Who Is in the Room

Karim Crippa has worked for Art Basel since 2018, most recently as head of communications for the Paris fair, and took the director’s post last November. The 2026 edition is his first. Ocula interviewed him in May; the article gives nothing on his education or earlier career.

He frames his job as continuity. He told Ocula he wants to “sharpen the contours” of the fair and to build on its “Parisian-ness”, which he describes as elegance, refinement and romanticism, with “a certain idea of exclusivity in a desirable way”, and also the diversity of the city and the resourcefulness of its creative scene. He credits French galleries for the work of making Paris attractive and describes his own view of the market as “a form of cautious optimism”.

Asked whether the invitation-only Avant-Première favors blue-chip galleries, he said it creates “a blend of people and an exchange of ideas and perspectives for our exhibitors.” On joint booths he called them “a savvy solution for galleries to participate in the fair, where space is very limited”, adding that the best ones show “more than the sum of two parts.” He said he is “not going to set myself KPIs.”

In a fuller interview on Art Basel’s own site, published September 21 and conducted by the journalist Matthieu Jacquet, Crippa adds detail on the floor. Premise grows from nine projects to 12 and moves into a Grand Palais space the fair has not used before, with its own entrance on Square Jean Perrin. The Avant-Première is held on the Tuesday afternoon before the Wednesday opening, which he presents as a calmer occasion for galleries to invite their most loyal clients, given the Grand Palais’s limited capacity. In Emergence he sees more painting and figuration than in earlier years, and more visible Queer positions.

The actress Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, known as Sylvie in Emily in Paris, is art director of Oh La La!, the fair’s two-day rehang on Friday and Saturday (October 23 and 24). Galleries swap in new or rarely seen works at their booths. The 2026 theme is “Myths and Legends”, and Ocula lists three strands: transformation and metamorphosis, beliefs and rituals, and imaginary landscapes. The press dossier names Nina Childress, Ossip Zadkine, Portia Zvavahera and Philippe Mayaux among the artists shown.

The French filmmaker Alice Diop received Miu Miu’s 2026 commission for the Public Program. It is her first exhibition, Geste de Consolation, at the Palais d’Iéna from October 21 to 25. Hypebeast reports that it builds on her 2025 short Fragments for Venus, made for Miu Miu Women Tales, and that it mixes film, photography, sculpture, poetry, dance, music and performance. Zanele Muholi, Mary Lee Bendolph, Simone Leigh, the composer Angel Bat Dawid and the jazz trio Sistazz of the Nitty-Gritty are among the contributors.

Hypebeast counts it as the third Miu Miu-backed show at the fair, after Helen Marten and the pairing of Goshka Macuga with Elvira Dyangani Ose. Guided tours are booked through Miu Miu; online registration opened October 8. Press photographs of Diop are credited to Brigitte Lacombe and Miu Miu.

The Conversations program moves this year to the Grand Palais Auditorium. The dossier calls it free and open to the public. It does not say whether the Thursday sessions, which fall during the Vernissage, need a Vernissage ticket. Thursday access unconfirmed

Mahama also has a solo show at the Fondation Cartier, and Fattal one at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (see What to See). The dossier lists the sessions without timing the stage changes, so allow for overruns.

Emergence puts one artist in each of 16 booths on the balconies of the Grand Palais Nave. Twelve of the galleries are first-time participants in the fair.

Premise moves this year into the Salon Seine, a room of about 900 square meters, and grows by three projects to 12. Six of the 12 galleries are new to the fair.

Art Basel has commissioned the critic Ingrid Luquet-Gad to map a new generation shaping the city, four years after the fair’s first Paris edition in 2022. Her argument is that Paris is becoming more international and welcoming while using its heritage as a starting point. In art she names Claire Tabouret, who is designing six stained-glass windows for Notre-Dame, and Pol Taburet, who blends Guadeloupean voodoo with Greco-Roman myth. Galleries include Petrine, Lo Brutto Stahl, Pavec and Raphaël Durazzo’s space. In music she lists Théodora, Oklou and Souleymane Saïd, who programs music at the Fondation Cartier, and in media Andrew Pasquier of BUTT and Hanadi Mostefa of ANCRÉ.

Chris Sharp founded Post-Fair in Los Angeles and runs a gallery there under his name. He lived in Paris for a decade as a writer and curator and organized the Place des Vosges fair for two years, according to The Art Newspaper. He brings Post to the Marais in October (see The Fairs).

Olivier Fau, David Rothschild and Valerio Polimeno are behind Chez Sotheby’s (see Nights).

Mary Rozell, Global Head of the UBS Art Collection, is quoted in UBS’s notes on Earthly Paradise: Nature Reimagined, the selection from the collection shown at the UBS Salon, which the dossier says is open to the public Friday to Sunday. The artists include Etel Adnan, Raqib Shaw, Nicolas Party, Julian Charrière and Marguerite Humeau.

Tracey Emin has three works on the Parvis des Droits de l’Homme, presented by White Cube, October 14 to November 1.