New art fair Arrival brings collectors to the bucolic Berkshires

Arrival, a new art fair, opened its inaugural edition in the Berkshires on Thursday (12 June) with a VIP reception at the popular hotel Tourists in North Adams, Massachusetts. The biennial fair’s first edition continues until 15 June, with 36 exhibitors at the hotel, a programme of panels and talks, and off-site programming at nearby art museums and venues.

During Thursday evening’s preview, fairgoers strolled along the hotel’s outdoor walkways, peering into large light-filled windows before entering the open rooms of their choosing. Exhibitors from across the US are have checked in for Arrival’s first edition, from the Texan spaces Talley Dunn Gallery andMartha’s to the Los Angeles galleries Charlie James and Tierra del Sol, Jane Lombard Gallery and R & Company from New York, Drive-by Projects from Boston, Library Street Collective from Detroit, and more. Fairgoers wandered in and out of rooms decked out with art hung on the walls, draped across the beds and placed in front of large picture windows bathed in natural light.

Arrival’s founders are three friends with a combined 60 years of experience in the art world. Yng-Ru Chen is the owner of the Boston-based Praise Shadows Art Gallery. Sarah Galender Meyer, who isoriginally from upstate New York and runs Galender Art Advisory, a Bay Area-based firm specialising in private collection management. Crystalle Lacouture is an artist based in Boston and North Adams, and curator at Tourists.

“Right now, for galleries, it’s a very hard business,” Chen says. “The margins are tough, and with all the tariffs and the uncertainty, this whole year has been hard for some gallerists. I think that we need to provide more support.”

The fair’s founders hope to create a special and intimate experience in the Berkshires for collectors, gallerists, artists and casual visitors. “You can step outside to get some fresh air,” says Chen, adding that the bucolic Berkshires location gives visitors “a respite from the frenzy of being in a convention centre in New York City or Miami”.

“This is completely different—a new experience,” says Takako Tanabe, the owner and director of New York-based Ulterior Gallery. She adds that Arrival is her first experience of organising a fair stand in a quasi-domestic setting like a hotel room, as opposed to the larger trade fair venues favoured by bigger expos. She is also “living” with the art in her room at Tourists, as many participating gallerists are doing for the duration of the fair.

One of the fair’s most high-profile exhibitors, the San Francisco-based gallery Jessica Silverman, got off to a strong start during Thursday evening’s opening. The gallery’s sales included two paintings by Hayal Pozanti—Chimes of Neptune (2025) for $55,000 and Coaxed Drops from the Clouds (2025) for $45,000—as Chelsea Ryoko Wong summery painting If I Could Stop Time (2025) for $27,000 and Pae White’s textural panel cold summer (2024) for $25,000. The gallery also sold four of White’s porcelain and gold Companions sculptures for $3,000 each.

Representatives of selected museums, including the Williams College Museum of Art located just five minutes down the road, were invited to walk the fair on Thursday just before the VIP preview. On Friday afternoon, the museum announced it had acquired three works from the fair: a work on paper by Julie Buffalohead (from Jessica Silverman), a bead and embroidery on leather work by the artist Kite (from Bockley Gallery) and a sculpture by Juvana Soliven (from Ontopo gallery).

In the lounge at Tourists, the multidisciplinary artist Mel Chin’s DIS-pense & DIS-tribute (1992), stands quietly in a corner, consisting of a vending machine offering individually wrapped fragments of a US flag. More than three decades after its debut, it still makes a bold and timely statement about what Chin calls “junk food patriotism”, a warning against “uniting a diverse society through instant, artificial gratification”. Chin’s solo stand, presented by the New York-based advisory Davila-Villa & Stothart, showcases works spanning four decades.

Bob Faust’s graphic flags add to the ambiance around the pool at Tourists, and dot the local landscape including at the nearby Clark Art Institute and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass Moca).

Arrival is funded in part by tax-deductible donations to its fiscal sponsor Fractured Atlas, and gallery booth fees. “We started with no funding, so we didn’t lose anything,” Chen says. “This really was very grassroots. We have not paid ourselves. We’ve put our own money in to get incorporated.” Founding donors include the Girlfriend Fund, and the Bay Area collectors Pamela and David Hornik.

Admission to the fair is free. “We’re committed to keeping the fair open and accessible to everybody,” Meyer says. Around 2,000 visitors have already registered for Arrival’s inaugural edition, which coincides with Williams College’s alumni weekend, which normally brings around 4,000 returning graduates to the Berkshires.

• Arrival, until 15 June, Tourists, North Adams, Massachusetts