When the pandemic sent wealthy city-dwellers decamping to glitzy enclaves like Palm Beach, the Hamptons, and Aspen, art dealers naturally followed. “You go where the money is,” Sotheby’s executive Lisa Dennison said at the time. Such is the logic behind the inaugural edition of Aspen Art Fair, which brought more than 20 galleries and crowds of well-heeled collectors to the resort town during Aspen ArtWeek. Though reports indicate global art market spending has shrunk ten percent over the past year, specters of market turmoil eluded the weeklong festivities, which ended on August 2.
Nearly every component of the fair reflects the shrewd business acumen of co-founder Rebecca Hoffman, an art-world veteran who helped rebrand the Outsider Art Fair and develop Intersect Art and Design. Instead of setting Aspen Art Fair in a drab convention center, she opted for the Hotel Jerome, a 135-year-old red-brick treasure of a resort sporting chalet-like rooms. Galleries like Perrotin, Miles McEnery, and Southern Guild set up booths on the ground floor while dealers like Guy Rusha volunteered their own hotel rooms. Odd vignettes ensued, like a tentacular Sienna Shields sculpture sprawling across Rusha’s bed; when he went to sleep, he simply pushed it aside.
The Aspen Art Fair was hardly the week’s only draw. Intersect Art and Design brought 31 galleries to the Aspen Ice Garden in the city’s quaint West End, where heavyweights like Fernando Mastrangelo and Meghann Riepenhoff plumbed how art interacts with design and the environment. Outside the fairs, Lena Henke hosted an invitation-only hike and Ryan Trecartin staged a concert on the summit of Aspen Mountain that required riding a chair lift. Capping the week off was the annual ArtCrush Gala, which celebrated the tenth anniversary of the Aspen Art Museum’s Shigeru Ban–designed building and auctioned works by Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Emma McIntyre, Allison Katz, and Kennedy Yanko. The auction, which took place live and online, raised a record-breaking $4.5 million for the museum’s education and curatorial programs.
“Aspen is one of those places that has a certain kind of magic that’s hard to describe,” Isabelle Bscher, who runs Galerie Gmurzynska, told Aspen Times. “It’s also an opportunity to show things in a completely different setting for people. People have more time during the summer. They go for a hike or a bike ride in the morning, but then in the afternoon, they have more time to look around and are less stressed than in the city.” Just don’t forget your altitude sickness medication.
