January 2009

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The dealers are also waiting with interest to see how the fair turns out in its first year under new management. Tribal Arts Management, based in Brussels, has taken over the organisation of the event, and have, for the first time since it began in 2001, introduced a vetting and ethics committee. This has met with a mixed response from the dealers. Most agree that vetting is necessary to guarantee authenticity, but they also point out that the previous process of ‘self-vetting’ worked because it relied upon the impeccable reputations of those invited to show. In his ‘Word from the Chairman’, published on the fair’s website, Jean-Paul Barbier-Mueller touches on the need to maintain the good name of tribal-art dealing and to expunge any remaining ‘black sheep’ from the market. Parcours des Mondes, however, is so highly regarded that, as Bruce Frank of us-based Bruce Frank Primitive Art remarks, ‘dealers must show pieces that are without question of authenticity. It’s an intimate fair, people talk, and besides all [collectors’] eyes are on them.’

The current demand for tribal art is summed up by Christian Elwes of Entwistle, London, as ‘a growing market, especially for the very best material with impeccable provenance and academic documentation, of which there is, conversely, greater and greater scarcity’. That is what collectors come to Parcours des Mondes to find.

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