The speech Christopher Kennedy delivered last week at the City Club of Chicago was stirring enough to launch a political campaign. Exhibiting the energy and vision (and voice and curls) of his father, Bobby, and famous uncles, he got a standing ovation from the crowd, which included Bill Daley, Burt Natarus, and Natarus’s nemesis, Brendan Reilly, who recently unseated the alderman. But Kennedy, who worked his way up at the then-family-owned Merchandise Mart and has headed Merchandise Mart Properties (which runs the Mart and a lot more) for seven years, is attempting something harder than, say, a mere run for president. He thinks he can get Art Chicago’s groove back. It’s a noble undertaking but risky, and some Chicago gallery owners say they’ve already been chewed up in the process.
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Art Chicago, which runs April 27-30 at the Mart, was hip once, then it wasn’t. The crowd moved on. Kennedy thinks this great “meritocracy” of a city can make them care again. He traced the history of the fair from John Wilson’s pioneering Art Expo at Navy Pier–which grew into “the most important art show in the world,” he said–to the art wars that erupted when Wilson’s lieutenants Mark Lyman and Tom Blackman split and launched their own shows. When “interlopers” from Palm Beach and Cleveland entered the fray, “costs were driven higher, prices were driven lower,” Kennedy said, “and eventually everyone withdrew.” Meanwhile competition grew in other cities: Art Chicago imitators like London’s Frieze fair, Paris’s FIAC, New York’s expanded Armory Show, and–most galling–Art Basel, which not only stole our heat and took it to Switzerland but threw it back in our face by setting up shop in Miami Beach.
Kennedy said the first thing the Mart did to get this year’s show off the ground was solicit the support of the Art Dealers Association of Chicago (CADA). CADA members recall that Mart representatives held a series of enthusiastic meetings with them last fall, turning on the PowerPoint charm and enlisting them as ambassadors to recruit dealers nationally and internationally. A few remember a warning voiced by one of their own: “They might mount a show we can’t get into.” But at least some felt the Mart was focused on creating a fair with a distinctive Chicago identity. “We were very excited,” says Flatfile’s Susan Aurinko. “I was the biggest cheerleader in the city for what they were doing. We were calling people and saying, ‘You have to apply.’”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Robert Drea (Aurinko).
