Atlanta, one of the fastest-growing art destinations in the US, will be home to a new art fair starting next autumn, organisers announced Thursday (5 October) during Atlanta Art Week.
The inaugural Atlanta Art Fair will be held in October 2024 alongside the third edition of Atlanta Art Week, which kicked off in 2022 and was founded by art advisor Kendra Walker. The fair will be put on through a partnership between Art Market Productions (AMP) and Intersect Art and Design, both known for producing regional art fairs across the US. AMP is a division of a21, the firm that puts on the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival, a popular draw in the city each September.
“It seems like there’s this moment to capitalise on,” says Kelly Freeman, a longtime fair director at AMP—which also organises the Seattle Art Fair and Art Market Hamptons, among others—who will head up the Atlanta Art Fair. “There's an appetite for a centralised gathering place for the arts and we'd like to be that place, alongside the incredible work that Kendra Walker's already doing with Atlanta Art Week.”
Visitors at the Seattle Art Fair, one of AMP's other fairs Courtesy of AMP Art Fairs
AMP expects more than 50 galleries to participate in the inaugural fair, largely a mix of dealers from Atlanta and across the South, with applications scheduled to open 1 December. The fair will be held at Pullman Yards, a former industrial complex in east Atlanta that has been overhauled into a mixed-use development with a film studio, restaurants and event space.
Atlanta, long home to thriving art, music, film and food scenes, has received more national attention over the past few years. Hollywood heavyweight United Talent Agency (UTA) opened its second UTA Artist Space contemporary art gallery in Atlanta last year, joining dozens of galleries operating in the city. The population of the greater Atlanta metro has grown to its largest ever, around 5.16 million people, according to estimates released in August 2023 by the Atlanta Regional Commission.
“There's just so much growth. We've been looking at Atlanta for a while now,” Freeman says. “It's just this growing, thriving metropolis that has a pretty amazing concentration of wealth. It seems like it's the right time to come in with a platform that they can use to tell their story.”