Uptown Art Fair

Maybe this will be the year when you make that extra effort to actually find the art at the Uptown Art Festival. Sure, there are food booths, live music, games, and the general hubbub of another summer festival. And who can deny the cheap thrill of wandering around the middle of Lake Street slightly buzzed, and shopping for machine-made Mexican rugs? But honestly, there really is a lot of genuine art to be found—it just gets overwhelmed by the 500,000 people expected to converge on Uptown this weekend. More than 400 “arts and crafts” exhibitors bring their wares to Minneapolis from as far away as Florida and New York. And while there are plenty of great local artists who don’t make it into a vendors’ booth, well… this isn’t precisely the place to take a long look at serious art, either. Did we mention the food booths, live music, and games? On a vaguely related note, let us mourn the loss of MCAD’s wonderful gallery upstairs at Calhoun Square, one of the real (and secret) gems of the native Twin Cities art scene.