African Art Club

Hi Folks,

As you probably already now I am not an official member of the Parcours des Mondes, but I have already a few years a successfull exhibition running in the Rue de Seine around the same period with quality African Art on show. This year I had a two week exhibition since the second week was the week of the “Biennalle des Antquaire’ and I was quite happy with the sales having sales not only the first week but also the second. When most tribal art dealers where already gone I still got visitors who came to see Tribal Arts in the Saint Germain area after having read about the events in the newspapers and beeing dissaponted that everybody was already gone.

Having to do make the Parcours des Mondes one day shorter due to the strike was also not so good for business, since not all customers where able to free themselve in this short period. I had many visitors and customers before and after this 4 days period .

From what I heard not everyone had the same level of success, some of the dealers selling a huge amount of pieces, and some other nearly nothing, but when you saw the relation between the requested prices and quality of them this could have been predicted .

That not every dealers made good business should not be a surprise since participating officially cost thousands of euros , and that the fees are higher every year, and this has to be reflected in the prices of your pieces. But I noticed that some dealers are asking very high prices above reasonable, which makes than there are less people able to buy them, and on the high level of quality, you have also a high level of expectation, but customers have huge choice of quality pieces when there are more than 80 dealers presenting objets at the Parcours des Mondes.

I also see that every year there are less and less visitors while the amount of participants is increasing. It is not that people are not interested in Tribal Arts since I sold many objects to private persons not really interested in African Art but in general art.

I think I can say that the general public even has a bit more attention for it, but I guess the promotion of the event is not done in a way to attract the general public, but more the insiders crowd.

Some of my friends with quality pieces and who where not members of the organisation where even menaced with police intervention, even if they sold from there little hotel room. This makes me think that there is a tendancy from some to try to “control” the market, wich happens less on similar events in the US, but shows how high the competition feels for some .

I would propose to make te event a bit longer, 4 days is to short in my eyes.

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