Collector Mirka Serrato was walking her dog through Chicago’s affluent Gold Coast neighborhood when she came across Ramiro Verdugo, the groundsman tending to the garden at an imposing neoclassical residence. Both Latin American, they hit it off. She was looking for a place to live, and an apartment was available. She ended up living there very happily for about three years before she moved to Dallas, where she’s closer to her family, in her native Mexico. But she wasn’t ready to let go of the Windy City, not entirely.
“Leaving Chicago was not an option,” she told ARTnews in an interview. “Seeing the place empty after all it gave to me was torture.” Serrato has a day job in PR but studied at the Sotheby’s Institute, and she resolved to turn the place into a venue for an art show or event. Then she went looking for the right person to help her. She met Jonny Tanna, founder of London’s Harlesden High Street gallery (the rare such business that has a manifesto), at a party at the Fondation Beyeler during Art Basel—and a partnership was born.
“When I met Jonny,” she said, “I was like, ‘Now I can pack up my stuff.’”
Now, Serrato and Tanna will launch a new art fair, Neighbors, whose name, they figure, says a lot about the vibe they hope to create. It will debut during Expo Chicago, from April 8–12, and will take place across four rooms over just 1,200 square feet of the apartment, about seven minutes from Navy Pier, which Expo called long called its home. No booth walls, no white cubes; the space is full of feminine touches.
The building once belonged to the Goodman family, who were major patrons of the arts in Chicago, so it’s a fitting way for Serrato to hold on to the place a little longer. “Art used to live in domestic spaces before it was institutionalized,” she said. “I hope the space will hold the galleries the way the space held me.”
Jonny Tanna and Mirka Serrato.
Alongside Tanna’s Harlesden High Street, Neighbors will include just five other exhibitors: Gathering (London), Hans Goodrich (Chicago), Post Times (New York), Tureen (Dallas), and Weatherproof (Chicago).
Tanna has experience organizing art fairs, having founded Minor Attractions, a Frieze London satellite micro-fair, in 2023. He also has participated in more than 50 art fairs, including Frieze London, Independent in New York, Basel Social Club in Switzerland, and Post-Fair in Los Angeles. He also curated the “Nest” section of Untitled’s 2025 Miami Beach outing.
The future home of Neighbors, an apartment on Chicago’s Gold Coast.
The test will be to see whether Chicago can support a continuing satellite fair. NADA tried it with the Chicago Invitational in 2019, and there’s the super-micro, very cheeky Barely Fair, ongoing since 2019, which shows miniature artworks in a wee little mockup of a gallery.
“We’re taking it one step at a time,” said Tanna about that challenge of sustaining a satellite fair in Chicago. “First, we try to build a strong lineup. When I saw the place, I wanted to create something like [the micro-fair] Paris Internationale circa 2015, and bring that to the Americas. Post-Fair is the closest to what I hope to accomplish. Paris Internationale had a domestic vibe, the work was mostly sculptural-based and conceptual, and it was less commercial. But I wanted to bring more galleries from the States.”
He continued, “A strong lineup attracts an audience. We’re also working with advisors to bring collectors through, and working our local Chicago networks to make it as visible as possible. I want to make it similar to what we do at Minor Attractions.”
With so much experience both as a fair organizer and a dealer, Tanna knows how to work with galleries, and Serrato brings knowledge of finance to the table; she’s also organized industry conferences, “so I know I can print badges for sure,” she joked. They’ve tried to keep the participation fee reasonable for small galleries taking a chance on a new enterprise.
Bigger art fairs are known for a rigorous selection and vetting process, and Neighbors is doing the same, at its own scale, but as way to try to ensure the dealers’ success. The expenses of participation, shipping, lodging, and all the rest for the dealers required nothing less, they felt.
The gardens at the future home of Neighbors, a satellite fair to Expo Chicago, launching this April.
“We’ve allowed galleries to eliminate as much risk as possible by looking at their previous programming,” Serrato said, and thinking about what kind of works the galleries have shown before that would suit the fair’s distinctive space.
In the light of the stakes and all the logistics involved in organizing such an event, Tanna made one surprising claim, at least to this reporter, saying, “I really enjoy organizing art fairs.” That’s based primarily on what he hopes will distinguish Neighbors from other fairs. “Most fairs these days are not as curated as they used to be,” he said. “We’ve done the same thing as TEFAF,” he said, referring to the Maastricht-based fair whose vetting process is the stuff of legend. “It’s not going to be just random stuff and people selling their wares.”
Post Times founder Broc Blegen signed up for Neighbors after meeting Tanna in Los Angeles, when they were both exhibitors at Post-Fair last month.
“I met Jonny at Post-Fair for the first time, and we hit it off,” Blegen told ARTnews by phone. “He took me around to places he got invited to. He was really generous. I had a car and he had the party invites so we palled around. We connected as working-class kids who have to hustle their way around this art world.”
Blegen added, “I trust Jonny, and he seems to have a vision for what he thinks is needed in this new art world we’re coming into, where everything is collapsing and being rebuilt as we speak.”
