NYT Nails It, Mostly
.... though I thought the show last year was a bit worse. Perhaps I thought that because people tell me I only got through about three quarters of this year's show before leaving for the Stray Show and not coming back.

Faltering Art Fair Chills Chicago

CHICAGO, July 16 — The Chicago art establishment, from museums to galleries to artists, still seems shaken by what it perceived to be the failure this spring of its internationally known contemporary [ed. is that what it was supposed to be? huh...] art fair.

Critics thought it the weakest in size and in quality of art in its 25-year existence, and this follows a trend in recent years in which more and more of the world's serious collectors, curators and dealers have been skipping the fair, Art Chicago.

Well... I don't know that the community still seems shaken.... we do actually think about other things. Like about the plan to hold the fair in tents in Grant Park next year, which somehow seems desperate to me, and I don't think will do anything to make this guy happy:

Robert Landau, president of Landau Fine Art in Montreal, was a regular exhibitor at Art Chicago but dropped out of the exposition after the 2002 show. "It's a sad story," he said. "We stuck it out for quite a long time. Unfortunately over the years, the fair has dwindled in importance. The exhibitor mix weakened, and the customer base weakened with the absence of the good galleries." Mr. Landau said the fair no longer attracted the art-savvy clientele for the $100 million inventory of modern masters paintings that he put on display.

"The last year we were there we had more customers walking in off Navy Pier who really weren't there to see the art show. We had so many people coming in making remarks like, 'Are any of these paintings real?' "

A valid question, but in my vision of the future I don't see dealers trucking hundreds of millions of dollars of inventory into a tent just to get mustard and beer all over it from the grubby hands of tourists from Schaumburg and Elgin complaining about indecency.

Perhaps I am a snob.

Good morning, all... well... close. Is lovely day. Blogger ate the rest of this posting before I saved it, so you'll never know the wisdom I might have blessed you with. But I'll be back later, no doubt.

- posted by Cynthia @ 12:57 PM | | | Link |