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The hundreds of gallery owners who apply each year to secure a coveted booth at Art Basel, the Swiss art fair, spend weeks on their admission applications. They describe the evolution of their galleries, track the history of their exhibitions and list the biographies of their artists. Then there is the matter of the “mock booths,” intricate sketches, miniature models, even virtual tours, of their planned exhibition spaces, complete with tiny reproductions of the exact works they hope to exhibit.
每一年，几百家画廊主人都要递交申请，确保自己在瑞士巴塞尔艺术展(Art Basel)上拥有令人觊觎的一席之地。他们往往要花费几个星期准备申请资料，要描述画廊的进步，追溯画廊的参展历史，列出旗下艺术家的小传。之后还有“模拟展位”这件事：制作复杂的草图和微缩模型，甚至还有虚拟游览演示，以展现展览的预设空间，这些空间里放有与参展计划一致的微小的展品复制品。
All to impress the fair’s selection jury, six fellow dealers who have become among the most powerful gatekeepers — and tastemakers — in the art world.
这一切都是为了打动博览会的评审团，评审团由六位艺术品交易商组成，他们是艺术界最有权势的把关者与品位评判者。
“It is like the Olympics,” said the New York dealer Fergus McCaffrey, “or the European Champions League, and every good gallery and their artists wants desperately to compete.”
“就像奥林匹克运动会，”纽约交易商弗格斯·麦卡弗雷(Fergus McCaffrey)说，“也有点像欧冠，所有好的画廊和画廊旗下的艺术家都拼命地想参加竞争。”
As the art market explodes in value and collecting becomes a global treasure hunt, the importance of showing at art fairs has soared, too. Fairs now account for about 40 percent of gallery sales by value, and as collectors flock to destination bazaars in places like Paris, London, New York, Miami and Maastricht in the Netherlands, dealers, museum curators and art-world groupies follow.
随着艺术市场的价值迅速爆炸，收藏成了全球的寻宝活动，在艺术展会中展示自己的重要性也随之上升。如今，艺术展览会上的销售额约占画廊销售额的40%，收藏家们集中在巴黎、伦敦、纽约、迈阿密和荷兰的马斯特里赫特(Maastricht)这些地方的大市场；交易商、策展人和艺术界的“骨肉皮”们亦随之而来。
And perhaps no fair, dealers say, is harder to get into than Basel, where for the privilege of paying $50,000 to $80,000, galleries get to sell to the highest of high-end collectors, build relationships and burnish their reputations by sharing space with the best dealers in the world.
交易商们说，最难打入的展会或许还要算是巴塞尔，参展需付5万至8万美元，在这里，画廊可以把作品推销给最高级的收藏家， 参展人可以和世界上顶尖的交易商共处一室，建立业内关系，提升自身口碑。
“It is like getting admitted to a club,” said Jeffrey Deitch, a private art dealer and former museum director and gallerist who waited seven years before the doors opened to him in 2006.
“就像获得了俱乐部的准入资格，”私人艺术交易商、前博物馆馆长和画廊经营者杰弗里·戴特什(Jeffrey Deitch)说，他等待了七年，终于在2006年得到了进入巴塞尔的机会。
At first glance, the chances of being selected for the fair, which begins on Tuesday, don’t seem so slim, with about 900 galleries from around the world vying for the nearly 300 booths. But a look at the last seven years of the Basel lineup reveals a reality of much longer odds for newcomers, as a roster of veteran galleries end up dominating the fair year after year.
展览今年的准入评选程序将于周二开始，全球900个画廊竞争大约300个展位，乍看上去机会并不是那么小。但是看看近七年来巴塞尔的参展阵容就会发现，对于新来者，机会确实很小，年复一年，都是同样一批资深画廊在主宰着展会。
The result for Basel aspirants can be a regimen of yearly disappointment, even for well-established names.
巴塞尔的候补者们可能每年都要经历例行的失望，就算那些已经很有名气的人也是如此。
Anke Kempkes, a respected Manhattan dealer, has applied unsuccessfully at least five times. Dorsey Waxter, who is president of the Art Dealers Association of America and helps organize the popular New York Art Show, has failed for years to get in.
恩克·坎普克斯(Anke Kempkes)是一位颇受尊敬的曼哈顿交易商，他已经连续五次申请失败了。多尔塞·瓦科斯塔(Dorsey Waxter)是美国艺术交易商协会(Art Dealers Association)主席，帮助组织很受欢迎的纽约艺术展，她也失败了好几年。
“I have been with the in-crowd at the Art Show but I am not in Basel,” Ms. Waxter said.
“我已经打入艺术展的时髦小圈子，但还是没法进入巴塞尔，”瓦科斯塔女士说。
A Little Fair Grows Bigger
从小展览起家
It wasn’t always this way. When Art Basel began 45 years ago in a staid Swiss town best known for banking regulations, it was primarily a fair for European galleries hoping to sell Modern and contemporary art to the growing ranks of mainly European collectors.
一开始并不是这样的。45年前，巴塞尔艺术展在这座一本正经、以银行业而闻名的瑞士小镇上开幕，基本上只是一个欧洲画廊的集会，让画廊能把手头的现当代艺术品出售给日益增加的收藏家们。这些收藏家主要来自欧洲。
Galleries were usually invited back year after year. But a jury system, introduced later in the 1970s to screen applicants, gradually became more rigorous as Basel leveraged its Swiss efficiency, convenient location and five-star service to attract and cultivate an ever wealthier and more demanding clientele.
年复一年，通常是艺术展邀请画廊。但到了70年代，筛选参展画廊的程序中突然引入了评审团制度。筛选标准愈来愈严格，巴塞尔也开始利用瑞士高效、便利的区位条件和五星级服务吸引和培育更加富有、需求更大的大客户。
Today, V.I.P. collectors are lavished with Champagne breakfasts, lectures, tours, BMW car service, and most important, early access to the fair so they can buy the best art first.
如今，贵宾收藏家们在巴塞尔一掷千金，享受香槟早餐、演讲、旅行、宝马车服务，不过更重要的是可以提早参与艺术展，抢先买下最好的藏品。
These days Basel draws about 92,000 visitors to its six days of connoisseurship, selling and schmoozing. Many attendees are just window shoppers paying $50 for a day pass to watch the world’s richest people buy the planet’s most expensive art, like the person who paid around $34 million last year to walk away with a Warhol “fright wig” self-portrait (sold by Skarstedt, of New York and London). Axa, an insurance company that is one of the fair’s sponsors, estimates that more than $3 billion worth of art will be put up for sale at the fair this year.
如今，为期六天的巴塞尔艺术展上充满了赏鉴、交易与闲谈，能吸引到9.2万名参观者。许多参观者都只是花50美元买一天的票，只看不买，看着世界上最富有的人如何买下这个星球上最昂贵的艺术品，比如去年某人如何花费约3400万美元买下沃霍尔(Warhol)有着“可怕的假发”的自画像（这幅画由纽约和伦敦画廊Skarstedt出售）。阿克萨保险公司(Axa)是艺术展的赞助商之一，它估计今年艺术展上出售的艺术品价值在30亿美元左右。
As Art Basel’s influence has grown, so too has the power of its jurors, each of whom typically serves for five to 10 years.
随着巴塞尔艺术展影响力的增长，评委们的权力也在增加，他们每人的任期一般是五到十年。
“I imagine,” said Amy Cappellazzo, an art adviser, with perhaps a touch of understatement, “being a member of this committee would make you popular among your peer group.”
“我猜想，”艺术顾问艾米·卡佩拉佐(Amy Cappellazzo)用轻描淡写的语气说，“当上这个委员会的成员会让你在朋友们当中更受欢迎一点儿。”
Marc Spiegler, the director of Art Basel, a Swiss company that also runs art fairs in Miami and Hong Kong, said he chooses the committee for Basel with an eye to balancing geography and taste, seeking experienced jurors of such standing that other dealers will accept being judged by them. Because five of the six votes are needed to readmit an existing gallery and four of six to put a new gallery into contention for the remaining slots, he said there was no way for a single juror to torpedo a gallery’s chances.
巴塞尔艺术展是一家瑞士公司，同时还运营迈阿密和香港的艺术展，公司总监马克·斯皮格勒(Marc Spiegler)说，他在选择巴塞尔艺术展的评审委员会时要平衡地域与品位，要寻找有经验、有地位的评委，好让其他交易商可以心悦诚服地接受他们的评判。如果一个已经参展的画廊希望继续留在今年的展会中，需要六名评委中有五名给它投票；四名评委投票才能令一个新画廊成为空缺席位的候选者，然后再由评委进行讨论，斯皮格勒说，单凭某一个评委是无法破坏某个画廊的机会的。
The jurors, who separately operate German, Swiss, Italian and American galleries, begin their work about 11 months before the fair. In a series of gatherings, they and their advisers discuss their selections, vote, consider appeals and ponder larger questions: Should they include contemporary Chinese artists? Yes. Art by artists coming of age in the digital era? Definitely.
评委们在德国、瑞士、意大利与美国各自运营着画廊，在展会开展前11个月便开始了评审工作，他们会和顾问讨论自己的选择、投票，要考虑画廊的吸引力，还有更宏大的问题：他们应该把当代中国艺术家吸收进来吗？应该。电脑时代成长起来的年轻艺术家们的作品呢？当然也应该。
Once the fair starts, jurors arrive each morning at 8 to make sure that galleries that have sold items the day before do not replace the empty spaces on their walls with inferior art. If they have, dealers could be shown the door.
展会一开始，评委们就会每天早晨八点赶到会场，检查那些在前一天售出作品的画廊是否会在空出来的地方放上质量低劣的作品。画廊这样做会被赶出会场。
For their efforts, jurors are paid a small honorarium and expenses, and they routinely have their ears chewed by eager supplicants.
评委们可以得到一小笔礼金和报酬，平日里，急切的申请者总会在他们耳边喋喋不休。
“Someone is trying to kiss you somewhere — metaphorically speaking,” a former juror, Claes Nordenhake, said of the lobbying. “And you know that the reason is not because they love or respect you but because they want to come close to the fair.”
“总有人想拍你的……马屁，”前评委克拉斯·诺登海克(Claes Nordenhake)谈起这些游说行为。“你知道，这不是因为他们爱你、尊敬你，是因为他们想接近展会。”
The process has its critics.
评审过程受到一些批评。
Gerd Harry Lybke, director of a German gallery, Eigen +Art, a frequent Basel exhibitor who was denied admission in 2011 but readmitted the next year and now regularly shows, said the selection panel should consist of museum directors and curators rather than rival dealers.
德国画廊Eigen +Art的总监戈尔德·哈里·里布克(Gerd Harry Lybke)是巴塞尔的常客，2011年，他拒绝参展，但翌年又重新参展，现在也一直参展，他说评委会应该由博物馆总监和策展人组成，而不是有竞争关系的交易商们。
“If it were a car fair, would the judges be other car companies?” he said.
“如果开一个汽车博览会，评委难道会是来自其他汽车公司的人吗？”他说。
Dealers have sued (unsuccessfully), and in the late 1990s the Swiss authorities, reacting to the fair’s market power, reviewed whether the fair violated the country’s antitrust provisions. No violations were found, but the authorities convinced the fair to create an appeals process for rejected galleries. (About 50 galleries a year appeal; about five eventually get in, after the fair asks them to up their games.)
交易商们曾经诉讼过展会（未成功），90年代末，瑞士官方意识到展会的市场力量，调查该展会是否违背了本国的反垄断法。最后没有发现任何违法现象，但官方说服展会为被拒绝的画廊开设上诉程序（每年有50个画廊上诉；最终会有五个画廊在艺术展要求他们升级展品后，得以进入展会）。
“We bend over backwards to be fair,” said Lucy Mitchell-Innes, a juror, who formerly ran Sotheby’s contemporary art department and co-owns the New York gallery Mitchell-Innes & Nash.
“我们想尽量做到公平，”评委露西·米歇尔-英尼斯(Lucy Mitchell-Innes)说，此前她曾负责苏富比的当代艺术部门，并与他人联合拥有纽约的米歇尔-英尼斯与纳什画廊(Mitchell-Innes & Nash)。
The committee looks for galleries that, among other things, are cutting edge, reflect geographic diversity in the art market and can demonstrate they have developed an artist’s career.
在众多条件当中，评委会最希望参展画廊拥有自己的特色，能反映出艺术市场的地域多样性，并展示出他们对艺术家发展自己事业生涯的帮助。
“They have to evolve,” Mr. Spiegler said of the galleries.
“他们必须不断进步，”斯皮格勒说。
He said he travels the world encouraging emerging galleries to apply.
他说自己周游世界，鼓励新崛起的画廊申请参展。
“There is no tenure at Art Basel,” Mr. Spiegler said. “There is no seniority.”
“巴塞尔艺术展不搞终身制，”他说，“我们也不搞排资论辈。”
But that depends on how you define tenure and seniority.
但这取决于你对“终身制”和“排资论辈”的定义。
Try, Try, Try Again
屡败屡战
Most galleries admitted for the first time, or after at least one year’s absence, end up in second-tier locations at the fair, according to six years of fair data. And most are not invited back the next year. More established dealers — the Gagosians, Paces and Zwirners, who derive power from their superstar clients and artists — dominate the inner aisles of the ground and second floors of the main hall, considered by many the most sought-after real estate in the art fair world.
根据六年来的艺术展数据，大多数第一次被允许进入艺术展的画廊，或者中间缺席了至少一年的画廊，最后在展会上都只能得到二线位置。他们当中的大多数翌年就不会再获得邀请了。而像加戈西安(Gagosian)、佩斯(Pace)与兹沃纳(Zwirner)这样的常客交易商则会沾旗下的超级明星客户与艺术家的光，占据主会场一层与二层的内侧画廊，很多人都觉得这是艺术界最受人觊觎的位置。
On the ground floor, home to more than 100 galleries, typically about 90 percent were in the fair the prior year.
在一层，有100多家画廊参展，一般而言，其中90%都是去年来过的。
Mr. Spiegler said the fair had reconfigured the ground floor layout this year to place booths exhibiting similar art next to one another, a decision that meant lots of galleries had to switch places. And the lineup of roughly 220 dealers in the fair’s main section, known as the Galleries sector, will feature a host of faces not present five years ago, he said.
斯皮格勒说，艺术展今年重新布置了一层的格局，把展出较小型艺术的摊位放在一起，这样不少画廊就得互换位置。他说，这一次，参加艺术展主单元（名为“画廊单元”）的大约220名交易商中，有不少人都是五年前还没有出现的。
“We feel that a turnover of 60 galleries in five years in the Galleries sector is a reflection of the development and changes within the art market,” he said.
“五年来，在画廊单元中，有60家画廊被替换掉，这种流动性反映出艺术市场的发展与变化，”他说。
Newcomers do break into the elite ranks and stick around, sometimes replacing veteran galleries. Consider Mr. McCaffrey, the New York dealer, who first applied for the 2011 fair, was admitted in 2012 and has returned every year since. He described his selection as “one of the most memorable moments of my life.”
有些新来者的确打破了精英阶层，并坚持下来，有些画廊取代了老画廊。纽约交易商麦卡弗雷2011年第一次申请参展，2012年被允许参展，之后每一年都能来参加展会。他形容自己的入选是“这一生最值得纪念的时刻之一。”
Commercially, it makes sense to favor galleries whose status and drawing power is part of the fair’s appeal. “These galleries make the whole fair stronger to the benefit of everyone,” said Sam Keller, Mr. Spiegler’s predecessor in directing the fair. “You think twice before you kick any of them out.”
从商业角度而言，支持那些有地位、有权势的画廊也是展会的诉求之一。“这些画廊让整个艺术展更有实力，这对所有人都有好处，”在斯皮格勒之前的巴塞尔总监山姆·凯勒(Sam Keller)说，“让任何人出局都得经过深思熟虑。”
And the veterans do not approach the fair lightly. A representative for the Manhattan gallery David Zwirner said that it saves its best material for Basel. A glossy catalog of Zwirner artists goes out to 1,500 buyers on the eve of the fair.
那些资深画廊也不敢慢待巴塞尔。曼哈顿画廊“大卫·兹沃纳”(David Zwirner)的一位代表说，画廊把最好的东西留给巴塞尔。在展会前夕，一份印刷精美的兹沃纳艺术家名录被分发给1500名买家。
Smaller galleries keep trying for Basel, and its alluring imprimatur. “It confers legitimacy,” said Cristin Tierney, a New York gallerist who failed to win entry this year but still plans to visit Basel.
小一些的画廊仍在努力申请巴塞尔的参展资格，希望得到这份诱人的认可。“它授予你一种资格，”纽约画廊经营者克里斯汀·蒂尔内(Cristin Tierney)说，他今年没能获得入场资格，但仍打算去巴塞尔看看。
Mr. Spiegler says the fair’s power sits heavily with those who make the decisions. “We know it is an existential issue for some galleries,” he said.
斯皮格勒说，展会的权力大量集中在那些做决定的人们手上。“我们知道，对于某些画廊，这是生死攸关的大事，”他说。
Ms. Waxter, who was rejected again this year, said she had no hard feelings. “That is what happens,” she said. “That’s life.”
瓦科斯塔今年也再次遭到了拒绝，她说自己不觉得难过。“就是这样，”她说，“这就是生活。”
