weekend is happy to announce the launch of our new sister platform focused on Art Weeks. Having developed galleryweekend.org and artweekend.org with our partners in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, we have seen an interesting shift over the last few years on two different levels.
The first is the continuing expansion of the contemporary art market, away from the traditional centers of New York and London. Don’t worry these traditional art meccas are fine- but there has been an explosion of art fairs, gallery festivals in places only a few years ago would have seemed highly unlikely. International cities like Mumbai, Seoul, Adu Dhabi and many others are filling are feeds with new galleries, museums and festivals. As well as what we call the continuing regionalisation of the art market – with midsize cities such as Dallas, Aspen, and Atlanta developing art fairs, weeks or weekends due mostly to our online connectivity and the reality that you no longer have to be based in NY, London or some European capital to see a good museum show or have a career as an artist.
The second is that these art fairs (for better or worse) often create an ‘art week’ being defined as the activities around the time of the fair- parties, pop-ups, and additional exhibitions that often follow at local galleries, museums, and artist spaces. The best example is Miami Art Week which is a phrase used mostly in the press or a way for galleries/artists to be part of a larger phenomena when Art Basel Miami Beach rolls into town. Now some 20 years after its development, there are just as many satellite art fairs happening at the same time some more established such as NADA, Untitled, Scope, etc.. For better or worse there aren’t any gatekeepers anymore.
When Artforum launched its (critically loved and hated column) Scene and Heard column in 2008, it started with Art Basel Miami and then editor Scott Rothkopf stating… “The real action, it seemed, was elsewhere-which is where the action at this fair always seems to be. For unlike Basel proper, which comes with fewer private parties and (as might be expected) poolside cabanas, the overabundance of simultaneous events in Miami induces a near-manic paranoia in clued-in visitors endlessly worried that they’re in the wrong place at the right time.
There are also some art organizations that define themselves as an ‘Art Week’, most notably Atlanta Art Week initiated by Art Advisor Kendra Walker and SF Art Week which was launched last year by Emily Counihan, and will present the second edition in January 2025. As well as some more established entitles – like Amsterdam Art Week, Berlin Art Week and newly renamed Geneva Art Week, to name a few of our Europen partners and counterparts.
The Art Week Club will primarily focus on the US and Mexico where there is plenty of new activity- though other art weeks might follow afterwards.
So, just to list some upcoming Art Weeks we are planning to follow and spotlight through this platform.
Aspen Art Week (July 29- Aug 6). Aspen is known mostly as a summer retreat for High-net-worth individual (HNWI) and the Aspen Art Museum has built a powerful fundraising apparatus around it- The Art Crush Gala and Art Auction. As well, two art fairs have emerged during this vacation time with Interesect Aspen (which focuses on Art & Design) along with a new fair boutique fair called Aspen Art Fair at the Hotel Jerome organizsed by Becca Hoffman’s (74th Arts) featuring Perrotin (Paris and others), PATRON (Chicago), Gmurzynska (Zurich) and some newer galleries Southern Guild (from Cape Town), Secci (Florence) and El Apartamento (Havana) totaling some 30 galleries.
Atlanta Art Week (Sept 29- Oct 6) AAW now firmly established in its 3rd year will present a series of exhibitions, lectures at local galleries, artists spaces, museums and institutions including The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, and the Spruill Center for the Arts in what I would describe as a still developing and uniquely diverse art scene which reflects the city of Atlanta.
New galleries to Atlanta include the UTA Artist Space which started its Atlanta program early last year along with Whitespace Gallery and some other up and coming galleries. This year AMP Events has announced the Atlanta Art Fair which will launch in the historical Pullman Yards district. AMP also organizes art fairs in Seattle, San Francisco, the Hamptons, and the ART ON PAPER in NYC.
Miami Art Week as we said above it’s more a phrase than an organization and represents all the activities around the first week of December when Art Basel Miami Beach, and all the satellite fairs (NADA, Untitled, Scope) come to town and all the exhibitions and events numerous private and public museums that have fueled Miami’s rise on the international calendar- this includes the Rubell Museum, the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse.
And the public spaces include The Bass Museum, the Pérez Art Museum and the ICA Miami, along with an ever changing list of galleries, popups and offspaces.
San Francisco Art Week
SF Art Week debuted last year with a series of exhibitions and conversations in galleries, art spaces, local museums and institutions in the Bay Area. The SF Art Week has an excellent advisory committee made up of gallerists and curators. Galleries include a mix of established and emerging- Altman Seigel, Wendi Norris, Jessica Silverman, Micki Meng, Fraenkel, Rena Bransten, and Rebecca Camacho. Museums include SFMOMA, Institute of Contemporary Art, Asian Art Museum, and Cantor Arts Center along with the Artist Residency program at the Headlands Center for the Arts.
SF Art Week was built in part, to support the Fog Design & Art Fair, which since its founding has seen some important international galleries perhaps trying to tap into the Bay Areas and Silicon Valley’s HNWI’s- David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, LEHMANN MAUPIN, Gladstone, Marian Goodman, Max Hetzler are among the blue-chip participating galleries at Fog. Last year they launched FOG FOCUS, an invitational designed to showcase art by young artists and their galleries as an integral part of San Francisco’s creative ecosystem- featuring Commonwealth and Council (LA), Crèvecœur (Paris), and Et al. (SF)…
Mexico City Art Week. CDMX has been the star the last few years with US and Latin American collectors driving a new untapped market with new fairs and galleries and has become the hot spot for collectors on their way to LA for frieze. ZSONAMACO is the largest art fair platform in Latin America, founded in 2002 by Zélika García and this year Direlia Lazo will take over as Director, the fair has four sections Contemporary Art, Design, Photo, and Antiques. Material Fair and Salón ACME are two additional events that draw large crowds and excellent younger galleries from Mexico, Latin America, and the US.
Highlights from last year’s Material included LLANO, Lodos, General Expenses, Galleria Mascota, Galleria Enrique Gurrero (all CDMX) along with Chris Sharp Gallery (LA), Instituto de Visión (Bogota), Berthold Pott (Cologne), 4649 and Tomio Koyama (Tokyo) to name a few. While, Salón ACME is a platform and an art event created by artists for artists that gives visibility, impulse, and dissemination to emerging creators who develop their work both in Mexico and abroad.
For all these reasons and more, we hope you will join us as we expand our offerings to include additional ArtWeek content and newsletters.
please contact us (galleryweekends@gmail.com) for information regarding partnerships and advertising on The Art Week Club.