Chicago will be the site of not one but two big international contemporary art fairs starting their simultaneous four-day public runs on Friday. But out of sight at both will be three of this city’s more prominent, high-end contemporary art dealers.
Richard Gray Gallery, Donald Young Gallery and Rhona Hoffman Gallery will be conspicuously absent when Art Chicago opens under a tent in Grant Park and newcomer Chicago Contemporary & Classic debuts at Navy Pier, Art Chicago’s old quarters. The three say they are taking a pass, in part, because a spring Chicago contemporary art fair has become passe, its excitement transfused to the Art Basel Miami Beach show and fairs abroad.
The openings of and clamor by high-end collectors and dealers for other fairs “have exacerbated the lesser opinion of the Chicago art fair,” said gallery owner Rhona Hoffman.
Not every dealer feels the same. Based on information posted as of Wednesday on their respective Web sites, Art Chicago will have 96 exhibitors from this country and abroad and Chicago Contemporary & Classic 69. Their combined 165 will be six more than Art Chicago signed up last year, when it was the only show in town. Each fair will have several Chicago-based dealers, and five local galleries will exhibit at both.
`A rich, full weekend’
“I don’t see the fairs as competing,” said Carrie Secrist, who will be shuttling between the booths her namesake gallery has at both shows. “I see it as a rich, full weekend, touching all the bases in the art market.”
Among other scheduled events here next weekend are the Nova Young Art Fair in the West Loop gallery district and the Chicago Antiques Fair in the Merchandise Mart.
Chicago has not had dueling spring contemporary art fairs since 1993. The rivalry may re-energize the scene. But the shows’ maneuvering for position — and shifting of dates until they were pitted head to head — has unsettled others.
One of the casualties is Vernissage, the annual benefit for the Museum of Contemporary Art that has been held at a spring art fair here for 23 years. Last year’s benefit at Art Chicago raised $310,000 for the museum and helped draw serious area collectors to the show.
An MCA spokeswoman said the museum was contacted by the two fairs but decided not to continue the benefit.
“Planning was the main consideration,” she said, noting the earlier confusion about fair dates and the long lead time such benefits require. “We are directing our energies this year into our upcoming performance gala featuring the Paul Taylor Dance Company on June 2.”
Chicago auctioneer Leslie Hindman had decided not to continue her AntiquesChicago show, which had run for two years concurrently with Art Chicago, and instead throw in with Chicago Contemporary & Classic. Her task was to recruit dealers of antiques and decorative art.
But Hindman said last week that she gave up when the fair moved its dates back a week to coincide with Art Chicago’s. The new dates, she said, conflicted with the Merchandise Mart antique show and with decorative art shows elsewhere.
“I’m disappointed, but the dates didn’t make sense,” she said.
Richard Gray Gallery had exhibited at a spring Chicago art fair every year since the first was held in 1979. That string will be broken this week.
“It’s a great disappointment to us that Chicago no longer has the principal contemporary art fair in the United States,” said gallery director Paul Gray.
He said other fairs in this country and Europe “serve our needs more effectively than Art Chicago. We fervently hope that the future might hold a greatly revitalized international art event such as the former Art Chicago.”
“I do four fairs, which is too many,” said Donald Young, whose gallery exhibits at Art Basel in Switzerland and Miami Beach, as well as at the Armory Show in New York and the Frieze Art Fair in London.
Bypassing Chicago
His gallery stopped showing at Art Chicago two years ago. “I need a certain public to support what I do,” he said. “That public hasn’t been coming to Chicago art fairs for years.”
He added, “Nothing would be better for us than to have a successful Chicago art fair. But these things can’t be turned around on a dime. People would have to think there is something completely new to draw them back.”
Ilana Vardy, director of Chicago Contemporary & Classic, said the absences of the Young, Gray and Hoffman galleries shouldn’t reflect badly on Chicago as a fair site.
“Those three galleries are the only Chicago galleries that really do the big international fairs,” she said. “There are just so many fairs that a gallery can commit itself to financially and materialwise.”
Thomas Blackman, the producer of Art Chicago, said it might have been easier to organize his show with the support of the three galleries. Though disappointed they won’t be there, he said, “They’re missing out. It’s going to be a great show. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
Richard Norton said his namesake Chicago gallery has done well at Art Chicago and will be represented there again this week and at Chicago Contemporary & Classic. He isn’t happy the shows are running simultaneously, but he said that as a Chicago gallery “it’s our responsibility to make a stand and support the shows.”
Chicago dealer Kenneth Saunders said his Marx-Saunders Gallery, which specializes in contemporary glass sculpture, fared well in 2004 in its first year at Art Chicago and will be showing there as well as at the rival show.
“If you have a fighting spirit and are optimistic, there is no way you can’t be excited about these show organizers going around the world telling people, `You have to be in Chicago at the end of April,'” he said. “You have to take advantage of that.”
———-
cstorch@tribune.com
