The art world stops for no one. With this year’s Frieze London now in the rearview mirror, the art fair calendar rolls on from continent to continent, bringing the world’s most exciting works into view for crowds and curious speculators everywhere. Allow yourself to follow the rhythm of the circuit over the next year, and tour the cities playing host to these fairs. After all, when the crowds subside and the collectors have made their moves, you will still be surrounded by beauty and elegance – you’ll just need to know where to find it. That’s where this handy guide comes in.
La Biennale di Venezia, Venice,
Begin at the end, with the imminent closure of the 60th Venice Biennale on November 24. On your next visit, as you stroll lazily between exhibitions in the fair’s famous Giardini, take a moment to appreciate one of Venice’s more overlooked masters – the architect Carlo Scarpa and his thrillingly modernist Sculpture Garden.
Venice may not be the first place that comes to mind when you think of sharp-angled structures and abstract constructions, but Scarpa’s work breathes life back into the city, be that at the Olivetti showroom just off St Mark’s Square, or the waterside Fondazione Querini Stampalia, a Venetian family collection worth stopping by to visit.
Once you’ve had your fill of modernity, you can re-indulge in the baroque at the city’s new Aman hotel, facing out towards the Grand Canal. Continuing with a now-trademark level of luxury, the Aman group has renovated a 16th century palace, with rooms as breathtakingly opulent as anything you’d see elsewhere in the city.
Until November 24
Zona Maco, Mexico City
At the heart of the Americas – culturally and geographically – Zona Maco, hosted every February in Mexico City’s Centro Citibanamex, draws talents from across the continent and beyond – north to south, and east to west. You feel the character of the city expressed everywhere through Zona Maco, in its bold and lurid installations, charged with emotion and often appreciated by the local art crowds with similar fervour.
That spirit carries out into the city proper, into Condesa and Roma Norte with its surrealist graffiti, pastel-painted townhouses and ruffles of ivy. Mexico City is somehow always in bloom. Enter one such townhouse and you’ll find La Valise, one of the country’s most vaunted hotels, and an inaugural recipient of the newly launched Michelin Key.
Once you’ve picked a suite (go for the one with the bed that rolls out to the balcony), take a trip south from Roma Norte, to the deep-blue Frida Kahlo Museum, once the artist’s home, and now a museum and gallery that unabashedly celebrates the city’s most brilliant daughter. You will see that emotion runs through everything in CDMX, and always has.
February 5–9
India Art Fair, New Delhi
About to enter its 16th year, the India Art Fair has long since established itself as one of the most exciting and forward-thinking art fairs in Asia, and each year has brought a reliable burst of light and colour to ornate, enigmatic New Delhi.
A city that prides itself in its standards of opulence, New Delhi really is best enjoyed at a once-in-a-lifetime hotel such as The Leela Palace – a shimmering beacon of a building, nestled in the diplomatic district, which apes the unmistakable architectural style of Edwin Lutyens. As gargantuan and imposing as it may seem from the outside, its environs and interiors are every bit as dazzling.
Should you be looking to bring some part of India back home with you – beyond, of course, a piece from the art fair – you can do no better than visiting Aap Ki Pasand, the country’s oldest tea blenders.
From the moment you step inside, your senses are bombarded with the jungly, spicy notes of Sancha, their trademark blend. Buy a bag for a friend, and three for yourself.
February 6–9
Frieze Los Angeles, US
There can be no mistaking it, Frieze Los Angeles, the urbane younger sibling to the eponymous London fair, is a Hollywood affair, every bit as achingly glamorous and exclusive as you might dream. It’s at Santa Monica Airport, for one – arrive by jet, limousine, helicopter if you’re so inclined; this is LA, but LA County, to be exact.
All the more reason to stay out from the fair and in the main city centre, where the Hollywood experience awaits you at The Prospect, a 1930s Regency mansion in pretty Whitley Heights. This is the area that gave birth to stardom as we know it, the secluded corner of the city where Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino resided, and to stay at The Prospect is to step right back in time with them.
Back in Technicolor, you can always take the pulse of Los Angeles in Koreatown each night. The streets come alive with diners and revellers moving between street food spots, outdoor shows and the contagious chaos that’s carried through the air.
Enjoy LA as it was, LA as it is, and snatch a chance to look around Frieze one more time before you fly back from Santa Monica.
February 20–23
Art Paris, France
With so many cities challenging its throne these days, it can be easy to forget why Paris has, for well more than a century, been synonymous with the highest heights of aesthetic excellence. One visit to Art Paris at the Grand Palais des Champs-Elysees should quickly and permanently eliminate any doubt from your mind – beauty still lives here.
Parisian splendour is a true thing to behold, and you will find it on display at the Saint James to a dizzying degree – with a fountain in the courtyard, manicured gardens, twinkling chandeliers and marble speckled like stracciatella, you will believe for a moment that this city cannot get any better.
Lucky for you, it can. After a day in the lap of luxury, save the fine dining option for another day, and go to the platonic ideal of a French bistro: Chez Denise – La Tour Montlhéry, which is tucked away in the 2nd arrondissement, for a meal that will cement your new certainties about the brilliance of France’s capital city.
April 3–6
Art Dubai, UAE
For years, Madinat Jumeirah has been a bustling site of trading, curating, exhibiting and championing the craft of various trades, making for a spot in the city that is at once contemporary and fashioned after the traditional.
Each year, at Art Dubai, tradition steps firmly to the side for a few days, as some of the brightest young talents from across the Middle East, Africa and beyond converge in the emirate to display the great new works of their generation, including artists who work in digital formats.
Even though the fair takes place in a hotel, you might want a change of scene. So keep one foot in the future and book yourself into The Lana: a hotel composite of extraordinary architecture and a front-row view of Burj Khalifa.
Where other five-star hotels in the city might wear their wealth outwardly, The Lana revels in restraint. That said, the hotel’s Dior Spa – stocked with lotions, potions and cutting-edge therapeutic treatments – will leave you feeling thoroughly pampered.
April 18–20
Art Basel, Switzerland
The one and only Art Basel, behemoth of the modern circuit, may have outposts as far flung as Miami Beach, Paris and Hong Kong, but the original takes some beating. In its 55th year, Art Basel may be one of the older art fairs, but the city still carries the crackle of vitality that made it such a home for contemporary art in the first place.
Older clientele may want to stay and eat in one of the grander dames of the city’s hotel and restaurant circuit, marked as it is by unparalleled Swiss hospitality. But for a feel for Basel, take a suite at Volkshaus Basel, a design-forward hotel not far from the banks of the Rhine, where every room feels like a corner of the fair in the city’s Exhibition Hall.
Cross the river for Roots, a vegetable-forward restaurant that holds two Michelin stars – few meals will change the way you look at food as much as an evening here.
June 19–22
The Armory Show, New York City
Maximalism is the watchword at The Armory Show, which takes over the giant Javits Centre in Manhattan for a fair that brings the bleeding edge of contemporary art to New York City each January. The city has no trouble in feeling like the centre of the world at the best of times, but with exhibitors from Stockholm to São Paulo, The Armory Show is reliably vivacious and current, and a surefire place to find tomorrow’s masterworks alongside today’s.
For a taste of luxury that feels of the moment, look no further than the recently renovated Hotel Chelsea. Once the down-and-dirty crucible of 1960s counterculture, welcoming Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan into its hallowed hallways, the Chelsea’s latest guise is now stunningly appointed, situated only a few blocks away from the Javits Centre.
Head next to S&P Lunch, a new diner that – much as the Chelsea does – subverts and elevates a century-old fixture of Manhattan life, all through the language of soups and sandwiches.
September, dates to be announced
