MADRID.- Sao Paulo, Moscow , Paris , Miami and Lisbon are the stopovers for ARCOmadrid, the International Contemporary Art Fair, on its promotional tour of its upcoming 30th event, to be held from 16th to 20th February 2011 in Madrid .

A new feature of the plan drawn up by the art fair for its international promotion is the direct involvement of the Madrid City Council through Promoción Madrid, its city marketing agency, which will be lending its support to ARCOmadrid for the fair’s 30th anniversary, in recognition of its key role in the city’s cultural offer and as a particularly interesting asset for international contemporary art collectors and professionals.

The opening date has been planned for 21st September in Brazil , coinciding with the Sao Paulo Biennial. The Spanish restaurant of Sergi Arola, one of the most prestigious chefs in the world, has been chosen to host the presentation of the fair to collectors and media. The encounter will lend special attention to the SOLO PROJECTS Programme focused on Latin America and whose selection of galleries, artists and proposals has been entrusted to Luisa Duarte, an independent Brazilian curator; Daniela Pérez, associated curator of the Museo Tamayo of Mexico; and Julieta González, associated curator of Latin American Art at Tate Modern, London.

The fair, this year celebrating its 30th anniversary, will also host around 10 Russian galleries in its FOCUS RUSSIA section, selected for the occasion by Daria Pyrkina, curator of Russia’s National Centre for Contemporary Arts and a professor at the Lomonosov Moscow State University. The galleries will be strategically mixed in with the GENERAL PROGRAMME and ARCO 40 in order to encourage greater interaction within a professional framework.

Another initiative is the OPENING: NEW EUROPEAN GALLERIES programme, inviting new galleries from Europe with less than 8 years. This section will pay special attention to young galleries coming from emerging Eastern European countries.

Another four stopovers have been programmed for ARCOmadrid’s international presentation. The second is due for Moscow , on 28th September, to be followed by another in Paris coinciding with FIAC on 21st October. After that, on 2nd December, ARCOmadrid will travel to Miami to make its presentation at ART BASEL Miami, and finally, in January, to Lisbon . The presentations are planned to heighten awareness of the fair and its new features in such an emblematic year for ARCOmadrid, and to draw attention to the fair and to Madrid from contemporary art collectors, gallerists and other agents. Also worth remembering is that ARCOmadrid organises an invitational programme for private and corporate collectors plus collecting institutions, as well as museum directors and curators from all over the world, as well as increasing numbers of collectors from Spain and from many other countries.

For its international promotion, ARCOmadrid is bringing on board Goldmann Public Relations (GPR), a Berlin-based PR agency which will support all these actions in order to maximise the dissemination of the fair.

Promoción Madrid , a body belonging to Madrid City Council’s Department of Economy, Employment and Citizen Participation, is in charge of the cultural, tourist, financial and business promotion of the City of Madrid on both a national and international level. As a city marketing agency, it deals with the projection of the image of the city as well as with the design and implementation of advertising campaigns, definition of strategies for tourist dissemination and the management of channels for the promotion of the Spanish capital, including the esMADRID.com portal and esMADRIDmagazine.

Through this promotional action carried out hand in hand with ARCOmadrid , Madrid is working to consolidate its image as one of Europe ’s great cultural cities, with its museums, art centres and galleries adding to its tourist attractions to make up an exciting tourist offer for those looking for a unique cultural destination.