Atlanta Arts category interest

Everybody and their brother has an art fair. New York, Los Angeles, and Miami have numerous. Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco. Seattle, Indianapolis. Jackson Hole, WY, Aspen, CO, Charleston, SC.

But not Atlanta.

Despite being the sixth most populous metro area in America with more than 5,000,000 residents, Atlanta lacked an art fair until this year. The inaugural Atlanta Art Fair takes place October 3 through 6, 2024, at Pullman Yards five miles east of downtown. The event coincides with Atlanta’s third annual Art Week.

Atlanta’s arts scene has been slow on the uptake. It may be the only aspect of the city to have developed slowly.

Established as a national capital for Hip-Hop music and filmmaking, why has the city’s visual arts scene lagged behind?

An explanation for that would be hard not to connect with the greatest tragedy in American art history. In June of 1962, an airplane crashed at Paris’ Orly airport. At the time, it was the deadliest accident in aviation history. All on board perished: 122 passengers and eight crewmembers. Among them, 106 Atlantans, all members of the Atlanta Art Association returning from a tour of Paris museums.

“In an instant the core of Atlanta’s arts community was gone.”

Community members rallied in the immediate aftermath, donating millions helping fund what would become the Woodruff Arts Center, home to the High Museum of Art, the Alliance Theater, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

Tragedies pass from public consciousness. New tragedies replace them. Stop someone on the street today in Atlanta and its unlikely they’ve heard of the crash.

After the shock wore off and the initial fundraising was completed, Atlanta was left without the guts of its arts community. It’s most passionate, energetic, well-heeled, prominent arts advocates. Collectors. Would-be gallery owners. Potential arts organization founders, board members and directors.

It could be argued–how could it be argued against–the crash left a 50-year hole in Atlanta’s visual arts.

Not Coming, Here

Atlanta’s current generation of arts movers and shakers are doing their best to make up for lost time. Ascending. Momentum. Emerging. Exciting. These are all words commonly used from the outside looking in when assessing Atlanta’s visual arts scene over the past decade. Words used to indicate something is happening, but has yet to happen.

“I don't know that you would say that if you were here, if you're here and in the arts,” Kelly Freeman, Director of Art Market Productions, the company organizing the Atlanta Art Fair, told Forbes.com. “I've sat in rooms with the people who live and work in Atlanta, who are supporting each other and fighting for their artists and fighting for funding, and I would say that this is one of the most active (arts) communities that I've ever been lucky enough to be a part of.”

Perception is not always reality and the outside perception of Atlanta's art scene as waiting to arrive is inaccurate according to Freeman.

“Atlanta Art Week did such a great job of shouting that message from the rooftops, ‘Hey, come pay attention to all of the work that's being made here, and all of the artists who either show here or outside of Atlanta, but who can still afford to live and work in this community.’ It’s such a rarity,” she said. “An art fair is a centralized gathering space for things that have already happened. I don't want to get ahead of myself with thinking about what an art fair can do, the community's already done it, now I'm building a platform for them to do it in a more efficient way.”

Freeman and Art Market Productions also run fairs in San Francisco and Seattle. It’s what they do. They’re not taking a flier on Atlanta; the fair isn’t a trial balloon. AMP is not based in Atlanta. Expanding there is not charity.

“It's years-long listening on my end. Where is there this general buzz generating from? Where are my gallery partners from around the country and around the world, where are they asking me about? Where do they have questions about a potential collector community,” Freeman explains of the factors leading to launching the fair. “Gathering input from the people I work with from around the world, but then it's looking at hard data. Atlanta has the fifth highest national GDP. There's growth in so many different sectors with the film industry becoming what it is here, and all of the enterprise that's coming in with companies headquartering In Georgia.”

A staggering 19 Fortune 500 companies call Atlanta home including Home Depot, UPS, Delta airlines, Coca-Cola, and Aflac. Thousands of highly paid executives. Executives who’ve relocated from all over the country and world, including its arts capitals, to work there. Potential collectors.

The city has a ton of money and there are few activities Atlantans enjoy partaking in more than spending it. Freeman, AMP, and the galleries and cultural partners who’ve thrown in on the Atlanta Art Fair, want to move fine art up the shopping list.

“My company and I have been looking for places where we think our art fair model could be an additive to the community and Atlanta has been top of the list or five years,” Freeman said. “The creativity, the economic viability of the city, and this undercurrent of hustle and collaborative, cooperative work from the art space, it's unparalleled right now.”

Atlanta Art Fair

Among the more than 60 galleries from around the nation and world taking part in the Atlanta Art Fair, 20-plus call the Atlanta area home. The fair will also spotlight numerous local arts museums, organizations, and non-profits. The High Museum of Art has joined as lead institutional partner. Atlanta-based guest curators Lauren Jackson Harris and Karen Comer Lowe played critical roles in helping program the event which includes a full schedule of talks Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

The Atlanta Art Fair is an Atlanta art fair, not just an art fair taking place in Atlanta.

“That's where I think my company has really found its niche. We build platforms. We have no overarching brand that identifies our art fairs from others. We build a platform for the communities in which we operate,” Freeman said. “This show is about Atlanta.”

Single day general admission tickets begin at $35. Doors open to the public at 11:00 AM each day. Closing time is 7:00 PM Friday and Saturday, 6:00 PM on Sunday.

Around Town

The Atlanta Art Fair highlights a dizzying assortment of cultural shindigs taking place across the city this week, Atlanta Art Week.

There’s also the Atlanta Design Festival. Atlanta Fashion Week. Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ+ film festival.

Atlanta’s art museums have put their best foot forward as well.

At the High Museum, special exhibitions for homegrown photographer Tyler Mitchell, and selections from the collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys are on view. Anyone brave enough to fight the traffic heading north of downtown to the Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art at Kennesaw State University will be rewarded with “Jeffrey Gibson: They Teach Love: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation exhibition.” Gibson is presently representing the United States at the Venice Biennale. Ming Smith’s photography displayed at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art would be distinguished at any art museum in the nation.

Welcome to Atlanta, where the arts scene isn’t emerging as nationally important, it has arrived.