Guide for advisors and collectors
How to organize art fair previews
In the days before a fair opens, galleries send their collectors and advisors preview PDFs and sales lists, often dozens of them. The best works are frequently reserved before the VIP doors open. This guide sets out a simple workflow to collect, triage and track those previews so you act on the right works in time.
By the Vitryne team · Updated · 5 min read
What a fair preview contains
A preview is the gallery's list of the works it will show on its booth, sent ahead of the fair to the people most likely to buy. It usually arrives as a PDF, sometimes as a link to an online viewing room. For each work you can expect:
- an image of the work, often with the caption printed beside or over it;
- artist, title, year, medium and dimensions, sometimes in both centimetres and inches;
- edition details for prints, photographs and sculpture;
- the gallery's inventory number;
- a price, or “price on request”, and sometimes a status such as reserved or sold;
- on the cover, the gallery, the fair, the booth number and the dates.
Every gallery lays this out differently, and prices come in whatever currency the gallery works in. That is what makes previews slow to compare once you have more than a handful.
When previews arrive
Most previews land in the week or two before the VIP opening, with a peak in the last few days. Major fairs such as Art Basel (in Basel, Miami Beach, Paris and Hong Kong), Frieze (London, New York, Los Angeles and Seoul) and TEFAF each produce their own wave. If you follow several fairs a year, previews are a near-constant flow rather than an occasional task.
Getting on preview lists
Previews go first to the people a gallery knows are buying. If you are not receiving them, tell the galleries you follow which artists and price ranges you are looking for, and ask to be added to their list for the fairs you attend. Galleries favor buyers who reply quickly and follow through, so a short, clear answer to every preview helps you stay on the list for the next one.
A five-step workflow
1. Collect everything in one place
Previews come by email, messaging apps and viewing-room links. Before the rush, decide where they all go: a dedicated mail label or folder at minimum. Many galleries send online private-view links (often from Artlogic) rather than PDFs. Links can expire after the fair, so keep a copy you control: the PDF version, or the works themselves imported somewhere you can search.
2. Write down each client's brief first
Triage is only fast if you know what you are looking for. For each client, note the budget range, the artists and media they collect or avoid, and practical limits such as the size of the wall or whether the work must travel. Then read every preview against those briefs, not the other way round.
3. Capture each work in a consistent format
The comparison happens across galleries, so put every candidate in the same structure: artist, title, year, medium, dimensions, price as printed, currency, availability, gallery, booth and inventory number. Keep the price exactly as the gallery wrote it and note the currency; convert only when you compare, and say so when you share figures with a client.
For example, a caption printed under an image as “Example Artist, Untitled (Blue), 2024, oil on linen, 150 × 120 cm, USD 85,000, booth B12” becomes one row:
| Artist | Title | Year | Medium | Dimensions | Price | Currency | Availability | Booth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Example Artist | Untitled (Blue) | 2024 | Oil on linen | 150 × 120 cm | 85,000 | USD | Available | B12 |
4. Track availability and holds
At fairs, works are often reserved before the public opening. When you ask a gallery to hold a work, log the date and the time limit they give you, which is often short. Mark works as reserved or sold as soon as you hear, so a sold piece never reaches a client's shortlist.
5. Send each client a shortlist before the doors open
A short, well-presented selection gets faster decisions than a forwarded stack of PDFs. Include an image, the full caption, the price and the booth number for each work, so you can walk straight to it on the day.
After the fair: keep the archive
Previews are market information. Which works sold, which stayed, and at what asking prices tells you a lot about an artist's market the next time a gallery offers you their work. Keep the files and your notes rather than deleting them when the fair ends.
Checklist
- One place where every preview lands (a mail label, a folder, or a catalogue)
- Each client's brief written down: budget, artists, media, sizes, wall space
- Every work captured with its price as printed, currency and availability
- A note of who sent what, from which gallery and which booth
- Holds and reservations logged with the date they expire
- A shortlist per client, ready to send before the doors open
- The archive kept after the fair, prices and sold works included
Doing this with Vitryne
Steps 1 and 3 are where most of the time goes, and they are what Vitryne automates. Drop each preview PDF, or paste an Artlogic private-view link, as it arrives and Vitryne reads every work on every page: the image, artist, title, year, medium, dimensions, edition, inventory number, price as printed and availability, along with the gallery, fair and booth from the cover.
You can then search all your previews at once, filter by availability, gallery or size, sort by price, and download a presentation PDF of a client shortlist or export to Excel or Artlogic. Your catalogue stays private to your workspace, is stored in Zurich, Switzerland, and is never used to train AI models. See how advisors use Vitryne.