Highlights

Outstanding presentations by the globally leading galleries, more than 255,000 visitors and high sales recorded in all the market segments. The three shows in Basel, Miami Beach and Hong Kong ensured a successful year for Art Basel once again and consolidated its position as the leading platform for the global art market.

The show in Miami Beach in December was staged in the renovated Miami Beach Convention Center (MBCC) for the first time, with its more spacious show layout and a new design that was very well received by exhibitors and visitors alike. The similarly redesigned Grand Ballroom was able to accommodate a large-scale performance installation for the first time.

The Art Basel Cities Week also celebrated its première in Buenos Aires in September, with a week full of exhibition openings and guided tours, talks, open ateliers and parties. And the highlight: Hopscotch, an exhibition divided over three areas of the city which, at the same time, comprised a journey through squares and parks, deserted buildings and industrial premises. With its Art Basel Cities initiative, Art Basel is extending its commitment within the world of art and not only organising art fairs but also cooperating with cities in a bid to develop customised programmes and open up new opportunities for the world of art to engage with the cultural offerings in cities. Buenos Aires was the first city with which Art Basel Cities has developed a multi-year initiative.

The globally leading position of Art Basel is to be further strengthened through focusing on the existing shows, continuing the Art Basel Cities initiative and developing further initiatives to be announced at the appropriate point in time.

Art Basel

A record year for Masterpiece London: in 2018, the world’s leading cross-collecting fair was already able to break the visitor record it had set only last year. Sixteen percent more guests came to the grounds of the historic Royal Hospital Chelsea. The 160 participating galleries reported high sales once again. One of the highlights of the show: the location-specific “Five Stages of Maya Dance” installation by Marina Abramovic. Her self-portraits in alabaster, depicting different moods, were displayed in the entrance zone by Factum Arte and Lisson Gallery.

In 2018, Masterpiece London was staged as part of the MCH Group's collector event portfolio for the first time. Since 2010, Masterpiece London has presented a unique mix of antiques and jewellery, old and contemporary works of art, design, ceramics, and a great deal more, at the end of June each year. The collector’s items span a total of 6,000 years of art history. Antiques have a firm place at the show, as do 19th-century art, 18th-century mirrors and modern curiosities. In coming years, Masterpiece London is to be staged at additional international locations. It will be expanding to Hong Kong in 2019 already.

Masterpiece London

How do we want to live, work and eat in future? How can we make our everyday lives more sustainable? The Criterion Festival, which was staged for the first time in April showcased innovative solutions for consumption, design, craftsmanship and food culture. More than 8,000 visitors came to the MCH Group’s new format at Messe Zürich, ensuring a successful start for this mix of market, conference and meeting point.

Whether handmade game specialities or mass-produced shoes, intelligently designed everyday furniture or stylish smartphone cases: at the Criterion Festival, more than 140 manufacturers and dealers presented future-oriented products from the design, technology, crafts and food culture sectors. The programme also featured a further 160 items, including keynotes, workshops and panel discussions. Visitors were able to watch products being made, ask questions and actively participate. They learned how to cook delicacies from trimming waste, came to appreciate that sustainable fashion can also be chic and cool, and saw how people can live without generating waste. In short: how people can combine pleasure and design without having a guilty conscience.

Criterion

When the world’s most important medical education event is hosted by the Congress Center Basel, the entire congress infrastructure is deployed. More than 3,800 participants from 90 countries met at the Congress Center Basel at the end of August for the AMEE Conference of the Association for Medical Education in Europe.

Over a period of five days, the focus was on the latest specialist knowledge, on ideas for knowledge transfer and, naturally, on networking between the participants. The congress was accompanied by an exhibition with 83 exhibition stands and 900 posters covering an exhibition area of 8,000 square metres. The Congress Center Basel staged this major event together with Worldspan, AMEE’s communication agency.

“The CCB team couldn’t have been more helpful and efficient. The logistics and layout of both the Event Hall and CCB worked amazingly well. I wouldn’t hesitate to take another large (or small) congress to Basel and the CCB”, were the words of praise voiced by the Association’s officer responsible for the congress in describing her working relationship with the Congress Center Basel.

The Association for Medical Education in Europe is a globally operating association with members in more than 90 countries on all five continents. The organisation unites professors, lecturers, researchers, members of the government and the administration and also ambitious young academics in the medical and healthcare disciplines. The Association has been holding an annual conference in a European city since 1973.

AMEE

The first of December marked the big day: MCH Global had its debut as a reconfigured full-service agency for experience marketing on the Swiss market too. MCH Global’s offerings extend from strategy, via design, right through to implementation. In the context of the relaunch, the Rufener brand was integrated in the MCH Global brand.

“Experiences are the global currency of today, and emotions are the centrepiece of any meaningful experience”, says Kathrin Morlock, Managing Director MCH Global Switzerland. “With experience marketing we are extending live communication to cover the entire customer journey, with customers being offered not only real-time experiences but also virtual experience spaces. This applies not just to exhibitions, conferences and events but also to platforms such as roadshows, pop-up stores, in-store product launches and the like.”

All in all, some 50 colleagues work for MCH Global at the Zurich, Dubai, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Los Angeles locations.

MCH Global is the agency brand of MCH Live Marketing Solutions AG, the new name given to Expomobilia AG in November 2018. That marked the first step in the planned simplification of the company structure for the LMS companies in Switzerland. During the first half of 2019, these are to be merged into MCH Live Marketing Solutions AG, which will be present on the market with the three brands of MCH Global, Reflection Marketing and Expomobilia in future.

MCH Global

It was one of the most-photographed stands at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: “Samsung City”. The electronics manufacturer exhibited its products on a total area of 2,600 square metres, presenting smartphones, televisions and innovations for the smart home. And a highlight all of its own: the entrance to the exhibition stand, eight metres high and 32 metres wide, comprising almost 5,000 LED modules showing films and animations.

The experts at MC² (MC-squared) once again took charge of the production, assembly and project management of the Samsung stand. MC2 has been engaged on assignments for the CES for more than 20 years, showcasing brand worlds both inside and near to the show. In 2018, they worked on a total of twelve exhibition stands, occupying 8,730 square metres in all. Up to 175 employees were present on-site.

Further highlights: the Canon USA and Pioneer stands, for which MC² was in charge of design, production and assembly. Other MC² customers at CES 2018 included Sony, Acer, Coway, Otter, iDevices, OOMA, Ring, Sports Innovation Lab and Cambridge.

MC² has belonged to the MCH Group since 2017 and is a company group within the Live Marketing Solutions division. The MC² Group has its head office in Chestnut Ridge, New York, and employs more than 350 at 15 locations in the USA and Germany (Düsseldorf).

MC²

This was an exceptional building project even for the experienced project managers at Expomobilia: converting the Stücki shopping mall in Basel, which is owned by Swiss Prime Site AG, into the “Stücki Village” – an attractive and multi-faceted meeting zone with shopping and experience opportunities, restaurants, doctors’ surgeries and coworking spaces. Expomobilia was commissioned by S+B Baumanagement AG to construct the three-storey installation, the support structure and the complete façade. The cube-like, nested building, which extends over three levels, was based on a concept by architects Diener and Diener.

Expomobilia completed the project ready for occupation in just five months, including the specialist and detailed planning and the construction work. The tight schedule, the fact that the construction work was conducted inside an existing building during running operation and the small logistics area available for construction machines and materials meant that extremely precise project planning was required. All in all, Expomobilia constructed 5,209 square metres of gross floor area, mounted 370 tons of steel, 612 tons of glass banisters, 11,000 square metres of gypsum fibreboard and 2,800 square metres of façade panels. The Stücki Village project shows that Expomobilia is able to execute permanent building projects in a professional manner in addition to its familiar projects for exhibition, event and pavilion structures.

Expomobilia