The Best Not-So-Little Art Fair in Texas
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Growing up, Kelly Cornell was confused when she first visited a shopping mall outside of her native Dallas. “I remember thinking, this isn’t a mall,” she says. “Where's the art?”
We’re perched at a table outside on the second day of the 14th Dallas Art Fair, and Cornell, the fair’s director, is telling me about her own favorite local haunts. “I go to NorthPark,” she explains, discussing the shopping center opened by developer Raymond Nasher in 1965 that boasts a collection including works by Roy Lichtenstein, KAWS, Frank Stella, and more. “It's incredible and unlike anything else out there. It's a shopping center, also I'd call it a museum—the Katharina Grosse they just installed is huge—because millions of people go every year and experience it. I grew up with that and I didn't know any different.”
The 14th Dallas Art Fair was held in late April at the Fashion Industry Gallery in Downton Dallas—there were also satellite events spread out over the city, in hotels, private collections, along Highland Park running trails, and even the Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium—and made a compelling case for the importance of domestic fairs, even as its glitzy international counterparts were kicking up their gondoliers’ slippers halfway around the world.
“I’ve always said that this fair marches to the beat of its own drummer,” says Cornell, who began working for the fair as an intern when she was enrolled at SMU. “Things here just work differently.”
That was apparent during a Thursday-night preview event, when a who’s who of Dallas’s art scene made their way through the venue, sipping champagne and visiting booths of galleries including Various Small Fires (which was also celebrating the opening of a Dallas outpost that weekend), Cristina Grajales Gallery, Half Gallery, Kasmin, Perrotin, and Van Doren Waxter among many others.
Fairgoers buzzed about work by Ukrainian artists at the Sapar Contemporary booth, or the pieces by local artist Evita Tezeno that had already been acquired by the Dallas Museum of Art, and gallerists—a mix of local and international—were eager to note the difference between Texas crowds and those at other fairs. “At most of these things, if you don’t close a sale in the booth, you don’t close it,” one local dealer said. “Here, people keep coming back—it’s not unusual to finally sell them something a few weeks down the line.” Another exhibitor, in from the East Coast, noted, “In Dallas, we can be much looser with what we show. The people here are open; they want to buy art.” (As far as the local dealers go, one says, “We actually want each other to succeed—that’s unique to Dallas and it throws other people off.”)
Cornell attributes the good vibes to a culturally voracious crowd being presented with the opportunity to shop local. “There's no one size fits all here,” she says. “Over the years, people have continued to bring more difficult artwork as they realized that this is a sophisticated audience. I do think an appreciation of the arts is woven in here at a very deep level. There’s also a cross pollination happening and it's really solidifying our scene. We have a great ecosystem of the arts here, from galleries to collectors, philanthropists, and museums. If there’s support at all of those levels, it’s helping strengthen the whole ecosystem.”
That support is evident. Over the course of the fair, visitors were able to tour the Warehouse, a private collection in an industrial corner of town founded by Howard and Cindy Rachofsky and the late Vernon Faulconer; visit Marguerite Hoffman’s home to see her assemblage of modern masterpieces; and even take a tour of the pieces the Jones family has installed at the stadium where their football team plays. The Joule Hotel, a neighbor to the fair's headquarters, hosted artist events, a pop-up shopping experience, and the over-the-top Eye Ball, a lavish themed party that closed out the weekend in high style.
The local institutions are intimately involved as well; the Dallas Museum of Art has spent close to $675,000 since 2016 acquiring work from the fair, and the Nasher Sculpture Center opened its doors to a Saturday afternoon panel discussion on the growth of the arts in Dallas where director Jeremy Strick noted, “Prior to the Dallas Art Fair, there had been a bifurcation between those people collecting international work and those collecting domestic—the art fair mixed that up.”
Back outside the fair, Cornell is swarmed by well-wishers, stopping to tell her what they loved or assure her they’ll be back later with a spouse who needs to symbolically weigh in on a purchase. (At that Nasher panel, panelist Billy Fong noted, “This is the birthplace of Neiman Marcus. We like to shop.” ) Which begs the question, has she picked up anything yet herself?
“I always do, but not yet this year,” she says. “Everything I wanted to buy already sold. I have first access and I didn't even get to it quick enough. But still, I'm happy about that.”
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