Art Miami’s new owners
Partnership of Nick Korniloff, Mike Tansey and Brian Tyler have acquired the Florida fair from Summit

Art Miami director Nick Korniloff (right) and collector Marty Margulies

Art Miami director Nick Korniloff (right) and collector Marty Margulies



new york. Florida’s longest-running contemporary fair, Art Miami, has changed hands, with a new partnership taking over the event. Art Miami LLC, the new partnership consisting of veteran Art Miami fair director Nick Korniloff and media executives Mike Tansey and Brian Tyler, acquired the fair—which will celebrate its 20th edition this year from 2-6 December—from Summit Business Media for an undisclosed sum last week. “Summit’s focus is media for finance and insurance,” says Eric Smith, the vice president of Summit, which also owns Art Expo. “It wasn't in our long-term interest to grow the fair.”

“Getting full control and ownership of Art Miami from a larger company means so much,” says Mr Korniloff. “The ability to not deal with layers of management in an effort to make decisions will truly benefit our exhibitors and all the collectors and attendees who visit Art Miami.”

The sale of Art Miami marks yet another conglomerate selling off an art fair. In July 2008, the UK firm DMG World Media sold Palm Beach International Fine Art Fair and later the contemporary fair Palm Beach 3 back to David Lester, who had sold both fairs to DMG in 2001.

Mr Lester had launched Art Miami in 1991. “At the time, there were only two contemporary fairs in the US: Miami and Chicago,” says Mr Lester, who recruited such international dealers as Karsten Greve, Leslie Waddington and David Juda. Many of them are now in Art Basel Miami Beach.

Mr Lester says he sold his 100-dealer Art Miami in 1998 to Advanstar for $4.5m. “I sold it because I was concentrating my efforts on the Palm Beach fairs,” he says. Later Art Miami was picked up by the Illinois-based private equity firm Pfingsten Partners LLC. In 2006, Pfingsten sold off Pfingsten Publishing, a business-to-business media company with an art and framing division, to another private equity firm. Pfingsten then became a part of Summit Business Media, part of the Chicago-based Wind Point Partners portfolio company.

In spite of the many changes for Art Miami, director Mr Korniloff has a strong record. Last year, he pulled in 96 dealers and attracted 36,000 visitors. He plans to make technology a stronger focus and has 85,000 contacts in the fair database. “This year the art market is contracting globally but we will end up with around 85 dealers,” he says. The fair is slated for the Midtown Miami Arts District adjacent to the Design District.

Some art world insiders wonder about the future of the much smaller satellite fairs, however, with Art Basel Miami Beach increasing in square footage and the art market down.