Swiss fair group retires an ‘empty’ term and rebuilds relationships as the art market courts a new generation

Art Basel is dispensing with one of the art world’s most ubiquitous acronyms. The Swiss-led fair group behind marquee events from Hong Kong to Miami Beach has “done away with the word ‘VIP’,” saying the label has lost its meaning and, worse, distracts from the organization’s core audience: individual collectors and cultural institutions. The move lands at a delicate moment for fairs and dealers, who are recalibrating relationships with buyers amid a cooler market and changing expectations from younger patrons.

Noah Horowitz, Art Basel’s chief executive, has framed the rebrand in unusually plain terms: the ‘VIP’ tag had grown “a little bit empty,” and its once-useful cachet no longer matched what serious collectors need from a fair. In practice, the company has retired the VIP title in favor of a newly named department, “collector and institutional relations.” The shift sounds bureaucratic, but it points to a strategic reset: less emphasis on blunt status signifiers and more on tailored access, advisory, and long-term cultivation of individuals and museums who shape the primary market.

The change also reflects how the art-fair experience has morphed over the past decade. Previews, lounges, and concierge perks were designed in an era when lines between luxury hospitality and cultural programming blurred—and when supply, prices, and confidence were surging. Today, even at the top end, buying is more selective, discovery is spread across digital channels, and younger high-net-worth collectors approach art as one component of a broader lifestyle. They still want access and community, but not necessarily the velvet-rope semantics that ‘VIP’ implies.

Competitors are taking different tacks. Frieze, Art Basel’s closest rival, is keeping the term, arguing that “VIP” describes a broad cultural network that includes patrons, artists, curators, and partners. That divergence underscores a live debate inside the industry: does the language of exclusivity attract commitment—or alienate the very audiences fairs need to grow?

On the ground, little about the mechanics of a major fair will change overnight. Early-entry windows, first-look walk-throughs with dealers, museum-group itineraries, and by-invitation receptions are still the coins of the realm. The difference is rhetorical and relational: Art Basel is positioning those privileges as tools that help collectors make better choices, not as badges of rank. The company has also appointed Carly Murphy—an alum of Christie’s client strategy team—to lead the retooled unit, signaling a more data-led, relationship-marketing approach to the highest-spending cohort.

The timing is pragmatic. After the blockbuster years that followed the pandemic, the global art market cooled in 2024 and early 2025, with overall sales slipping and mid-tier dealers feeling the pinch of rising costs. Fairs remain essential—both as shop floors and as conveners—but the cycle of back-to-back events has pushed galleries to make hard choices. Against that backdrop, the language a fair uses to define its best customers matters: are they “VIPs,” or are they collectors whose taste and risk tolerance require specific, sometimes quieter forms of service?

There is also a geographic dimension. Art Basel’s calendar now stretches from the Rhine to the South China Sea—and increasingly to the Gulf. Expansion plans, including new programming in Doha and an amped-up Paris edition at the Grand Palais, are meant to meet collectors where they live and travel. In Paris, the fair has experimented with more granular tiers of access—adding an ultra-early preview slot for a tiny circle of priority guests—while softening the headline label. The point, insiders say, is to shape experiences around intentions (buying, research, museum acquisition) instead of around an all-purpose VIP catch-all.

For galleries, the rebrand will be judged on execution: who gets in first, how many passes a dealer can allocate, and how effectively fair organizers ferry top clients to the right booths at the right hour. Many dealers grumble that VIP programs centralized a function galleries once controlled themselves. If the new “collector and institutional relations” team collaborates—rather than competes—with exhibitors’ own client lists, the change could ease long-standing friction. If not, a renamed bureaucracy won’t matter much.

Collectors, for their part, are likely to welcome clearer signals. In an era of choice overload, early access is only as valuable as the counsel that comes with it. The seasoned buyers who anchor fair sales want research, condition transparency, and pricing context. Emerging collectors want confidence and conversation. Both groups want time: a chance to see work without a scrum, to revisit a booth, and to make a decision without being jostled by the Instagram moment du jour. That is the real substance behind the gold-lettered acronyms on a plastic badge.

The semantics of status may seem trivial, but words do real work in the art economy. “VIP” once denoted proximity to masterpieces and the experts who handled them. As the term sprawled—from car services to cocktail lists to credit-card tie-ins—it occluded the basic transaction at a fair: galleries need to place good works with the right collectors, and collectors need a trusted route to quality. Swapping slogans for specificity is, in that light, less a marketing flourish than a return to first principles.

Whether the rebrand sticks will depend on delivery across a busy season. Art Basel’s December show in Miami Beach will test whether a collector-led ethos can coexist with a city that runs on velvet ropes. The revamped Paris fair—benefiting from the Grand Palais’s reopening—will probe how a historically museum-rich audience responds to more finely tuned preview schedules. And new Gulf programming will ask whether the region’s state-backed institutions and private buyers prefer discrete concierge models to big-tent labels.

Art fairs have always been theaters of access. What Art Basel is signaling now is a shift in script: away from the optics of rank and toward the substance of relationships. If that sounds less glamorous, it may also be more durable. In a market where confidence has wavered and information moves faster than inventory, the most valuable perk may not be a lanyard at all—it’s a credible introduction and a clear path to great art.