Can a Slimmed-Down Expo Chicago Still Throw Its Weight Around?

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Ask incoming Expo Chicago fair director Kate Sierzputowski what her city’s art scene is like, and you get a couple of very illuminating examples to illustrate its nature, which she describes as “distinctly collaborative.” 

For many years, dealer Rhona Hoffman hosted an August ping-pong tournament, Sierzputowski told ARTnews recently. “Everyone showed up, drank some beers, and put their name on the board, from gallery owners to art fair directors to art handlers to artists to heads of independent spaces and museum directors,” she said. (After Hoffman gave up her space in 2024, another longtime Windy City dealer, Carrie Secrist, hosted the event at her larger new space, Secrist Beach.) And the Renaissance Society, the University of Chicago venue beloved for its brainy shows, has for three years now hosted a November fundraiser at Seven Ten Lanes in Hyde Park, where ticket holders show off their skills at bowling; the event page for 2025 promised “strikes, spares, suds, and sliders.”

It is in this distinctive Midwest city on Lake Michigan, with its close-knit, supportive art scene, that some 130 galleries will convene for the 15th edition of Expo Chicago (April 9–12), its first under Sierzputowski’s leadership and its third outing as part of the international Frieze brand, which purchased the fair (along with New York’s Armory Show) in 2023.

The gossip around the art world is that as the market suffers, many fairs have had trouble getting their booths fully subscribed; ARTnews reported in October, for example, that at least eight galleries had pulled out of December’s Art Basel Miami Beach even after their participation was announced. When Expo revealed its 2026 lineup of 130-some exhibitors, it was down nearly 25 percent from the last three editions, which hosted in the region of 170 galleries. 

Sierzputowski maintains that this was a deliberate decision, made before the fair even opened the application process. “For us it was a purposeful move,” she said. “We decided after 2025 that we wanted the fair to seem a little more accessible, and more curated, to show the refinement of the fair under Frieze. In a more manageably sized fair, our audience can feel like they have direct relationships with the galleries and not feel overwhelmed.” While mega-dealers like Gagosian and Zwirner are sitting it out, major galleries such as New York and LA’s Karma (a first-timer), New York’s Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, Nara Roesler (São Paulo, New York, and Rio de Janeiro), and Vielmetter Los Angeles, along with Chicago mainstays like Monique Meloche and Patron, are on the roster. 

And if the main fair has lost some weight, the city is beefing up with one new satellite, Neighbors, in a luxe Gold Coast apartment, which joins Barely Fair, “the 1:12 scale international contemporary art fair,” ongoing since 2019, which brings a new meaning to the term “micro fair,” with miniature artworks in Lilliputian spaces. 

What’s more, the energy around fair week may be only greater this year, as both the Renaissance Society and the Museum of Contemporary Art have aligned their benefit events to coincide with Expo. The RenBen, as the former’s is affectionately called, “always creates so much FOMO and such iconic moments,” says Sierzputowski. That will doubtless be even more so this year as world-famous Italian artist and trickster Maurizio Cattelan is the RenBen’s artistic director, organizing a “Silent Party” on April 8 that will transform two floors of the historic Chicago Athletic Association hotel into a labyrinth of myriad art performances, edible offerings, and more.

This year, Expo aims to capitalize on building excitement for the Obama Presidential Center, which opens to the public on July 19 and has already commissioned projects from high-wattage artists including Mark Bradford, Nick Cave, Jenny Holzer, Julie Mehretu, and Carrie Mae Weems. The fair’s “Embodiment” sector is curated by Louise Bernard, founding director of the Center, and will present galleries inspired by its architecture (by the husband-and-wife team of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien) and its commissioned artists. Among them are Anton Kern Gallery and Regen Projects, which are mounting a joint presentation of paintings by Mexico City–born, New York–based Aliza Nisenbaum, who has a major mural commission at the Center. 

“I’m so honored to be part of the tradition of social activism and plurality and all the values Obama subscribes to,” Nisenbaum told ARTnews in a phone conversation ahead of the fair. It’s a homecoming for her, as she earned her BFA and MFA at the renowned School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her 70-foot-long Obama Center mural, Reading Circles/ Weaving Dreams/ Seeding Futures (2026), celebrates the public library and will feature spotlights on numerous writers as well as visual artists. The galleries, meanwhile, will show portraits that grow out of her extended exchanges with immigrant communities, work that will no doubt be especially resonant against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s violent raids on immigrant communities, including in the Windy City.

Sierzputowski joined the fair in 2020 as a coordinator, and was promoted to director of programming in 2021 and artistic director in 2023 before her appointment last year as director. Under her tenure in those earlier positions, the fair has organized a summit for museum curators as well as a forum for curators (dubbed “one-of-a-kind” by Chicago publication NewCity), and she hopes that the fair’s institutionally minded attitude will be clear on the main floor of the fair. That will come partly through Louise Bernard’s presentation and partly with the contributions of the fair’s curator, Essence Harden, also named in 2025, who will oversee the fair’s Profile sector (featuring solo and group projects by international galleries), and of Kate A. Pfohl, associate curator at the Detroit Institute of Arts, organizing the Focus section (highlighting emerging galleries and artistic practices). 

But a fair doesn’t succeed by the attendance only of museum curators and directors, important as they may be; quality collectors have to come through in numbers, and Patricia Pericas, senior director at Nara Roesler, says the fair succeeds on that front. The gallery will present work by two young Brazilian artists, Elian Almeida and Mônica Ventura, whose work is priced as high as $35,000 but as low as a very accessible $7,000. 

“I love the collectors there,” said Pericas (who is also on the fair’s selection committee) in a phone conversation. “They are old-school. It’s not a jazzy, flashy collector. They dive deep into the program.” Collecting may happen at “a different pace” than at more glitzy fairs like Art Basel Miami Beach, she said, but the collectors are still “cosmoplitan and elegant.” 

Even museum trustees, she says, collect boldly, buying work that may be provocative or political: “They’re not afraid of it.”