Digital Editions
Newsletters
Subscribe
Digital Editions
Newsletters
Art market
Museums & heritage
Exhibitions
Books
Podcasts
Columns
Technology
Adventures with Van Gogh
Art market
Museums & heritage
Exhibitions
Books
Podcasts
Columns
Technology
Adventures with Van Gogh
Art fairs
news

Inaugural Seattle Art Fair targets tech-savvy audience

Billionaire Paul Allen is backing the new regional event which boasts 60 local and international galleries

Julia Halperin
30 July 2015
Share

With a billionaire backer, an exhibitor list featuring some of the world’s largest galleries and a sports stadium as its location, the Seattle Art Fair is not a typical regional fair. The inaugural event, which opens today, 30 July, brings 60 galleries from 14 cities including New York, Miami, Hong Kong and Tokyo to Seattle’s CenturyLink Field Event Center (until 2 August).

Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft and owner of the Seattle Seahawks football team, is the driving force behind the fair. Allen’s investment company Vulcan Inc. is co-producing the event with Art Market Productions, which operates fairs including Art Market San Francisco and Texas Contemporary.

Seattle boasts a growing concentration of wealth in the tech and renewable energy sectors as well as major collectors including Allen, Jon Shirley, the former president of Microsoft, and Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks. With no other fairs in the Pacific Northwest region, “this will cover a lot of ground that hasn’t been covered before,” says Eric Gleason, the director of Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York.

The timing is also strategic: there are no other major fairs in July and Seattle offers an escape from the brutal summer heat. “It’s a great city and a great time of year to be here—these factors led to the growth of other fairs like [Art Basel] Miami [Beach],” says Max Fishko, the co-founder of Art Market Productions.

The fair also charges less to participate than many of its peers. Booths cost $26 per sq. foot, or around $6,500 for a modest stand. As a result, “you have galleries that have never shown at an art fair” alongside major dealers including Pace, David Zwirner and Gagosian Gallery, Fishko says. The exhibitor list includes 13 Seattle-based galleries. 

The fair has organised projects throughout the city, including a life-sized diorama by the Portland-based artist Wendy Red Star in one of its parks. Meanwhile, a satellite event, Out of Sight, presents work by more than 100 artists from the Pacific Northwest, many of whom do not have gallery representation (30 July-2 August).

Works at the main fair range in price from around $5,000 to more than $10m, Fishko says. Donald Ellis Gallery will present rare Native American objects from the Pacific Northwest ($20,000-$250,000), including a Tlingit raven rattle from Southeast Alaska, around 1860. 

In an effort to woo Seattle’s tech-savvy audience, Pace Gallery will present three projections by teamLAb, a collaborative of Japanese digital artists, alongside works by Tara Donovan, Sol LeWitt and others. New York's Bitforms Gallery will host a live performance by Addie Wagenknecht, who programmes drones to paint. The gallery will offer her completed drone paintings for around $8,000 each.

Others are betting on traditional media. Eric Gleason of Paul Kasmin, who is bringing new sculptures by Will Ryman and Ivan Navarro, says: “My hope is that some people who deal with the intangible all day will flock to wonderful tangible objects.”

Art fairs
Share
Subscribe to The Art Newspaper’s digital newsletter for your daily digest of essential news, views and analysis from the international art world delivered directly to your inbox.
Newsletter sign-up
Information
About
Contact
Cookie policy
Data protection
Privacy policy
Frequently Asked Questions
Subscription T&Cs
Terms and conditions
Advertise
Sister Papers
Sponsorship policy
Follow us
Instagram
Bluesky
LinkedIn
Facebook
TikTok
YouTube
© The Art Newspaper

Related content

Art Baselnews
8 February 2024

Art Basel reveals 287 galleries participating in its next Swiss fair, including 22 first-time exhibitors

June's event will be the first edition of the world’s most important art fair under the direction of Maike Cruse

Benjamin Sutton
Art marketnews
5 October 2023

Atlanta Art Fair is the latest addition to a packed fair calendar

Organisers expect more than 50 galleries to take part in the fair's inaugural edition next year

Carlie Porterfield
News
28 February 2017

Spring awakening? A shake-up for New York’s fairs

The city’s prime time for contemporary art gets a new programme, with an emphasis on discovery and depth

By Gabriella Angeleti, Sarah P. Hanson and Dan Duray