A year ago this month, the New York dealer James Cohan packed up his booth at Art Basel with a feeling of accomplishment. He’d shown ambitious new work by such internationally known gallery artists as Folkert de Jong and Yinka Shonibare and sold pieces to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, in Amsterdam. He had every reason to believe he would be invited back in 2008 to what is regarded as the most important fair for modern and contemporary art. Earlier this year, however, he received news to the contrary: Art Basel’s six-dealer selection committee had rejected his application. “I prided myself on our display,” says Cohan. “So I must be missing something in the equation.”

The equation is simple: too many dealers, not enough booths. Space constraints dictate how many stands an event can accommodate. Cohan is just one of 700 international dealers who didn’t make Art Basel’s cut this year, which saw a record number of applicants, only 300 of whom were selected. So with contemporary-art dealers proliferating worldwide—at last count there were more than 350 galleries in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood alone, up from 170 in 2001—competition is stiff for the limited number of booths at top fairs like Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach (ABMB); the Armory Show, in New York; and Frieze, in London. (The Armory Show has recently secured additional space—a rare boon—and by its 2010 or 2011 edition, will have room for 75 modern- and 20th-century-art dealers, giving it a leg up on other shows, says cofounder Paul Morris.

This supply-demand imbalance is happening at a time when, for many collectors, a stroll down the aisles at fairs has supplanted regular visits to galleries, making event-based business as important as what happens in the storefront—if not more so. In a study conducted last year for the TEFAF fair, in Maastricht, the Dublin-based economist Clare McAndrew surveyed some 5,000 dealers and wrote that 21 percent of those who responded “attributed 75 percent or more of their business to transactions carried out away from their primary place of business, including some respondents for which 100 percent of transactions were conducted elsewhere.”

It is not surprising therefore that emotions can run high among those left out. Having a space at a fair means “a large amount of money coming in at one moment, and if it’s not there, it affects how you plan the rest of your year,” explains Janice Guy, a co-director of the New York gallery Murray Guy. “If you do not get in, it’s a random choice of the selection committee that puts your business in danger,” adds Guy.

Rejection is not merely a financial matter; it can also tarnish a gallery’s reputation. Participation in fairs has become such a stamp of approval that Armory Show director Katelijne de Backer has heard of some rejected dealers telling their peers they hadn’t applied. “If that is the way they want to spin it, that’s fine by me,” de Backer says.

Gallerists claim that artists pay attention, too, having come to expect the built-in audience that their work commands at fairs. “The quarterly sequence of the two Basels, Frieze, and the Armory” has become so important, says Christopher D’Amelio, of New York’s D’Amelio Terras, that some artists will leave their current galleries for one with a better fair profile.

Even small satellite events are highly competitive. Last year there were 370 applicants for the 82 booths at the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) fair, in Miami, to which both members and nonmembers are invited. With many of those rejected feeling disgruntled, director Heather Hubbs says NADA is considering a rotation system for members. Liste, which bills itself as “the young art fair in Basel,” also attracts far more hopefuls than can be accommodated. The organizers expanded the exhibition space two years ago but then relaxed their policy that galleries must be less than five years old to participate and can do so for only three to four years—creating an even bigger pool of contenders.

The importance of fairs to the bottom line is at the center of an ongoing controversy within the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA). This year 115 of the 170 member galleries applied to the Art Show, held annually in February, but the Park Avenue Armory, its longtime venue in Manhattan, can hold only 70. The ADAA’s policy states that any member gallery not included in the fair for two years in a row must be in the following one, but some feel this doesn’t go far enough. With a membership organization, “the best fair” would be one that allows everyone to participate every year, says Lawrence DiCarlo, whose New York gallery, Fischbach, was rejected for the 2008 fair but had participated in previous editions. Members recently voted against compulsory rotation by a narrow margin. The ADAA has been considering other strategies (see “Show and Tell). “We are trying our best to serve our membership and we are investigating every possible way to do that,” says the ADAA’s president, Roland Augustine, of the New York gallery Luhring Augustine.

One result of the increasingly heated and high-stakes struggle for fair inclusion is increased scrutiny of—and pressure on—selection committees. While these committees consider many factors—the one for Basel makes the rounds of the fair every morning to take photographs of booths—much of the decision process is somewhat arbitrary and subjective. Dealers in the main section of Basel are chosen for their programs. A current Basel selector, David Juda, the director of London’s Annely Juda Fine Art, says he looks for “quality and uniqueness” and acknowledges that such judgments are “subjective.” For her part, the New York Latin American art dealer Mary-Anne Martin, a member of the current ABMB selection committee, notes that many deserving galleries do not get in because there is just not enough room. “It’s like getting into Harvard,” Martin says.

All this makes the committees’ closed-door decisions tougher. The process has turned cutthroat and, say some, cliquey. “I sat on the Art Chicago selection committee for years, and felt like a good citizen,” says the veteran London and New York dealer Bernard Jacobson. But now, he says, being a committee member “is a different game. It’s more like letting your friends into a club.”

Those who complain about art-fair politics, however, may be referring to the relatively unchanging makeup of these committees. Members may not have the life terms of Supreme Court justices, but they tend to stay on for long periods—something fair organizers say is needed to ensure quality and stability. Art Basel has no set maximum on committee tenure; selectors usually remain for a “recommended term of 5 to 10 years,” says the former Basel artistic director, Cay Sophie Rabinowitz. Frieze has no strict cutoff points either. It aims to refresh its seven-member team by adding one new face each year. Still, co-director Amanda Sharp explains, “we do not bring someone in and say, ‘You have a five-year term.’ We say, ‘You have a minimum of a two-year term.’ ” The Armory Show is exceptional in having a relatively high turnover. For the show’s first two editions, its dealer-founders, Colin de Land, Pat Hearn, Matthew Marks and Paul Morris, made the admissions decisions, but since the 2001 introduction of a five-member selection committee (expanded to six members in 2002), two- or three-year stints have been the norm.

Adding to the perception of clubbiness, the process for choosing people to serve on the committees tends to be just as subjective as the selection of exhibitors. At the Armory, for example, when a selector retires, he or she may be asked for a list of possible successors, as are the remaining committee members, who vote on the combined roster.

Clubbiness isn’t always the issue, though. Reflecting on his recent rejection, James Cohan points to the absence of Americans on the Art Basel committee. Although galleries from the U.S. have a strong presence at Basel, it is historically a European fair. The Zurich dealer Victor Gisler, who has been on the committee for 10 years, recalls that around the time he joined, it was pushing to integrate more U.S. galleries while reassuring nervous European dealers who represented American artists and were concerned about the competition. Indeed, the number of international galleries in the fair has increased substantially in recent years.

Others are mainly riled by the process’s lack of transparency. When he was excluded from Art Basel a few years ago, Cohan figured it was a slap on the hand for having displayed in his booth a secondary-market piece by Ugo Rondinonean artist he does not represent. Art Basel considers that a no-no for contemporary exhibitors, and some have certainly been disciplined for similar infractions: Emmanuel Perrotin, who has galleries in Paris and Miami, was rejected in 2006, the year after he slipped worker badges to the French collector and Christie’s owner François Pinault and his adviser, Philippe Ségalot.

While dealers are acquainted with the general guidelines for participation, the fact that so many rejections lack explanations is galling. Most fairs have a “don’t tell” policy, since it’s nearly impossible to capture the nuances of the decision-making process. “People seem to come up with different rationales to explain to themselves why they didn’t get in, and of course lots of them would like to discuss it,” says Sharp. “But it’s very hard, with a decision that has been made over hours-long discussions and gone through a process of eight people talking and reaching a consensus, to give an accurate line-by-line reading of the argument.” Initially, Frieze was more apt to disclose to rejected dealers the rationale behind the decision. But, says Sharp, “I realized that other fairs had a policy not to tell anyone, and I began to understand why.”

“No one in the management organization takes accountability,” Cohan objects. “They refer back to the committee. This is big, important business, and if you leave it up to a committee you have chosen, don’t you have the responsibility to look over how these decisions are being made?” Rabinowitz counters that Art Basel’s procedure is thorough and that “the commitment to making it a democratic process is astounding. For almost 30 days, morning to night, each application is reviewed three times.” Basel and Frieze have appeals systems: Basel’s is overseen by a separate, nondealer panel; at Frieze, an applicant’s materials are resubmitted to the selection committee. It is rare, however, that a gallery wins entry on the basis of an appeal. And there is little to gain from hounding the directors, although de Backer has taken calls that she describes as “heartbreaking.” Because the committee has final say, the most directors can do is listen.

Having dealers judged by their peers often invites accusations of conflict of interest. De Backer says she is aware of the potential for such conflicts. “When galleries come to me and say their exclusion is unfair because the committee members have personal interests, I think that whatever kind of committee you are dealing with, there will always be that personal aspect.”

This issue led to a crackdown on Art Cologne. Under Germany’s antitrust laws, galleries are allowed to sue for admission, and have done so. The suits have become less frequent as organizers have tightened their process and included in selection meetings a lawyer who can provide detailed explanations to every German gallery that applies. But some market observers say the threat of legal action has made Cologne too regional and will ultimately lead to its becoming a second-tier fair. In fact, Art Cologne came under fire last fall when a group of local dealers, including Christian Nagel and Daniel Buchholz, complained about its “bitter loss of status.” This past January its director, Gérard Goodrow, announced his departure.

To circumvent such problems, some smaller fairs, like Zoo, in London, and Volta and Liste, in Basel, do not include gallerists on their committees, turning instead to curators and critics. “Dealers I’ve spoken to who have been asked to be on panels hate it—they hate to choose their peers, who take it personally,” says the Zoo fair director, Soraya Rodriguez. “But for critics and curators, that is their job. They have an independence that people will respect.” The former Art Basel director Samuel Keller, however, believes even their independence is limited: “Whoever is an important member of the art world has alliances and networks.”

Selectors may not get much sympathy for their suffering, but they do claim to endure their share of scrutiny and stress. “They get a lot of heat from people who don’t get in,” de Backer says. The New York dealer Anton Kern, who just finished a three-year term on the Armory Show’s selection committee, can attest to that: “You get yelled at a lot,” he says. Kern explained to those critics that he looked out “for the longevity of the fair,” adding, “I’m not looking out for me, my friends, the short term. Also, I’m just one person on a committee of six.” All the same, he expresses reservations about the system: “Dealers look at a fair and think, How can I get in there? And fairs are becoming overly important for the market.”

Juda finds judging his compeers very difficult, and thankless. “The galleries that do participate feel that they should be in anyway, and the ones who don’t get in feel it is due to my stupidity,” he says, adding that the position is time-consuming, taking him away from his gallery at least 18 days a year. Nevertheless, he is proud to put in the hard work.

Sharp defends having dealers on the Frieze selection committee, observing that they just know the business better. “They have a perspective no critic or curator has about what it means to be able to do a good presentation at an art fair, and I think they make very good judgments,” she says.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. “Fairs are all the same,” says the London dealer Kenny Schachter. “It’s the same clique. Their capriciousness and politicizing will remain constant.” Even a market contraction would have little effect, Schachter adds, since quality art will always be in demand, and so “the top fairs will remain in hyperselective mode.”  

"Fair Game" originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's June 2008 Table of Contents.