For its 14th edition, the Dallas Art Fair is back in full swing with a focus on Texas’s rapidly expanding art scene. After a scaled-down 2021 edition, the fair returns to its pre-pandemic size with 85 galleries at the fair’s longtime home, downtown Dallas’s Fashion Industry Gallery, this April 21–24.

“The Dallas art market has been on a sharp incline in recent years, and since the pandemic, we have seen Texas’s population skyrocket, with more and more people relocating here from places like New York and California. We have seen this positively impact the arts and collecting in Dallas,” said Kelly Cornell, director of the Dallas Art Fair.

Notable galleries returning to the fair include Derek Eller Gallery, Karma, Kasmin, Night Gallery, Perrotin, and Various Small Fires. In fact, the latter will open its third location in Dallas in April, coinciding with the fair, with a group exhibition featuring artists born or currently living in Texas. Newcomers include Guadalajara’s Galería Curro and Over the Influence, with spaces in Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and Bangkok. 

Timothy Lai, This Love Is Exhausting but I’m Not Tired of You Yet (2021). Courtesy of Jack Barrett.

This year will also mark the sixth edition of the Dallas Art Fair Foundation Acquisition Program, a fundraising initiative that to date has gifted nearly 40 artworks to the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA)’s permanent collection. Through the program, curators from the DMA and a group of private donors are given day-early access to the fair in order to select works to enter the institution’s holdings. This year the collecting budget has reached a new high of $150,000. 

Dallas Arts Month, an annual celebration of the city’s cultural scene, will kick off with the fair. Among the many citywide exhibitions, the DMA will present “Spirit Lodge: Mississippian Art from Spiro,” which will be the first major exhibition dedicated to the art and culture of Mississippian peoples. Meanwhile, Dallas Contemporary will unveil exhibitions of works by New York-based artist Borna Sammak, as well as Alabama-born artist Lonnie Holley, Houston sculptor Joseph Havel, and East Texas painter Natalie Wadlington. 

Ending on a light, winking note, the fair will conclude with the Eye Ball, an outdoor closing party held in the courtyard of the Joule hotel, alongside Tony Tasset’s 30-foot-tall eyeball sculpture.

For more information on the fair, click here.