The upcoming edition of Art Basel Miami Beach is fast approaching. This year, which marks nearly a quarter of a century, with the fair in its 24th year, Art Basel is implementing a number of bold, innovative changes, including a more focused gallery line-up and some major revamps to the show floor plan. We caught up with Art Basel Miami Beach Director Bridget Finn, and gallery co-founders Matthew Wood and Pedro Mendes of Mendes Wood DM for a lively conversation about what prompted the changes, and what they’re all looking forward to.

Eileen Kinsella: What kind of feedback from exhibitors prompted this year’s major floor-plan changes and the decision to distribute blue chip galleries throughout the show as opposed to concentrating them in one place?

Bridget Finn: This will be my fourth show, and the third under my direction. The feedback from our exhibitors across the board, as well as our selection committee, has reinforced the value of a more focused environment. If there has been a through-line in my conversations, it is that it’s critical to build the show so that collectors can navigate the whole fair more easily and give each gallery presentation the attention it deserves. That really informed the footprint of the show and this new configuration.

Having been on the gallery side for a great many years and participating as an exhibitor so many times in different shapes and forms, I’m conscious of what goes into participating in these fairs – not only the financial commitment, but the work it takes to plan what you’re doing and to get the artists involved. It’s months of preparation, and the floor plan has a real bearing on how that work and investment translate to meaningful encounters.

EK: What are the most substantial alterations?

BF: We’ve put a lot of energy and thought into creating more even sight lines and redesigning the entrances so they create better paths for navigating the show. We have basically switched from five plazas to four with a more symmetrical configuration.

Collectors naturally arrive at galleries they are familiar with and that they want to visit, and we want the routes between those visits to introduce them to new programs, to something they hadn’t anticipated seeing. Galleries are typically not shy about telling me how they feel about change, and this is a difficult year to introduce a change like this, but I think it is absolutely necessary.

EK: From the standpoint of an exhibiting gallery, how do you feel about the changes and what are you looking forward to?

Matthew Wood: It’s funny because the new floor layout really chimes with the way that we started –that’s what keeps coming back to me. We did Miami Beach for the first time in 2011, when our gallery was one year old. It was very much an experience of being a new gallery from Brazil in the Positions sector. We were suddenly in direct conversation with galleries that had decades of history and relationships to artists; we were introduced to this larger conversation and embraced by it.

We featured Paulo Nazareth with a work called Banana Market/Art Market (2011). As a child, he would often sell fruit alongside family members and friends at the markets in Belo Horizonte. He wanted to play with the idea of the fair and the market itself. What would a Brazilian artist be bringing to a North American art fair? Bringing fruit emphasized this idea that perhaps he hadn’t got the memo and he showed up selling fruit instead of Conceptual art.

Pedro Mendes: At the same time Paulo was making a comment on Latin American countries as banana export countries, commodity exporters. It required one ton of bananas to fill the van. We didn’t have a big team at the time and we had to go from market to market in Miami buying as many as we could find – from Little Haiti to Little Havana to Little Guatemala to Little Honduras. That experience in itself was very much part of the artwork and reflected the nature of the city as a transition point between North and South.

EK: Why is Art Basel Miami Beach a standout fair for you?

PM: I think Miami is the fair that truly represents, in artworks and audience, Latin America and the diversity which exists within the region: Each country has its own history, customs, traditions. This year we’re bringing an incredible work by Rosana Paulino, Crisálida [2025-2026], the first ever bronze sculpture by the artist, created for outside the Brazil Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2026, a very emblematic work.

MW: Traditionally authority has tended to flow from the North (i.e Paris or Basel). Miami Beach occupies a very particular position in the international art world. It is a city whose cultural identity is inseparable from the movement of people, ideas, and histories between North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

EK: Bridget, what do you look to as a barometer of success for your fairs in general but especially now with these new implementations?

BF: We will measure our success by the success of the galleries. That is always our focus: the show is very sales-minded and it’s usually very dependable for many of our exhibitors. We want them to meet people they don’t already know, connect with clients they haven’t seen in some time, and for everyone to be able to find them easily. We also want to give them the opportunity to welcome back collectors looking for a shake up, that’s also important for people to feel like new connections and synergies are being formed.

EK: What are indicators of success for a gallery?

MW: We gained a lot of prominence in that first fair through the spirit of discovery. The ultimate underpinning of a fair should give importance to discovery as opposed to straightforward market efficiency. Discovery becomes its own more dynamic commercial efficiency. A fair should be measured not only by how effectively it serves existing relationships, but also by how many new ones it makes possible.

PM: There is the discovery element, of course. But there is also a real financial risk to acknowledge; meaningful and substantial transactions are essential for survival and sustainability. One of the questions and challenges for Miami, now that Basel has five fairs, is how to bring collectors to all of them. Each fair within the Basel portfolio needs to operate and cater specifically to the place and audience – segmentation is key. In Miami, people are concentrated in the fair itself – that’s something that has to be really celebrated and makes it a very exciting place with a lot of energy. I have discovered many artists myself at this fair – it has always had a strong balance between discovery and transaction.

BF: It’s important to listen to and value what galleries share with me – what their goals are, what their hopes for the fair are. We have an incredible team that takes those points to heart and we work together to try to build an environment that is geared toward everyone’s individual success.

EK: For how long, during and after the fair, are you taking stock and deciding whether or not the gallery’s participation was a success?

PM: Ten days, more or less. It can be meeting a new collector or consolidating a conversation that had already begun. Conversations and processes can be sped up at a fair – it keeps a feeling of urgency.

MW: There are obvious quantifiable aspects to it, but it’s also seeing faces you know and people returning. We tend to think of fairs in terms of continuity. The success of our relationship to Art Basel Miami Beach is down to 15-years of continuity. I know what has come explicitly out of Miami across the world, including sales to major museums and conversations that started there. The germination of these relationships can be gauged on reflection. During the week itself, I think it’s very much about ‘Hello again.’