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# Let Us Now Praise Famous Shills: Art Basel Preview Edition
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/let-us-now-praise-famous-shills-art-basel-preview-edition/
- Published: 2013-11-07T18:03:14.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:34:20.000Z
- Description: If you aren't already quaking with anticipation for the latest installment of Art Basel Miami Beach, you obviously don't matter.
- Author: Mostafa Heddaya
- Tags: Opinion, American Visionary Art Museum, Art Basel Miami Beach, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:59 (2012, 2013, part 2)

![art-basel-miami-frame-640](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/11/art-basel-miami-frame-640.jpg)

If you aren’t already quaking with anticipation for the latest installment of **Art Basel Miami Beach**, you obviously don’t matter. The best-kept secret of the global collector class is that nobody quite throws a party like [**MCH Group**](http://www.mch-group.com/en-US.aspx?ref=hyperallergic.com), the Swiss-domiciled “Global Live Marketing” conglomerate that owns the **Art Basel** franchise. All the [hippest subsidiaries](http://www.mch-group.com/en-US/MCHGroup/Companies.aspx?ref=hyperallergic.com) are there: **MCH Messe Schweiz (Basel) AG**, **MCH Swiss Exhibition (Basel) Ltd.**, and **Art Basel U.S. Corp**. Not a [parvenu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parvenu?ref=hyperallergic.com) in sight!

Beyond being a geyser of **proper nouns in boldface** and providing the ultimate backdrop for non-ironic references to the “art world,” the **Basel Miami** bacchanal also hosts leading luminaries weighing in on the issues of the day. This fact was reassuringly affirmed by a press release that just landed in my inbox announcing the “daily line up of events offer\[ing\] dynamic dialogs between prominent members of the international art world.” Before my eyes glazed over in reverence, I caught the prominent billing for the fair’s “**Premiere Artist Talk**” (boldface theirs):

> This year’s **Conversations** program in Miami Beach launches on Thursday, December 5th with the Premiere Artist Talk by the American multimedia artist **Doug Aitken**, discussing his recent nomadic project ‘Station to Station’ in conversation with Artforum Editor **Michelle Kuo**.

Everyone knows that **Doug Aitken**‘s ***Station to Station*** gambit, which virtually no major art critic even bothered to review, was just a roundabout [**Levi’s**](http://us.levi.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=23491076&ref=hyperallergic.com) ad campaign. Not that today’s ***Artforum***, Chelsea’s nutshell of [infinite ad space](http://galleristny.com/2013/09/reviewing-artforums-advertisements-september-2013/?ref=hyperallergic.com), has ever met a shill it didn’t like, but the orgiastic indifference of this pairing, in this setting, is something to behold. If that isn’t art, I know not what is.

See you in **Miami**!