Series, showcasing significant modern and contemporary sculptural works, and Masterpiece Presents, a platform for innovative, immersive works of art. Past installations have included new works by Phyllida Barlow, Marina Abramović & Iván Navarro. Visitors could also attend the fair’s celebrated talks programme with leading curators, artists and exhibitors, providing insights into artists’ and creators’ practices, their times, techniques and styles.”
Louvre To Limit Daily Visitors to 30,000
The Louvre Museum has decided to limit visitors to 30,000 a day in order to create a more pleasant visitor experience. Management revealed this week that entry would be cut by a third, a policy already introduced over the last few months. During its busiest times before the coronavirus pandemic, the Museum would attract as many as 45,000 people daily.
The Museum’s recently appointed director, Laurence des Cars, told the NY Times that the Louvre, which attracted some 10 million tourists in 2019, is still the world’s number 1 tourist attraction. He added, “the Museum has become, perhaps, not as serene as a walk along the nearby Seine.” “I would like a visit to the Louvre to be a moment of pleasure, especially for people who are discovering the museum for the first time, which means 60% of our visitors,” des Cars said.
Crowd management has been a problem for many years. Taking into account tour groups clogging many galleries, including the room displaying the Mona Lisa, the Museum has had to find solutions.
The Museum is committed to finding state-of-the-art ways to engage a new generation of visitors through VR and AR.
In 2022, attendance at the Museum had bounced back to 7.8 million people, 170% more than in pandemic-battered 2021 but 19% less than in 2019 before the coronavirus hit.
Mary Cassatt Bio-Pic To Premiere On International Women’s Day
The release of a new film MARY CASSATT: PAINTING THE MODERN WOMAN, in cinemas nationwide will premiere on International Women’s Day, Wednesday, 8 March 2023.
Mary Cassatt made a career painting the lives of the women around her. Her radical images showed them as intellectual, curious and engaging. This was a significant shift in the way women appeared in art.
Directed by Ali Ray (Frida Kahlo) and featuring the world’s most eminent Cassatt curators and scholars (all women), this new feature film MARY CASSATT: PAINTING THE MODERN WOMAN reveals how this classically trained American artist came to join a group of Parisian radicals – the Impressionists – a movement that transformed the history of art.
Mary Cassatt, born in Pennsylvania in 1844, lived much of her adult life in France, to the extent that she became not an American but a French artist. In 1868, her painting A Mandolin Player became her first work to be accepted by the Paris Salon, the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Edgar Degas saw Cassatt’s work at the Salon, and in 1877, he asked her to exhibit with a new group called the Impressionists.
However, Cassatt’s connection to the Impressionists is only a tiny part of her story. Presenting her stunning prints, pastels, and paintings, the film introduces us to this surprising, compelling, yet often-overlooked artist whose career was as full of contradictions as the women she painted.
Top Photo: Masterpiece © Artlyst