The Friends Fair in Austin will host its second edition, with an opening preview on May 7, with public days on May 8–9. Returning to the Loren Hotel Austin, the fair has also increased the number of exhibitors from 10 to 17, and it will take over an entire floor within the Loren.
The first edition launched last year as a collaboration between five Austin–based galleries, four of which will return for this edition, including Martha’s and McLennon Pen Co. That iteration saw over 2,000 visitors to the boutique hotel fair.
“Being born and raised in Austin, it’s meant a lot to me for this event to be successful,” Ricky Morales, a cofounder of the fair and co-owner of Martha’s, told ARTnews in an email. “There is an amazing art community in Austin and for the fair to receive the attention and attendance that we saw in the first year, it really drove home the fact that Austin is and can continue to be an art city.”
Four of the five galleries that rounded out its exhibitor list will also return: Half Gallery, Megan Mulrooney Gallery, Dutton, and Inman Gallery. This year’s edition will welcome several new galleries, including Nature of Things (Dallas), Seven Sisters (Houston), Tyler Park Presents (Los Angeles), KDR (Miami), and Ruiz-Healy Art (San Antonio and New York).
Additionally, two of the rooms will be given over to non–commercial presentations.
Co-Lab Projects, an artist-run, itinerant nonprofit founded in Austin, will take over one of these rooms, while the other will feature an exhibition of second-year MFA students from the University of Texas at Austin, curated by their professors.
“As cofounders, our priority was to ensure that the visiting galleries had strong sales and genuinely enjoyed their time in Austin,” Jill McLennon, founder of McLennon Pen Co., said in an email. “We were thrilled that so many galleries expressed interest in returning. Expanding the fair felt like a natural next step, adding more voices and cities without growing too quickly.”
The full exhibitor list follows below.
| Exhibitor | Location(s) |
| Andrew Rafacz | Chicago |
| Dutton | New York |
| Half Gallery | New York |
| Inman | Houston |
| Ivester Contemporary | Austin |
| KDR | Miami |
| Marinaro | New York |
| Martha’s | Austin |
| McLennon Pen Co. | Austin |
| Megan Mulrooney | Los Angeles |
| Nature of Things | Dallas |
| Northern-Southern | Austin |
| Ruiz-Healy Art | San Antonio and New York |
| Seven Sisters | Houston |
| The Valley | Taos |
| Tyler Park Presents | Los Angeles |
| Wolfgang Gallery | Atlanta |
