EXPO Chicago Expanding to an Entire Week this Year

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For you art fans, seeing Chicago become an international art destination again, is probably something you've been waiting to see for a long time. We're sure that you waited with bated breath for the opening of the inaugural EXPO Chicago at Navy Pier last September, and you probably can't wait for this year's installment; turning the raw space into a mega-gallery of gleaming, spacious sub galleries with excellent lighting, to highlight the Twomblys, Richters, Gurskys and Hirsts that will be on display.

But this year, some new and exciting changes will take place, one of which we previously discussed: EXPO Arts Week. Yes, that's right, a full week of art and culture all around Chicago. Another change will mimic that of that other high profile arts fair in New York, Frieze. In the same vein as Frieze Focus, the portion of that fair which celebrates galleries that have been opened for less than six years, EXPOsure will include eighteen galleries amongst its listings of galleries that have been opened for less than seven years, to give those galleries and emerging artists, well, exposure to an international clientele of art collectors and enthusiasts.

Major art heavyweights and gallerists will participate in EXPO Chicago this year, and among them are Marianne Boesky Gallery; Rhona Hoffman and Kavi Gupta of Chicago; Luhring Augustine; Pace; Marc Selwyn Fine Art and David Zwirner. If those names alone aren't enough to make you take out salivate, your mouth must not make enough saliva. And another big name that will be on the lips of every art aficionado this fall is that of Shamim Momin, the director of LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division), a non profit art org that curates site and situation-specific projects, and former curator for two Whitney Biennials, and former professor at fancy East Coast Little Ivy, Williams College. Momin will curate In/Situ, the large-scale installations and performance art that will be seen throughout the fair. If this fair can make the leap from regional art fair to new international art destination in just two years, we are so excited to see what year five will bring.—J'nai Gaither
· Expo Chicago [Official Site]