Detroit got its first contemporary art fair this weekend. Season opened on the sixth floor of Michigan Central Station for a four-day run, September 25 through 28, with a VIP preview Thursday afternoon. Eleven North American galleries took booths.
A separate curated section called Detroit Presents put ten Detroit-based artists in front of the same audience. The fair is run by Amani Olu, a curator and writer who launched Detroit Art Week in 2018. That festival ran two editions, in 2018 and 2019, then went dark during the pandemic.
Olu kept the nonprofit, Detroit Art Week, Inc., alive and reorganized it into Season. He told The Art Newspaper the move was a bet on a smaller, regional fair format. A booth at Season cost $2,500, which is about a tenth of what a large international fair charges.
Four of the galleries are from Michigan: Library Street Collective, M Contemporary Art, Matéria Gallery, and What Pipeline. Four came from New York: High Noon, March, Osmos, and Tappeto Volante. The rest were Rivalry Projects from Buffalo, April April from Pittsburgh, and MKG127 from Toronto.
The Detroit Presents artists came in through a mix of invitations and an open call. The selection included Hannah Rose Dumes, Kat Quay, Cydney Camp, Lynne Bennet-Carpenter, Daniel Ribar, and Amna Asghar. Quay's contribution was sculptural server racks.
Dumes showed paintings. The fair came with the usual extras. Season Talks ran panels on market access and regional influence.
Off Season pushed visitors out into studio visits, gallery extended hours, and food and nightlife events across town. Online viewing through the Arcual platform stayed open for two weeks after the fair closed. The Gilbert Family Foundation funded the inaugural Detroit Presents and helped bankroll the operation.
Season reported $135,000 raised for its programs, 25 local jobs created, and roughly $360,000 in total economic impact. Whether those numbers grow enough to make Season a fixture is the open question. Olu is calling it civic infrastructure, not a one-off.
The 2026 dates have not been announced. 2405 W. Vernor Highway, Corktown.
