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Butter, the Indianapolis cultural mainstay fair that spotlights Black visual artists, will expand to the West Coast.
Cultural development firm Ganggang announced Aug. 28 that it will put on Butter LA, the first full exhibition outside the Circle City, from Feb. 26 to March 1, 2026. The dates coincide with Frieze Los Angeles, an international contemporary art fair.
“We’ve grown an incredible model and experience in central Indiana and are thrilled to see it expand to benefit the artists and community of LA,” said Mali Bacon, co-founder and creative director of Ganggang, in a news release. “We’re connecting the industry and the voices within it, spreading our geographic reach, but more importantly, our mission, which means more perspective, more learning, more ownership, authorship and preservation.”
What to know: Butter fine art fair 2025
Mali and Alan Bacon launched Butter in 2021 as a multisensory experience that pulled inspiration from Art Basel Miami, Indianapolis’ former Oranje festival, and the artists who painted the Black Lives Matter mural on Indiana Avenue and participated in the 2020 Indianapolis Art Center show “Eighteen: Black Lives Matter.” The couple aims to build equity and give cultural reparations to Black artists while building the city’s creative economy.
Butter doesn’t charge artists a commission or censor their work, and it returns all of the sale proceeds back to them. So far, the fair has produced more than $1 million in sales, according to the release.
Several major institutions have acquired work from Butter fairs of past years, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian Institute, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Studio Museum in Harlem and Detroit Institute of Arts, the release states.
Emerging, mid-career and established artists from the African diaspora will show work in the inaugural Butter LA. Nakeyta Moore, a past Butter curator and founder of ArtLoudLA, will work with California-based art advisor Jac Forbes and the Bacons to curate the fair. The art will include 50% California artists, 25% Indiana artists and 25% other national and international artists.
The expansion will build on a July temporary exhibition at Context Projects in View Park, California in July, where Ganggang introduced its model to collections, galleries and institutions, the release stated.
Even with the expansion, Butter will remain a Labor Day staple in Indianapolis. In addition to Los Angeles, Ganggang has future plans to program a taste of its vision in Chicago in October and Miami in December during Art Basel, according to Keri Kirschner, who runs communications for Ganggang.
Learn more at butterartfair.com.
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Contact IndyStar reporter Domenica Bongiovanni at 317-444-7339 or d.bongiovanni@indystar.com. Sign up here for the newsletter she curates about things to do and ways to explore Indianapolis. Find her on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter: @domenicareports.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Butter, the fine art fair that launched 5 years ago, will expand to LA
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