36 hours at EXPO Chicago 2026.

I spent 36 hours in Chicago during EXPO. That was the whole trip. A flight in, two days on the floor, a flight out. The compression matters: every conversation has to count, and every gallery you stop at is a choice. This is what I came back with.

The fair felt different this year.

EXPO Chicago 2026 was the most intentional fair I've covered. Not bigger, not louder, but tighter, on purpose. The curation read like somebody had a point of view about what the floor should be saying, instead of just whoever could pay for a booth. That's rare at this scale.

What stood out most: the number of Black-owned galleries holding real estate. Not in a side hall. On the main floor. With booths sized to compete. Showing artists at price points that took the work seriously. That doesn't happen by accident. Somebody at EXPO made a decision about what this fair was going to look like in 2026 and held the line on it.

The reels I shot from the floor are below. Watch them next to this piece — they're the visual record of what I'm describing.

Asking what actually sold.

The art-fair report has a problem. Every fair we read, every recap we see, talks about vibes. Energy on the floor. Excitement. Strong showing. Almost nobody publishes what actually sold, at what price, to whom. That's the data that would let the public read the market. It's also the data that's hardest to get.

So I tried something. I reached out to every gallery I spent meaningful time with and asked, on the record: what sold at your booth, at what price range, who bought it.

The point of that exercise wasn't to embarrass anyone. The point was the opposite. Making sales public during fairs builds trust. It tells collectors who weren't in the room what's actually moving. It gives artists context, gives museums acquisition signals, and gives the public a way to actually read the market. The vague "strong showing" recap helps nobody.

Two galleries said yes: Tanya Weddemire and Mitochondria Gallery. They told me what came off the wall, what the price points were, who the work went to in general terms. That's the work. That's how the field gets read.

I talked about it on the live show that week. The full conversation is here, and it's worth the watch if you care about what fair transparency could actually look like in practice:

What I'm taking from this fair.

One: EXPO Chicago is showing a way forward for what a fair can be when somebody is paying attention to who's in the room and not just who can pay the booth fee. Programming as point of view, not just as logistics.

Two: The Black-owned gallery presence on the main floor wasn't a side story this year. It was the floor. That's a real shift, and it should be the new floor, not the high-water mark.

Three: The galleries that opened up about what sold did themselves and the field a favor. They built trust with the next round of collectors who weren't in the room. The galleries that didn't open up: that's a choice too, and the public reads it.

I'll keep doing this at every fair I cover. If you ran a booth at a fair and want to make your sales public, message me on Patreon chat. I'll publish it the way Tanya and Mitochondria did, with their permission, on the record, alongside the recap.

That's the read from 36 hours in Chicago.