Neighbors, a new boutique art fair in Chicago, is betting that four rooms can do what cavernous convention centers often cannot: slow people down.
Launching during the same week as Expo Chicago, Neighbors will unfold inside a historic, domestic-scale apartment rather than a typical fair hall. The project is the brainchild of Mirka Serrato, who lived in the space for nearly three years before relocating to Texas, and Jonny Tanna, who also cofounded London’s Minor Attractions art fair. The two connected by chance at Art Basel in Switzerland last year and moved quickly from conversation to execution.
The fair’s premise is straightforward but pointed. Instead of rows of standardized booths and a long roster of exhibitors, Neighbors is designed around a tightly limited group of participants and an environment that encourages close looking. “Most fairs, even some large ones, don’t have a tightly curated lineup,” Serrato said, arguing that galleries can end up participating primarily to cover costs rather than to build a coherent dialogue. Neighbors, she said, aims to “flip that approach,” prioritizing “quality over quantity.”
Serrato is careful to position the fair as complementary rather than adversarial. Expo Chicago and other large-scale events “serve a different purpose,” she noted. But in her view, Chicago has lacked a satellite fair that meaningfully connects artists, galleries, and collectors in a setting built for conversation rather than endurance. With Neighbors, she said, the goal is to match the city’s established art scene with a format that reflects “rigor and care.”
For Tanna, the venue is not a backdrop but a curatorial tool. A home, he said, invites galleries to think differently about how work inhabits space: how a piece reads in a corner, against a particular architectural detail, or within the proportions of a room. The domestic scale also changes the social temperature of a fair, making it easier to encounter people more than once and to linger without the sensory overload of a sprawling hall.
The fair’s name is meant to signal that ethos. “Neighbors” points to proximity and exchange, and Tanna emphasized the cross-pollination the organizers hope to cultivate by drawing galleries and collectors from multiple cities, including London, Dallas, and Los Angeles. In that model, Chicago becomes not just a host city for a major fair week, but a meeting point where different art communities can compare notes.
The organizers also say they are trying to address a familiar pressure point: the expectation that smaller galleries must treat fairs as high-stakes sales sprints. Serrato described a months-long process of tracking galleries’ programs and the artists they support, then extending invitations based on that existing practice rather than asking exhibitors to manufacture a new “fair look” on short notice. The intention, she said, is to reduce the last-minute scramble and allow presentations to feel consistent with how galleries operate outside the fair circuit.
Tanna, who has participated in dozens of fairs, framed the approach as a corrective to another common disappointment: when a gallery’s reputation outpaces what it actually brings to a booth. Neighbors, he said, is deliberately resisting the temptation to “fill space just to make money,” favoring fewer participants whose presentations can be “disciplined and in conversation with one another.”
In practical terms, the fair’s small footprint means visitors can see everything quickly — and, ideally, return to what holds their attention. That compactness is part of the proposition: a fair experience calibrated for sustained looking and direct exchange, staged inside a space that carries its own history rather than the anonymity of a temporary build-out.
As art fair weeks continue to expand, Neighbors is making a case for the opposite move: less square footage, fewer distractions, and a format that treats the room itself as an active partner in how contemporary art is encountered.
