ML - Michigan Avenue

2015 - Issue 5 - September

Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!

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photography by clay boutté The Showman Tony arman raises the city's contemporary arts profile with the fourth expo chicago. by novid parsi Tony Karman knows that the strength of Expo Chicago, the international art fair whose fourth iteration runs September 17–20 at Navy Pier, rests on the broad shoulders of the town that attracts the curators, collectors, and other art enthusiasts who come from across the globe. "The asset that we have is our city," he says. It's an asset that, during the decline of Expo's defunct forerunner, Art Chicago, too often went untapped by the world's art connoisseurs. "I am still amazed at how many collectors confess they've never been to Chicago," he says. As Expo's president and director, the 56-year-old Karman wants to restore Chicago's reputation as the home to a first- rate international art fair. His ideal world? "If you're a collector, curator, or other arts professional, there's no question that you are in Chicago in September," he says. Working to make that vision a reality, Karman early on identified a few winning strategies. He went small—emphasizing gallery quality, not quantity. He created premier programming, from installations to lectures. He placed the fair on Navy Pier, where Art Chicago used to be held, enlisting renowned architect Jeanne Gang to design the exhibition space. And he scheduled the fair not in the spring, when the international art calendar is packed, but in September. Expo Chicago's Tony Karman, photographed at home next to Jackie Saccoccio's Saccarin (2013), is putting the Windy City on the global art world map. continued on page 74 PEOPLE View from the Top michiganavemag.com  73

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