Against the backdrop of a contracting art market, a new kind of art fair quietly made its debut in the Berkshires, offering world-class work, deep conversation, and swims between sales. The inaugural Arrival art fair transformed Tourists hotel in North Adams, Mass.—home to just 13,000—into a vibrant cultural outpost, attracting curators, collectors, and artists from across the country with its intimate format and verdant surroundings. The fair arrives amid a proliferation of commercial art events that are gravitating away from the mega-fair model.
Featuring 36 exhibitors for its inaugural edition, which closed June 15, the fair offered a setting rich with natural beauty and amid cultural attractions like North Adams’ Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MOCA) and, in neighboring Williamstown, the Clark Art Institute and the Williams College Museum of Art, the latter opening a brand new SO-IL building in 2027.
To judge by dealer and visitor feedback, it was a success.
Bringing together intellectual curators and collectors “is what the Williams area can do best,” said exhibitor Ben Ward, a Williams art history graduate. The New York dealer added that the fair provided “the most fun I’ve had talking about art in a long time, certainly at a fair VIP opening...”
