Amid the seemingly endless schedule of international art fairs that take place around the world each year, all art world eyes will be on Seattle this week, where the inaugural Seattle Art Fair, opens on Thursday July 30 and runs through August 2.
Previous attempts at organizing fairs here have never really gotten off the ground for a range of reasons including being underfunded, poorly organized, or simply too regionally focused. One former committee member told us about previous show organizers being so hampered by underfunding that they were “always coming to us and encouraging us to accept a particular exhibitor just so they could pay the rent. But why would we do that?”