Starting Friday, Los Angeles will transform into one big art-world destination — if you can make it through the traffic. Pacific Standard Time officially opens to the public this weekend, and along with it comes the latest iteration of the Pulse art fair, which has added a franchise on the West Coast following several successful years in New York and Miami as a satellite fair of the Armory Show and Art Basel Miami Beach, respectively. This move comes just a year after Cornell DeWitt took the helm, replacing original director Helen Allen. DeWitt took a few moments away from setting up in downtown L.A. to talk to ARTINFO about the decision to move west, and the unique challenges presented by Southern California.  

What was the calculation in opening an art fair at this moment in Los Angeles?

We were looking at L.A. for quite some time. It was something that had started even before I came on as director. My predecessor, Helen Allen, had looked into the idea for a while, and the decision really involved a combination of two things. The first is that there is this tremendous growth of interest in the art scene in L.A. — both from people who are outside of L.A. wanting to come and see what's going on here, and also in terms of the growth of what's going on inside L.A. That tremendous amount of interest in L.A. is really a groundswell. It's an organic, bottom-up type of situation. As a fair, we would not really be interested in a top-down type of situation where we decided, "OK, we're just going to go in here and decide that there should be a fair here."

Then, last fall everything started to kind of fall into place with the Getty announcing the Pacific Standard Time initiative. We've always been in touch with the people at MMPI. We've always had a good relationship with them, since we do our fairs at the same time in New York as well. They decided to do their fair Art Platform Los Angeles — they went ahead pulled the trigger on that at the same time as we were starting to scope out venues and look around. And it just really seemed like it was the right time.

Pulse has historically been a satellite fair. Are you attempting to sort of strike out on your own, or do you see Pacific Standard Time as playing a similar role as the Armory Show or Art Basel Miami Beach?

I definitely think Pacific Standard Time to a great degree plays that role in terms of the timing of the launch. To be completely frank with you, if I had another year to plan this, that would have been great. But PST was really the trigger for us to launch this year and at this point in time. Like I said, really the most important thing is listening to what's going on on the ground here, the fact that people want to come to L.A. and check out the scene, and also our galleries wanting to take part in the growth of the market here, as well. Pacific Standard Time was really a key part of the timing, really the deciding factor. But the fact is, next year there is no Pacific Standard Time, so we have to come in this year and give it our all, without that attitude of, "OK, we're this satellite event," because there's nothing to be a satellite to next year. We know we can't rely on another event to keep growing and keep moving forward next year. We really have to position ourselves as strongly as conceivably possible.

What we can expect from Pulse L.A. that's different, either because of the L.A. context or just in general?

In a certain sense, we're replicating a model of what we do in New York and in Miami, and planting that mold here in L.A. We do two things: One, we try to really focus on the local art community as much as possible. We do that in New York, which is easy because it's such an enormous community and all the galleries are there. But in Miami it's something that we really make an effort to do, to really focus on the art and the art community. Frankly, it takes quite a bit of effort to do so, but I think it really pays off. And so we're doing a similar type of thing [in L.A.]. The main model we use for doing that is our Pulse Projects — all of our special projects — which is essentially everything outside of the booths. Once we bring the galleries in, they can pretty much do whatever they want and focus on whatever artist they feel like would be most successful in this area. But for the special projects, that's where we really focus on artists that are part of the local community — and that's really a key part of our vision.

The second part is that Pulse has gotten to a point where we have a very strong core group of very dedicated galleries that we work with in New York and Miami, who are now coming to L.A. And a lot of these are international galleries. We have galleries from Japan, from Europe, and from all over the United States. One thing we excel at is sharing this large international community of galleries with the local market and making the fair feel more integrated in the local community.

Are they any specific challenges to staging an event in L.A.?

There are challenges to staging an event anywhere and everywhere — each city has its own unique challenges. I think the first thing that anyone would say about L.A. — be it for an art event or a film event or anything else — is that the size of the city and the traffic are challenges. That's why we ended up here in downtown, because it was the closest we could get to a centralized location. It's relatively easy to get here from Hollywood, the communities in the hills, and it's not so bad from the beach. Art Platform is just a few blocks away. MOCA — which is having a big event Friday night — is just a few blocks away. There are lots of amenities and hotels, so it's the closest we could come to a convenient location in Los Angeles.

Then there is the challenge of doing a new fair or a new event of any sort — just getting to know the venue and getting to know the providers (the various groups that we have to work with for power and walls and everything like that). Some of these people we work with consistently in all three markets now, so that helps a lot. But getting to know the venue itself is always going to be a challenge. In each city, everybody has a different way of operating. Doing business in Miami is very different from doing business in New York is very different from doing business in L.A. But it's fun! It's all part of the challenge.

Who is the most excited about this, the galleries? The collectors?

Well, interestingly, galleries have been generally the most skeptical. People say that they are the most jaded, if you will, in general about the L.A. market, and specifically about L.A. fairs. For years there have been really good fairs in L.A., but they've all struggled to reach beyond being just a local event. In any gallery in L.A., the first thing that they'll tell you is you can't support a gallery solely on the local L.A. market, much less an entire fair. But at the same time, they understand that there's a real importance to having a fair — a major international fair in the community — to lend a certain amount of shine to the market and to the art community in the area. So people generally, we've found, are enthusiastic. They are pretty much won over to it, and are at least willing to have the faith to give it a try. We've been really pleased with the response.

What is the collector base like, in terms of people you are hoping to attract to this L.A. fair?

Any gallery will tell you that its impossible to support a gallery just on the local collector base. There are some phenomenal collectors in L.A. to be sure, and a lot of passionate people who have been driving this interest in the L.A. community. But we've known since the beginning that for the fair to succeed at the level that we need it to be at we really had to reach beyond the local collector base. With us and MMPI coming in — we both have enormous international reach from doing fairs in Miami and New York. We have mailing lists, relationships, a VIP list, and we've found that this outreach has been very successful. Quite of few of the hotels in downtown L.A. are sold out. We've got a tremendous amount of response from people out of town coming this weekend for the fairs. That's really going to be the ultimate judge of the success — if we're successful in helping L.A. to show itself to the rest of the world and getting the rest of the world to pay attention.

There was a quote from Stephen Cohen's Art L.A. fair, when they announced that they wouldn't be returning this month. Cohen stated that, "What we had hoped would be a cooperative effort acknowledging the vibrant and distinguished history of Los Angeles's rich cultural heritage, was becoming lost in a myriad of multiple art fairs that became the competing art fairs." Do you have a comment on that — on the competition of art fairs at the moment in L.A.?

I feel we were as cooperative as it was possible to be. He says he's going to do his fair again in January and I wish him the best of luck. That's all I can really say about that.

You recently became the director of Pulse. Do you have any other plans? What's the direction you want to take the franchise?

Having launched a whole new fair and essentially grown the size of the fair by 50 percent within a matter of months, I think that's about enough for me right now. [laughs] Beyond that, I think the fair is a phenomenally strong brand, we have incredible loyalty from our exhibitors and our visitors. I'm not here to fix something that isn't broken. The focus has really been on launching this new fair, which has been a fantastic challenge, a lot of fun, a lot of hard work. Beyond that, a lot of new changes are going to be more evolutionary then revolutionary. There will be subtle changes here and there along the way. I would say that really, beyond launching Pulse Los Angeles, there was a concurrent decision to really shift the Pulse Projects focus to the local communities in New York, Miami, and L.A. Those are the two primary initiatives, and the rest are fairly subtle. Like I said, I'm not looking to fix what's not broken.