I hope you won a nifty cash prize or visited your local Coinstar prior to visiting the AAF Contemporary Art Fair this past weekend. Once lovingly referred to as the “Affordable Art Fair,” there was very little, if anything affordable about it. Recently redefined as the “Contemporary Art Fair,” complete with a $5,000 hike in the price limit, it left confused fair-goers and galleries alike wondering why there wasn’t more buying going on.
Well, for me personally, somewhere between my $8 prepackaged sandwich and the $5 soup, I found myself to be officially broke. That’s right—not even the food was affordable. But as for the “real collectors” I believe that they too were left in a debilitated state of shock due to the higher prices.
My biggest fear—that the newly defined “Contemporary Art Fair” leaves room for more art fairs (ex: “The Really Affordable Art Fair”) to be established…and who has the wherewithal for yet another art fair? (Or the money for an additional weekend of overpriced, prepackaged art-fair-food, for that matter…)
Courtney Strimple
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