Tyler has the scoop on the Aqua Art Miami art fair this year. It's the fair where one has traditionally found the most Portland and Seattle galleries and in general I always liked the feel, which was originally patterned on Portland's Affair at the Jupiter Hotel fair.

Now it looks Aqua is upgrading and I sense an art fair arms race, or is it a space race? It is true we here in the Northwest have a thing about space.

Nice Dirk, you found a way to make Miami more competitive... sheesh

It would be great if the Aqua expansion could lure some galleries away from NADA. One of the best things about these fairs is the crossover exposure for artists. Many of the dealers don't make it to the other fairs, but do walk around the one they're at. Which is why a geographically focused fair (like Aqua was-more so than the others), although great at revealing just how may hot artists live in the PNW, might better serve the artists through integration with European and East Coast galleries. If they add 40 more galleries from the West Coast there's gonna be a lot of crap (every decent pdx gallery was already at Aqua last year).

I would disagree that, "every decent PDX gallery was already at Aqua Last Year".... in some ways I think some Portland galleries might not want to be at Aqua because they would rather have less of the geogrphic cluster you menioned.

I suppose this Aqua move is an attempt to provide more spread though. The real issue for all of these fair vying for #2 is how well they cultivate key collectors and institutions outside of their geographic region.

My emphasis is on "key collectors" here as at most Miami fairs it's definitely a very geogrphically varied crowd already. The trick is placement, not jus traffic or sales. ABMB is the uncontested winner in that camp but PULSE and NADA have ben competing over #2 for some time.

I suspect Dirk and Co. are up to more than just having more space, and they need to... with booth prices going up so much for many of the fairs it could really break the bank for a lot of galleries..