Celebrated international art extravaganza Frieze is once again coming to Los Angeles, specifically Santa Monica for just the second time in the festival’s history.
From February 29 to March 3 the fair, which began in London in 2003, will feature a program of site-specific artworks, public activations and sculpture across the Santa Monica Airport airfield.
The 2024 fair brings together more than 95 galleries from 21 countries, with nearly 50% of them operating in the Greater Los Angeles area. Moreover, 13 of them will be showing at Frieze Los Angeles for the first time.
"This seems like the perfect synergy for it to be happening here in Santa Monica," said Jenny Rogers, Director of Recreation & Arts for the City of Santa Monica. "It's been a huge asset to be able to bring it to the airport … Having Frieze activate that space with all manner of arts and culture is really exciting. Through the partnership between the City and 18th Street, we [already] have a number of wonderful arts organizations that operate from there and this just adds more vibrancy to an already thriving art scene."
First held in Regent's Park in London and developed by the founders of the contemporary art magazine Frieze, the fair has since expanded to include editions in New York and Seoul in addition to Los Angeles and the UK capital.
The first show in Los Angeles was held in 2019 at Paramount Pictures Studios (and again in 2020), before everything was put on hold for the pandemic. An announcement was made in 2022, after the event was held at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, that the Los Angeles Frieze festival would relocate to the Santa Monica Airport site in 2023.
The fair is primarily concentrated in the airport’s southeast corner, with a mammoth-sized marquee being erected in the approximately 648,000 sq ft parking lot space that holds the Outdoor Antique & Vintage Market on the first and fourth Sunday of every month.
To gain some perspective of quite how mindboggling this logistical undertaking is...
• The site incorporates 120,000 sq ft of tenting
• Approximately 20 miles of cabling are used along with over 1.5 miles of HVAC ducting
• 8,570 linear feet of wall panels are used to build the booths
• 5,705 linear feet of truss is used to hold the 2,021 LED lights that illuminate the art
• Over 3,600 workers (inclusive of exhibitor staff)
And last year the fair welcomed 35,000 visitors across its four-day run and more are expected this year.
The fair’s roster of participating galleries for 2024 features a concentrated group of Los Angeles-based spaces including Blum, The Box, Château Shatto, François Ghebaly, David Kordansky Gallery, L.A. Louver, Night Gallery, Nonaka-Hill, Regen Projects, Parrasch Heijnen, Hannah Hoffman, Marc Selwyn Fine Art and Various Small Fires.
A significant appointment for Frieze Los Angeles 2024 is Essence Harden, Visual Arts Curator and Program Manager for the California African American Museum, as curator of Focus. The section, for US galleries that have been operating for 12 years or less, is a platform for emerging and underrepresented voices. Supported by Stone Island, whose grants promote participation in Focus alongside Frieze subsidies, the section this year consists of 12 galleries and explores ideas of ecology.
Credit: Casey Kelbaugh
Just about every art gallery across the city is joining in this long weekend’s worth of art appreciation that includes Santa Monica’s celebrated Bergamot Station Arts Center.
"There's an activation at Bergamot coming up this weekend, they're opening their studios as part of the Frieze weekend," Rogers says, adding that the 18th Street Arts Center is also holding events, both at the 3026 Airport Avenue and 1639 18th Street sites.
Moreover, LA’s preeminent museums including Getty, The Museum of Contemporary Art, The Broad, Hammer Museum, LACMA, ICA LA and Academy Museum of Motion Pictures are hosting special events offering the opportunity to discover Los Angeles’s world-class collections.
Tickets for Frieze range from $202 for the Friday night preview to $96 for general admission before 3 p.m. to $76 for general admission after 3 p.m. and are available from the frieze.com website. Early bird tickets along with tickets for "Frieze In Person LA" are now sold out.
Opening times for Frieze are as follows:
Thursday, February 29: Preview, invitation only, 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Friday, March 1: Preview, (open to the public after 1pm) 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Saturday, March 2: 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Sunday, March 3: 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Be advised however, that the area will be congested from around 9 a.m. – 8 p.m. each day of the event. All attendees are encouraged to use rideshare. The following traffic restrictions will be in place during the event: Northbound Bundy: No left turns onto Airport Ave at all times. Southbound 23rd: No left turns onto Airport Ave Thurs–Fri 4 p.m. – 7 p.m. SMPD will be on site to facilitate traffic movement.
