Gannon said the COVID lockdowns were difficult for artists and galleries in Melbourne, but the city had rebounded.

“I think Melbourne just does things in a really understated, considered, cool way,” she said. “We don’t feel like screaming from the top of the buildings how good we are, we show it with the art.”

She said the Melbourne Art Fair’s strength was its basis as a not-for-profit organisation, which prioritised galleries and artists.

“It is not an art fair that is trying to be the biggest ... it is trying to be about quality,” she said.

Professor Sasha Grishin, from Australian National University, said Melbourne would never lose its arts capital crown.

“Melbourne has always been the centre of the arts institutionally and commercially – you have the NGV and then you have daylight,” he said. “Also the Melbourne arts scene has much deeper pockets.”

Grishin said Melbourne would soon surpass Sydney as Australia’s biggest city and more money was spent on art in Melbourne than anywhere else in the country.

“The Sydney scene is so different and I don’t know why,” he said. “My good friend [artist] John Olsen used to say, ‘It’s all about the weather matey, it’s all about the weather’.”

Melbourne’s new contemporary art gallery, The Fox: NGV Contemporary, will be twice as big as Sydney’s and almost as large as London’s spectacular Tate Modern.

The NGV’s senior curator of contemporary art, Ewan McEoin, said Melbourne Art Fair shifting to an annual event showed the strength of art in the city.

“The art fair makes a strong contribution to the contemporary art ecosystem, as making more opportunity for artists to sell their work is fundamentally a good thing,” he said.

McEoin said it sent a message that Melbourne’s contemporary art market was buoyant, which was good news for artists.

“I think Melbourne has demonstrated a deep and ongoing commitment to the contemporary art scene above and beyond any other city in Australia and that is about the ecosystem for artists to make work, the ecosystem for selling work and the institutions showing local work,” he said.

“It is an ecosystem that is very collaborative, it is a community. No offence to any other city, but that takes a long time to build, and it is not something that goes away easily; it is in the DNA of the city.”

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