Fort Worth gets dueling art festivals over a dispute about supporting local artists

Fort Worth residents will be treated to not one, but two arts festivals this April due to a dispute between the organizers of the Main Street Fort Worth Arts Festival and Sundance Square Management.

The Main Street Fort Worth Arts Festival, taking place April 7-10, runs along Main Street in downtown from the courthouse to the convention center. It attracts tens of thousands of visitors every year and can generate upwards of $27 million in economic impact for the city.

Sundance Square Plaza, which is privately owned by Ed and Sasha Bass, sits smack dab in the middle of the festival footprint, and usually hosts vendors and art exhibits.

However, this year Sundance Square Plaza will host the Fort Worth Art Fair, featuring artists and musicians exclusively from Fort Worth and North Texas.

Discussions began in May 2021 between the two groups on ways to include more local artists in the Main Street festival. The current lineup of 200 artists includes 27 from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.

Fort Worth’s art and music community should have a place and presence in a festival that’s being billed as Main Street Fort Worth, said Sundance spokesperson Bryan Eppstein. He said less than 5% of the artists in the Main Street Fort Worth Arts Festival are actually from Fort Worth.

However, that’s not really what the event was intended to do, said Jay Downie, events director for Downtown Fort Worth Inc. Downie compared the event to a film festival where artists from around the world come to Fort Worth to showcase their work.

“But that’s not at the expense of local artists. It’s all part of the matrix,” Downie said.

Each artist who showcases their work at the Main Street Fort Worth Arts Festival must submit to a rigorous jury process, Downie said. About 1,000 artists apply every year for 200 slots.

Supporting local artists has never been part of the Main Street Fort Worth Art Festival’s brand, said Jay Wilkinson, an artist and gallery owner in downtown Fort Worth.

“It’s sort of a running joke that Main Street has never been accessible to local artists,” he said.

Wilkinson said the Main Street festival is more of a festival circuit show targeted to artists who make their money traveling the country showing their work.

“These craftsmen have been within this traveling fair culture for so long that those are the ones they reach out and aspire to, and they’re the ones who can usually afford the booths,” Wilkinson said.

Both Downie and Wilkinson pointed to Main Street’s emerging artist category as a way for local Fort Worth artists to break in to the festival circuit. Artists self-select to be a part of that emerging category and booth prices are typically more affordable, Downie said.

The jury process is the sticking point between the two groups. Downie said Main Street was open to including more local Fort Worth artists in the festival provided they apply and are evaluated by the jury process.

“We will not use the Plaza if that means compromising the integrity of our process and our reputation with the nation’s top touring artists,” Downie said.

Sundance Square’s art fair will have its own jury, though it’s not clear how that process will differ from the Main Street festival.

Sundance’s fair will also feature musical performances curated by the Big Good Foundation, which is run in part by Grammy Award-winning recording artist and Fort Worth native Leon Bridges.

Bridges will be presenting up-and-coming Fort Worth musicians as a way to bring more attention to the city’s growing music scene, Eppstein said.

Downie said his goal is to create a seamless experience for residents coming to visit the arts festival.

This story was originally published February 8, 2022 at 5:00 AM.

Harrison Mantas

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

817-390-7040

Harrison Mantas has covered Fort Worth city government, agencies and people since September 2021. He likes to live tweet city hall meetings, and help his fellow Fort Worthians figure out what’s going on.