There is a rich tradition of art fairs taking place in hotels. The Armory Show debuted at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York some three decades ago. More recently, New York has seen the Dependent and the Fridge, whose names riffed on Independent and Frieze, respectively. There’s also the Felix Art Fair in Los Angeles and the Hotel Warszawa Art Fair in Poland’s capital.

Now one is being planned at a hotel that is about three hours by car from New York and Boston.

The by-invitation Arrival Art Fair, in North Adams, Massachusetts, will stage its first edition from June 13 to 15, 2025, with about 30 exhibitors. If you have heard of this tiny burg (population 13,000) in the scenic Berkshire Mountains, it’s probably in the context of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), the sprawling arts complex that calls it home. But you also may have heard of the area’s great natural beauty and its wealth of cultural institutions, two major draws that could help make the fair a success.

Courtesy Tourists.

Arrival will set up shop at Tourists, a hotel that has been racking up notices in publications like Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Condé Nast Traveler. Guest rooms will house the gallery presentations, while programming will take place in settings like hotel’s lodge, restaurant, and 55-acre grounds, where trail hikes will be on the menu.

Behind the new initiative is the trio of Yng-Ru Chen, who owns Boston’s Praise Shadows Gallery, Bay Area art advisor Sarah Galender Meyer, and artist Crystalle Lacouture, who splits her time between Boston and North Adams.

“I don’t think it can be a model for most fairs,” Chen said. “Just because it’s a beautiful spot and you have a nice hotel doesn’t make a fair successful.”

Tourists. Photo: Peter Crosby.

That’s where a team of “curatorial ambassadors”—many of them graduates of the powerful art history program at nearby Williams College (as Chen is)—comes in. This group, which will nominate galleries to apply, includes MASS MoCA chief curator Denise Markonish, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum chief curator Amy Smith-Stewart, and Veronica Roberts, the director of the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.

“Some fairs are purely market focused,” Chen said, “but sometimes you have art fairs that care more about institutional relationships.”

Chen pointed to a few reasons why she thinks that Arrival can attract a solid audience. Besides the beautiful surrounds, there’s loyalty to the region among Williams art-history grads. (They have been referred to as the “Williams mafia,” and include a roster of well-placed museum directors and curators, apart from the curatorial ambassadors. This reporter is among them.)

A mockup of a display at the Arrival art fair, by Boston’s Praise Shadows gallery.

And then there are those cultural offerings. Besides the Clark and the Williams College Museum of Art, there is the Williamstown Theater Festival and the Tanglewood music and festival venue. North Adams is also not far from the art-rich Hudson River Valley, about two hours’ drive from Dia Beacon.

The organizers have no illusions about launching a fair amid a softening art market and a perceived glut of art fairs—events that can tax galleries’ finances. To address that, Arrival will take place in alternating years, and since exhibitors can essentially crash in their booths, their costs should be relatively low. Nominated galleries will pay no application fees, and the fair said it aims to keep its booth fees manageable.

Arrival will stage a kind of teaser event later this month, with Praise Shadows and two New York galleries, Shrine and RegularNormal, setting up displays to show what exhibitors can do in the well-lit, minimalist rooms. On the starry guest list for the July 27 event are VIPs like Independent fair co-founder Elizabeth Dee, MIT List Visual Arts Center director Paul C. Ha, Bay Area collectors Pamela and David Hornik, and Powerhouse Arts president Eric Shiner.

Shrine is actually signing on sight unseen. “I’ve never been around that area, but everyone I’ve talked to about this mentions what a beautiful and bucolic place it is,” its proprietor, Scott Ogden, said. “It’s gutsy to take a fair outside of a major metropolitan area, but that entices everyone to come and stay a few days.”