Art Basel’s Swiss Fair hopes a new initiative will encourage more people to visit the Messeplatz to see the art in person. “Basel Exclusive,” as the fair is calling it, is a simple premise: galleries will withhold at least one work, up to their entire booth, from the PDF previews they send to clients ahead of the fair.

Art Basel’s Swiss Fair

According to a press release, the initiative is meant to encompass one of the Swiss fair’s “defining strengths — discovery of the most exceptional works, in person, at the highest level.”

The initiative is open to any gallery participating in the main Galleries sector of Art Basel, which runs from June 18–21, with VIP preview days on June 16–17. So far, 170 out of 232 exhibitors, or just under 75 percent, have signed on. The fair expects this figure to continue to rise in the coming weeks.

“We all recognize the fact that we live in a digital world that is very much driven by the distribution of images and of artworks’ images,” Vincenzo de Bellis, Art Basel’s chief artistic officer and global director of fairs, said in an interview with ArtNews. “But at the same time, we also know the importance of seeing things in person, and that’s true for all the different constituencies of our industry. And therefore, we wanted to make a point altogether about this.”

He added, “It’s great to remind people that if they don’t come [to Basel], they won’t see certain things in person.”

The idea for the Basel Exclusive dates back to last fall, according to De Bellis. As the fair was prepping for Art Basel Paris, they debuted an invite-only program called Avant Première, where galleries were only given a certain number of tickets for select clients to preview the fair the evening before the opening.

The choice for which works are part of Basel Exclusive is up to the individual galleries, but de Bellis said that Art Basel has requested that the works “be something with importance and weight within their program.”