SOFA LAUNCHES AMERICANA FAIR

Best known for a trio of SOFA fairs in Chicago, New York and Santa Fe, the Art Fair Company is extending its reach by bringing on Caroline Kerrigan to direct a new Metropolitan Show, Jan. 18-22, 2012, to take place during Americana Week at the Metropolitan Pavilion in midtown Manhattan. Kerrigan co-founded the Outsider Art Show and directed the American Antiques Show (TAAS) for the troubled American Folk Art Museum (AFAM). Before that she headed up the Chelsea-based Viewing Room till 2003 and ran Kerrigan Campbell art + projects in the East Village during 2003-06.

“It’s a continuation of what I have been doing but we’re also building a new fair,” says Kerrigan. TAAS had been suffering dwindling attendance, and as part of an overall AFAM auto-destruct (including the sale of the museum building to the Museum of Modern Art), the fair ended up in the hands of the Art Fair Company, which is based in Lakeside, Michigan. The folk museum remains the beneficiary of the show.

“We own the new Metropolitan Show,” says Art Fair Company president Mark Lyman. “We’re reorganizing the concept and along with outsider and folk art are including both modern and contemporary design and art,” he says. A total of 40 dealers will be on the fair roster. Already signed on are Ricco Maresca in Chelsea, Carl Hammer of Chicago, and Philadelphia’s Finkel & Daughter.

“Photography will definitely be part of the mix,” says Kerrigan.

With traditional shows like TAAS and Sanford Smith’s Modernism fair going under after 25 years, this new Metropolitan Show will be closely watched. The Art Fair Company organizes several other shows as well, and is playing a role in producing Tony Karman’s new exposition Chicago fair next year.

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