Illustration: Viktor Hachmang
Art Basel Is Coming to Save Your City
The company behind the art fair claims it can replicate what it did for Miami all around the world. The first attempt? Cash-strapped Buenos Aires.
After Diego Radivoy’s first visit to Art Basel Miami Beach in 2004, he was hooked. A Buenos Aires resident, Radivoy originally traveled to the art fair as a member of a museum acquisition committee. But the art, parties, people, and culture brought him back the next year, and then the next.
Over time, Radivoy noticed a change. When he started attending, much of Miami was relatively seedy. Yet in a few years, unsafe neighborhoods such as Wynwood became “a place where everyone was walking freely and enjoying it,” he says. “The same thing happened to the whole city: It was a very powerful transformation.” To his eye, Art Basel was the catalyst for that shift. “It provided an art and culture identity to the city,” he says.