Tabi Walters

During this year’s Art Fair, an Instagram video went viral. In it, a couple reported buying a $250 painting from an art fair in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin that turned out to be a $60 print sold at Target. After showing the purported artist proof through Google Lens, the couple was refunded their money, and the con artist was asked to leave. 

Have fraudsters ever tried to make their way into Ann Arbor’s Art Fair?

“Of course,” says Karen Bauer, executive director of the Ann Arbor Summer Art Fair. “Can things like this slip by? Yes, they can. Do fairs address it as soon as they find out? They try to take care of it immediately.”

Directors talk—AAAF has a list of banned artists to look out for—and the Guild of Artists & Artisans has staff who circulate during Art Fair to ensure vendors show up with the art they submitted for jury. “If we got on-site and, in our search, realized that someone brought work they purchased in mass quantities to try to resell as their own, they would be asked to leave,” says Bauer.

Fortunately, that hasn’t been an issue; in Bauer’s twenty-one-year tenure with the fairs, there was never an instance where the organizers had to remove someone.

But even though there weren’t any fake artists, Art Fair faced a different challenge this year: smoke from Canadian wildfires.

Related: “A People’s History of Art Fair Bingo” (July 2026)

“The city came together in a way that was unbelievable to help and support us through what was a very difficult year,” says Bauer. Artists “were given an option to leave if they did not feel safe or to close their tents early on those days when the air quality was bad. 98 percent of them stayed and stuck it out.” 

Each year, Art Fair draws around 1,000 artists and nearly half a million visitors. This year, the air pollution also brought in city staff, public workers, emergency services, and the National Weather Service. Artists reported significantly lower attendance, and Bauer told WEMU sales were down 10 to 30 percent compared to past years. Nevertheless, she was encouraged by those who came out, especially on Saturday.

“It made a huge difference,” says Bauer. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’ve never seen anything like this year. What an amazing community we have. That’s what makes Ann Arbor and the Ann Arbor Art Fair so, so wonderful, and why so many artists want to do it every year.”