EXPO Chicago 2026 Feels Leaner, Sharper, and More Connected Under New Leadership
EXPO Chicago 2026 opened at Navy Pier on April 9 with a noticeably altered tempo. In its second year under Frieze ownership and the first led by director Kate Sierzputowski, the fair arrived with fewer galleries, a more disciplined layout, and a stronger effort to reconnect with Chicago’s collector base.
The fair was reduced to 140 galleries, down from 170 in 2025, a change that gave the aisles more breathing room and made the experience feel less exhausting than in previous editions. Working with Essence Harden, Sierzputowski said she wanted to make more specific choices, shape the sections thematically, and create a fair that curators would want to explore. That approach was visible across the floor, where the presentation felt more selective than sprawling.
The shift is also tied to Frieze’s broader strategy. Since acquiring EXPO Chicago and The Armory Show in 2024, the company has used its international network to connect the fair more directly with Asian and European galleries. The atmosphere on VIP day suggested that effort is resonating, with a livelier crowd and a more polished, cosmopolitan feel that recalled Frieze’s fairs in Los Angeles and New York.
At the same time, Sierzputowski spent months traveling around the region to rebuild relationships with local collectors, whose attendance had waned since EXPO’s founding in 2012. That outreach appears to be paying off, especially as the fair leans more heavily into institutional collaboration. EXPO Projects included “Evolution,” curated by Louise Bernard, director of the nearby Obama Presidential Center Museum, which is set to open later this year. Artists in Public Schools and the Saint Louis Art Museum also had a more visible presence, underscoring Chicago’s long tradition of museums, foundations, and academic collections shaping the city’s cultural life.
The fair’s early booth highlights reflected that renewed focus. Public Gallery sold out within the first few hours with paintings by Taylor Simmons, priced between $3,000 and $20,000. Simmons’s figures, often partially obscured, explore what gallery director Nicole Estilo Kaiser described as “acts of becoming,” while also resisting the hyper-visibility that can flatten Black subjects into spectacle. Nearby, ILY2 presented stone sculptures by Catherine Telford Keogh that combined marble, green onyx, BVLGARI cologne bottles, Versace perfumes, and Windex bottles into materially layered works.
If EXPO Chicago once risked feeling overextended, this edition suggests a fair increasingly defined by curation, institutional partnership, and a more deliberate sense of place.
