World Fairs - As Art Basel prepares for its annual shows in Paris and Miami, CEO Noah Horowitz discusses the cultural and financial impact of the globe's premier contemporary art event

Art basel ceo Noah Horowitz isn’t used to doing things the old-fashioned way. Before stepping up to lead the largest, most prestigious art fair operator in the world, he was Basel’s director of the Americas, in charge of the company’s most contemporary-leaning show in Miami Beach. Now he turns his attention from one of the youngest major art cities in the world to one of the oldest: Paris.

- By Douglas Markowitz & Portrait by Aaron Richter

Art basel ceo Noah Horowitz isn’t used to doing things the old-fashioned way. Before stepping up to lead the largest, most prestigious art fair operator in the world, he was Basel’s director of the Americas, in charge of the company’s most contemporary-leaning show in Miami Beach. Now he turns his attention from one of the youngest major art cities in the world to one of the oldest: Paris.

Launched in 2022, the same year Horowitz became CEO of the company, Art Basel Paris—running this year from October 18 to 20—is the company’s latest endeavor. Renamed from the unwieldy Paris+ par Art Basel, it’s both smaller and more ambitious in scope than its counterparts in Basel, Hong Kong and Miami. With the name change comes a new venue: the Grand Palais, the extraordinary glass domed exhibition hall built for the 1900 World’s Fair that now functions as an art museum. For its first two years the fair was held in the Grand Palais Éphémère, a temporary venue built in the Champ de Mars to substitute for the original Grand Palais while it underwent renovations in preparation for the Paris Olympics. Both venues hosted events during the Games, with a terrific fencing tournament in the Grand Palais, and now Art Basel will go en garde in the historic venue.

“It’s a new thing for us,” he says. “Paris is the only Art Basel fair that’s not in a convention center. It’s also the only one of the fairs that’s in a city recognized as a cultural capital with a critical mass and a density of hundreds of galleries at all tiers.”