VIENNAFAIR is Austria's biggest fair for contemporary art and focuses on the CEE (later this concept was expanded to Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe) region.
An eligibility committee – originally consisting of mainly Austrian art dealers but over the years becoming more and more international – was responsible for selecting the galleries.
By 2010 the supporting programme had been further expanded in several directions: directors of museums and institutions were invited to take part in discussions with artists like Pawel Althamer, Julien Bismuth, and Shirin Neshat.
In 2011 the artistic direction was taken over by Hedwig Saxenhuber and Georg Schöllhammer, who had already held responsibility as editors, curators and critics and are experts on Eastern and South-Eastern European art.
They extended the radius of galleries further in the direction of the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East, and special programmes on these regions were shown in specialist non-commercial sections.
In April 2012 Sergey Skaterschikov, a professional art & luxury industry investor, had acquired Viennafair [1] from Reed Exhibitions and presented a new team of artistic directors: Christina Steinbrecher and Vita Zaman.
Under artistic leadership of Steinbrecher-Pfandt and Zaman the event has grown significantly internationally not only expanding ist reach towards the East – mainly Russia and CIS – but also towards the West.
VIENNAFAIR also reached out locally by further developing art educational programs for young collectors, families, students and seniors.
A well balanced talks program with international speakers such as Kasper König, Adam Budak, Viktor Missiano, Andreiana Mihail and Aida Muhmudova, to name but a few, offered in-depth insights and understanding of today's contemporary art scene.
The service oriented approach towards the collectors, top-flight guests and partners, a higher quality in galleries and art presented resulted in an increase of sales with more than 25%, confirming VIENNAFAIR's successful positioning in the international fair calendar.