The UNTITLED Art Fair has announced that it is expanding from Miami Beach to San Francisco. The fair’s inaugural edition is scheduled to take place from January 12–15, 2017, during the annual FOG Design and Art fair.
Organizers have already earmarked a site at the city’s Pier 70 in the arts district of the city’s Dogpatch neighborhood; the area is currently home to 1275 Minnesota Street, which will host Anton Kern and Andrew Kreps’ pop-up gallery space this May.
According to ArtInfo, UNTITLED San Francisco will operate on a smaller, more intimate scale than the Miami-based version, at least in the beginning. The first edition is set to include 40 to 60 participants, in order to focus on quality and to test the interest of a market that is still emerging.
According to a statement from UNTITLED, the San Francisco-based fair will be a “long-term platform” that plans to “contribute to and grow alongside of the pioneering community in the Bay Area.” This community, the press release states, involves “health care, bio-tech, high-tech, real estate, finance, venture capital, and NGOs.”
The Bay Area is viewed as a market with strong potential for growth due to the high concentration of wealth in nearby Silicon Valley, and UNTITLED is the latest art organization seeking to be the latest fish in the pond.
Pace Gallery already has spaces in Palo Alto and Menlo Park, while dealers Larry Gagosian and John Berggruen recently announced that they will open new branches across from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Untitled Art Fair has operated in Miami since 2012.
Photo: Untitled Art Fair via Facebook
UNTITLED faces competition from rival fair Art Silicon Valley (scheduled for October), while Silicon Valley Contemporary, which launched in 2014, is already kaput. Nevertheless, fair organizers remain confident of Bay Area success.
Meanwhile, a number of institutions are adding to the Bay Area’s appeal: the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s extensive $610 million redevelopment will be revealed May 14, while the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive moved to a new building at the end of January. The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, which recently announced Max Hollein as its new director, also remains on the radar.