Visitors attending the inaugural VIP preview day of the 2026 edition of Art Basel Paris yesterday were forced to wend their way through concrete anti-ram barriers encircling the landmark Grand Palais where the event is hosted, the New York Times reports. Fair officials confirmed to visitors that they had additionally beefed up security, providing twenty-four-hour patrols.
The measures come in the wake of the forceful protests that have rocked France in recent days. Initially staged by public high school students protesting execrable conditions that prevent learning, the demonstrations quickly grew to encompass other discontented groups, including average citizens distressed over the cost of living and worsening public services.
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According to Hyperallergic, the Grand Palais was briefly placed under lockdown on October 17, while protests raged outside and galleries worked to install their booths.
“No one could get out, and no one could get in,” an anonymous representative of a New York gallery exhibiting at the fair told the platform.“There were moving trucks loading and offloading works, and at a certain point, they were told to pack up and go.”
The fair, which launched in 2022, is one of the highest-profile international art events in the world, drawing wealthy collectors from around the globe. Blue-chip galleries typically bring their costliest works to Art Basel Paris, and this year is no exception: The recently established New York powerhouse Pace DiDonna Schrader is presenting a 1917 work by Amodeo Modigliani valued at more than $100 million.
The class war brewing outside the Grand Palais may soon breach the iconic structure’s glass-and-steel walls: Documentations, a well-known French Instagram account concerned with censorship and working conditions within the country’s contemporary art scene, has issued a call for a protest to take place at the fair on Saturday, when the general public is allowed in.
“Gala dinners are no longer tolerable,” read the exhortation to demonstrate, which was sounded by several other organizations. “We can no longer keep pouring glasses of champagne while funding tanks out of the education and health-care budgets.”
Several commenters pointed out that the ultrarich buyers would already have gone home on the day set aside for the action. Another astutely pointed out another possible barrier to protest, writing, “Seen the price of a ticket.”