Courtesy Pelham Galleries

Pelham Galleries' booth at the Olympia International Art & Antiques Fair this month

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Lester and his wife, Lee Ann, became art dealers in the 1970s and moved into fairs in the late 1980s, making a mark by bringing expositions to Florida in 1991. It is this background as a dealer and an entrepreneur that Lester said makes him think he has something to offer Clarion.

“You have to have an individual entrepreneurial skill to work with the dealers and the collectors,” he told ARTINFO. He added that executives of large corporations are often of a more conservative mind-set than risk-taking dealers, making it hard for them to recruit and retain fair participants.

By way of example, he cited International Fine Art Expositions, the fair sponsor that he sold to DMG World Media for $18 million in 2001. The Lesters stayed with the company until 2003. By 2008, DMG, publisher of London’s Daily Mail and “certainly a very sophisticated international multimedia corporation,” in Lester's words, had had enough and sold the business back to the couple, reportedly for no more than $3 million. Now they are happily rebuilding the company.

At Clarion, Chief Executive Simon Kimble confirmed that the companies were discussing a venture but would not comment further. From the time of a management buyout in 2004, Clarion grew quickly, largely by purchasing other companies. It is now controlled by Veronis Suhler Stevenson, an American private equity firm. It runs a diverse string of events from the Baby Show to a recently acquired set of military fairs.

Lester thinks he can offer Olympia marketing expertise and contacts in the art world that he has built up over his long career. He also wants to help it expand internationally, which would help it differentiate itself from its key London competitor, the Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair.

Grosvenor, which is older — 75 years to Olympia’s 36 — and more establishment (it has a royal patron in Princess Alexandra) — suffers from what Lester sees as a significant flaw: Its relatively small space in the basement of the hotel of the same name leaves no room for expansion and is not welcoming to large displays. Olympia, by contrast, is housed in a huge 19th-century exhibition hall made of iron and glass, which offers plenty of room and natural light.

Lester has a coterie of loyal dealers, some of whom already exhibit at Olympia, and he wants to create a network of art fairs similar to global airline alliances. When his Palm Beach, Fla.,  clients want to reach a European audience, he wants to be able to place them in London, which ties into his plan to make Olympia more global.

To do bring in enough traffic to entice overseas dealers, he will have to roughly double attendance from 2009’s 34,867, bringing it to the level of two other key European fairs, TEFAF Maastricht and Art Basel. The latter presents a scheduling problem, as it occurs at roughly the same time as Olympia. They overlapped this month, and although the tentative 2010 dates have Olympia finishing three days before Basel begins, Lester said it would be preferable to space them even further apart.

Dealers at this year’s Olympia event said business was as good as could be expected in the current climate, but they enthusiastically endorsed the idea that Lester could make it better.

“David Lester has visions and drive and experience, and I think that he could galvanize Olympia to become the major international arts fair in London in the summer,” said Michael Goedhuis, a dealer with galleries in New York and London who specializes in contemporary Chinese art.

Similarly, Alan Rubin, who runs the Pelham Galleries in London and Paris, said, “David is a genius. If he takes the role, I will be very pleased. He knows how to attract people to fairs. He’s got some very sophisticated marketing ideas.”