Forget Paris: In Marseille, a New Art Ecosystem Emerges

Marseille is buzzing. According to the national statistics bureau of France, since 2015, 10,500 people under the age of 34 have flocked to the city every year, many artists among them, attracted by lower rents and a slower pace of life – a sun-drenched Berlin on the Med. “Before, if you were in Marseille, you were invisible,” says Jérôme Pantalacci, director of Art-o-rama, the city’s 20-year-old art fair. “Now you can run an international gallery from here.” The fair opens to the public on Friday at the Friche la Belle de Mai, a converted tobacco factory turned arts centre. Thirty-seven galleries from sixteen countries will exhibit,  with three-quarters of them from outside France, which is an unusually wide field for a fair of this scope. Nine galleries are French and three are from Marseille. The structure of the fair underscores some of the shifts happening in the French art scene.

France is the world’s fourth-largest art market and the European Union’s largest. Going by figures in the Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2026, France racked up $4.5bn in sales in 2025, up 9% on the year,  8% of global art sales. “France is very centralised - everything is in Paris, and it’s complicated to exist if you aren’t based there,” Pantalacci said. “But it’s more and more complicated for young galleries to exist in Paris.”

The fair’s own account of itself is that it is a first step. “We’ve had a lot of galleries doing their first art fair with us, and galleries from other continents doing their first European fair,” Pantalacci said. “Then after three or four editions they move on to the larger fairs - Frieze, or Basel. I think it’s a natural process: you start with us, then you grow up.” 

Art-o-rama is the least expensive serious door onto the European circuit: €3,500 a booth for galleries under seven years old, €4,000 for those older,  against roughly €8,000 for a first-time solo booth at Liste Art Fair Basel, often considered the other more ‘affordable’ entry point into the European art market. Pantalacci puts the whole exercise at €5,000 to €6,000: “You can do the fair for that, accommodation, transport and everything.” “The idea is to let galleries come and take a real risk, because a curatorial proposal can be an economic risk,” he said. “We encourage them to take it, but we reduce the financial pressure.”

Some of these booths are not paid for by the galleries. For five years running, Art Barcelona, the Catalan galleries’ association, has sent one of its members to Marseille at no cost: the fair supplies the booth, the association covers shipping, accommodation and the rest. “It’s totally free of charge for the gallery to come,” Pantalacci said. “It’s a real invitation.” Others arrive on public money - Romanian galleries have subsidies this year, and French galleries can apply to CNAP, the state’s contemporary art fund, to cover a fair.

Then there are the prizes. The fair’s own programme schedules twelve prize announcements across the three days.With 37 galleries, that is one award for every three booths. The Prix Roger Pailhas, judged by a committee of collectors, reimburses the winner’s entire participation fee. The Prix PÉBÉO, funded by a Marseille-region paint manufacturer, buys €10,000 of work from an exhibiting artist. The rest are acquisitions by private collections - Taurisano in Italy, and three named for individual collectors - or come from a 75-member collectors’ association, the city’s art school and the département.

The fair’s clear aim is to support younger galleries wanting to break into the system. “You shouldn’t come to an art fair if you need to sell - otherwise you can end up in real economic danger,” Pantalacci says. “Of course, the goal is also to sell. What matters, especially for the youngest galleries, is meeting a collector or a curator. That can take one or two years to turn into something.”

The south of France has seen an artistic revival in recent years. Arles in particular has become a regional centre for art. It now has around ten foundations and funds for contemporary art and photography. LUMA opened its Frank Gehry tower there in June 2021; Lee Ufan opened his foundation in a Tadao Ando conversion of the Hôtel Vernon in April 2022; the Fondation Thalie arrived that summer; the Fonds Bustamante opened in July this year in a twelfth-century church redone by Charles Zana. “It’s incredible for a small city to have all these private initiatives,” Pantalacci said of Arles, “and they’re the work of collectors.”

Pantalacci is optimistic about Marseille’s future. He says: “First it was the artists living there, then the galleries came after the artists, and then the collectors and the institutions came after the galleries. So maybe, hopefully, we’ll be saying the same thing about Marseille. We start with the artists, we have more and more galleries now, and hopefully we’ll have more and more collectors. And maybe a stronger market.”

On the 29th August, the day after the fair opens, MADMAX, a newly minted gallery takes over a Belle Époque townhouse on Rue du Coq in Marseille that used to hold the private bank Zarifi & Cie - 170 square metres over two floors, opening with marble sculptures by Matouš Háša - a sign that the market is indeed growing. 

Art-o-rama runs 28–30 August at the Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille.