Six-Track Mind

NEW YORK—“I would never have guessed this is where I’d be sitting right now,” says Paul Morris, “and I’m loving it.” No, he’s not talking about the restaurant where he’s having lunch with this reporter. Rather, he is referring to his new job: overseeing six art fairs owned by Chicago-based Merchandise Mart Properties, Inc. They are Art Chicago; the Next fair, also in Chicago; both editions of Volta (in Basel and New York); the Armory Show in New York; and the Toronto International Art Fair.

For 13 years, Morris ran his own contemporary-art gallery—recently shuttered—in New York and still does some private dealing. He also cofounded the Armory Show in the mid-1990s with fellow dealers Matthew Marks and the late Pat Hearn and Colin de Land. He and Marks sold it to Merchandise Mart last August, and Morris joined the company’s team. Since then, he says, one of his biggest challenges has been to revive the 15-year-old Art Chicago, taking place this year from April 25 to 28. He has been drumming up interest among younger collectors in the city and also connecting with the established ones.

In managing the six fairs, Morris has a self-imposed mandate: to keep them all unique. “They can’t succeed unless they are all incredibly different and keep their own identities,” he says. “I work with all the individual directors and make sure everyone sticks to the mission statement, with room for imagination and growth.”

"Six-Track Mind" originally appeared in the April 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's April 2008 Table of Contents.