Few major expos can match the range of art on view in the Atlanta Art Fair’s largest edition yet, which held its VIP preview on Thursday (1 October) at Pullman Yards. There, wares presented by 83 exhibitors span mixed media agate slices from the Atlanta-based artist and designer Amy Rader, painted puzzles by the College Park-based artist Jeffrey Wilcox Paclipan, and pop culture icons that the Atlanta-born, Los Angeles-based artist Michael Kalish has fashioned out of film strips.
Rarefied names from afar figure prominently as well. The San Francisco-based gallery Art of Contemporary Africa is showing a canvas and two vessels by the South African legend Esther Mahlangu, and the New York-based artist Rafael Domenech contributed one of the seven large-scale installations featured in the fair’s public projects section. In theory, this vast, Pop-tinged cornucopia could be chaotic and overwhelming; in execution, it works, bound elegantly by the fair's soaring post-industrial setting.
A sculpture of a big blinking cloud by the Los Angeles-based Trulee Hall hangs over it all at the fair’s centre. Nato Thompson, the artistic director of Art Market Productions (or AMP, which organises this fair), says that when he first spotted this work last year in Hall’s studio, she said it was already destined for an exhibition. Then she went on a yoga retreat and quit the art world. Now it is concluding a three-fair tour, after presiding over the San Francisco Art Fair and the Seattle Art Fair, both AMP productions.
A sculpture by Trulee Hall hangs over a central space at the 2026 edition of the Atlanta Art Fair Photo: Vi Dao @viavividmess
Thompson says he picked up on the vibrant, Pop-inflected styles permeating this year’s Atlanta Art Fair. “People are pretty depressed,” he says. “I think people are emotionally wanting something else.”
Times may be tough, but folks here are as enthusiastic as ever. Atlanta is resilient. Two local artists—the muralist Charity Hamidullah, who is showing with Atlanta-based Tila Studios in the fair’s cultural partner section, and the painter Christopher James McAdoo—both tell The Art Newspaper they consider the city’s talent pool to be its greatest asset. “The struggle creates genius,” McAdoo says.
Since the pandemic, Atlanta’s art scene has weathered an entire hype cycle. In 2022, the adviser Kendra Walker launched Atlanta Art Week. The United Talent Agency staged its first pop-up exhibition; a “permanent” space followed, then closed after the agency suspended its arts division. The first-ever Atlanta Art Fair opened the following month. It remains the city’s only such event.
“There was some scepticism, as there always is when something’s starting,” says Josh Hintz of the Milwaukee-based Var Gallery, which is showing at the fair for the third time.
Uncertainties around Atlanta’s collector base linger. “My impression is that they have mostly gone out of town to purchase,” says the Memphis-based David Lusk, whose namesake gallery is making its Atlanta Art Fair debut. Halfway through opening night, he reported that “an important collector” from New York had expressed “a whole lot of interest” in one of the quilted “truck butts” by the Nashville-based Briena Harmening suspended in his stand, each priced at $6,000.
Soft sculptures by the artist Briena Harmening on view in David Lusk Gallery's stand at the Atlanta Art Fair Photo: Vi Dao @viavividmess
By the end of opening night the dealer Scott Zieher had sold three works—a $2,800 excavated book by Portland-based James Allen, an $8,000 photograph by Atlanta-based Caroline Allison and an $800 drawing by New York-based Anthony Miler, all to private buyers. “If I meet three new collectors here on the first night, that’s ripe enough for me,” Zieher says.
After deciding to skip the upcoming edition of the Scope Art Show in Miami Beach in order to start building relationships in Atlanta, the Harlem-based Claire Oliver Gallery sold a towering sculpture by Miami-based Carlos Betancourt to a private collector for $20,000 within an hour of the fair opening. The Atlanta-based gallery Luca Fine Art sold a large, butterfly-laden portrait by the French artist Lis Sam for $30,000.
Many of this year’s participants agree that the fair is improving. “This is probably the best year,” says Susan Bridges, the founder of the local Whitespace Gallery. “It’s a bit more curated.”
The event keeps growing, as galleries from Charlotte, Los Angeles and Kingston, Jamaica get involved. A perhaps unlikely contingent from Wisconsin is developing too, with five galleries from the Badger State showing at the fair this year. Still, Atlanta galleries run this show, bringing the sprawling city’s offerings beneath one traffic-free roof.
It is widely known that necessity has fostered an exceptionally collaborative creative community throughout the American South, where public arts funding remains limited. On opening night, the Atlanta-based artist Tariqa Waters celebrated her exhibition in the fair’s public projects sector with a 30-minute gameshow in its programming area. I expected comedy, and left with insight. Waters asked contestants the hard questions, like what would happen to art without the art world?
At the end, Waters opened the floor for audience questions. “What would make Atlanta’s art scene better?” I asked. Her second contestant, the local sculptor Grace Kisa, responded: “Support.” The audience broke out in applause.
- Atlanta Art Fair, until 4 Octoebr, Pullman Yards, Atlanta