The translation of the brick-and-mortar art fair into a digital experience

Over the past decade, the brick-and-mortar art fair has been established as a premier event for collectors, dealers and artists to gather to sell or purchase art in a one-stop-shop setting. Also over the past decade, the art world has gone global and in doing so, embraced the Internet as a vehicle for conducting business. In the current digital climate, the art fair is poised to make the leap from the physical to the virtual world. This thesis explores this possibility through an understanding of the history of art fairs, how the art world has gone online, the art collector, sociology of art, examination of the VIP Art Fair, and proposal of how to produce and market an online art fair.