It’s been one of the busiest weeks in the summer cultural calendar, with two art fairs and an “Art Week” celebration overlapping in downtown Aspen.
Reporter Kaya Williams has been covering events from all three programs, to determine the community’s appetite for such robust programming. She spoke with Morning Edition host Megan Tackett about the schedule and what she discovered through her reporting; this interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Megan Tackett: So let's just set the scene here. What makes this week so significant for your beat?
Kaya Williams: There are three different art events with a ton of programming. There's the Aspen Art Museum's “Art Week.” They've been hosting a ton of art talks and performances and parties, and they've got their “Art Crush” gala coming up too.
Then there's the Intersect Aspen Art and Design Fair over at the Ice Garden with a bunch of exhibitors — these are galleries from Aspen and all over the world — plus panel conversations. And then there's the new Aspen Art Fair over at the Hotel Jerome, with more exhibitors, local and international, plus panels.
All three of these have some special awards and honors for pretty established artists, too.
And galleries around town have their own special events. It's kind of like during Food and Wine, when restaurants will just come up with their own ideas and tie them in with the big weekend. So a lot of collectors are coming out this week to celebrate all this art and enjoy the programming, too, and it's also, except for maybe a couple things like the gala, pretty accessible price-wise to the average Joe.
Some stuff is free with an RSVP, and other stuff is the price of, like, a fancy cocktail in town. So basically, from the afternoon into the evening, you could go nonstop to different art events for like, five or six days straight.
Tackett: Okay, that sounds like a lot.
Williams: It does, especially if you're like me, and you get emails about every single event and then some. So this year, I kind of went into my reporting wondering if a lot can become too much. Like, is there an upper limit to the amount of art events that Aspen can take in one week.
Tackett: Say more about that.
Williams: Well, first, I asked the organizers of both Intersect and the Aspen Art Fair what they thought, because now this is two big dogs in town at the same time, and they were all really diplomatic about it.
I spoke with Tim von Gal, who runs Intersect, last Thursday, and he said he wished the entire art world well: “Aspen is, if you build it, they will come from the art perspective, meaning that art always seems to find a home here, one way or the other.
He also said it would be hard to find the limit at this point, but it's nowhere near the horizon right now.
Then the next day, I had Becca Hoffman and Bob Chase in the studio. They're the co-founders of the Aspen Art Fair. Becca used to run Intersect. Bob owns the Hexton Gallery in town. And they also suggested that this was like a “both-and” scenario, not an “either-or.”
“I think this town's appetite has grown together with its popularity and its population,” (Chase said.) “So, you know, is there a limit? I don't know, but it hasn't proven that there is over the past 70 years.”
“I agree,” (Hoffman added.) “I think the sky's the limit here.”
And you know, they also made the point that a rising tide kind of lifts all boats. I think those are Becca's words. There's a lot of collaboration between different organizations here, and some philanthropic elements to this week of art, too.
Now this idea of “the sky's the limit” was something that I heard a lot when I was just walking around both fairs yesterday afternoon. There was one gallerist at the Aspen Art Fair who said the limit really hasn't been found yet. And, yep, people are hungry for art here in a way that really stands out. So it's really not that hard to find an audience for both new and ongoing programs.
Tackett: Do you think this is something that's unique to Aspen, or are there other places in the country that have this much of an appetite for art?
Williams: Well, if you spend any time in Aspen, you know that this town does like to think that it's unique and special, but one of the really interesting insights that I picked up on this week was that Aspen, in this case, really is distinct.
I remember back when I lived in Boston, this saying that you could throw a rock in Harvard Square and hit an author, and here in Aspen, I think it's pretty fair to say you could throw a rock in the downtown core and hit a gallery — though, I don't recommend that, because there's a lot of fragile art, and we do not condone vandalism here at Aspen Public Radio.
But anyways, I made that comparison to Tim Van Gal, and this is what he said: “Aspen is a unique art community. Aspen has not only incredible artists, but has so many dynamic members of this community that are fully engaged in the arts and can really speak in a very, very sophisticated, knowledgeable way about the incredible subjective nature of art.”
That was a common sentiment at art fairs this week, and also that's kind of unusual in the art world right now. Several people at these fairs have pointed out that if you look at another super artsy place, New York City, galleries are actually closing.
And Becca Hoffman from the Aspen Art Fair, she pointed out at a panel on Wednesday that on a global scale, the number of art fairs is actually going to be on the decline year over year. One of the big, big things that makes Aspen still a viable market with such a big appetite is that it's still a big hub of wealth and a destination for wealthy art enthusiasts.
At that panel on Wednesday, art advisor Josh Baer explained why we're all here in Aspen this week with a quote from Jerry Maguire: “Show me the money.”
Tackett: OK, my ‘90s heart is so happy that there was a Jerry Maguire reference in that. But speaking of money, seriously, that is what Aspen is known for. Aren't these events pretty exclusive?
Williams: Actually, no. And this was one thing that Josh Baer mentioned at that panel this week was that he's seeing horizontal growth at these art fairs. You know, there's collectors who are showing up in the first hour, looking to make an acquisition, but there's also a lot of people coming just to learn about art and to see it.
As I mentioned earlier, a ticket to one of these art fairs is like a fancy cocktail, maybe a few beers in town, so it's not prohibitively expensive.
And a lot of the events at Art Week, which is run by the Aspen Art Museum, they just required an RSVP to experience really, really cool events. There was this performance at Aspen Mountain last night that pretty much anyone could go to. You didn't even need to buy a gondola ticket, and even if you didn't register in advance, they had a waitlist going that led even more people to the top.
And I noticed yesterday walking around, you know, there's people milling around Intersect in bike clothes and folks wearing their hiking stuff up to these shows on top of Aspen Mountain. There's this sense of “Aspen casual” and accessible arts that anyone can experience that's also really core to Aspen's identity as a creative hub.
