Expo Chicago

How Tony Karman catapulted Expo Chicago into the art world spotlight

Tony Karman, president and director of Expo Chicago at Navy Pier, during the initial setup for the showcase of modern and contemporary art Sept. 13, 2016. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

"We're building a city," says Tony Karman, walking briskly past a nascent maze of gray-hued walls rising from the floor of Navy Pier's exhibition hall.

Karman, president and director of Expo Chicago, is days away from welcoming the national and international art worlds to the annual fair, the city's biggest art event. His reputation, his business and the international cachet of the city of Chicago are, to varying degrees, riding on it. So he's surprisingly calm when confronted with — the carpet.

If you've got an eye for design — and Karman, known for a dapper uniform of trim jackets, crisp shirts and a signature pocket square, does — the carpeting in Navy Pier's exhibition areas is problematic. It conjures up the lobby of the kind of early-'90s hotel that might have had an atrium. And there's a lot of it.

Karman has spent years battling this carpet; covering it up, wishing it would just go away. But when a supervisor greets him, he shrugs and says flooring won't be a concern this year. "I've made peace with the carpet. I'm embracing it." In Karman's world, details matter. But five years into an endeavor that has put the city he loves back on the international art map, the big picture is coming into focus.

"Tony is the hardest-working man in the art world," says Museum of Contemporary Art chief curator Michael Darling. "I was actually out bodysurfing in Miami, and I came riding up onto the beach, and landed right in front of Tony. I sort of popped out of the water, and we started talking business right there."

This is classic Karman — his energy is a defining quality, and his excitement for his projects is infectious.

It's also the quality that probably most explains why Expo Chicago has managed to overcome the burden of Chicago art fair history. "For years," says international fine arts consultant Helyn Goldenberg, "before Miami and all the other shows that we have now, Chicago had an art fair, which was the best art fair in the country, period. It lasted a long time, and then like many things outlived its usefulness and it went away."

Adolfo Cantú

Art Consultant

Art historina & Critic,specialising in creating and curating collectios

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