Miami Event to Offer More Than $3 Billion Worth of Art

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Art Basel Miami Beach, the largest U.S. art fair, will offer more than $3 billion of mostly postwar and contemporary works when it opens to a select group of collectors today, a 20 percent increase from two years ago.

Held at the Miami Beach Convention Center, the fair’s 12th edition features 258 galleries from 31 countries, with pieces by top market performers including Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso and Jeff Koons. Lavish dinners, boozy parties and at least 20 satellite art fairs, including Scope, Pulse, Untitled, the New Art Dealers Alliance and Art Miami, take place concurrently with the main event, which drew 50,000 visitors in 2012.

Visitors who may attend this year include hedge-fund managers Daniel Loeb, Adam Sender and James Chanos; private-equity executives Henry Kravis and J. Tomilson Hill; and entrepreneurs Mark Zuckerberg and Martha Stewart. Warren Buffett’s NetJets Inc., a sponsor since the fair’s inception, has booked 210 flights in and out of Miami during Art Basel, a 17 percent increase from last year, according to Adam Johnson, senior vice president of global sales, marketing and service.

The fair is a highlight in a year that saw record prices as the wealthy chase investment yields in riskier assets amid record-low interest rates around the globe. Last month, New York auction houses sold about $2 billion of Impressionist, modern, postwar and contemporary art. Christie’s held the largest auction ever, selling $692 million of works in less than three hours, including Francis Bacon’s $142 million triptych that became the most expensive artwork sold at auction.

'New Wealth’

“Postwar and contemporary art has been on fire,” said Suzanne Gyorgy, global head of art advisory and finance at New York-based Citigroup Inc.’s Citi Private Bank. “There are so many more collectors globally now than even five years ago. Top tier, iconic art shows status and success. For new wealth, the fact that it’s recognizable is very important.”

Art prices have surged since the start of 2008, outperforming the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) of big U.S. stocks, according to Artnet Worldwide Corp. Global art sales, which peaked at 48 billion euros ($65 billion) in 2007 and fell to 28 billion euros in 2009, reached 43 billion euros in 2012, according to the latest annual Art Market Report from the European Fine Art Foundation.

Art is “now definitely considered a valid alternative investment,” said Clare McAndrew, author of the report, in an e-mail. “Therefore if financial assets become less attractive in terms of yields and prices, there are some people who would expand their allocations to alternatives, including art.”

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