From the archive: "Art Basel Miami Beach postponed", November 2001

Art fairs announce themselves in long, cheerful press releases. The most important one in the history of the Miami fair is short, apologetic and has no names in it. It went out on November 5, 2001, under the heading "Art Basel Miami Beach postponed", and you can still read it in the e-flux archive (e-flux). If you want to understand why the fair is what it is, read it first, then read what happened in the five weeks after it.

This is the first piece in From the archive, a monthly series in which we read one document from Miami's art history closely. The release is quoted once and paraphrased otherwise; the account of what followed comes from Art Basel's own oral history and an interview Sam Keller gave The Art Newspaper in 2007. Both are participants' memories, and we say so where it matters. Checked October 24, 2026.

What the release says

It runs to seven short paragraphs, and the first one does the work. The first Art Basel Miami Beach, planned for December 13 to 16, 2001, would not take place. It would open instead on December 5 to 8, 2002.

The second gives the reasons, in a list that reads now like a summary of that autumn. The organisers cite the continuing, unpredictable danger in the United States since the attacks of September 11, the warnings of more attacks, the anthrax incidents, and the state of war. Then they turn practical: flying, shipping freight and insuring works of art had all become too risky or too difficult for a fair in December.

The anthrax line was not abstract in South Florida. The first person to die in the anthrax attacks was Robert Stevens, a photo editor at American Media in Boca Raton, about 50 miles up the coast, on October 5, 2001, a month before the release (CBS News).

The third paragraph is the apology. The organisers regret postponing an event they had launched with success, six weeks before it was due to open, and present the decision as a duty to the safety of everyone involved: exhibitors, visitors, sponsors, the press and museums around the world.

The fourth is the one to read twice. More than 150 leading galleries had confirmed, along with about 50 art magazines and cultural institutions. Only five galleries had withdrawn. But many leading galleries, from different parts of the world, had written to ask for a postponement, some on their own and some together.

The rest is housekeeping, with one exception. The fair says it acted in "the best interest of galleries, collectors and art friends alike," thanks everyone for the work already done, and promises a local visitor service for anyone who still comes to Miami Beach on the original dates. The last line puts the loss to Swiss Exhibition, the organising company, at about $4 million. Then come the press contacts, in Basel, New York and Miami Beach.

What it leaves out

No one is named. The release speaks for show management and the selection committee, and it does not say who made the call or how close it was.

It does not mention Basel, or the June fair in Switzerland, or what the company would do with a year's gap. It does not say what had already been made. Keller, the fair's director, later said the contracts with the galleries were signed, the convention center booked and the catalogue printed (The Art Newspaper).

And it does not say what the galleries would pay. In the same interview Keller says that was the point of the decision: postpone, charge the galleries nothing, win back their trust and come back a year later. A fair that missed its first date, he believed, might never open at all.

The swissinfo report, which ran on November 2, three days before e-flux posted the statement, adds a few details the release does not: the fair had expected work by more than 1,000 artists, and the organisers had billed it as the most important art show in the Americas. It gives the cost in Swiss francs, about SFr4 million (swissinfo). The money is the one figure that never settled. The fair said about $4 million; swissinfo said four million francs; Keller remembered about $5 million already spent. "Several million dollars" is the safe reading.

Who stayed away

The five galleries that withdrew are not named anywhere we could find. The letters asking for a delay have not been published.

What we have is the view of the people around the fair. Sara Fitzmaurice, who ran VIP relations at the start, says she argued hard against going ahead: Americans were grieving, people would not fly, shipping had stopped and insurance for art cost a fortune (Art Basel). Keller says the art market depends on people travelling and enjoying the business of buying, and in the autumn of 2001 they were doing neither. The market, he adds, had been slowing before the attacks.

Keller also says he offered to take the blame, and to resign if the decision turned out wrong. The company agreed to the plan, and said the galleries had made Art Basel and it was time to give something back.

Who came anyway

The release's promise of a visitor service for people who came anyway turned into something bigger. Keller and his team went to Miami in December 2001 and ran the programme that had been built around the fair: collectors' visits, the museum programme, the private collections. There was no fair. By Keller's account hundreds of people came, among them patrons of museums such as Tate. He called it perhaps the most important moment of his time as director, because it showed the cultural programme could stand on its own, without a single booth.

The museums held their dates. At the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, Roy Lichtenstein: Inside/Outside, a show of more than 120 paintings, drawings and sculptures about how the artist imagined space, opened that week and ran to February 2002 (Domus). It had been planned to open with the fair. Bonnie Clearwater, the museum's director, organised it, and she dates what she calls the "Miami model" from that week: the fair as an event for the whole city, not a hall (Art Basel).

Read 25 years on

The release did what it said. The fair opened a year later, with a vernissage on December 4, 2002 and public days from December 5 to 8, with 160 galleries and about 30,000 visitors (e-flux).

What it could not have said is what the empty year would show. The week in December 2001 had the collectors, the museums, the private collections and the parties, and no fair. It is the clearest early sign of what Miami Art Week became: a week in which the fair is the reason to come and much of the rest happens elsewhere. Clearwater says as much, though she is a participant, and the oral history it comes from is Art Basel's own.

The other thing to read in the release is the tone. A new fair, six weeks from opening, chose to lose several million dollars rather than ask galleries to take a risk they had asked not to take. Whatever one thinks of the fair now, the decision built the trust that the 2002 edition ran on. For the longer story of how the fair came to Miami in the first place, from the Bramans' trips to Basel to the rival fair whose contract gave Miami its December dates, see how Art Basel came to Miami.

Reading it yourself

The release is free to read in the e-flux announcements archive, as is the closing report from December 2002 (links in the sources below). The swissinfo report is still online. Keller's 2007 interview with Cristina Ruiz and Melanie Gerlis is on The Art Newspaper's site, and Robin Pogrebin's four-part oral history of the fair, published by Art Basel in 2022, is on artbasel.com; part three covers 2001 and 2002.