Butter, an art fair showcasing the work of Black artists, returns to Indianapolis

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The Butter Fine Art Fair is returning for its fourth iteration this week, spotlighting the work of Black artists from all over the country in a celebratory setting with an unconventional economic model—100% of the proceeds from art sales go directly to the artists.

More than 60 exhibitors will join in an action-packed series of talks, showcases, musical interludes, and spoken-word sets, creating a rich, buzzy atmosphere at the Stutz, a former factory building in downtown Indianapolis.

“When we were considering the first year, we thought, may 1,000 people in Indianapolis might show up for something like this,” Malina Simone Bacon, a co-founder of Butter, tells The Art Newspaper. “We put it together very quickly, found some early support and over 3,400 people showed up. This year, we’re anticipating upwards of 12,000 people, and are reaching the $1m sale mark.”

The international art fair circuit, with its big names and blue-chip prices, is not known as a paragon of accessibility for up-and-coming artists or would-be collectors who are art-world novices. The major fairs cultivate airs of exclusivity in which the world’s most deep-pocketed collectors can acquire the rarest works. More regionally-focused fairs are thriving in cities like Dallas, but Butter, with its home-grown commitment to equity, is offering a different way of doing business that elevates historically marginalised voices.

The fair’s 2024 line-up includes Cornelius Tulloch, a Miami-based interdisciplinary architect and designer whose work is featured in the Studio Museum in Harlem’s permanent collection. The Bahamian American artist April Bey is showing her mixed media ruminations on Afrofuturism, which have been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno and the California African American Museum. In keeping with Butter’s promise to ensure that half of all included artists are Indianapolis natives, one of this year’s participants is D. Del Reverda Jennings, a local self-taught artist whose work channels the diasporic “Goddess persona” in unconventional materials.

Founded in 2020 as a response to the Black Lives Matter protests that took place across the country amid the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the concept for Butter was conceived by Malina Simone Bacon and her husband Alan Bacon. They are also the founders of Ganggang, an Indiana-based creative advocacy agency.

“In the winter of 2020, a lot of Black visual art was popping up here in Indianapolis, and there were murals all over the country—everyone’s talking about Black art, suddenly, and the attention was overdue and haphazard,” says Alan Bacon. “There was one night where [Malina] was going to an institution that for the first time was doing a big contemporary show, and then another one across town, and we thought—we can do it better. What was missing was the context that was worthy to show the work. The city needed a platform and there was an opportunity to do something different in terms of the narration in presenting artwork made by Black people.”

Attendees at the 2023 edition of Butter Photo by Gerald Encarnacion, courtesy Butter

Indianapolis, a city best known for hosting the world’s largest single-day race, the Indy 500, is not typically thought of as an art destination. Its major institution, the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) at Newfields, has embraced a new direction since its former president and chief executive Charles L. Venable stepped down in 2021 amid accusations of racism, unfair ticket pricing and cultivating a toxic work environment. In 2020, the Ganggang founders decided not to proceed with an exhibition they had been tapped to curate at the IMA. And in 2023, Malina Simone Bacon resigned from the Newfields board of governors after the chief executive Colette Pierce Burnette suddenly stepped down. (Earlier this week, Newfields announced it had hired the Field Museum’s chief financial officer, Le Monte G. Booker Sr, to succeed Burnette.)

Despite that history, Newfields acquired work at Butter’s 2023 edition, as did the Central Indiana Community Foundation and Indiana University’s Indiana Memorial Union. Last year, Butter eclipsed $270k in art sales. The fair’s ethos is defined by a grounded but insistent optimism—if you build it, someone will come.

“Anywhere that humans exist there is a collector base,” Alan Bacon says. “But there’s not an art market already here, an art sector. That’s something that we’ve had to grow alongside the mindset and the trajectories of the artists. Last year, we created the ‘new collector’s club’, so this is the second year that we’re massaging that market and creating generational wealth.”

This year, visitors to Butter can expect a musical lineup featuring 50 DJs, dance performances and an impressive food and beverage spread. A new outdoor performance stage will feature live music by local acts including Pork & Beans Brass Band, FOXD’LEGND and Brandon Lott. On 30 August, the fair will launch Grapevine, a curated selection of Indianapolis’s Black-owned retail brands and food trucks. Conversation Cove, a space for artist talks, will feature interview sessions every hour for interested visitors.

“We can think about the collector in a similar way to the artist, on this continuum of emerging to established,” Malina Simone Bacon says. “Last year, there was one collector who had never purchased an original piece of art before. He spent $16,000 on one piece. Collector education at Butter is amplified so new art enthusiasts can understand what value is, what appreciation is—these buyers are proud to support specific artists, they’re proud to have a piece in their home and they’re proud to have gotten a piece from Butter.”

2024’s edition will also launch a kids’ area in partnership with the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, complete with a Lego printing station, bumper cars and a ball pit. But Butter’s heart, in the Bacons’ view, remains its holistic view of artistic expression and engagement for locals.

“People are really interested in Butter because this is where you find artists that are on the rise, but are also right here. They can talk to you while you purchase work from them,” Alan Bacon says. He adds, hinting at a possible future expansion of the fair: “You know, Butter spreads.”