Zero 10 Gets Its First Global Head

Published September 29, 2026 in Right Click Save (Louis Jebb): Art Basel has named Karen Archey curator of the next Zero 10, the fair giant’s section for art of the digital era, at Art Basel Miami Beach this December. The announcement matters less as a personnel move than as a structural one: Zero 10 is being built out into a permanent institution with staff, a year-round mandate, and a roster that now includes galleries that spent the last decade declining to show digital art.

The facts

  • Karen Archey is the new curator. She is Head of the Curatorial Department at K20 and K21 in Düsseldorf, and formerly Curator of Contemporary Art at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, where she oversaw the contemporary art and time-based media collections and showed Hito Steyerl, Metahaven, and Marina Abramović. In 2015 she co-organized “Art Post-Internet” at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing.
  • Nicole Sales Giles, formerly head of digital art at Christie’s New York, joins as Zero 10’s first Global Head, responsible for the initiative’s strategic direction as a year-round global entity. Eli Scheinman, who has worked on every Zero 10 edition since the launch, continues as Strategic Advisor.
  • The Miami Beach edition, titled “Generation”, is the largest Zero 10 presentation to date: 19 projects involving 22 galleries, co-curated by Archey and Scheinman. Art Basel Miami Beach runs December 4–6, 2026, with VIP previews December 2–3.
  • James Turrell, who showed with Pace at the inaugural Zero 10 in December 2025, returns with a new body of work presented outdoors and free to the public, via the Turrell Art Foundation, Art Basel, and Pace.
  • First-time mainstream galleries joining: Boesky (New York), Fredric Snitzer (Miami), and de Sarthe (Hong Kong/Scottsdale).

The timeline

Zero 10 launched at Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2025. Twelve months later it has run four editions: Miami Beach 2025, Hong Kong in March 2026 (emphasis on interactivity), Basel in June 2026 (Trevor Paglen co-curated; seven established Art Basel galleries including Marian Goodman, Sprüth Magers, and Hauser & Wirth joined), and Miami Beach again this December.

The roster highlights

Emily Xie (with Art Blocks), Daniel Rozin (bitforms), Sarah Meyohas (Boesky), LoVid (galerie charlot), Mitchell F. Chan, Parker Ito, Zhong Wei (de Sarthe/Nguyen Wahed), Leo Castañeda (Fredric Snitzer), Refik Anadol (HOFA), Random International, Johanna Reich (Galerie Kornfeld), Yatreda (Load), Harm van den Dorpel (Lohaus/Interface), Robert Alice (Omer Tiroche), Faig Ahmed (Sapar Contemporary), Jon Rafman (Sprüth Magers), Studio Drift (TAEX), Abi Shehu (Voloshyn), Luke Shannon, 0xfff, Richard T. Walker, Evil Biscuit, Lin Jingjing.

Archey’s curatorial statement on the title: “The exhibition’s title points towards a productive double meaning — to ‘generation’ as the computational process through which images, forms, and experiences are produced, and to a new generation of artists reckoning with the systems and imaginaries of the digital age.”

The structure is the story

A fair section launched as an experiment now has a museum-trained curator from the institution side (Stedelijk, K20/K21) and a commercial head from the auction pipeline (Christie’s). Curatorial muscle and market infrastructure, split across two hires. Turrell’s free outdoor work puts the most bankable name in the section outside the paywall entirely.

Digital art at Art Basel has been through phases: sideshow (1of1 NOW, 2022), sponsored feature (Meridian, 2024), dedicated sector (Zero 10, 2025). This is the phase where the sector hires permanent leadership. What gets decided next — which galleries get in, which artists get framed as the canon, whether the year-round mandate builds infrastructure or just a better calendar — happens inside one organization’s walls.

The open question

Zero 10 now has permanent staff, a global head, and mainstream galleries queuing for slots. At what point does a fair section stop being a section and become the institution digital art keeps being told it needs? And if it does — who watches what it excludes?

Source: Right Click Save, “Art Basel Names Karen Archey as New Curator for Zero 10,” September 29, 2026.