Lucie Kitchener, the CEO of stalled design fair Masterpiece London, which shows works by antique dealers and designers, stepped down from the role in December, a representative for the fair’s parent company MCH Group told ARTnews recently. The news was the latest shift for Masterpiece, which has not staged a fair since 2022; the MCH representative said that “future plans are under review” for the brand, though further details were not provided.
Masterpiece has had a rough few years. In 2023, MCH, the Swiss events company that also owns Art Basel, announced in regulatory filings that it was cancelling that year’s edition of Masterpiece and that the fair would not run again in its current form, as it had been losing money since at least 2020.
Two years before that, in 2021, MCH’s directors reported in financial filings they expected Masterpiece London to “return to profitability” after recovering from the pandemic cancellation of the 2020 fair. That did not end up happening. In subsequent reports, MCH said that Masterpiece suffered a £2.2 million profit loss in 2022 and another £2 million in 2023. MCH reported that it was operating the design fair with a £2.6 million loan from the accounts of its most lucrative fair, its annual Basel edition.
In 2022, the last year the fair ran, Masterpiece reported generating $5.9 million from that year’s edition, only 2 percent above the costs it spent to operate the fair. At the time, MCH had been trying to build the fair’s sponsorship business, courting heritage brands with ties to Old Masters like the Wallace Collection. However, those partners accounted for only 15 percent of the fair’s revenue that year and wasn’t nearly enough to offset the high operating costs. In June and July of that year, four board members resigned from their roles at the fair.
After MCH announced the cancellation of the 2023 edition, former employees of Masterpiece left the fair to establish the art, antiques and design fair Treasure House Fair. Around 40 galleries that were planning on participating in Masterpiece switched to the new fair. Treasure House will hold its third edition this June, despite quietly reporting that it too was in a loss-making position, with a £50,000 deficit in the summer of last year, according to UK financial filings.
MCH has not yet given up on Masterpiece however, disclosing in public filings that it plans to retain the Masterpiece’s trademark and brand, but to reconfigure a “new concept” for the fair. To date, representatives still involved in ownership of the brand have not publicly talked about those plans are. MCH owns a competing American brand, Design Miami, revenue for which is undisclosed.
TEFAF, a long-running competitor fair that includes design, is set for its 2025 edition in Maastricht in March.
