Chicago, Meet Your New ‘Neighbors’: Expo Gets a New Satellite Fair, In a Luxe Gold Coast Apartment
Collector Mirka Serrato was walking her dog through Chicago’s affluent Gold Coast neighborhood when she came across Ramiro Verdugo, the groundsman tending to the garden at an imposing neoclassical residence. Both Latin American, they hit it off. She was looking for a place to live, and an apartment was available. She ended up living there very happily for about three years before she moved to Dallas, where she’s closer to her family, in her native Mexico. But she wasn’t ready to let go of the Windy City, not entirely. “Leaving Chicago was not an option,” she told ARTnews in an interview. “Seeing the place empty after all it gave to me was torture.” Serrato has a day job in PR but studied at the Sotheby’s Institute, and she resolved to turn the place into a venue for an art show or event. Then she went looking for the right person to help her. She met Jonny Tanna, founder of London’s Harlesden High Street gallery (the rare such business that has a manifesto ), at a party at the Fonda...