Expo Chicago’s 2026 edition made a decisive pivot under new director Kate Sierzputowski: leaner, more curated, and more institutionally engaged. With around 130 galleries at Navy Pier, down from 170 in 2025, several booths sold out within hours and lapsed Midwestern collectors were back in the aisles.
The change began with structure. Sierzputowski reconfigured the floor plan, reduced the exhibitor count, and rebuilt the fair’s identity around curatorial leadership. Essence Harden, fresh from co-curating the Hammer Museum’s Made in LA biennial, joined as the fair’s first dedicated curator, overseeing 21 solo and thematic presentations in the Profile section.
The Focus section, for galleries operating 12 years or fewer, was entrusted to Detroit Institute of Arts curator Katie A. Pfohl, organized around Gathering of Waters, a thematic framework linking landscape, migration and craft through the Mississippi River Basin. A third section, Embodiment, was curated by Louise Bernard, founding director of the soon-to-open Obama Presidential Center. More than half of all stands fell within a curated section.
Sierzputowski’s Midwestern focus was more than rhetorical. She spent months traveling the region, forging partnerships with the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Saint Louis Art Museum, visiting the fair for the first time in roughly a decade, and the Speed Museum in Louisville. The goal was clear: reconnect with audiences whose attendance had wavered since the fair’s founding in 2012. Judging by opening day, it worked.
Local galleries led the commercial charge. Monique Meloche sold two Yvette Mayorga paintings at $50,000 each, alongside works by Sheree Hovsepian and Luke Agada. Patron placed a Lindsay Adams painting at $32,000 and works by Caroline Kent, Alice Tippit and Miao Wang. Good Weather and What Pipeline’s joint stand sold Dylan Spaysky’s wicker sculpture Girls for $40,000. Institutional buying ran in parallel.
The Nelson-Atkins acquired Luftwerk’s neon installation Open Frame for $150,000, the Peabody Essex bought three LaKela Brown works and a Jovencio de la Paz textile, and the Bronx Museum acquired Sadie Barnette’s The Work through the Sherman Acquisition Award. Northern Trust supported purchases across four institutions.
Karma sold two Kathleen Ryan sculptures for $150,000 and $135,000. Night Gallery placed multiple Robert Nava works between $40,000 and $200,000. Gray sold pieces by Torkwase Dyson, Rashid Johnson and Candida Alvarez, the latter at $100,000.
Several booths stood out curatorially. Public Gallery’s solo presentation of Taylor Simmons, whose deliberately obscured figures resist hyper-visibility, sold out entirely. ILY2 drew sustained attention with Catherine Telford Keogh’s stone sculptures, embedding pharmaceutical products and luxury cosmetics into ancient geological materials. OSMOS presented the late Herbert Holsey’s political collages, unseen since 1995, sharp and unsettling as ever.
Since Frieze acquired Expo Chicago in 2023, the fair’s international profile has sharpened. But Sierzputowski has kept the Midwest at its centre, treating the region not as a limitation, but as the subject. That instinct defined this edition.
