The FOG Design+Art Fair in 2024. It is set to return for its 11th edition at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture in San Francisco.Credit...Nikki Ritcher, via FOG Design+Art
The art market rises and falls, but art fairs are forever — or at least they seem so sometimes, given that they are more plentiful than ever. Kipton Cronkite, an art adviser who lives in Los Angeles, attended 41 art fairs worldwide in 2023 — he kept track — and this year it will be closer to 30, he said.
“Every month there’s something somewhere,” Cronkite said, noting that it’s his job to have a sense of the overall marketplace. “Collectors can’t go to all these fairs themselves — that’s why I go.”
Even famous artists whose works are sold at such events take part in fairs as buyers. “I like them because I’m a shopper, too,” said Brian Donnelly, better known under his nom d’art, KAWS.
Donnelly, who currently has an exhibition of his collected works on view at the Drawing Center in New York, particularly enjoys the Outsider Art Fair, but he also stopped by Art Basel Paris in October.
“I don’t need them to be any more than they are — it’s a gathering of a lot of stuff,” Donnelly said, noting that some artists see them as too commercial. “There are many ways to get work into the world — why cut off one of those avenues?”
Here are five of those avenues coming up in 2025, and how to navigate them.
FOG Design+Art: San Francisco, Jan. 23-26
For its 11th edition, FOG is set to host 59 dealers at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, spread across two piers jutting out into San Francisco Bay. The fair has a new director, Sydney Blumenkranz, who formerly worked at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on the events team. “We have a really elevated group of collectors here, and this is the time to reach them,” Blumenkranz said.
Among the first-time exhibitors will be Lisson Gallery, with spaces in New York, London, Shanghai, Beijing and Los Angeles. Lisson plans to show work by the installation maestro Anish Kapoor, who lives in London and Venice, and the textile artist Olga de Amaral, who lives in Bogotá, Colombia, among other artists. “We have an increasing number of clients on the West Coast, and now seems like a great time to participate,” Lisson’s chief executive, Alex Logsdail, said in an email.
There is also a solid roster of local galleries with a global reach, including Jessica Silverman, Altman Siegel and Berggruen Gallery. “To me, FOG is the best mix of hyperlocal and international at the same time,” Blumenkranz said.
