Paired together, the terms “art fair” and “beach” can still conjure images of scattered stalls brimming with tourist art or factory-made craft mementos. To be sure, two decades into Art Basel Miami Beach, quality has long since planted itself in the sand. Still, in the serious art world, jet-set leisure locales tend to be dismissed as either unserious or too far removed from art market epicenters to matter.
But these assumptions are changing. What’s emerging instead is a splashy new shift: As collectors move, so does the market. And increasingly, parts of the art world are meeting this jet set where they already are.
Lo and behold, the rise of the destination fair. What defines these events? While mega-fairs like Art Basel and Frieze take place in destinations in their own right, they still anchor the art market calendar. Destination fairs invert that logic: They’re not about drawing the art world in—they’re about plugging into places where the world’s collectors already circulate.
Often staged off-cycle, these fairs land in locales memorialized in Maison Assouline books, Slim Aarons portraits, and the seasonal circuit of the ultrawealthy—Mallorca and Ibiza in Spain, St. Moritz and Gstaad in Switzerland, Capri, Italy, the Berkshires, Punta del Este, Uruguay, Joshua Tree, California—all of which have boutique fairs. Places where people don’t just visit—they “summer,” they après-ski, they settle into second homes. Even Saint-Tropez, France, will soon host the glitzy 20-exhibitor design fair PAD in early July. “There is a clear advantage in having a fair in Saint-Tropez,” said Flore de Ségogne, the executive director of PAD. “Everyone travels here between June 1 and July 20!”
For galleries, these events offer an alternative to the well-trodden art market circuit.
“I hear it all the time—that there is art fair fatigue because we all participate in so many fairs,” says Nathalie Kates, founder of the four-year-old Lower East Side gallery Kates-Ferri Projects. “At the anchor art fairs, you see the usual suspects because the fairs are so expensive.”
Kates is part of the debut edition of Art Cologne Mallorca, the storied German fair’s new outing in the neo-brutalist Palau de Congressos. Running from April 9th to 12th, with 88 galleries, most exhibitors hail from Europe, with 15 based in Palma itself. Kates-Ferri is one of five US exhibitors attending.
Increasingly, the audience for these fairs is sticking around for more than skiing or sunshine.
“What has changed is that many of these destinations are no longer purely seasonal resorts,” said Baptiste Janin, cofounder of MAZE Art Gstaad, which wrapped up its third edition in February and has hosted editions in locations including the Alps and Côte d’Azur.
“Each salon is conceived in relation to a specific place and to the rhythm of that destination,” Janin explained. “We tend to choose destinations where collectors and experienced art audiences are already present.” He added: “The possibility of discovering and acquiring art simply becomes part of the cultural life of the place during certain moments of the year.”
Small in scale—often under 50 galleries—and deeply tied to their surroundings, these events operate less like marketplaces and more like temporary ecosystems. “Residents are already asking what will happen at the fair this year and tell us they are ready and waiting,” explained Edgar Gadzhiev, Lara Kotreleva, and Nadezhda Zinovskaya, the directors of VIMA, in an email interview. The fair will return to Limassol, Cyprus, in May for its second edition. “At VIMA’s inaugural edition in 2025, we saw that the fair was becoming a point of attraction for this international audience in addition to its local counterpart,” they added.
Crucially, these events are recalibrating how—and with whom—art is being experienced. “They increasingly position themselves where collectors already spend time,” confirmed Anne-Claudie Coris, executive director of Parisian powerhouse Templon, who recently participated in MAZE Gstaad. “The atmosphere was relaxed and convivial—a very different pace from the major fairs, and it allowed for many meaningful conversations with collectors,” she noted. Plus, “Sales were good.”
It’s easy to dismiss this as another luxury detour. But the success of these events hinges on something much harder to manufacture: community. These fairs are not just capturing wealth; they’re embedding themselves within it.
NOMAD St. Moritz, one of the clearest early blueprints, was conceived nearly a decade ago as “an alternative to the usual white-cube fair in exhibition halls in big cities,” according to its founder Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte. “The idea was to develop a different type of experience and to become a sort of door opener for new possibilities.” Built on word of mouth, it has since held editions in Venice, Monaco, Capri, and Abu Dhabi—transforming each setting into a temporary, lived-in exhibition. “People love this more intimate format. They come with no pressure,” he added.
Next stop, the Hamptons. In late June, NOMAD will take over the Watermill Center, tapping into a locale long synonymous with cultural capital but rarely treated as a destination for international fairgoing audiences. “You don’t know how many people from Europe, from the Middle East, have told me, ‘You know what, I’ve never been to The Hamptons. It has always been my dream!’ So to make the Hamptons a cool destination for people from abroad is something unusual,” he said.
Indeed, these fairs are complementing—not competing with—the traditional art world calendar. “We look into creating a unique reality for our audience, and that’s it. We don't want to compete with anyone or anything. We just come as a complement in a new perspective,” Bellavance-Lecompte noted.
And these in-situ formats are also pulling in new audiences. As Michele di Robilant of storied gallery Robilant + Voena notes, “NOMAD’s non-traditional venues and its leisure-oriented locations attract a broader audience than traditional art fairs, drawing visitors who might not typically seek out the fair environment.” These fairs also draw in a much-coveted younger demographic, added Janin; “We’re noticing a younger generation gradually joining—sometimes the children of established collectors.”
Kates has seen it firsthand: “More and more, we see the children or the grandchildren of collecting families adding their two cents on where the collection is going,” she said.
“They are more interested in storytelling, and investment is a word that never even comes out of their vocabulary. Investment is not transactional. Investment is investing in culture. And that, to me, is exciting.”
