This year Sharp and Slotover have taken a step back from running the fairs they founded in London (that’ll be Frieze London and Frieze Masters, the latter the duo’s venture into not-so-contemporary art) and New York. Victoria Siddall, trusted longtime Frieze employee, takes over, along with a couple of recently appointed deputies, and is now in overall charge of day-to-day stuff like making sure the right galleries get into the fairs and overseeing the nonprofit projects and public programmes. 

So what have Sharp and Slotover been doing with their spare time? Nobody outside the firm knows, and Sharp and Slotover remain tight-lipped. Last winter Slotover was in Beijing to launch Frieze content onto Chinese social media platforms, so questions as to a possible extension or buy-in into Asia were raised. Then there’s Slotover’s influence back in London: besides chairing the board of South London Gallery, he sits on the board of Create London, a nonprofit public-art-commissioning body that supports community-focused projects by artists in the city’s East End.