16 Booths That Prove Art Basel 2026 Is Firing on All Cylinders

From museum-quality historical presentations to forward-looking contemporary statements, Art Basel 2026 saw galleries transform the fair booth into a site of scholarship, discovery, and conversation. Across the halls, the strongest exhibitions did more than assemble significant works—they articulated distinct points of view through art history, cultural memory, material innovation, figuration, ecology, and architecture. The following selections stood out for the rigor of their ideas as much as for the quality and conviction of the art on view.

White Cube

Art as Social Catalyst

White Cube brought together artists whose practices demonstrate how contemporary art can foster dialogue, reflection, and shared experience. Featuring works by Michael Armitage, Antony Gormley, Howardena Pindell, Richard Hunt, Gabriel Orozco, Georg Baselitz, and Isamu Noguchi, among others, the booth is united by a shared engagement with memory, identity, material transformation, and cultural history. A particular highlight is Michael Armitage’s Campus Divas (2014), which weaves together personal narrative, contemporary culture, and East African traditions, while works by Hunt, Pindell, and Gormley underscore the gallery’s commitment to artists who have expanded the language of contemporary sculpture and painting. As Julia Baumhoff Zaouk, Director of White Cube, notes, the presentation centers on artists who create “spaces of gathering, exchange, and reflection for communities,” demonstrating how art can catalyze conversation and cultural engagement. Balancing historical significance with contemporary urgency, the booth reveals the enduring power of art to connect individual experience with broader social and cultural narratives.

What We Love: Artists whose work invites reflection, dialogue, and meaningful engagement with the world around us.

Société

The Future in Motion

Société offered one of the fair’s most forward-looking surveys of contemporary practice, spotlighting artists whose work was undergoing significant formal and conceptual expansion. Spanning painting, sculpture, video, and digital media, the presentation resisted a singular thematic framework in favor of a more nuanced proposition: a portrait of artistic evolution in real time. Works by Lu Yang, Timur Si-Qin, Bunny Rogers, Kaspar Müller, Conny Maier, Trisha Baga, Petra Cortright, and others demonstrated practices that continued to evolve across questions of technology, perception, ecology, consciousness, and image-making. 

“What made the booth special was the convergence of several important trajectories at once.”

As Marius Wilms, Director of Société, explained, “What made the booth special was the convergence of several important trajectories at once.” Pointing to Timur Si-Qin’s largest sculpture to date, new bodies of work by Bunny Rogers and Kaspar Müller, and forthcoming institutional exhibitions for Conny Maier, Wilms noted that the presentation became “less a survey of a program than a snapshot of artists at a genuine moment of transformation.” 

What We Love: Société focused on artistic trajectories in motion—revealing practices that were actively shaping the future of contemporary art.

Vadehra Art Gallery

An Artist Emerges

Vadehra Art Gallery presented “Of Cities and Tongas,” a focused solo exhibition of early paintings, drawings, and collages by the celebrated Indian artist and scholar Gulammohammed Sheikh. Comprised of works from 1961–62, the booth offered a rare glimpse into a formative chapter of Sheikh’s six-decade career, before the layered historical narratives and cultural palimpsests for which he is widely known. Created following his move to Baroda and prior to his studies at the Royal College of Art in London, these works reveal an artist experimenting with cityscapes, horse-drawn carriages, shifting perspectives, and evolving notions of identity. As Roshini Vadehra, Director of Vadehra Art Gallery, noted, “this body of vintage works from 1961–62 by Gulammohammed Sheikh is being presented for the first time as a solo project,” adding that the works “offer new insights even to long-time followers of the artist” and capture Sheikh “at a formative moment, just prior to his first direct encounters with European Masters.”

What We Love: A museum-quality booth that revealed the foundations of Sheikh’s visual language, offering a rare glimpse into the emergence of one of India’s most influential post-modern artists.

OMR

Now What Next

OMR presented works by Pia Camil, José Dávila, Julian Charrière, Claudia Comte, Gabriel Rico, SUPERFLEX, and Troika in a cross-generational exhibition exploring perception, ecology, memory, and transformation through a distinctive architectural approach. Occupying one of Art Basel’s multi-level spaces, the gallery replaced conventional walls with translucent linen curtains, creating an environment defined by openness, movement, and encounter. 

“If we are collectively not asking ourselves what happens now, what’s next, what now, then we’re generally failing as a society.” 

As Cristóbal Riestra, owner of OMR, explained, the presentation represents “a synthesis of what we’ve been doing” after 26 consecutive years at Art Basel. Rather than concealing the architecture, Riestra sought to reveal it, transforming the booth into “an extension of hospitality” where visitors are invited to gather, pause, and engage with the works. He points to SUPERFLEX’s text work Now What? as encapsulating the spirit of the presentation: “If we are collectively not asking ourselves what happens now, what’s next, what now, then we’re generally failing as a society.” The result was a booth that felt less like a fair display than a considered reflection on the relationship between art, space, and public experience.

What We Love: OMR turned a simple but urgent question—Now What?—into a curatorial proposition, inviting visitors to reconsider how we inhabit space, encounter art, and imagine the future.

Lisson Gallery

Memory Myth Material

Lisson Gallery anchored its presentation in ideas of memory, transformation, and cultural continuity, bringing together artists whose practices bridge history, mythology, spirituality, and material experimentation. Timed to coincide with major institutional projects across Venice and beyond, the booth featured works by Dana Awartani, Wael Shawky, Anish Kapoor, Olga de Amaral, Ding Yi, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Huguette Caland, and Dalton Paula, among others. Rather than foregrounding a single medium or movement, the booth unfolded through a series of interconnected narratives, from Awartani’s reflections on architectural heritage and preservation to Shawky’s reimagining of ancient mythologies and Sugimoto’s meditations on time and cultural memory. Historical works by Carmen Herrera and Hélio Oiticica further deepened the presentation, while new works by Yu Hong and Ding Yi pointed toward contemporary questions of identity, cosmology, and knowledge. Rich in symbolism and intellectual depth, the booth rewarded sustained viewing, revealing how artists across generations continue to engage with the enduring relationship between past and present.

What We Love: A richly layered dialogue between mythology, memory, spirituality, and material experimentation.

Victoria Miro

The Power of Figuration

Victoria Miro proposed a refined exploration of figuration, gathering artists who approach the human form as a site of memory, imagination, identity, and transformation. Spanning generations and cultural perspectives, the booth included works by Milton Avery, Hernan Bas, María Berrío, Chantal Joffe, Isaac Julien, Wangechi Mutu, Chris Ofili, Paula Rego, Flora Yukhnovich, Barbara Walker, Khalif Tahir Thompson, and Emil Sands, among others. A major highlight was a new painting by Ofili, one of two related works debuting simultaneously at Art Basel, while Avery’s luminous Fishing Bird (1962) provided a powerful historical anchor. Elsewhere, new works by Joffe, Celia Paul, Thompson, and Sands demonstrated the continued reinvention of figurative painting, while Mutu, Julien, and Berrío expanded its possibilities through sculpture, photography, and richly layered narrative. 

As Glenn Scott Wright, President of Victoria Miro, noted, the presentation was united by “a focus on figuration,” creating meaningful connections between artists from different generations and backgrounds. The result is a booth that feels both intimate and expansive, revealing the enduring relevance of the figure as a means of understanding ourselves and the world around us.

What We Love: A beautifully paced booth that showed how the human figure continues to serve as one of contemporary art’s most powerful and adaptable languages.

David Zwirner

Masters Meet the Moment

David Zwirner transformed the fair stand into a sweeping survey of contemporary and postwar art, pairing new works by Amy Sillman, Dana Schutz, Chris Ofili, Victor Man, Neo Rauch, Sasha Gordon, and Liu Ye with landmark works by Ruth Asawa, On Kawara, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Gerhard Richter, Mark Rothko, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Rather than advancing a singular curatorial narrative, the presentation embraced the breadth of the gallery’s program, creating unexpected conversations across generations, geographies, and artistic movements. Highlights ranged from Sillman’s densely layered new painting Blue Siren (2026) and Victor Man’s meditations on rebirth and transformation to a rare 1950s looped-wire sculpture by Asawa and an early 1966 Date Painting by Kawara. Anchored by major historical figures while championing some of the most compelling voices working today, the booth demonstrated the gallery’s remarkable ability to move seamlessly between art history and the contemporary moment.

Associate Partner and Head of David Zwirner London, James Green said, “We have sold more than 70 works by over 40 artists at Art Basel so far. Highlight sales include several significant 20th-century secondary market works, the placement of our Isa Genzken presentation at Basel Unlimited with a major European museum, and a number of new works by younger contemporary artists on our roster, including Walter Price and Yu Nishimura.”

What We Love: An ambitious survey that balanced blue-chip masterpieces with compelling new works while maintaining exceptional quality throughout.

MASSIMODECARLO

A Singular Vision

MASSIMODECARLO brought together established masters and emerging voices from Europe, Asia, and the United States, while placing a particular focus on the singular practice of Pietro Roccasalva. Works by Carla Accardi, Alighiero Boetti, Maurizio Cattelan, McArthur Binion, Elmgreen & Dragset, Carsten Höller, Jordan Casteel, Jennifer Guidi, Paola Pivi, Yan Pei-Ming, and others reflected the breadth of the gallery’s program. Yet the booth was anchored by a concentrated selection of Roccasalva’s works, which drew upon literature, philosophy, cinema, religion, and art history to construct a highly personal visual language. 

As Massimo De Carlo, Founder of MASSIMODECARLO, explained, “We’ve been coming to Basel for more than twenty years, and we always come with the artists who represent us. This year, the booth spans generations and geographies—established masters and younger voices, American, European, Asian. But the heart of it is Pietro Roccasalva, whose visual grammar is built from decades of art history, literature, and cinema.” That focus gave the booth its unique character, transforming an international selection into a compelling statement on artistic depth and continuity.

What We Love: Amid an impressive international roster, the intellectual richness of Pietro Roccasalva’s practice provided the booth with a distinctive center of gravity.

Pace Gallery

Voices Shaping Today

Pace Gallery brought together one of the fair’s most internationally resonant constellations of artists, centering figures whose work currently shapes the cultural conversation well beyond Basel. The booth was anchored by recent works from Yto Barrada, Nigel Cooke, Torkwase Dyson, Lee Ufan, and Trevor Paglen, each of whom has a major project on view in Venice this year, offering a timely view of contemporary artistic practice across disciplines and geographies. Particularly striking were new works by Dyson, whose investigations of space, movement, and architecture continue to gain momentum internationally, alongside recent works by Lauren Quin and Anicka Yi, two artists expanding the possibilities of painting and sculpture through distinct visual languages. Rather than isolating contemporary voices, Pace placed them in dialogue with landmark works by Alexander Calder, Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, and Claes Oldenburg, revealing unexpected continuities between generations. The result was a presentation that felt both of the moment and historically grounded, demonstrating how innovation was carried forward across decades of artistic experimentation.

What We Love: A timely dialogue between Venice’s leading voices and the innovators who came before them.

Jack Shainman Gallery

Rewriting Cultural Memory

Jack Shainman Gallery assembled a powerful cross-generational presentation that traced seven decades of artistic inquiry into representation, visibility, and cultural memory. With works by Gordon Parks, Faith Ringgold, Barkley L. Hendricks, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Nick Cave, Hank Willis Thomas, Diedrick Brackens, Jesse Krimes, Charisse Pearlina Weston, and Yoan Capote, among others, the booth highlighted artists whose practices have expanded and redefined the narratives traditionally afforded space within art history. As the gallery noted, the presentation formed a multigenerational chorus of voices. Across works created over the past 70 years, these artists offer what the gallery described as “new perspectives to the times in which they lived with everlasting urgency.” Rather than presenting history as fixed, the booth revealed it as a continually evolving conversation, shaped by artists who challenge inherited narratives while creating new ways of seeing the world.

What We Love: Seven decades of artistic voices united by a shared commitment to reimagining cultural memory.

Mennour

Past Meets Present

Mennour presented one of the fair’s most compelling intersections of the primary and secondary markets, placing twentieth-century masterpieces alongside artists who had recently joined the gallery’s program. As the gallery notes, “more than half of the Mennour booth is devoted to the secondary market,” with works by influential figures including Alexander Calder, Joan Miró, Germaine Richier, Francis Picabia, Lucio Fontana, Roy Lichtenstein, and Yayoi Kusama forming a significant part of the presentation. These historical works were shown in relation to contemporary artists such as Camille Henrot, Alicja Kwade, Petrit Halilaj, Ryan Gander, Zineb Sedira, andLee Ufan, underscoring the breadth of the gallery’s roster. Particularly noteworthy was Mennour’s first presentation of works by Manoucher Yektai and Yinka Shonibare following the recent announcement of their representation. 

What We Love: Rather than separating historical and contemporary positions, the booth revealed how artistic legacies continue to inform and enrich the present.

Sean Kelly Gallery

The Art of Looking

Sean Kelly Gallery foregrounds the enduring relevance of connoisseurship in contemporary art. New works by Shahzia Sikander, Kehinde Wiley, Mariko Mori, Julian Charrière, Sam Moyer, and Janaina Tschäpe appear alongside significant works by Marcel Duchamp, Rebecca Horn, Joseph Kosuth, and Idris Khan, creating a presentation that rewards close looking and thoughtful engagement. Highlights include Sikander’s new mosaic, Charrière’s Imperfect Lovers—a meditation on the relationship between human and geological time—and Wiley’s latest portrait, which continues his exploration of visibility and power through the lens of art history. Asked to define the central idea behind the booth, Sean Kelly, Founder of Sean Kelly Gallery, offered a single word: “connoisseurship.” It is a fitting description for a presentation distinguished by the quality of its selection.

What We Love: A reminder that connoisseurship remains one of the most compelling curatorial ideas at the fair.

Hauser & Wirth

Modern Contemporary Dialogue

At Booth C10, Hauser & Wirth staged a nuanced exploration of the continuities between modern and contemporary art. Anchored by exceptional works from Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, Philip Guston, Francis Picabia, Maria Lassnig, Louise Bourgeois, and Bruce Nauman, the presentation unfolded as a concise history of artistic reinvention, where formal innovation, psychological inquiry, and material experimentation reverberated across generations. These seminal works were placed in compelling proximity to artists including Gerhard Richter, Amy Sherald, Rashid Johnson, Lorna Simpson, Henry Taylor, Jenny Holzer, Pierre Huyghe, and Nicole Eisenman, underscoring the enduring vitality of their predecessors’ concerns. As Iwan Wirth, President and Co-Founder of Hauser & Wirth, noted, the booth was “a radical focus on 20th and 21st-century masterworks,” guided by the conviction that “there is no contemporary without the modern.” The result was an offering of remarkable depth and clarity, one that treats art history not as a sequence of movements, but as an ongoing conversation.

What We Love: A living dialogue between modern and contemporary art, revealing how the most urgent artistic questions persist across time.

Levy Gorvy Dayan

The Power of Provenance

Levy Gorvy Dayan offered a curated selection of postwar and contemporary masterworks that foregrounded rarity, connoisseurship, and art-historical significance. Works by Günther Uecker, Pierre Soulages, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Sigmar Polke, Keith Haring, Yves Klein, Jean Arp, Otto Piene, andCésar reflected the gallery’s commitment to exceptional examples by some of the defining artists of the twentieth century. As Brett Gorvy, Co-Founder of Levy Gorvy Dayan, explained, “Art Basel in Switzerland is a fair that is very meaningful to the gallery,” noting that the presentation was carefully conceived around the strengths of the Basel audience and the gallery’s core European artists, particularly Uecker and Soulages. “Overall it is essential for us to focus on quality,” he added, observing that many of the fair’s most meaningful conversations centered on “historic and rare works.” At a moment when market conditions continue to evolve, the booth served as a reminder that exceptional works with strong provenance and historical importance remain among the most sought-after categories for collectors.

What We Love: Connoisseurship, rarity, and historical significance brought together through exceptional museum-caliber works.

Kukje Gallery

Memory Through Material

Kukje Gallery examined how memory, history, and cultural knowledge are transmitted through material form. Anchored by works from pioneering figures including Yoo Youngkuk, Wook-kyung Choi, and Kim Yun Shin, alongside contemporary voices such as Jenny Holzer, Kyungah Ham, Michael Joo, Jae-Eun Choi, andKorakrit Arunanondchai, the booth revealed artists who transformed abstraction, craft, language, and natural materials into carriers of historical experience. Highlights ranged from Holzer’s luminous redaction paintings and Yoo’s distilled modernist landscapes to Ham’s intricate embroideries, whose dazzling surfaces concealed complex networks of labor, censorship, and exchange. 

What We Love: The way abstraction, craft, and natural materials became vessels for memory, history, and cultural exchange.

303 Gallery

Time Value Perception

303 Gallery constructed a precisely calibrated exhibition that explored the shifting relationships between objects, systems, and perception. Works by Doug Aitken, Alicja Kwade, Mary Heilmann, Rob Pruitt, Sam Falls, Jeppe Hein, Cassi Namoda, Stephen Shore, Tala Madani, Larry Johnson, andSue Williams created moments of connection and contrast across disciplines and generations. A particular highlight was Alicja Kwade’s Heavy Heart, in which a marble sphere suggestive of the world rests inside a bronze-cast Balenciaga handbag, collapsing distinctions between value and burden, luxury and universality. Equally compelling were Rob Pruitt’s new Let’s Start This Day Again (After Ugo Rondinone) works, a grid of functioning clocks that transformed the passage of time into a visual gradient, allowing color, duration, and perception to converge.

What We Love: An intelligent exploration of time, value, and perception through unexpected encounters between objects and systems.