The 57th Street Art Fair is
Chicago
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's oldest
juried art fair. Founded in 1948, it is held the first weekend in June annually on 57th Street between Kimbark and Kenwood Avenues, in the Chicago neighborhood of
Hyde Park, directly north of the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
campus. It is "the only large, international not-for-profit art fair devoted to exhibiting original art, operated solely for the benefit of the artists, and run by a small group of volunteers without any institutional support."
History
The 57th Street Art Fair was founded in 1948 by Mary Louise Womer, proprietor of The Little Gallery on 57th Street, which was then a thriving arts colony, "a time of oddballs and crazy people (in later years many of them famous as writers, scientists, and artists) and extraordinary, sometimes nutty, local events." Ms. Womer wished to acquaint the large number of young artists in the neighborhood with each other, and decided to hold an outdoor fair on Saturday and Sunday, October 16 and 17, 1948. 51 artists paid 50 cents each to exhibit, and by Sunday's end, had sold $500 worth of art. The fair was so popular, it was continued the next year with a committee of organizers. By 1952 there were sales of over $10,000.
The early fairs were not juried, but they contained a number of exceptional artists.
Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg (January 28, 1929 – July 18, 2022) was a Swedish-born American sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring large replicas of everyday objects. Another theme in his work is soft sculpture versions ...
's earliest recorded sales of artworks were at the 57th Street Art Fair, sometime before 1957, where he sold 5 items for a total price of $25. The fair became juried in 1963, when it had grown too large for the available space.
With the fair going virtual in 2020 as most events were cancelled caused by the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
, the 73rd will return in 2021.
Today
The 57th Street Art Fair is held on the first full weekend in June. More than 20,000 visitors see the works of some 250 artists on those two days. Continuing the spirit of the first fairs, all of the artworks are real and original, not reproductions, and the fair is free and open to the public.
See also
*
Juried competition
A juried competition is a competition in which participants' work is judged by a person or panel of persons convened specifically to judge the participants' efforts, either by the competition's stated rubric or by a subjective set of criteria depen ...
References
{{Reflist
External links
Official website
Festivals in Chicago
Art festivals in the United States
Art fairs