Art Collector Circuit

The stops run in calendar order. Dates shown are the next edition of each stop; a dashed status means the organizer has not yet confirmed.

01Who follows it

Collectors, dealers, advisers, museum trustees and curators, auction-house specialists, and the press that covers them. It is the most professional of the circuits: most of the people at a fair's preview are there to buy, sell or advise, and the calendar is set by the fairs' owners and the two big auction houses rather than by tradition. It also has the widest public following of any circuit, because the fairs sell tickets to the general public for most of their run and the Biennale is open for six months.

02Why these events connect

Because the same works, dealers and buyers move between them. A gallery that shows at TEFAF in March will be at Basel in June and Paris in October; the auction houses schedule their evening sales in New York, London and Hong Kong to sit beside the fairs; the Venice Biennale is where reputations are set that the fairs then price. Art Basel and Frieze between them own most of the stops, and their calendars are built not to collide. The result is a year with a fair or a sale somewhere roughly every three weeks, and a settled order that the trade plans its inventory around.

Numbered in stop order; the dashed line follows the sequence.

03The typical progression

BRAFA in Brussels at the end of January opens the year; TEFAF Maastricht in mid-March is the first major stop; Art Basel Hong Kong in the last week of March takes the circuit to Asia with Hong Kong's spring auctions alongside. The Venice Biennale's vernissage in early May is the year's single most important week in even years for art and odd years for architecture; Frieze New York, TEFAF New York and the New York spring auctions fill the rest of May. Art Basel in June is the center of the year. The autumn runs Frieze Seoul in early September, Frieze London and Masters in the second week of October, Art Basel Paris the week after, the London October auctions between them, then the New York fall auctions in November and Art Basel Miami Beach in the first week of December to close.

04Geography

Six cities and one town. New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong and Miami Beach host fairs and auctions; Basel hosts the fair the company is named for; Maastricht hosts the one the old-master trade cannot miss; Venice hosts the exhibition. Seoul, Brussels, Los Angeles, Madrid, Mexico City, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha and Singapore have regional fairs that feed the circuit but do not define it.

The Venice Biennale exhibition grounds, Venice

05Suggested timing

Basel in June and Miami Beach in December are the two stops that stand on their own; Frieze London and Art Basel Paris, eight days apart in October, are the natural pair, with the London auctions between them. The New York May weeks (Frieze, TEFAF, the sales) are the third block. First-choice hotels in Basel are booked by the trade a year ahead; Miami Beach by September. Preview days are by invitation; public days are ticketed and the queues on the first public morning are the longest.

06Important overlaps

Art Basel and Royal Ascot share the third week of June. Art Basel Hong Kong falls in the same days as the Dubai World Cup and Art Dubai. Frieze New York, the Met Gala and the New York spring auctions all sit inside the first three weeks of May and overlap Cannes. Frieze London coincides with the London October auctions and PAD London and comes a week after the Prix de l'Arc. Art Basel Miami Beach shares its weekend with the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and the Antigua Charter Yacht Show.

07Where people go afterward

After Basel, to the Venice Biennale for anyone who missed the opening, then to the coast. After Frieze and Paris, to New York for the November sales. After Miami Beach, to St. Barts, Aspen or the Alps for the holidays and then to Brussels and Los Angeles at the end of January, when Frieze Los Angeles and BRAFA restart the year.