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.