Inside the Global Art Fair Wars

Today’s art fairs have become far more than cultural and commercial events; they operate as platforms of visibility, machines of global branding and instruments of geopolitical power. The rivalry between the mega fairs exemplifies the newest phase of art’s globalization, but this system—in which fairs shape where capital circulates, where legitimacy is produced and which cities become cultural nodes—did not emerge naturally. It emerged from a broader transformation inseparable from the rise of...