Update: VIP Online Art Fair

I have made several posts on the VIP, high end art fair.  The Art Newspaper has a review of the fair.  According to the article the results are mixed, and possibly should have been better if there were not so many technical glitches.  It seems the initial traffic to the site was either higher than expected or they were just not prepared with redundancy/contingency options. Some dealers paid up to $20,000 for virtual booth space, and there were some solid sales associated with the online fair.

Although the fair is now closed, the website is still up at www.vipartfair.com.

According to the Art Newspaper

A technical problem—which meant many were unable to log into the first online art fair for its opening days—could be the death knell for the well-marketed VIP Art Fair.

“It's a shame it didn't work technically as it could have been an interesting platform,” said Magnus Edensvard of Ibid Projects, one of the exhibitors in the fair's “emerging” section. “People liked the idea, it would have been great if it had worked,” added another dealer, who didn't wish to be named.

While the fair's founders—New York dealers Jane and James Cohan—say that the “technical difficulties” were confined to one specific area, namely the dealer “chat-room” facility, the net effect was simply that people could not log onto an exclusively online event. Problems were particularly pronounced once the US market woke up to click, and by the second evening of the fair the twitterati had dubbed it “VIP Fail”.

To read the full ARt Newspaper article, click HERE.

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