Art Problems: Do I Need to Go to Art Fairs?
Are the fairs worth the back pain and steep ticket prices? Paddy Johnson has the answer.
Do I need to go to art fairs? I don’t have gallery representation and galleries don’t seem very interested in new artists at those events. Should I just stay home? —home alone in Chicago
Nobody needs to go to an art fair. It’s optional. Art fairs are places to look at art, buy art, and meet professionals. If you’re not interested in those things, don’t go. Nobody will miss you if you decide it’s not worth it. They won’t even know you’re missing.
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? People only remark on the absence of galleries, not the absence of artists. You won’t be missed. You won’t be talked about either.
What you get out of any art fair experience depends on your ability to assess what you should get out of it. You have to know what you want. Networking? Looking at art? Both? Then you can figure out a plan. Usually, this means setting up coffee dates with pre-existing connections and reviewing fair events and programming.
This is the foundation of career strategy, even if nobody calls it that. Calendar management sounds too simple, and “strategy” is such a dirty word in the art world that nobody wants to use it. But every successful artist does, whether they name it or not. Art Professionals don’t find your work because your art is so great. They find it because you’ve gone out of your way to find them.
