Elsewhere Imagines an Art Fair Beyond the Booth

YOWIE Exterior
 

By Caitlin Kelly-McKenna June 8th, 2026

Most art fairs have a familiar rhythm: the bright aisle, the quick scan, the dealer hunched over a laptop. Elsewhere, a new room-based art fair staged at YOWIE Hotel in Philadelphia, seeks to interrupt that rhythm.

Founded by Megan Galardi of Blah Blah Gallery, arrives with a clear sense of purpose. Galardi is not rejecting the art fair model so much as trying to reorient it. “As a gallerist, I’ve participated in art fairs and seen their power as sites of discovery and exchange,” she said. “With Elsewhere, I wanted to build something more connected to context, shaped by the relationships between galleries, artists, institutions, collectors, and the city itself.” The fair’s setting at YOWIE Hotel feels central to that idea: design-forward, intimate, and a welcome change of pace from the familiar art fair booth.

When I first spoke with Megan about Elsewhere, the format immediately resonated with me. As the owner of Kelly-McKenna Gallery in Spring Lake, New Jersey, I have long been interested in presenting contemporary art outside the traditional gallery or fair setting. A hotel-based fair felt like a natural fit: personal, unconventional with an emphasis on how art changes when it is encountered in a lived-in space. For the inaugural edition of Elsewhere, we are presenting paintings by Kelcie Mack alongside sculpture by the artist duo Resurrect Studio, two bodies of work well-suited to an intimate, room-based setting.
 

Kelly McKenna Gallery, Kelcie Mack and Resurrect Studio

Megan’s pitch also called to mind the early history of The Armory Show, which began in 1994 inside New York’s Gramercy Park Hotel. Before becoming a major anchor of the international fair calendar, it started in hotel rooms, with art displayed on beds and in bathrooms. That history felt relevant here. Hotel fairs have a way of making the art world feel less polished and more alive, asking dealers to think not only about what they are showing, but how a work behaves in a room.

This was central to Elsewhere’s appeal: a format that felt equally engaging for dealers and visitors. For Point Blank, the Chicago-based gallery participating in its first fair, that intimacy felt fitting. “As this is our first time participating in a fair, it felt fitting to start with the first edition of Elsewhere,” the gallery explained. Coming from Chicago’s apartment and DIY scene, Point Blank was already attuned to site-specificity and to exhibitions shaped by space, city, and community. Elsewhere’s nontraditional venue and accessibility offered what they described as a “community-oriented and intimate environment” aligned with their curatorial values.

 Point Blank, Alessandra Norman, Untitled 1, 46 x 23 inches, enamel on MDF
 

Their presentation of Chicago-based artist Alessandra Norman extended that thinking into the room itself. Norman’s interest in perception, built environments, and meaning-making made the hotel setting more than a backdrop. Point Blank arrived with “a significant amount of curatorial flexibility,” responding directly to the room’s spatial and visual balance; an approach difficult to imagine in a standardized booth.

Stowaway, visiting from Los Angeles, was drawn to Elsewhere’s mix of ambition, intimacy, and improvisation. Galardi’s invitation arrived at a serendipitous moment, just as the gallery, newly past its two-year anniversary, was considering fairs to expand its market.

Stowaway, Indiana Hoover
 

“Like most artist-run spaces,” Stowaway noted, “I’m inherently drawn to things that commingle ambition, DIY, and passion.”

Galardi’s pitch also framed Philadelphia as a city for artists and collectors, making the decision easier. For its presentation, Stowaway chose Indiana Hoover, whose work the gallery already knew could live naturally in a domestic setting. The room-based format made that quality central.

For Fleisher/Ollman, one of Philadelphia’s longstanding galleries, Elsewhere offered a chance to better understand the city’s collector base.

“We said yes to determine if we could figure out who is buying art in Philadelphia,” the gallery explained, noting a particular interest in reaching younger collectors as more young people move to the city.

Fleisher Ollman, Molly Metz, Delay Delay Delay, 2023, Acrylic, Flashe, collaged newsprint on canvas, 20 × 20 in (50.8 × 50.8 cm), double-sided

Their presentation reflected both local commitment and the gallery’s broader program, foregrounding mainly Philadelphia-based artists while also including Julian Martin, a Melbourne-based artist working out of Arts Project Australia, whose work connects to Fleisher/Ollman’s long engagement with self-taught art and progressive studio practices. To encourage emerging collectors, the gallery focused largely on works in the $1,000 to $3,500 range.

Taken together, the responses point to what makes Elsewhere distinct. Its first edition comes at a moment when many galleries are reconsidering the cost, pace, and hierarchy of the traditional art fair. While fairs still offer visibility, access, and sales, they can also make everything feel strangely uniform. Elsewhere suggests another model: smaller, more flexible, and more focused on the relationships that bring contemporary art into view. In that sense, the name feels fitting. Elsewhere is not an escape from the art fair, but a way of imagining how it might happen differently.

Elsewhere was open June 4–6, 2026 at YOWIE Hotel, 226 South Street, Philadelphia.

www.elsewhere-fair.com