Aspen has long been a playground for food lovers, skiers, and the global donor class—but increasingly, it’s become a serious destination for contemporary art. The second edition of the Aspen Art Fair returns to the historic Hotel Jerome from July 29 to August 2, marking the launch of Aspen Art Week and a notable expansion of the fair itself.
In its inaugural year, the fair hosted just 21 exhibitors. This year, that number has more than doubled, with 44 galleries from over 15 countries, including 25 newcomers and 19 returning participants.
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Big-name New York galleries like Sean Kelly and Marianne Boesky join a roster that includes Praise Shadows (Brookline, MA), Anat Ebgi (Los Angeles and New York), the Sunday Painter (London), La Loma Projects (LA), and 193 Gallery (Paris and Venice). Programming highlights include talks with artists like Mickalene Thomas and Issy Wood, curated home tours, and a site-specific exhibition inspired by A Room of One’s Own.
The Hotel Jerome itself—awarded a Michelin Key and widely considered Aspen’s cultural living room—plays a central role in the fair’s identity. Nearly every available space on the ground floor is used for art, with in-room installations transforming guest suites into salon-style exhibitions. While there are traditional art fair booths, the setting feels less like a convention center and more like a private club, fostering a kind of accidental intimacy: collectors stumble into gallerists, artists trade hiking recommendations with advisors, and fairgoers drift between paintings and mini-bars. It’s this atmosphere—deliberately informal, defiantly un-boothlike—that cofounders Becca Hoffman and Bob Chase see as a core part of the fair’s success.
Hoffman brings two decades of art fair and gallery experience, including revamping the Outsider Art Fair and founding the nomadic culture venture 74th Arts. Chase, a longtime Aspen resident and owner of Hexton Gallery, is embedded in the town’s cultural infrastructure and serves on national councils for both the Aspen Art Museum and Anderson Ranch.
We spoke with the fair’s cofounders about what sets the Aspen Art Fair apart, why bigger isn’t better, and what snack to take on your hike.
ARTnews: You launched this fair just last year, and now you’re back with more exhibitors and a deeper programming bench. Why do you think the first edition worked?
Becca Hoffman: We’re seeing a shift away from massive fairs toward more boutique, curated experiences. Aspen gave us the opportunity to create something immersive and personal—something that mirrors how collectors actually want to engage.
Bob Chase: It also helped that Aspen was ready. We weren’t parachuting in. There’s an arts infrastructure here already—museums, galleries, collectors—and the Jerome is this central, almost mythic gathering point in town. The hotel setting made it intimate, but also very visible. That combination worked.
Sean Kelly and Marianne Boesky are on the exhibitor list this year. What does that say to you about the fair’s place in the calendar—and in the market? (I’ll say it for you: when Sean Kelly signs on, that’s proof the fair isn’t just a novelty.)
Chase: Ha, yes—thank you. We took that as validation. And we also had a lot more interest than we expected. But we’re careful about scale. We still want it to feel discoverable, not overwhelming. Aspen can’t—and shouldn’t—support a 150-gallery model.
Hoffman: It’s a curated invitation-only fair for a reason. We want to bring a mix of the emerging and the established, the local and the global. We’re building an experience for people who are already deeply curious.
Aspen can be hard to reach. It’s not Basel or Miami. Was that part of the appeal?
Hoffman: Definitely. There’s something special about showing up here with intention. Aspen may be remote, but it’s not inaccessible. It attracts a different kind of visitor—people who want to engage, not just drop in for an hour.
Chase: And once you’re here, there’s not the same hierarchy you feel in big cities. You can walk into a gallery in a T-shirt and end up in a conversation with a physicist or a collector. There’s less posturing, more openness.
What’s your advice for someone coming for the first time during Aspen Art Week? There’s a lot going on.
Hoffman: Dive in. You can program yourself every hour if you want, from hikes and studio visits to panels and performances. But you can also just find a few things and let Aspen do the rest. The landscape is a big part of the experience.
Chase: Yeah, check the websites. Between the museum, the ranch, and our schedule, it’s all mapped out. If you’re ambitious, you really can do it all. Just don’t skip the cold plunge.
Is the Jerome going to remain the fair’s permanent home?
Chase: It’s the heart of town—has been since 1889. The scale is right, the energy is right, and it keeps the fair from growing too fast. Which is a good thing.
Hoffman: It’s part of the fair’s identity now. And it also keeps us from overreaching.
Favorite Aspen secret? The place you’d go or what you’d eat if you weren’t working the whole week.
Chase: I’m not naming restaurants—I have too many friends. But for hiking: it’s gotta be Hunter Creek. You can be alone and in the wilderness within 15 minutes. That’s pretty rare.
Hoffman: My hike snack of choice is MAWA grain-free granola. You can get it at the Saturday farmer’s market, I think at the crêpe shop as well. That and a sandwich from Butcher’s Block and you’re set.
And if someone’s out too late?
Chase: New York Pizza is great. Or the Buck. Everything late-night in Aspen is underground, literally. You walk down a flight of stairs, and suddenly you’re in a club.
Last question—what’s the ethos here? What’s the point of doing all this in a town like Aspen?
Chase: There’s a phrase I keep coming back to. Years ago, Jim Hodges designed a book for a local project here called Art in Unexpected Places. The title was Give More Than You Take. That’s stuck with me ever since. And I think it captures what we’re trying to do with this fair. Aspen isn’t just a beautiful place to stage a commercial event—it’s a real community, with people who live here and care deeply about culture. We didn’t want to build something that just shows up, extracts value, and disappears. We wanted to create something that adds to the ecosystem, that connects institutions, and that gives back. That’s what success looks like to me—not just big names on the roster, but making something sustainable and meaningful in a place that deserves it.