Last week, ten days after the first Expo Chicago, Tony Karman’s resurrection of the once glorious Navy Pier art fairs, Karman took part in a panel considering the value of events so blatantly geared to the 1 percent in a city with a plateful of 99-percenter challenges.
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But a show aspiring to international status has to maintain a delicate balance: it can’t tip too heavily into local art without looking provincial. Only 15 of the 120 galleries who participated in this year’s Expo (most paying a minimum of $22,000 per booth) were Chicago dealers likely to be showing local work.
And in spite of the fact that your average art-fair dealer is as intent on doing business as the slickest hustler on a used-car lot, the rationale that emerged for these high-end shopping extravaganzas leaned heavily on things loftier than the old ka-ching.
“I was struck by the way business leaders, along with the mayor, recognize that this is important for our city.”
Because—civic altruism notwithstanding—it’s not the 20-thousand-some local window-shoppers ponying up for $20 tickets who can make this fair successful. It’s the megabucks global collectors and those from regional museums and beyond, who often travel as groups, come with liberal spending money, and are courted with VIP privileges and private events (Expo offered about 15 tours of private local collections this year).
