by This year was supposed to be the 60th anniversary of one of Minnesota’s biggest events, the Uptown Art Fair, but construction on Hennepin Avenue–an essential road for the festival–put a wrench in plans.
Initially Uptown Association, which organizes the fair, informed artists that the construction would only alter the fair’s location and it would be condensed to the parkway called The Mall.
The association kept applications open until March 15th and even went through a week-long jury process to determine which artists would be admitted.
Just two weeks after the jury process, Uptown Association announced that this year’s fair was canceled due to construction.
The fair’s director of operations, Jill Osiecki, explained that event is on one of the busiest intersections in the state, Lake Street and Hennepin Avenue, and she said Uptown Association thought keeping the same location of the fair was integral to tradition.
“Without having the event there, which is the signature of the event, just didn’t feel right,” said Osiecki.
Applying to art fairs usually costs $50 to $60 per application, so some artists are strategic with where they decide to apply. This way they aren’t spending money on an application for an event they can’t work.
Melissa Gust had a booth at the fair for the first time last year and said she made more sales there than at any other summer art festivals she worked. Now that it’s canceled, she doesn’t have anything lined up to fill that gap.
“The timing of all of this was actually really unfortunate because the day they let the public know was the day they let the artists know, but the applications for every other art fair were already closed,” said Gust.
Osiecki admitted the Association had known about the construction plans for years, but did not realize the scope of the construction zone was so large until seeing it in person.
“Maybe at some point we buried our head in the sand a little bit and just hoping for the best, but then you just couldn’t ignore how bad it was gonna be,” said Osiecki.
“I don’t think they wanted to admit it to us until they exhausted all their options, but we weren’t aware that that was still not set in stone. We were missing that transparency,” said Gust.
While the traditional art fair is canceled for this year, Uptown Association announced the Uptown Art Experience which plans to include smaller pop-up events spanning the whole summer.
