EXPO CHICAGO 2026 Opens With Local Enthusiasm and Strong Institutional Sales
The latest edition of EXPO CHICAGO opened its doors to VIPs yesterday (April 9) at its iconic location at Navy Pier. The preview was strategically preceded by the annual celebratory brunch, once again hosted in partnership with MCA Chicago, to draw elite patrons and museum professionals to the fair early in the day. Even more strategically, early entrants were given direct access to the curated sections as their first stop—a signal of how the fair’s new director, Kate Sierzputowski, intends to make curator-led programming and institutional partnerships a core element of EXPO CHICAGO’S identity going forward. There were several institutional acquisitions on the first day by museums from across the Midwest and further afield, confirming the fair’s standing as one of the go-to platforms for curators and acquisition committees.
Young art patron and cultural dynamo Abby Pucker told Observer that she felt the fair seemed markedly more curated, roomier and more cohesive with its new layout and tighter selection. She also revealed that she had acquired several works in the early hours and was planning to return for a second round. While the fair is slimmed down this year—with 130 exhibitors versus the previous year’s 170—several other Chicago collectors, including Chris Craft, told us they intended to return in the coming days to finalize decisions. For him, as for many of his peers in the city, EXPO is the most important moment of the year for completing annual acquisitions, and he plans to dedicate the entire weekend to it. There’s a slower, more deliberate rhythm here that distinguishes the fair, and the art scene surrounding it, from the New York or L.A. rush.
Curatorial rigor meets institutional appetite in Focus
The first standout presentation of the fair is a solo show foregrounding Sara Nsikak’s quilted storytelling, presented by New Orleans-based gallery Sybille. Taught to sew by her grandmother, a revered seamstress from Nigeria’s Oyo state, Nsikak uses stitching to revive ancestral knowledge and memory, embedding it directly into the fabric of her work. As one unpacks the dense narrative, one senses how Nsikak, after moving to New York to work in fashion, became disillusioned by its waste and exploitation, prompting her to launch La Réunion, a brand rooted in sustainability. Even after achieving notable success—including having a dress featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion” exhibition, she shifted toward bespoke home goods, continuing to merge art, fashion and design without hierarchy.
The presentation is part of Focus, a curated section by Katie A. Pfohl of the Detroit Institute of Arts centered on the symbolically resonant theme of “Gathering of Waters,” which explores migration and landscape across the Mississippi River Basin and diasporic histories through connections among Detroit, New Orleans and the broader Midwest, with notable presentations of work by African, Latin American and Caribbean diaspora artists.
Some of the most interesting galleries from the vibrant Brazilian art scene are in the section, even as EXPO this year coincides with Brazil’s most important fair, SP-Arte. In a shared booth, São Paulo-based Bianca Boecker and VERVE are showcasing a coordinated two-person presentation exploring ancestral memory and the body. Through sentimentally morphed ceramic and textile works, Brazilian artist Caroline Ricca Lee explores and fictionalizes the legacy of her Japanese-Chinese descent, investigating how materials can carry identity and heritage across generations. VERVE’s Ian J. Duarte Lucas, exhibiting at EXPO for the fourth time, confirmed that despite the overlap with SP-Arte, the fair was a “good challenge” and a unique opportunity for exposure among American museums—an investment that paid off when Caroline Ricca Lee’s work was acquired by the Denver Art Museum through the Northern Trust Purchase Prize. Meanwhile, following last year’s sold-out show, Boecker confidently sold several new pieces by Brazilian artist of Korean descent Patricia Baik, whose delicate works explore Korean heritage, translating an investigation of the interrelation between body, memory and identity onto porous and poetic surfaces (prices $10,000 and $5,000 each).
The Northern Trust had a visibly significant impact on first-day dynamics overall, supporting acquisitions for four institutions, including the Denver Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Peabody Essex Museum. The latter was behind the acquisition of three works by LaKela Brown presented by 56 Henry. The museum also acquired Warped Grid 6.2 (2025) by Singaporean-born, Oregon-based Jovencio de la Paz, translating ancestral weaving knowledge into a digital yet deeply tactile dimension. Coming to Chicago from L.A., Sharp has been pairing de la Paz with the delicately flexible spatial articulation of characters on metal thread by Kanitha Tith, a rising Cambodian artist who was also highly visible during Hong Kong art week, presented by Jakarta-based gallery Rho Project and included in the inaugural show at Gold, the new hybrid space by Serakai Studio.
Also with the support of the Northern Trust, the Phillips Collection acquired Paul Gardère’s Untitled (Heads No. 36) (1991) from Magenta Plains and Indo buscar Sá Rainha (Going to Fetch Sá Rainha) (2026) by Diego Mouro at Mitre Galeria. Presented in the Focus section, Mouro’s body of work lingers after the visit: the Brazilian artist’s allegorical compositions link histories of enslaved communities, folklore and saintly presences, emerging as protective figures. The work unfolds through a fully imagined yet universally resonant visual language in which the earthly and the celestial converge in a deeply spiritual space. Priced at between $8,000 and $16,000 each, the gallery sold five works on the first day in addition to the Northern Trust acquisition, with one going to one of Chicago’s most important collectors, Anita Blanchard.
Also worth stopping by in the Focus section is High Noon’s booth, featuring archetypally evocative yet hauntingly ominous paintings by Jennifer Coates. Inspired by a recent visit to the nearly inaccessible ruins of the Mahanoy Plane coal works in Pennsylvania, Coates’s work merges post-industrial remnants with ancient ruins into mystical landscapes where nature reclaims space from industrial decay, ghostly presences appearing within abandoned structures. Inflected with an eco-feminist sensibility, her intuitive, almost divinatory process layers mark-making into relic-like fragments, drawing on antiquity, Baroque painting and Surrealism to evoke time, decay and renewal. By evening, the gallery had sold five works on paper at $2,500 each, two small paintings at $5,000 each and one larger work for $20,000.
One of São Paulo’s most experimental galleries, Yehudi Hollander-Pappi, drew both institutional and collector interest with a highly conceptual booth, centered around a tank of San Francisco Bay
Returning to EXPO after three years, San Juan gallery EMBAJADA is spotlighting a solo presentation by 72-year-old Puerto Rican artist Pablo Delano, ahead of upcoming institutional presentations including a show at MASP São Paulo and another in Connecticut. On view are witty sculptural assemblages and photo-collages continuing his long-standing investigation into Puerto Rico’s visual and colonial histories, appropriating and repurposing archival materials to address the tension between Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean traditions and Western classical and mass-media aesthetics, along with the symbolic systems of power and value they sustain. Particularly striking is Carnival, juxtaposing a haunting black-and-white portrait of a wealthy yet visibly uneasy family with a traditional horned Vejigante mask—a mischievous folkloric figure rooted in Spanish, African and Taíno traditions.
Toronto-based Patel Brown is showcasing the witty, humorous work of collaborative duo Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber, exploring language, taxonomy and knowledge. The gallery sold multiple works on day one, including a painting priced between $20,000 and $25,000, a sculpture at $8,000 and several smaller works.
Equally successful in Focus was Superposition’s presentation of Helina Metaferia’s recent work. The booth featured hand-cut mixed media collages, a sculptural brass crown with etching, a ceremonial staff in wood and brass and a single-channel video documenting a live performance, all situated within the artist’s ongoing investigation of diasporic identity and ancestral heritage at the intersection of archival research, embodied ritual and political memory. An institution acquired one of the new brass sculptures, Crown (Makeda), priced at $20,500, while another sculpture, Staff (Betiri), priced at $18,500, was placed in a private collection.
Steady demand on the main floor
Multiple sales were also reported by dealers presenting in the main section throughout the day. New York and Los Angeles-based Karma captured the floor’s attention with Kathleen Ryan’s jewel-like “Bad Fruit” sculptures, where, as contemporary vanitas, preciosity hovers in tension with decay. The gallery sold Bad Lemon (Adrift) and Bad Orange (Deep Blue) (2026) for $150,000 and $135,000 respectively, while placing all works by Jeremy Frey, including three flatweaves priced between $30,000 and $55,000 and five basket relief prints priced between $18,000 and $30,000.
Directly opposite, Los Angeles titan Night Gallery featured one of its leading artists, Robert Nava, presenting an entire booth of new, electric works in which the East Chicago native continues his intuitive exercise of mythopoiesis through fantastical characters. The gallery placed several works on day one, priced between $40,000 and $200,000. “Our presentation is very much a homecoming for Robert. He grew up just outside Chicago, and visits to the Art Institute (which now holds many of his drawings in its collection) and the Field Museum were formative. These institutions offered his earliest exposure to ‘Art,'” Brian Faucette, the gallery’s senior director, told Observer, noting a deep connection between Nava’s work and Chicago’s larger Imagist tradition. “The radical cross-pollination of fine art, pop culture, outsider art, and psychedelia that was core to the Hairy Who artists is deeply present in Robert’s epic mutations.”
Among the heavy hitters from the Brazilian ecosystem, Nara Roesler doubled down with simultaneous participation at EXPO and SP-Arte—a move the New York gallery’s director described as “always worth” the effort. The gallery sold three acrylic and oil-on-canvas works by Brazilian painter Elian Almeida for $22,000, $22,000 and $18,000. Almeida’s gesturally instinctive approach builds dense impasto through accumulation as he seeks to appropriate and rewrite colonial narratives. The gallery also placed a work by Monica Ventura—in porcelain, brass, wood and gold leaf, priced at $7,000—whose biomorphic ceramics explore femininity through ancestral techniques and embodied knowledge.
Debuting at the fair after remarkable growth in just one year of operations, Miami-based Opa Gallery showcased a group of new works by self-taught, Geneva-based, Cameroon-born artist Maurice Mboa, who, through his metal-engraved canvases, has developed a rich visual universe infused with his own form of animism. Priced between $50,000 and $60,000, the works immediately attracted strong interest, following an almost sold-out show at the gallery earlier in the year. The gallery is also presenting paintings on linen by French artist Tess Dumon, whose layered compositions channel a perceptual shift shaped by her experience as the mother of an autistic child. Priced around $25,000, these poetic landscapes feel both intimate and expansive, with a cosmological sensibility connecting the personal and the universal.
This edition also marked the first official joint fair presentation between Marc Straus and Swivel Gallery, following their recent merger. The collaboration materialized in a large central booth in the main section, where the two dealers staged a carefully choreographed intergenerational dialogue on materiality, combining artists from both programs with new works by Amy Bravo, Kiah Celeste, Alejandro García Contreras, Lucia Hierro, Otis Jones, Márton Nemes, Edgar Orlaineta, Anne Samat, Antonio Santín, Renée Stout and Marie Watt. The gallery placed several smaller works on the first day and remained hopeful of closing negotiations on a few more ambitious sculptural works in the coming days.
Local establishments that anchor the Chicago scene year-round also performed well, reporting several sales over the VIP preview. Patron placed one of the new poetic abstractions by Chicago-based artist Lindsay Adams for $32,000, ahead of her solo opening the following week at Sean Kelly in New York, which follows a sold-out show in Los Angeles last year.
The gallery also sold a painting by Caroline Kent priced between $15,000 and $45,000 and several materially dense monochrome abstractions by Miao Wang priced between $9,000 and $15,000. Also standing out were the abstract, symbolic works of Alice Tippit—described by the artist as “visual poetry”—which build on the subconscious language of her current museum show at DePaul Art Museum ahead of its closing, with prices ranging from $8,500 to $15,000.
Chicago power dealer moniquemeloche also had a strong first day, placing significant new works by Yvette Mayorga, paired against a bright yellow ground, alongside two portraits by David Shrobe in a shared dialogue with traditional painting and art history. By evening, the gallery confirmed the sale of several works by Sheree Hovsepian and several paintings by Luke Agada. “We’ve enjoyed meeting with many curators and museum directors in our booth, and it’s been a very active first day at the fair,” Meloche told Observer, also noting strong traffic at the gallery’s physical space in recent days, with out-of-town curators and museum groups visiting its current show of vibrant landscapes by Cheryl Pope.
DOCUMENT, now a regular presence at major fairs including Art Basel and Frieze, was equally satisfied with the fair’s new institutional direction under Sierzputowski’s leadership. “Our first day at EXPO was a success. We are impressed with Kate’s leadership and the energy she brought to the fair. It’s a busy week for the city, and we are very proud to be part of this edition,” said the gallery’s partner, Sibylle Friche. The gallery sold a new photography-based work by Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Negative (P1400105) (2024), and one of the suspended nocturnal scenes by Dabin Ahn, The Four Seasons: Spring (Seoul, Chicago) (2026), part of the same series the South Korean-born, Chicago-based artist is currently presenting in a solo show at the gallery.
Good Weather is another fast-growing gallery that has built a reputation for experimental programming both within the Chicago ecosystem and beyond. Presenting in the Focus section alongside Detroit-based What Pipeline, the gallery staged an ambitious solo presentation by Dylan Spaysky, placing Girls (2026)—a large sculptural installation in basket-woven wicker shaped into life-size portraiture—with a private collector for $40,000. Moving fluidly between high and low culture, Spaysky delivers a witty yet unsettling commentary on the choices of adornment, consumption and accumulation through which we construct our identities.
Chicago gallery GRAY is presenting a curated dialogue between works by leading artists exploring how abstraction becomes a vehicle for transformation, embodiment and liberation. The gallery reported multiple sales across the booth, including an acrylic on linen work by Candida Alvarez placed for $100,000, Torkwase Dyson’s Scalar 2 (Hypershape) (2024) for $55,000, McArthur Binion’s Self:portrait (2025) at $35,000 and a Rashid Johnson oil on cotton rag paper work for $25,000.
Curatorial rigor in Profile and Embodiment
GRAY’s presentation is part of the Embodiment section curated by Louise Bernard, founding director of the soon-to-open Obama Presidential Center, which also featured a dedicated booth building momentum around one of the most anticipated institutional openings in the city. Among the highlights are a series of vibrant paintings and watercolors by Aliza Nisenbaum linked to a major mural commission for the center, featured in a joint presentation by Anton Kern Gallery and Regen Projects.
Hailing from the Bay Area, the section also features dealer Wendi Norris, presenting a thoughtful dialogue between spiritually attuned practices by artists including Ambreen Butt, María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Chitra Ganesh, all exploring migration, memory and transformation from a diasporic perspective. A symbolically powerful work by Pakistani artist Ambreen Butt, Guardians of Safe Heavens (2023), was acquired early in the day by a U.S. institution for $38,000, while another work by the artist later sold to a collector for $8,000. Norris also placed a large mixed-media work on archival paper by María Magdalena Campos-Pons for $22,000, presented within a section of the booth entirely dedicated to her work, as the artist continues to build institutional momentum following a steady run of museum exhibitions and biennial participation in recent years, including her first large-scale U.S. museum retrospective in decades at the Brooklyn Museum in 2023.
The similarly thoughtfully curated Profile section, led by Essence Harden, also delivers a wealth of focused solo, dual and thematic presentations. Among them, Half Gallery is showcasing Wenhui Hao’s richly textured cosmic abstractions, with six of the eight works on view sold by the afternoon, priced between $6,000 and $18,500, confirming the artist’s ongoing momentum.
One of the most interesting discoveries in the section is once again offered by Mexico City gallery Third Born, presenting the densely conceptual work of Portland-based artist Sidony O’Neal. With a background in mathematics, O’Neal’s practice explores circuits of meaning, resource flows and coded systems. Drawing on abstraction and an IT-inflected aesthetic, her industrial-looking, at times deliberately awkward hardware-like works examine the physical infrastructures that enable the abstract flow of data—structures that both channel and constrain. The result is a practice marked by precise attention to computation, philosophy and the social tensions embedded within contemporary systems of data and knowledge circulation, shaping not only physical reality but also our understanding of experience and materiality.
Equally intriguing is the practice of Stacey Lee Webber, presented in a solo booth by Philadelphia-based Bertrand Productions, featuring an ambitious large-scale gate made of melted dollar coins—a symbol of both protection and exclusion—alongside sculptural birds formed from currencies sourced from around the world, merging into a single migrating flock. Trained as a metalsmith, Webber works almost exclusively with found coins, transforming currency into intricate sculptures, textiles and jewelry that challenge systems of value and exchange. By cutting, drilling, bending and weaving often low-value pennies, she elevates them into delicate yet labor-intensive compositions that probe how money circulates, accumulates and is reassigned meaning—ultimately asking what happens when currency is rendered unusable yet becomes more valuable as art. The presentation attracted immediate institutional interest: the Peabody Essex Museum acquired Birdscape (2026) in the $15,000-25,000 range, while the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art acquired God Bless America: Chainlink (2023). The gallery also sold most of the smaller works on view, priced between $3,500 and $9,000.
San Francisco dealer Jessica Silverman’s presentation of life-affirming work by Bay Area artists was immediately well received, particularly by the curators in attendance. One of the highlights, The Work (2025) by Sadie Barnette, was acquired by the Bronx Museum through the Sherman Acquisition Award, while additional works by the artist were placed with collectors for $24,000 and $16,000 each. “I was born and raised in the Midwest, so I love connecting with the art world in Chicago,” Silverman told Observer. The gallery also quickly placed four works by Koak—two large works at $50,000 each and two works on paper at $6,000 and $7,000—alongside David Huffman’s Interwoven (2026) for $40,000 and Lava Thomas’s Looking Back III (2017) for $50,000, ahead of her first solo exhibition with the gallery in September 2026.
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