Town Fair

Jorg Sasse, 8246, 2000.

So the DC Art Fair is scheduled for April of next year, and the organizers behind the Miami brouhaha hope to exhibit anywhere from 60 to 85 galleries drawn from the international pool. (That number of galleries depends on the optimism of the person you ask.) No word yet whether (or which) District galleries will be participating; none of the 1515 14th St. galleries is committed, and neither are the handful of Dupont galleries with whom I've spoken.

If gallerists are skeptical, they have reason to be. Take what I say with a grain of salt (rule number one around these parts), and know up front that my hesitation stems in small part from my feeling down on the District lately and in larger part from my feeling extremely skeptical about the market's ability to sustain year-round art fairs wherever there is a city to host them, but I don't think I'd bite on this.

The DC Art Fair is sandwiched between Scope and the Affordable Art Fair, for one thing—and I know that the gallerist who alone represented the District at Scope isn't planning on going back. On the other (higher, more expensive) end of the spectrum (near which the DC fair probably isn't situated), Art Basel is only a month later. I don't know what collectors or galleries the organizers intend to attract, but their reasoning for holding a fair has a lot more to say about tourism than the market. At least, that's their public reasoning. But the tourists who come here are the wrong sort for an art fair—not the hot young things or the wealthy elite—so, let me just say that I have my doubts, and I especially think it would be premature to say that the city's "arrived" or think that this is otherwise any kind of signpost for the city.

Also, art fair at home? No traveling? At the convention center? And their community involvement plan? Not nearly as exciting as this city's. Sure, we live in stuffy DC—but I've heard of more exciting G8 summits.