No-Admission Art Fairs, Festivals And Museums

Entry to the art world too often, sadly, comes with an admission price. Purchasing art has long been associated with its unattainable upper echelons and the auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Increasingly, it’s becoming expensive just to look at art.

In a measure mirroring American society writ large, the nation’s premiere art museums have chosen to place the responsibility for their support on the backs of regular people. In July of 2022, the Metropolitan Museum of Art raised its general admission ticket price to an eye-popping $30. Still only a fraction of what it costs to visit a top-end amusement park, $30 was a barrier that had not been broken and rarely approached for access to culture.

An unspoken social license kept museum entry reasonably priced. This was art after all—education, humanity, history—essential to a well-functioning civilization in a way rollercoasters aren’t. These spaces serve a societal function, like libraries; access shouldn’t be denied by economics.

But if the best, most well-heeled museum in the country could engage in a gouge, why not others. The Met was a trailblazer.

In little over a year, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art, all in New York, along with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art all bumped up to $30 for general admission adult tickets. The Art Institute of Chicago went to $32.

To working people, $30 is real money, not so the billionaire robber barons occupying these museum’s boards who pick their teeth with $100 bills.

Fortunately, there are places like Louisville where this fall a family of four or six or 10 a single person can enjoy fine art every weekend, free of charge. Here here!

Entry to Louisville’s Speed Art Museum is free through October 1, 2023, and free on Sundays through 2024. The museum has a fine encyclopedic collection highlighted by arguably the most important single painting of the 21^st century, Amy Sherald’s portrait of Louisville’s Breonna Taylor.

The seasonal events begin with the first-ever Paristown Art Festival taking over Brent Street and Christy’s Garden September 29 and 30. The event will feature dozens of painters, photographers, jewelry-makers, designers, and wood artisans at the newly revitalized Paristown Arts District. Guests can enjoy dining and cocktails at The Village Market Food Hall or The Café throughout the weekend, and a soft-opening concert on Friday night.

Returning to Iroquois Park beginning October 3, the Louisville Jack O’ Lantern Spectacular finds artisans hand-carving pumpkins throughout the month leading up to Halloween. Visitors stroll a one-third-mile path enjoying over 5,000 carved pumpkins illuminated every evening as a part of the nightly show.

Louisville’s artsy autumnal highlight, however, as always, is the St. James Court Art Show.

St. James Court Art Show

Celebrating its 67th anniversary October 6 through 8, this juried fine art and contemporary crafts show welcomes over 600 artists from around the country each first full weekend in October. The event spans four square blocks in the Old Louisville neighborhood, the city’s original suburb, home to the country’s most extensive collection of Victorian-era homes.

What began in 1957 as an effort by St. James Court residents to raise a couple hundred bucks to repair a historic fountain has become one of the top art fairs in the nation.

It wasn’t always that way.

“I think the first art show had 14 exhibitors and the reason they had an art show was, at that time, there were more artists living on St. James; if there had been more bakers, it would have been a bake show instead of an art show,” Howard Rosenberg, Executive Director of the St. James Court Art Show, told Forbes.com chuckling.

The debut edition featured artworks hung on clotheslines. Not anymore.

“The artists booths are set up in the street so as you look at the artists, the backdrop are all these historic homes,” Rosenberg explains. “On Thursday it’s a neighborhood, on Monday it’s a neighborhood, but Friday, Saturday and Sunday, it’s an art show.”

An art show expecting a crowd in excess of 200,000 attendees. An art show featuring more than a dozen mediums on display from wood, jewelry, leather, sculpture, glass, painting–you name it.

And More!

The St. James Court Art Show keeps its focus on the art, the Louisville UnFair, running concurrently, does not. Founded in 1997 and taking place at the Magnolia Bar & Grill, the annual UnFair Art Show brings together thousands of art lovers who imbibe vast quantities of beer and spirits while live music fills the air.

Traditionally embracing vice and subversiveness, this is an art show for locals by locals, striving to exemplify Louisville culture during the St. James Court Art Show a block up the street. All the art here is local, affordable and ready-to-buy.

Kentucky’s largest street painting event, the Via Colori Street Painting Festival October 21 and 22, will bring over 100 artists to Louisville’s waterfront with the intent of making artistic masterpieces on a large scale, directly on the sidewalks of the popular Waterfront Park. Live music, vendors, family-friendly activities, bounce houses, a food court, cosplayers, and of course, street art will be on display.

All free of charge.

As are both the Art Center of the Bluegrass and its new GLASS National Art Museum opening November 3, 2023, 80 miles southeast of Louisville in Danville, KY–an ideal road trip for enjoying the state’s rolling hills and changing fall colors.

The GLASS National Art Museum will showcase contemporary artists working in the compelling medium of glass—most notably providing a permanent home for the collection of American glass artist, Stephen Rolfe Powell.

Prior to his death in 2019, Powell was a longtime resident of the Danville community and professor at Centre College (just down the road from Art Center of the Bluegrass). In addition to creating a name for himself in the glass community through his own work, he founded and built the glassblowing program at Centre College in 1985, teaching aspiring glass artists from across the country for more than three decades.

Powell’s personal work is held in the permanent collections of art museums around the world, including The Corning Museum of Glass (Corning, NY), Chrysler Museum (Norfolk, VA), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.).

It was following a successful retrospective exhibition of Powell’s work in fall 2022 that the idea to create GLASS was born—not only to create a permanent home for Powell’s work to be enjoyed, but to educate the public about glassmaking.

“Powell is a beloved figure, known as much for his richly colored sculpture as for his inspirational teaching,” Susie Silbert, former curator of Contemporary Glass at The Corning Museum of Glass—the world’s preeminent glass museum, said. “Through his work at Centre College and the atmosphere of possibility he cultivated there, he made Danville, Kentucky, a beating heart of contemporary glass known across the nation for quality, integrity, and the excellence of its graduates. GLASS will allow people to enjoy Powell’s incredible art and build on the work he started to ensure Danville is a must-visit destination for people interested in glass, in art, and in learning.”