Dallas: Hamburger to Highbrow?

From just 35 exhibitors in its first year, to the 94 that participated last week, the increasing interest in Dallas as a destination for both collectors and dealers is evident. Longtime an important seat of southern wealth in the US - hence the initial interest in potential local collectors - a wind of sophistication and international attention may just deflate the big hair and vulgar displays of excess for which the city has been known.

Housed over two floors of Fashion Industry Gallery, the fair is located in the center of Dallas’s booming Arts District - within walking distance of the Dallas Museum of Art (designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes), the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (designed by I.M. Pei), the Nasher Sculpture Center (designed by Renzo Piano) and various theaters, galleries and temporary outdoor concert spaces.

Local art world figures, including fair co-founders John Sughrue and Chris Byrne, have compared today’s Dallas to Los Angeles a decade ago.
 

And while old moneyed support (post-war gifts to local museums…) has bolstered the arts scene here for years, the focus has shifted toward cultivating new generations of collectors who are willing to look beyond Texas for exposure to contemporary artistic creation. 

And the Republican, capitalist, business-minded mentality of Dallas means that new fortunes and new potential collectors are being born every day here.

Dallas Art Fair via Courtney Price

Many galleries - including Paris’s Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin and Galerie Christian Berst - came for the first time this year. And it seems many exhibitors showed art that might appeal to a “Texan” collector base. New York’s Marlborough Chelsea gallery prominently displayed a painting of a hamburger by Mike Bouchet.

It’s true, the tone might seem a little louder, a little more crass than at the other fairs, but tastes are decidedly different here - if not for long.

 

Work by Hung Liu via Courtney Price
 

"America Sneezes", a show by New York-based artist Nate Lowman, just opened at nearby Dallas Contemporary. The nonprofit museum (with free admission) has been home to increasingly important shows as of late. Just last month a successful, if somewhat controversial, exhibition by France’s Loris Gréaud closed to much acclaim.  

 

So, as has been the question in many an “art fair city,” what will happen when the show moves on?

 

If Miami has taught us anything about the temporality and fickle nature of art world attention, we’d know that the dealers, artists and collectors generally stay for but a brief moment, and then move on for the rest of the year.
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Hopefully Dallas will know how to maintain the energy it’s been exposed to this week - and know how to appropriately ‘capitalize’ on its investment.