When Heather Hubbs, who cut her teeth working for Tom Blackman’s Art Chicago fair staring in the late 90s, was hired by the New Art Dealers Alliance in 2004 to run its annual Miami fair, she hit the ground running, flying to Miami the very next day to organize the event. About a year later, Hubbs, now 39, was promoted to overall director of NADA, and since then she has very much become the face of the organization.

A 25-member operation when it was founded in 2002 by a small group of young art dealers, including both galleries and individuals, NADA had grown into a membership of around 150 by the time Hubbs took the reins. Today, there are a whopping 300 members. As the art world charges into the fall season, Hubbs spoke with ARTINFO senior correspondent Sarah Douglas about the challenges of running an expanding organization, the possibility of a new group within NADA for collectors, the potential for a second fair outside Miami, and the real meaning of the word "new."

Is New Art Dealers Alliance a misnomer? After all, you have members like Nicole Klagsbrun, who has been in business for over 20 years.

I can’t speak on behalf of NADA’s founders, but I think when it was formed it was about being a new, as in young, art dealer. Over time, the more I thought about how the organization functions, I realized that in the name New Art Dealers Alliance, the word "new" refers to the alliance itself. It’s a new kind of dealer association. It’s about a new way of networking as dealers or professionals in the field.

So, for instance, an American gallery that is a member of NADA wouldnt graduate at a certain point, if they, say, became a member of the prestigious Art Dealers Association of America?

I wouldn’t see any need to leave one for the other. What the ADAA does is very different. Their programming is very different from ours, and what it means to be a member is very different. We do a lot of social things — parties and dinners. At the end of September we are doing a conference in San Francisco.

But isn’t it true that NADA is still trying to define itself?

It’s very young. It’s only grown legs in the past two years. So questions about how it needs to change, and whether it needs to change to remain relevant, and whether it’s important to keep members around for years and years — there are no real answers to those questions yet.

You do have some non-American members, right?

We have wanted to grow our membership abroad, but it’s hard to keep members around because we don’t do as much programming there. At one point we had a lot of London galleries as members, but that has tapered off.

So NADA isnt necessarily just for young dealers, but the annual NADA Art Fair in Miami is primarily for showcasing the work of emerging artists, right?

We wouldn’t exactly encourage people to have a lot of work by very established artists in their booths, but we don’t have a formal rule about that. It’s only recently that some galleries have wanted to show more established work. Like Henry Darger, for instance, who is very expensive. We haven’t frowned upon this because we feel that putting other work in that context can make everybody look a little bit better. But visitors to the fair are looking for younger artists. They aren’t focused on more established material. So, for the galleries who have tried it, it hasn’t been that successful for them. It might be interesting to see what happened if we created a section in the fair for more established work.

Has a section like that been a real consideration?

We thought about having it this year, but haven’t really formulated it enough to make it happen yet. Because last year we had things like Peter Alexanders work at the Nyehaus booth.

Would you say that the relationship between NADA and Art Basel Miami Beach is similar to the one between the Liste fair and Art Basel? Liste has long billed itself as "the young Basel," and has a history of graduating galleries to the main fair.

Yes, Nada is the Liste of Miami. Of course, the main fairs in the two cities are very different. In Miami, the main fair is more contemporary and focuses a lot more on younger galleries. Liste actually gets a lot of galleries that do the main fair and then go back to Liste. We don’t get so much of that. Once a gallery goes to Art Basel Miami Beach, it’s unlikely they will come back to NADA. Some have. In fact, last year some galleries said to me they wish they would have done NADA instead of the main fair.

Would you be open to the idea of a gallery participating in Art Basel Miami Beach and in NADA, if Basel would allow it?

I would. Especially if it’s a gallery like Spruth Magers, that wanted to do a really young project at NADA.

Both NADA members and non-members are eligible to participate in the NADA fair, but do members have an edge?

Members are given a more special look, but being a member doesn’t guarantee participation in the fair. That was the case for the first two fairs. After that it was open to non-members. The reason for that is we got this surge of interest in membership just because people thought it meant they would get into the fair. We work hard to grow the organization’s profile in a way that it’s not just about the fair.

Is that a big problem for NADA, being so closely identified with the fair?

Lots of people think we are a fair company. We’re not. We don’t have that kind of budget.

You, of course, started as the director of the fair, and then moved up to being the director of the entire Nada organization.

Yes. When the founders, the original board, stepped down, in 2005, the second board made me director of the entire organization.

What would you say is now the biggest misconception people have about NADA?

Nobody seems to know that we are a non-profit. We don’t put a big sign up on the door of the fair announcing it. People may not even think about it. We don’t charge admission to the fair. So we don’t have someone standing there waiting for you to hand them money. That sets a certain tone when you go to our fair. You can just go in. It’s a subtle, nice thing about NADA that people don’t really recognize.

NADA was formed in 2002, on the cusp of the largest art market boom in history. But how did the organization react to the recession of the past couple of years?

In terms of the fair, in 2008 dealers sold barely anything. I knew the galleries wouldn’t be able to come back the following year in the same way. I’d been given to a tip to go look at a new venue, the Deauville Beach Resort, and in January 2009 I stayed at the that hotel, and then met with my board and told them that moving the fair to this new venue would allow us to cut the budget, which would allow us to cut costs for the galleries. So we did that. I’d asked the owner of our previous venue, the Ice Palace, to reduce the rent, but he refused.

I imagine Miami got very used to big annual payoffs from the art crowd.

People in Miami just saw a lot of galleries coming down and collectors coming down and spending money. They thought there would never be an end to all that money. I tried saying that galleries are really struggling, and that some of them are very young.

Based on conversations with your members, where do you think the market is now?

I haven’t spent a lot of time asking specific questions about that. We do surveys to find out what our members want, and what they can afford. The feeling I’m getting right now is that people are doing okay, but that things are just slow. I thought we would see galleries dropping off left and right, and it hasn’t been like that. I think people are figuring out how to stay alive in creative ways. If they are starting up now, they are doing it in small spaces with no staff. And people are traveling less. And doing fewer fairs.

One of NADA’s main tenets has always interested me: "We believe that the adversarial approach to exhibiting and selling art has run its course." I’ve always been somewhat skeptical of this because I think art dealers are competitive by nature.

Where it really pays off is when we can get a bunch of people into a room — whether it’s a party or a workshop on insurance. We do an event where we get a lawyer in a room, and get beer, and members can come and ask any questions they want. These are all people who may be competing against each other, but they have the same questions and same problems. We’ve had roundtables where members can bring up questions like, What do you do when a collector does this or that? There aren’t many environments where you can ask questions like that. It’s sometimes hard to get members to come to these things, but they are always glad they did.

Any new initiatives where membership is concerned?

Recently we have been talking about starting a new member group within Nada for collectors. Because some collectors have expressed interest in becoming members.

How would that function?

I think it would just mean you would be invited to certain events focused on dealers and collectors.

I imagine the draw for collectors would be access to emerging artists.

Or it could be younger collectors needing guidance. We do two or three Nada dinners a year, and there are always curators and collectors that members want to bring, and the rule has always been that it’s for dealers only. But I can see the interest in having these people present, for networking purposes, so why not have two dinners? One just for dealers and one that includes collectors and curators.

How likely is it you will start this group?

Very. The question has been floating around for a few years now, and the new board that started in March has been discussing it. The founder members weren’t interested at all in collector members. When the issue came up with my second board, they struggled to have it make sense. The new board seems to think, the more the merrier.

I understand there have been changes recently to how your board functions.

The board’s term used to be four years. We’ve changed it and expanded the number of people on the board and given them different term lengths. The principals — president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer — all now have terms of three years, and everybody else has a two-year term. At the end of your term you have to option to ask to stay on, and then the others vote anonymously on that, and you can redo that for up to 10 years. In the long run, this means more consistency in carrying through some of the ideas that have been brought up.

In what area have you seen the most growth in membership?

Individuals, as opposed to gallery members.

Have you ever felt you had to respond to the charge that NADA is a clique? The 'cool kids' sort of thing?

That has come up in the past, but not so much anymore. The fair has that reputation, but mainly from some people who apply year after year and don’t get in.

NADA really isn’t that exclusive, after all, as an organization.

It’s not very difficult to become a member. We’ve talked about making it more of a process, but now you just get nominated and get an invitation and fill out a form and send it back.

Has NADA discussed doing an additional fair somewhere other than Miami?

We talk about it every year. New York, London, and Basel have all come up.

Tell me more about the New York possibility. Last spring during the Armory Show, the new Independent fair, for instance, which was kind of a hybrid event with galleries and non-profits, was very well received.

We weren’t so interested in New York in the past because it didn’t seem like there was a place for us. But it now seems people may be looking for an alternative.

You respond to the needs of your members.

Yes, I think we would do a second fair where and when our members wanted it. Not that we would never be a satellite fair again, but I would like to try to do a fair in a situation where we were the only fair.

If, say, the Frieze art fair were to launch an event in New York — and there have been rumors — would you ever consider collaborating with them?

Yes, we are all about collaborating and partnering. If they said something like, "Be the Zoo Fair [a former satellite of Frieze] of New York," I would do that.

Do you think New York needs an art fair?

I remember when I first started working on an art fair, in 90s, I thought, why does New York need a fair? Isn’t art what happens here every day? But I think it does. Especially for the European galleries who come here. And for younger galleries in New York, because a lot of collectors aren’t aware of them.

How do you see NADA developing in the coming years?

I would like to see membership grow worldwide. I would like to see us try a fair somewhere by ourselves, even if it doesn’t go well and we only do it once. I would like to see us try ideas that have been floating around, and what will make those ideas possible is money. We don’t have a major fundraiser or a board that gives us big pots of cash. So that’s been my challenge recently: figuring out how to generate funds for expansion.