EIC, The Bold Opinion
Growing, growing, here to stay.
The third rendition of the Atlanta Art Fair concluded its four-day weekend of visual conversation, activities, and of course, art. Welcoming more than 13.5k visitors onto the 27 acre Pullman Yards campus, arts and culture enthusiasts from across the globe gathered to meet 85 national and international galleries.
Although global art was the main attraction, the executive curators of this year’s fair blended prior experiences with new ideas. The fair reported the same number of participants as the year before, but found ways to build a space filled with more smiles, more connections, and more community.
“It is always refreshing to see so many colleagues in a fun and engaging setting. It’s also great to engage with new collectors in our home city and it is the seeds that are planted that grow into fruitful endeavours,” said the team at Jackson Fine Art with AMP.
| Year | Attendance | VIP | Exhibitions |
| 2024 | 12,000 | 3,500 | 60+ |
| 2025 | 13,500 | 3,500 | 70+ |
| 2026 | 13,500 | 3,500 | 85+ |
As the saying goes, numbers don’t lie, and in this case, neither does the vibe. The energy toward the Atlanta Art Fair has heavily influenced other institutional partnerships, openings, events, and programming to sprout, creating a colorful window for the creative community to breathe.
The first week of October was speckled with art-centered events in the city. It all started with “Welcome Wednesday” in Buckhead’s Miami Circle, the city’s largest concentration of fine art galleries. Seven galleries participated by opening their doors for the community to discover new work and bridge new connections ahead of the days to come.
The galleries included were:
- Alan Avery Art Company
- Anne Irwin Fine Art
- Hayes + Stone Contemporary
- Johnson Lowe Gallery
- Marcia Wood Gallery
- Mason Fine Art
- Thomas Deans Fine Art
To add to the bundle of happenings, the list of cultural partnerships aid the mission to engrave the city into the global art market. Institutions like The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art found opportunities to blend their own milestones in the mix. The Atlanta historically Black college presented “Between Here & Infinity”, a thirty year celebration of the Spelman College Art Collection with nearly seventy works from artists that shape their permanent archive. One of the twelve theatered open discussions, “African Art in Atlanta”, featured Dr. Brandy Pettijohn, Curator of Exhibitions at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, bringing the culture to center stage.
Other Atlanta Art Fair cultural partners included Goat Farm, which held its third edition of “Site” on its 12 acre campus on that Saturday night. “Site”, a one-night-only contemporary art festival of immersive installations, live music, and inquisitive experiences, invited art-goers outside and into the elements. Naturally, as this art ecosystem grows, more art-adjacent components get added, like ingredients, to satisfy any tastebud. The Atlanta Design Festival and Atlanta Fashion Week events both brought the community out to engage with the arts in their own ways.
“Coming To Atlanta” – International Players
Annually, the curators of The Atlanta Art Fair make transparent efforts to collectively grow Atlanta as a global, respectable, hub for art of all kinds. There were thirteen international galleries in participation this year, an uptick of three from 2025 and six from the inaugural. That’s clear, marketable proof of attraction and a thirst in need of quenching. Value, however, is a two-way street, and one cannot exist without the other. It turns out that many international artists have similar sentiments.
Artists from the U.K., like Gabriel Tendai Choto for Momento and Oyinloluwa S. Ilesanmi for Paul Conliffe are two young artists that presented with bright futures in their foresights.
“What does it mean for me to be in Atlanta? Everything. It sounds a bit cliche, but here, my experience has been one in a million,” said Choto on the closing day of the fair.
“I feel a sense of belonging and my artwork seems to be finding its home here and I’m a firm believer in going where my art takes me,” he said. “This is my second time exhibiting in America [the U.S.], but in comparison to L.A. and here, I’ve found a gallery that feels like home. This is Atlanta, my artwork feels Atlanta, I feel Atlanta,” he added.
Choto’s pieces, on display through Memento ATL, a women-led contemporary gallery in the Poncey-Highland area, attracted the gaze of many through its “unfinished”, outlined, hyper-realistic work of melanated bodies. This is a connection that bridges the unimaginable miles across the Atlantic.
Maintaining focus on the same hemisphere, Atlanta’s One Contemporary Gallery in partnership with Gerber Fine Art, invested their eggs in the basket of a Brazilian painter named Brendon Reis, whose work presents stunning, indigoic, silhouettes. The work, like Choto’s, is complex, yet comforting and resonates throughout the diaspora.
“We’ve enjoyed having him here,” said Faron Manuel, Founder of One Contemporary. “As far as his work, he has a lot of visual references that he’s pulling from, like blues music, cinematography from Lauren Hill videos, and blue figures based on Brazilian hair care products,” he said. “The blue figures are a way to invite a multi-complexioned culture into the work to tell interesting stories about love, self reflection, and just Black folks self-satisfied in leisure,” he added.
In addition to his grand display at the fair, One Contemporary and Gerber Fine Art hosted Reis in an invite-only conversation with other distinguished artists on the perspectives of global contemporary art.
“His [Reis] first international trip and solo exhibition is here with us at the Atlanta Art Fair, and I think that’s pretty significant,” said Manuel.
All About Atlanta
What would the Atlanta Art Fair be without the influence of the sweet, Southern culture that itself is steeped in? This year’s fair felt like a smooth blend of everything and everything that Atlanta influences. The space oozed with a broader display of works including traditional, artificial, sculpture, seasoned and emerging talent, all still tying in that sweet, Southern narrative that we all continue to advocate for.
The fair maintained global representation, but still kept its thumb on the pulse on the city written in its own title. This year, there were thirty Atlanta-based galleries in show, with seven from Georgia and the metro Atlanta areas like Savannah, LaGrange, and Roswell. That total is up from last year’s twenty-seven and 2024’s twenty-one.
This year was the second time that a new, Atlanta-based gallery, Luca Fine Art, participated and walked away with sales on opening night and a promising future for their collections. “I love it for the city of Atlanta, and I think it’s a great opportunity for local galleries and national galleries to tap into the Southeast market,” said Rodney Kazemi, Owner of Luca Fine Art. “You see a lot of local artists too, so it’s great for them to get exposure as well,” he added.
Amidst the glitz within a sea of polished and fine art, there is the looming question, especially in a city like Atlanta, of artists that are underrepresented or unnoticed. These spaces can cover or blanket over their nonconventional counterparts; the artists without labels, the bootstrappers. This year’s debut of ATL Currents, a new initiative in partnership with the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta, created an exclusive publication that highlights Atlanta-based independent artists to expand access, visibility, and opportunities to begin satisfying the mission to bring inclusivity to all art spaces.
Curators like Plushette Ellis, Founder of Artistic Logistics in partnership with Be Kind ATL also made sure to thickly crochet, not only Atlanta’s culture, but the artists that make it, into their exhibits.
“As an arts and civics community leader, a lot of my work is through the lens of civics and economic development for communities. I really want to be able to continue these kinds of events to be able to support our ecosystem and the vision of us to be an art capital,” said Ellis. “Artists should be able to work and thrive in the city that they live in,” she emphasized.
Together, their work made sure to put ATL on blast by featuring an iconic Waffle House painting on the front wall and a scattered, yet blended, mix of local artworks.
“It was different from other spaces, as far as the look. I wanted to continue this exhibit that I did during the World Cup and bring it to the fair with the intention of showing some of the cultural record of Atlanta, our landmarks and nuances of the culture,” said Ellis.
“Showing a huge cultural landmark, we got a lot of attention because of the Outkast collaboration with Waffle House. People shared their memories of Waffle House and how it’s their favorite cultural landmark here. It was really important for me to show a piece of Atlanta history through the exhibit,” she added.
Local Atlanta artists, curators, galerists, and collectors continue to show up for their community to push their city to the top. The Atlanta Art Fair proves to be one of the biggest stages to make sure the plot is not lost to the Southeast region, the nation, and the world.
Read the articles from 2024 and 2025 in our archives.
For more information on artists, works, and to keep up with The Atlanta Art Fair, please visit www.theatlantaartfair.com.
