Master Drawings London will now be called Master Drawings and Sculpture Week, as some sculpture dealers will take part for the first time, bringing the total number of dealers across the two events to 50, plus the major London auction houses.
London Art Week represents a collaboration between, rather than a total conflation, of the two dealer initiatives, which organise coordinated exhibitions in galleries throughout the West End during the major auction series, and both will retain their names and separate PR companies.
However, London Art Week hopes to create a "coherent platform" through shared advertising, a new online portal and a joint map showing all the participants, and it seems a natural step that the two events - happening at the same time in the same place with a shared motivation to encourage visitors into commercial galleries - should cooperate with each other for mutual benefit.
Unrivalled Expertise
As Lowell Libson, a founding member of Master Drawings London said, the new event "gives buyers at every level an opportunity not only to see the finest works available, but also to engage with dealers of unparalleled expertise and experience".
"I believe that this degree of cooperation between dealers in different disciplines, as well as the auction houses, would be unachievable in any other major 'art city'," he added.
Johnny Van Haeften, co-founder of Master Paintings Week, agreed: "We welcome this initiative which strongly underlines the unique and unrivalled connoisseurship and expertise to be found in the art trade in London.
"The old cliché of the fusty gallery is totally out of date and we want people to discover just how accessible we are and what treasures we hold."
