Displaying items by tag: Economy

Three highly attended and widely acclaimed exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art generated about $781 million in spending by regional, national and foreign tourists this spring/summer season. Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations, Tomas Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City, and The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde are to thank for the impressive chunk of change.

The Metropolitan has employed a number of audience studies in recent years to calculate the public economic impact of its special exhibition program. With a direct tax benefit of $78.1 to New York City, it appears the program is well worth its while.

In total, 339,838 visitors came to the Met to see Schiaparelli and Prada and 323,792 patrons came to see The Steins Collect, which will remain on view though November 4, 2012. At the time of the study, Tomas Saraceno on the Roof drew the largest crowd with 368,370 visitors.

As the world economy began to tank about five years ago, a curious thing happened at the top level of the international art market: It started to boom. At the annual spring art auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's in New York and their branches around the globe, deep-pocketed bidders snapped up Braques and Bacons, Klimts and Kandinskys, often at record prices.

Now with the global recession officially over but the American and European economies still shaky, auction records for blue-chip modern and contemporary art continue to be shattered. Just a few months ago, a pastel version of Edvard Munch’s "The Scream" (1895) fetched an astounding $119.9 million at Sotheby’s, by far the highest price ever paid at auction for a work of art, surpassing the winning bid of $106.5 million for Picasso's "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust" (1932) at Christie’s two years earlier. A week after the gavel fell on the Munch, Mark Rothko's "Orange, Red, Yellow" (1961) went for nearly $87 million, the artist’s personal best at auction.

Throughout the 1990s, the post-Thanksgiving stretch was a sleepy time for tourism in South Florida. Enter Art Basel Miami Beach, which brought the country’s largest contemporary arts fair to the first week of December.

“I use the term ‘Basel effect’ quite often,’’ said Rolando Aedo, senior vice president of marketing at the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau. “From a business perspective, the numbers are outstanding.”

Compared to results seen in 2002, the year of Art Basel’s debut, revenue from the average Miami-Dade hotel room grew 51 percent for the first 11 months of 2010, according to Smith Travel Research. For December, that increase surged to 79 percent.

For hotels in Miami Beach, the change is even more dramatic. During the first week of December, the average Beach hotel room rented for 141 percent more in 2010 than it did during the same time stretch in 2002, according to an analysis by the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Countless levels of hype, hyperbole and cultured fawning surround the 10th anniversary of the Basel fair. A look at the numbers can ground some of that puffery, but they mostly illustrate nine years worth of expansion for the fair itself and the circuit of events that now largely define what’s known as “Art Basel.”

Consider:

•  Art Basel Miami Beach enjoys the world’s largest satellite “scene” — that is, the roster of art shows that have popped up during the same week as the main event. In true Miami style, the Basel satellite roster roared during the boom years, peaking at 25 in 2008. Art Miami, once the leading art fair in the area, found it couldn’t compete and moved from January to Basel week and now reports strong sales.

The recession thinned out the satellite ranks, but 16 are scheduled for this year — more than orbit any of the other major art fairs around the world.

“It just kept growing. It became a global cultural happening,’’ said Craig Robins, the main developer behind Miami’s Design District and majority owner of Design Miami, the lone satellite fair partly owned by Art Basel’s parent company.

Robins argues the satellite shows aren’t as important as the circuit of parties, museum exhibitions, gallery installations and private events that attract VIPs from around the world. NetJets, a Basel sponsor that sells private-jet usage, expects about 150 flights in and out of the Miami area this weekend — more than double the 70 flights Net Jets sold in 2002.

No official numbers track the Basel social scene. But Max Sklar, Miami Beach’s tourism director, said the Basel week has shaken off its recessionary slump and regained its status as the busiest stretch in the city for high-end catered events.