Two fairs in one

Deutsche Welle: How would you sum up Art Cologne 2010?

Daniel Hug: I would say it's probably the most comprehensive look at the avant-garde from the last hundred years, or the last 110 years, in one place. We have 202 exhibitors from all over the world ...exhibiting artworks starting from 1900 up until the most cutting-edge, newest, shooting stars of today.

Have people have been having trouble getting to Europe this year because of the volcano in Iceland and airline disruptions?

We are two hours from Amsterdam by train, we're an hour and a half from Brussels by train, we're three and a half hours from Paris by train. We're in this multicultural European hub... Still, most of our visitors have not made it. Our overseas visitors - American collectors, even collectors from Hungary, from Russia (couldn't get here.) Yet the opening last night was incredibly full, fuller than last year actually, and that had a lot to do with the press that sort of motivated a lot of people in the area, in Holland and Belgium, in Germany, to come to the fair.

The Art Cologne program New Positions, which sponsors less-known artists, turns thirty this year. What do you see as New Positions' place in the fair?

Art Cologne was the first fair to introduce financial aid, I guess you could call it, for young artists. ...These would be presented by galleries, exhibitors that were already admitted into the fair, who would then make a suggestion of a young artist. There were certain criteria. It has nothing to do with age necessarily but more to do with exhibiting history. They can't have had a museum exhibition – stuff like that.

If you look at the recipients of the New Positions in the past it's pretty incredible. Many are quite well known. For example Neo Rauch was a New Positions [artist] 14 years ago. Rosemarie Trockel, Thomas Ruff – just off the top of my head. I would say one every year has gone on to actually become something. Of course I think that also reflects the quality of the gallery that suggests the New Position, and by improving the quality of the galleries exhibiting in the main section of the fair, of course the New Positions become more interesting.

What changes have you made to keep Art Cologne relevant?

The Art Cologne is really two fairs. On the ground level we have a more conservative, blue chip, secondary dealer fair of galleries that present modern art, post-war art. And then upstairs we have the second fair which is really a contemporary art fair. Very few of the collectors from either fair cross over. But a few do, so the crossover is kind of nice. I see that as one of our strengths, that we are sort of a crossover fair between these two fairs that the Art Cologne actually is.

Reducing the size of the fair was very important, which I did last year, and one of the ways that I did that was to divide it on two levels, creating two small fairs rather than one large fair.

Art Cologne is one of the oldest art fairs in the world. What are your plans for it?

My strategy is to focus not only on the classical modern and the post-war and to support the long-term exhibitors that have been showing here [for] 40 years, like Galerie Thomas, but also to work and support a new generation, the young generation that's maybe shifting away from Berlin, that wants to have its own identity, that's not necessarily getting into the other fairs.

So these two extremes, of functioning both as a very traditional fair, but also looking ahead, supporting young, new galleries, but also providing the whole spectrum that's in between.

Interview: Sophie Tarr
Editor: Jennifer Abramsohn