Art Chicago's big comeback
April 26, 2007
BY KEVIN NANCE Critic-at-Large
Art Chicago was all but dead. After a slow, agonizing decline, the Windy City's once-great art fair stood on the brink of extinction a year ago when exhibitors arrived to find that the tent in which the fair was to be staged had neither walls nor a floor. Four days before opening night, Art Chicago's cash-strapped owner, Tom Blackman, placed a desperate call to the Merchandise Mart.
Mart president Chris Kennedy quickly agreed to host the fair that weekend, and crews worked around the clock to make it happen. Exhibitors, some of whom had come from as far as Europe, were dazed by the sudden turn of events. "They needed time to absorb the magnitude of the change," Kennedy recalls with a smile, "and we just needed them to start moving their crates."
The fair went off with hardly a hitch, drawing 21,600 people, and arts folk and civic leaders all over town heaved a sigh of relief. Says collector Jack Guthman, "Chris avoided having Chicago get a huge black eye."
And so Art Chicago lives on. It returns this weekend, like an art world Lazarus, as the centerpiece of an expanded lineup of events under the umbrella title of Artropolis.
But if resuscitating last year's fair was a minor miracle, Kennedy knew bringing it back to international prominence would require the local equivalent of the Manhattan Project. Deep-pocket collectors had largely abandoned the fair, jetting off to more glamorous shows in Miami, New York, London and Basel, Switzerland. Top gallery owners were beyond skittish; many had bailed long before the 2006 debacle. "It was terrible," Chicago's Rhona Hoffman says bluntly, "and I wanted nothing to do with it."
The Mart bought the fair from Blackman anyway. From Kennedy's point of view, allowing a major art fair to die would be a blow to the city's reputation and, specifically, to that of the Merchandise Mart, which hosts 70 trade shows a year. "It would have made it more difficult for us to compete with folks like Orlando or Las Vegas or Atlanta or L.A.," he says, "which was something we could not countenance."
A rooster called Chicago
In the next weeks and months, Kennedy and his staff set about planning a comeback for the fair.
The first order of business was to get the endorsement of the Art Dealers Association of Chicago, whose members were divided into three camps. "One camp wanted to continue Art Chicago and wanted to do it here," Mart vice president Mark Falanga recalls. "A second group wanted to align themselves with another show producer. And the third group just wanted to say forget it."
But the Mart team won the dealers over, then began reaching out to arts institutions, tourism officials and Mayor Daley to create a fair that would take advantage of the city's cultural amenities. "Coming out of the 2006 show, we had neither the great galleries nor the great collectors, and we needed both," Kennedy says. "Which would come first, the art or the collectors? It was the classic chicken-or-the-egg dilemma. We didn't have the chicken and we didn't have the egg, but we did have a rooster, and that rooster's name is Chicago."
To bring back elite gallerists, the Mart dispatched major Chicago collectors, including Lewis Manilow and Howard Tullman, to lobby on the fair's behalf. The Mart also hired David Rosen, a former fund-raiser for Democratic candidates from Bill and Hillary Clinton to Rod Blagojevich, to head the fair's VIP program, which will furnish high-rolling collectors with car service, theater tickets, passes to the East Bank Club and other perks.
But even as the Mart was courting the art world, it also laid the foundation for a more broad-based fair by creating Artropolis. The title encompasses five shows -- Art Chicago, the Bridge Art Fair, the Intuit Show of Folk and Outsider Art, the International Antiques Fair and the Artists Project, a show of unagented artists -- along with NewInSight, an exhibit of work by graduate students at the nation's top art programs. "We didn't want it to be focused just on the super-educated and elite," Kennedy says. "We wanted to make it more democratic, and that was our solution."
'There's a real buzz'
Will Art Chicago make good on its new lease on life, or will it return to the intensive care unit? The key element -- the list of exhibitors -- is markedly improved, with several top dealers (including Chicago's Hoffman and Richard Gray) making their first appearance in years.
"There's a real buzz," says Susanne Ghez, director of the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. "When I was in New York at the Armory Show, people were talking about Chicago again."
Still, several major gallerists and collectors remain skeptical. "I think it turned out fine, considering it's the first year, but a lot of people are still reluctant to come back," Hoffman says. "Some people don't want to be the first people to climb on board a new activity. They wait and see, and maybe take the second ride."