David Lester on Sailing Against the Skeptics

NEW YORK—Do art fairs float? If SeaFair’s two well-attended stops in Greenwich and Port Washington are any indication, the answer is yes. Created by David and Lee Ann Lester, the folks who brought us the Palm Beach Fine Art and Antique Fair, SeaFair took to the seas this spring aboard the Grand Luxe, a 228-foot megayacht with three exhibition decks, a champagne and caviar bar, and two restaurants captained by former White House chef Walter Scheib.

A wide variety of fine art and antiques is available for purchase on deck—from clocks and chandeliers at Mallet to paintings by Zhang Xiaogang at Goedhuis Contemporary. The Lesters, who sold the Palm Beach fair for $18 million in 2001, founded SeaFair in an attempt to bring high-end wares even closer to collectors.

Art-world skeptics have predicted the sinking of SeaFair, but the participating dealers, who shell out as much as $90,000 a month in booth rental fees, are banking on Lester’s notion that there is a new collector in every port. The yacht, which is currently docked at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan, will make 34 stops over the next year. Just an hour into its New York sojourn, David Lester took a few minutes to speak with ARTINFO about his marine dream. He ships off for Norwalk, Conn., on October 14.

You sound like a very busy man.

It’s a very busy day. We had a big party last night and then we have another one tonight, and then we’re just sort of getting guests on board at the same time.

Is the crowd here different than in Greenwich?

I think it’s really too early to tell. I mean we only opened up an hour ago. But the crowd we had last night was terrific. We had about 330 people, the boat was buzzing and full. It’s a little quiet now, but it’s always like that in the beginning. Then noon comes, and watch out! I think everybody’s still trying to figure out how the boat works—what are the plusses and the minuses, and so forth and so on.

There have been a ton of press clippings.

And they’ve all been positive–OK–there’s been almost nothing negative. Newsday ran a very interesting article that basically said, “I was wrong about SeaFair. I thought it was gonna be gaudy” and so on and so forth, but no, it’s been very, very well received publicly.

Speaking of press coverage, in one story you called the boat a “Mark Twain river boat for sexy people.” It seems like with its champagne and caviar lounge and marble bathrooms and all, it’s certainly a step up from Twain’s barge—what were you trying to achieve when you commissioned the yacht’s interior?

We wanted to have a new type of exhibition space for dealers. [In the background: “Nice to have you here. Thank you for coming.”]

So you’re actually standing and greeting people right now? Wow.

Right. [“Thank you for coming, sir.”]

And how many visitors are you expecting?

Well, you never know. We had about 4,000 in Greenwich and about 2,200 in Oyster Bay, and we expect about 4,000 in Manhattan this week.

As I understand it, you and your wife Lee Ann actually got the idea for SeaFair while you were out at sea?

Yes. We retired and bought our boat, and we were living on it when we came up with the idea. Dealers came on board to visit us and said, “Wow, wouldn’t it be interesting if we could do this on a boat?” So here we are. It is a $40 million boat, built especially for this purpose.

And how do you think the venue contributes to the viewing experience? Does it feel different to see art on land, versus on a boat?

No, what’s so interesting is that it’s not. I think that people were looking at the experience and they were saying, “What’s it gonna be like?” We’ve had to go through an educational process with the public and say, “OK, this is what SeaFair is.” The one thing we couldn’t do is convey the sense of scale. You have to come down and look at. The visuals just don’t convey it.

I’ve read that you characterize SeaFair as going after the “other 97 percent” of collectors.

That’s probably a mischaracterization. We’re trying to expand the physical reach of the dealers—that’s the real goal.

Did you choose your ports with that idea in mind?

We wanted to give them a variety of ports. You want to go to the wealthy suburban areas; you want to go to some metropolitan areas.

What was the vetting process for the dealers like? Are they galleries that you worked with in Palm Beach?

Yeah, almost all of them—90 percent of them.

What has it been like working with the U.S. Coast Guard?

Complicated! I had no idea what we were getting into. They’ve insisted that we do everything entirely the proper way. And we’ve finally passed all of the coastguard tests.

Congratulations! I heard that you’re planning on doing other themed boats in the future.

Yeah: one fashion, one pharmaceutical. We’d like to do some different things in different industries.

But they would all be fairs?

Something like that: expositions.

What are some of the lessons that you’ve learned while creating SeaFair?

They’re too numerous to discuss. We’re in the art fair business, we’re in the marine business, we’re in the shipping business, we’re in the coastguard business, and we’re in the restaurant business, all of which are complicated businesses.

It seems like SeaFair is a good indicator of the strength and reach of the art market right now.

I agree. And the art market will always need new ways to reinvent itself.

With that in mind, why do you think people were so wary of SeaFair?

People had no idea what to expect. It’s a seeing-is-believing kind of thing.