Dealers Are Doing Brisk Business at a Smaller and ‘More Intentional’ Expo Chicago 

Tears of joy are not the first thing you expect to hear about at art fairs, but that was the order of the day for Tennessee artist Annie Brito Hodgin at Thursday’s VIP preview at the thirteenth edition of Expo Chicago (April 9–12), where she is showing her paintings with Red Arrow Gallery.

“It’s the artist’s first time showing outside Nashville and her first time showing at an art fair, and she’s here with us,” gallery director Ashley Layendecker told ARTnews. Raised in a Southern Baptist fundamentalist Christian culture, the artist paints surreal modern interpretations of Biblical passages, populated entirely with versions of herself. “She works out of her kitchen and is raising three children,” Layendecker added. 

The tears came when it was revealed that one of her paintings went to the Bennett Collection (founded by Steven Alan Bennett and Elaine Melotti Schmidt, retired from careers in corporate law and education), which created a fund to buy works from the fair by women-identifying artists painting women in a realist style; acquisitions will go on view at Michigan’s Muskegon Museum of Art. “She started crying, and then we started crying,” Layendecker related. By midday on day one, Red Arrow had sold about half of the paintings it brought at prices in the range of $4,500 and $5,800, and was thrilled with the new connections they had made.

If selling pieces on day one of a fair is impressive, selling art on day zero is even better, especially in a slow art market. New York’s Half Gallery is showing seemingly abstract paintings that after some looking may resolve into floral imagery, by Chinese-born Wenhui Hao, who earned an MFA just last year at the Royal College of Art and lives in London. The gallery had sold six of the eight paintings on view by the day before Thursday’s VIP preview, at prices from $6,000 to $18,500, to both European and American buyers, some repeat clients. “We had people waiting for this fair,” said director Erin Goldberger. 

The fair slimmed down from about 170 exhibitors in past years to about 130 this year; part of the massive hall at Navy Pier was walled off, creating a smaller sales floor. Dealers were thrilled with the change. “It feels fucking great,” John Corbett, co-principal at Chicago gallery Corbett vs. Dempsey, told ARTnews. “The scaling down in size allowed for a raising of the bar in terms of the overall quality of presentations. It’s a more manageable size.” At some megafairs, he said, collectors have later apologized for not coming to their booth but explained that they couldn’t find it. 

This year, Corbett vs. Dempsey is showing unpeopled paintings and drawings of suburban homes by New York artist Gabrielle Garland, whose skewed perspectives and wild colors are the only suggestions of the personalities of those who might live in them. Paintings are tagged at $10,000 to $20,000, drawings at $2,000, and by midday Thursday the gallery had sold a painting and some drawings, and was satisfied. “Around here, people like to kick the tires,” said Corbett.

Notable market figures were in attendance at the fair, including Art Intelligence Global’s Matt Bangser; New York and Chicago advisor Erica Barrish; LA advisor Victoria Burns; New York advisor Wendy Cromwell; and Sotheby’s specialist Gary Metzner. Chicago collectors were out in force, including David Frej and Nancy Lerner; Josh and Megan Green Rogers; and Gwen Callans and Biff Ruttenberg. Other Chicago royalty included former Obama advisor and current CEO of the Obama Foundatoin Valerie Jarrett and at least one proper celebrity, musician Chance the Rapper.

The fair is also known for its draw of curators and leaders from museums and nonprofits. Among those on the scene on Thursday were Robyn Farrell of New York’s The Kitchen, Alison Gass of the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, Madeleine Grynsztejn and Jamillah James of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, DJ Hellerman of the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Adam Levine of the Toledo Museum of Art, Aram Moshayedi of Mexico City’s Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Amy Smith-Stewart of Connecticur’s Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, and Julián Zugazagoitia of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

Some galleries reported day-one sales into the six figures.

Los Angeles’s Night Gallery sold several paintings by East Chicago native Robert Nava at prices as high as $200,000. “Our presentation is very much a homecoming for Robert Nava,” said senior director Brian Faucette in a statement. “He grew up just outside Chicago, and visits to the Art Institute (who now hold many of his drawings in their collection) and the Field Museum were formative. These institutions offered his earliest exposure to ‘Art.'”

The Windy City’s Secrist Beach sold Open Frame (2025), by Luftwerk, the duo of Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero, to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. The asking price was $150,000. 

Karma (New York and Los Angeles) placed sculptures from Kathleen Ryan’s “Bad Fruit” (2018-) series, including Bad Lemon (Adrift) (2026) for $150,000 and Bad Orange (Deep Blue) (2026) for $135,000.

San Francisco’s Jonathan Carver Moore is offering small pieces by Demond Melancon representing colorful masks that recall classical African examples, created in glass beads and rhinestones on canvas, priced at $8,000. He had sold a number of them by midday Thursday. The pieces were inspired partly by the history of New Orleans Mardi Gras, where, Moore explained, Black people were once banned from appearing, leading to a separate tradition of masking. Also on view are photos by Adrian Burrell, a third-generation resident of Oakland, California, whose photos are inspired by a family history of enslavement that threads from Senegal to Louisiana. One shows a family elder, another a field of sugar cane on fire. One was sold before the fair opened, to a New York collector; the pieces are priced between $10,000 and $12,500. 

“This is one of my favorite fairs,” Carver Moore said, relating that before he opened his gallery, when he came here for research purposes, he was already buying from Expo.

San Franciso dealer Jessica Silverman credited her return to the fair after several years away partly to the presence of a recent hire, fair curator Essence Harden, who is a good friend. Also, “I’m from the Midwest,” said Silverman in a conversation in her booth, so she was happy to return. Another reason? “I got to know Abby Pucker, who is a firecracker.” Pucker is a prominent collector and philanthropist in the Windy City, and is part of the Pritzker family, who created the Pritzker Prize, the most distinguished honor for architects. “Chicago has always had great collectors.” 

Silverman focused this year on Bay Area artists, including Sadie Barnette, David Huffman, Lava Thomas, and Koak, who is newly represented by the gallery. By the end of VIP day, Silverman had sold Koak’s 2026 paintings Everything Touches Everything Else and Open Book / Pressed Flowers for $50,000 each as well as three pieces by Sadie Barnette, including Fancy Flowers (2026) for $24,000.

Los Angeles dealer Megan Mulrooney and her associate director Isabella Pigoni Miller were celebrating with champagne by early afternoon, having sold out their booth of floral landscapes by Kate Zimmerman Turpin, priced from$16,000 to $18,500, and small floral paintings on mohair by Maria Szakats for $4,000 to $6,000. They went to multiple Chicago collectors, said Pigoni Miller.

Also sold out by day one was London gallery Public, showing New York artist Taylor Simmons, who is currently an artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem. The works were priced between $3,000 and $20,000.

A small booth shared by Chicago’s Good Weather Gallery and Detroit’s What Pipeline attracted attention from Pucker (whose organization Gertie has some shows on view around town). A sculpture by Dylan Spaysky, Girls (2026), is a life-size rendition of the four main characters from Sex and the City in materials including rattan and wicker; it’s titled after the later show Girls as a way of thinking about different generations in pop culture. Whether Carrie Bradshaw and company would be pleased with the rendition is unclear, but Pucker was excited about it. It sold for $40,000. 

By late afternoon, Chicago’s Patron gallery had sold almost everything on the walls, said principal Emanuel Aguilar, including paintings by Lindsay Adams at prices ranging as high as $32,000. 

Regarding the trimmed-down fair, Aguilar said, “It feels more intentional,” adding, “That’s a good road map for any fair in this climate.”