Austin Exhibitor Guide

We want to introduce you to exhibiting at the first Affordable Art Fair Austin, Spring 2024. Read on to find out why we have chosen to start a fair in this dynamic city, and what the exhibiting experience could bring for you.

Why Austin? 

With a reputation for nurturing and championing an ever-growing artistic scene, Austin is a culturally rich city that is proud to showcase its creative roots in both music and the visual arts. Welcoming, inclusive and forward-thinking, the atmosphere aligns perfectly with Affordable Art Fair.

Austin has long been on our radar as we admire the city’s commitment to cultivating its annual local arts events calendar. We want to join in this development by building and expanding this established community dedicated to the arts. This local cultivation is key to the question of why we’ll be setting up in Austin in 2024: true to our ethos, we want to bring new people into the art community. 

Bringing Affordable Art Fair to Austin gives us the opportunity to connect local galleries to new local networks, complement the open feeling of the city and provide a new must-attend event as the only art fair citywide.  

First impressions of the fair 

Affordable Art Fair Austin will be held at the Palmer Events Center (PEC), a central venue that forms part of the beautiful Butler Park with downtown views and a sought-after riverside location. As a long-established, democratized space, everyone in Austin knows the PEC and its draw as a space for big events.  

The PEC gives us scope to go beyond what is expected of an art fair. With indoor and outdoor exhibition space, we’ll not only have ample space for exhibitors, but room to create an exciting program featuring live music, cafés and bars, family-friendly educational activities and art installations, as there is artwork that simply cannot be contained to traditional art fair conventions. We are expecting this fair to be an educational experience, with visitors walking away better understanding the nuances of artistic processes, as well as the value of buying contemporary art.  

With the venue having two main halls, our dates for 2024 coincide with the hugely popular City-Wide Vintage Sale, meaning that there will also be an already built-in audience that will be in attendance during the weekend.  

Who are our audience? 

The people of Austin love their homes and, although this is aligned with the US in general, what’s great about the Austinite audience is that they often specifically look for sentimentality and story when making art buying decisions. Rather than collecting art with an interior vision in mind, they are likely to prefer an empty wall over filling the space with artwork that doesn’t hold meaning. They want a story and the opportunity to build connections, so once you’ve sold to an Austin visitor, it’s likely that they’ll hold that new relationship close.  

In general, Austin is a liberal, friendly city, where families tend to settle in search for non-traditional school curriculums that favor music or art. With this knowledge, we can cater directly to this audience in alignment with the family activities and stroller-friendly hours that are successful at our fairs globally. This gives exhibitors the opportunity to gain a new, intergenerational collector base on top of the established community of existing art buyers. In turn, bringing these connections under one roof means that we will be able to positively contribute to maintaining a healthy art environment in Austin, whilst becoming a part of the city’s cultural history.  

Hear from our galleries on why to exhibit in your home city: 

Fremin Gallery – New York City 

It’s quite important to exhibit in the same city as your gallery because it exposes you to other collectors that you are not aware of, people who are not your normal collectors, it expands your horizons as well as reconnecting you to your collector base. 

Panter and Hall – London, UK 

Affordable Art Fair is brilliant at putting us in touch with more people in the city, helping us make valuable connections which lead to both business during and after the fair. At the same time as making these contacts, being in ones own city helps massively with logistics and expenses – transportation of artworks is rather different from shipping in crates months in advance and costs are definitely kept down as one is able to return home each night rather than booking accommodation elsewhere. We are so convinced of doing art fairs in our own city, that we do at least seven each year!  

Elisa Contemporary Art – New York City 

The Art Fair is an incredible opportunity to be introduced – face to face – to a very large and diverse art-buying audience within the same area as my gallery. No matter how much marketing/pr/social media we do as a small gallery, we will never have the opportunity to be in front of 7-12,000 people over 4-5 days.

The art fair allows us to connect with new art collectors, as well as those who support the art buying process such as art consultants, curators and interior designers. I have found that the vast majority of my buyers during the recent art fairs have been new buyers. I then have the opportunity to continue to build those relationships. 

And Rachel Stephens, Gallery Director for Wally Workman Gallery, who will present at our first edition: 

The Affordable Art Fair attracts welcoming and approachable galleries showing high quality work at reasonable prices, which the Wally Workman Gallery strongly believes in. We are excited to exhibit in a Fair with like-minded people and share our artists with the new as well as the experienced art collectors that AAF engages through their high-quality and global programming.