During the first week of October, Pullman Yards will undergo a massive transformation. The Atlanta Art Fair is set to bring over 60 exhibitors and more than 100 local, national and international artists to present their works on the grounds Oct. 3-6.
Artists and art industry leaders will have opportunities to connect with one another, network, and experience art from institutions across Atlanta and beyond.
Fair Director Kelly Freeman and her illustrious team have been hard at work crafting a three-day-long festival that includes a vast array of exhibitions, informative panel discussions, and other related programming. Presented by Art Market Productions (AMP), the event calls on numerous local partners such as the High Museum of Art, Art Papers, Atlanta History Center, Dashboard Co-op, Spruill Center for the Arts, and Millennium Gate Museum Atlanta.
The 2024 Atlanta Art Fair has enlisted Artistic Director Nato Thompson alongside Atlanta-based guest curators Lauren Jackson Harris and Karen Comer Lowe who have long standing reputations as champions of underrepresented voices in the arts.
Lauren Jackson Harris is an independent curator and director from Atlanta who co-founded Black Women in Visual Art which is an organization dedicated to supporting Black women arts professionals. Karen Comer Lowe’s career includes curatorial and education positions at institutions across the nation including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, and her current role as Curator in Residence at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.
During the 2024 Atlanta Art Fair, Harris will curate a group exhibition of rising Atlanta-based artists while Lowe will highlight two internationally-recognized local artists, Navin Norling and Pam Longobardi.
For Director Kelly Freeman, launching an art fair in Atlanta was a natural choice, especially after seeing the homegrown success of Atlanta Art Week. Freeman has been working in the art fair space for a decade now and brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to the table.
Freeman was born and grew up in Southern California before relocating to New Hampshire to attend Dartmouth College. Once in the Northeast, she began traveling to visit New York City with friends and quickly became enamored with the city. “I fell in love with the city and the culture of New York City,” Freeman told me. She went on to get her master’s degree in Art Business at Christie’s Education.
Following graduation, Freeman worked in New York City galleries including Galerie Lelong, P.P.O.W Gallery, and Morgan Lehman Gallery. She made her entry into the world of international art fairs when she became Art Fair Director in Business Development & Marketing at Art Market Productions in Brooklyn in 2014.
“I just fell in love with the idea that you are creating this marketplace that really is created out of nothing,” explained Freeman of the Art Fair industry.
“I mean, you’re coming into a raw convention center or factory space or field, and all of these temporary structures are built in such a way that you are building a very permanent feeling museum. I love that challenge and how to stay current in a community that you’re not embedded in year-round.”
Today, Freeman holds the position of Art Fair Director and Head of AMP Vertical in Creative Direction & Business Development at A21, formerly Agency 21. The company already has connections to Atlanta, as A21 also operates the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival. It was the next logical step to bring an international art fair here, with organizers calling Atlanta one of the fastest growing cultural hubs in the United States.
While the final lineup for participants is yet to be released, they have provided a list of highlighted art galleries taking part in this year’s inaugural Atlanta Art Fair. That list includes Gallery Anderson Smith, Marcia Wood Gallery, Maune Contemporary, The Object Space, Poem 88, Sandler Hudson Gallery, Spalding Nix Fine Art, Whitespace, Dunwoody Gallery, Fay Gold Gallery, Day & Night Projects, Jackson Fine Art, Johnson Lowe Gallery, among others.
“Art fairs are a very unique microcosm,” explained Freeman. “Our company focuses on regional art fairs; art fairs that are about the communities in which they operate.”
Visitors can expect to witness displays of work from outside the metro area as well. Galleries from Savannah, Birmingham, Fort Lauderdale, Greensboro, Houston, New York, Los Angeles, and as far away as South Korea, Colombia, Finland, Canada, and Ireland will all have a presence at the 2024 Atlanta Art Fair.
For those unfamiliar with the art fair concept as a whole, the idea is to curate a space and fill it to the brim with cultural partners and artists to provide an introduction to an entire scene in one concise place and time.
In Atlanta, that place is Pullman Yards, and the time is Wed., Oct. 3 through Sun., Oct. 6, 2024.
Attendees at the Atlanta Art Fair will walk through the main entrance to see a stage positioned at the center of the venue that will be activated with presentations, panels, performances, and artist talks during the fair. Surrounding the theater, expect to witness featured works by Sheila Pree Bright, Gyun Hur presented by Flux Projects, internationally recognized artist Roy Campos, Curtis Patterson’s bronze sculptures, in addition to installations by projected light artists and sculptors as well.
The 2024 Atlanta Art Fair has also enlisted an esteemed group of advisors for their board, with a lineup that includes Shannon Morris of Spruill Gallery, Natassha Chambliss of the Chambliss Collection, art consultant and advisor Kristen V. Cahill, Cynthia Farnell from the Ernst G. Welch School of Art & Design Gallery at Georgia State University, independent artist and curator Makeda Lewis, curator and founder of Town + Culture Denise Jackson, Donovan Johnson of Johnson Lowe Gallery, Birney Robert from Georgia Tech, Sarah Higgins of Art Papers, Burnaway’s Executive Director Brandon Sheats, independent curator Denise Leitch Jackson, Atlanta City Council President Doug Shipman, and Allison Thorpe, Vice President of Sutton.
Furthering their commitment to representing the Atlanta art scene, Thompson and Freeman will work with Atlanta-based advisors Tim and Dirk von Gal, founders of the Intersect Art Fair group.
“It was pivotal to us to collaborate with Atlanta-based curators who are deeply embedded within the city’s art scene and who can respond to the pressing needs of the arts community. Lauren and Karen have been instrumental in guiding our curatorial approach to the fair and strengthening ties with local stakeholders. We’re launching Atlanta Art Fair with the aim of nurturing more opportunities for cultural workers in the city and providing a supportive platform for the artists and galleries living and working here, while introducing all the exciting things happening in Atlanta with the wider world,” said Artistic Director of Atlanta Art Fair Nato Thompson in a statement.
“It’s the centralization of all of the different content,” continued Freeman, as we discussed what is special about the art fair experience.
“All of the different galleries [will be] showing very curated selections of their program, so you can learn about who they are and what they do, and then go and experience their individual programs at a later time. That, presented in context with international and national programs alongside them, is a non-commercial aspect of the show which is really meant to contextualize what’s happening in the global art community via large scale installations and public projects. You just get to see how it all kind of fits together.”
“This is one snapshot of what’s happening in the global art world today, via the lens of Atlanta,” said Freeman.
For more information about the 2024 Atlanta Art Fair, as well as additional programming announcements, check out the Atlanta Art Fair website and follow them on social media.