If you got the uncanny feeling, while visiting the High Desert Art Fair (HDAF) last weekend, that you were on a movie set, that’s because, in a way, you were. The event took place in California’s High Desert, at the Pioneertown Motel, built in 1946 by Gene Autry and Roy Rogers to simulate a Western town on screen. It’s located a couple of hours’ drive (if you time it right) from Los Angeles; about an hour from Palm Springs, with its thriving artistic and design communities; and 30 minutes from the positively magical Joshua Tree National Park. HDAF, which hosted 20 galleries, nonprofits, studios, and publishers, is in its fifth year, and its second at the Pioneertown Motel (it previously occupied assorted Airbnbs). Also a bit unreal to me was how such a successful art fair, with plentiful visitors streaming through all day Saturday, could be going on in such an out-of-the-way place, but it’s not as far out of the way as you might think. HDAF, which ran March 28-29, is the brainchild of Nicholas Fahey, co-owner of LA’s Fahey/Klein Gallery, and Candice Lawler, an artist manager, both of whom own homes in the area. At a dinner party, Fahey told the crowd that it’s easier to get LA people to come to the High Desert than to get them to travel from, say, Malibu to visit his gallery in Hancock Park, not far from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. So, Fahey and Lawler thought, why not start an art fair there?High Desert Art Fair co-founders Candice Lawler and Nicholas Fahey.Many in the art world complain about art fair fatigue, and many in the art market acknowledge the need to cultivate new generations of collectors. HDAF may offer a solution to both. (On the latter front, the fair offered a busy schedule of educational public programming, with one panel even devoted to “Collecting 101.”) HDAF is part of a recent wave of fairs focused on small set of curated exhibitors, like the invite-only Arrival in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, at the stylish Tourists hotel; the Basel Social Club, a loose-limbed Art Basel satellite that one year took place in an open field; and Post-Fair, a thoughtful Frieze LA satellite in a vacant Santa Monica post office. These satellites aim to offer a less commercial alternative than the much larger international brands, like Art Basel and Frieze, often with lower price points (for both collectors and exhibitors). Dealers at HDAF paid in the area of $3,500 for the rooms for two days, which included install and deinstall, Fahey told me over drinks. That’s a bargain compared to a large booth at Art Basel, which can run more than $125,000, or even a smaller display in the Statements or Features sections, which start at $13,000.One thing this budding fair has going for it is that it builds on a thriving cultural ecosystem already in place. Hundreds of artists have flocked to the area for its natural beauty, as have patrons of the arts. Apart from the government, one of the area’s most major landowners is artist Ed Ruscha, who stopped in to see friends in the ’70s and started scooping up properties immediately. Last weekend, a VIP program included visits to several inspiring sites, including the outdoor museum established by assemblage artist Noah Purifoy (on land donated by Ruscha). There was Andrea Zittel’s High Desert Test Sites, where she develops the modular habitats and crafty projects you’ve likely seen in museums and galleries, but which come alive in person. Art collector Jerry Sohn invited architect Arata Isozaki to build four concrete pavilions on his property, one for each season, that people can sleep in and use to enjoy the spectacular surroundings, along with art installations by the likes of Richard Long. Also on Sohn’s property are the “Ghost Cabins” of Rachel Whiteread.Pioneertown Motel.Back at the fair, art lovers enjoyed the sun and the surrounding landscape while ambling between rooms named for Western figures like Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, and Annie Oakley. Many brought their dogs. Those with kids or an urge to shop could head to nearby Pioneertown’s petting zoos and souvenir shops, which offered cowboy boots and hats that wouldn’t have looked out of place at the fair. Does it all sound a bit kitschy? Maybe, but it does beat yet another visit to a windowless convention center with uniform booths stretching from one end to the other.Every time I mentioned to a local that I’d last visited the area 20 years before, they said “Oh, a lot has changed since then!” San Francisco art dealer Jonathan Carver Moore bought a second home in Palm Springs in 2022; he says a lot has changed even since that time. (Moore was showing a selection of gallery artists, including striking, colorful paintings by Carrie Anne Plank that, she told me, have to do with AI modeling of protein formulations in vaccines, and are her little protest against the current administration’s anti-vaccine stance.)Carrie Ann Plank, Protean Constructs #5 (mRNA Capping Enzyme).FRANCIS BAKERThe changes everyone was talking about have been seen throughout the area, which isn’t immune to gentrification, as Clayton Baldwin, a real estate adviser and agent focused on the High Desert, told me. The area has seen a “meaningful cultural migration,” he said, increasingly drawing artists, makers, designers, architects, collectors, and others from LA, New York, and the Bay Area, such that the area no longer seems fringe. “The larger story is really one of open land, conservation, and long-term stewardship,” he argued. That said, “Prices have risen dramatically over the last decade, though not in a straight line and not evenly across every part of the market.” He rattled off a lengthy and not nearly comprehensive list of artists who have bought real estate in the area, including Iwan Baan, Edie Fake, Shepard Fairey, Jake Longstreth, Liza Lou, Jack Pierson, Rod Radziner, Cybele Row, Philip K. Smith III, Lily Stockman, and many more.One main selling point for HDAF is its accessibility to new collectors. Many exhibitors offered artworks ranging from the hundreds of dollars into the few-thousand range, and reported plenty of success. Track 16, of Los Angeles, was selling works priced from $300 to $8,000. On Saturday, the priciest piece they’d sold was a painting by Chris Ulivo for $4,500.Yucca Valley Material Lab’s display at the High Desert Art Fair.Victoria Posh, courtesy High Desert Art FairArtist Heidi Schwegler, founder of Yucca Valley Material Labs, said at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday that she had already made money on the fair, which would help fund the nonprofit’s varied activities, like residencies for artists, musicians, and writers. The organization’s “brisk business” included pieces that had sold for as high as $3,200, she said.With all the cowboy hats and boots around, as well as a queer contingent of art supporters from Palm Springs who were out in force, a highlight of the weekend came via compelling paintings of gay Westerners by Austin-based artist RF. Alvarez, showing with Los Angeles gallery Megan Mulrooney. I was particularly drawn to a sexy, intense portrait of an artist friend, Sepulcher (2026). It was priced at just $4,000.RF Alvarez, Sepulcher (2026).courtesy the artist and Megan MulrooneyBut it wasn’t all entry-level prices. The biggest sale by orders of magnitude that I heard of took place at Harold’s Gallery of LA, which sold a print by John Baldessari, A Refugee Is a Human Being Stripped of Everything Except Suffering (1988), originally made to raise money after a famine in Biafra, for $41,000. Baldessari’s work, an example of artist’s engagement with the larger world, was on view as millions across the globe marched on Saturday in the latest No Kings demonstration against Donald Trump. No protestors came through Pioneertown, but the outside world wasn’t absent.John Baldessari, A Refugee Is a Human Being Stripped of Everything Except Suffering (1988).Harold's GalleryArtists Ry Rocklen and Ryan Schneider manned the room devoted to Rocklen’s gallery Quality Coins (named for the pawn shop that used to occupy the gallery’s home in nearby Yucca Valley), offering works mostly from $250 to $2,500, with proceeds going to two causes: one, to help those in the area affected by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including sending money to neighbors who have been deported (as well as sending their dogs to join them); and two, organizing opposition to high-density real estate development in Joshua Tree. Schneider told me they had raised about $15,000 by midafternoon on Sunday, selling pieces by artists including Claire Colette, Heather Day, and Daniel Gibson, as well as by Rocklen and Schneider.Artists Ry Rocklen and Ryan Schneider work the room for Rocklen’s LA gallery, Quality Coins.Victoria Posh, courtesy High Desert Art FairAnd back at Harold’s Gallery, an impressive large drawing by Laurie Lipton showed the grim interior of an ICE concentration camp, complete with armed guards and crying children. It came straight out of the studio to the fair. Last we checked with the gallery owner, Harold Huttas, it remained available.Music was present throughout. Artist Shepard Fairey offered an opening night DJ set; a few exhibitors brought record players or portable speakers and hooked them up in their rooms, whether playing thrift-store finds or, at LA’s Gross Gallery on Sunday, soothing ambient music. Gallery founder Julian Gross was selling artworks by musicians, including TV On the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Interpol’s Paul Banks, who showed C-prints of iPhone photos of architecture, shot while the band is on tour. Gross had met his expenses a few hours in.Casey Niccoli, We Won’t Be Fooled Again (2026).Farrington PressAnother musical connection: at Farrington Press (“an off-grid print shop and collaborative space nestled in the mountains in an undisclosed location between the San Bernardino National Forest and Joshua Tree National Park”), the room was overseen by a gorgeous large print by artist Casey Niccoli, We Won’t Be Fooled Again (2026). Even if they don’t know her name, music lovers may know one of her works; she collaborated with ’90s alternative rock titans Jane’s Addiction, co-creating the sculpture that appeared on the cover of their 1990 smash hit album Ritual de lo Habitual. As she has written, she found herself erased from the band’s history. Now, she’s making work again after a long hiatus.Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh headlined a musical showcase at honky-tonk bar Pappy & Harriet’s.Victoria Posh, courtesy High Desert Art FairOne musical icon was also present in the flesh during the weekend’s festivities. Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh headlined a concert at honky-tonk roadhouse Pappy & Harriet’s, next door to the fair, playing a DJ set and using an imposing artifact, “The General,” which he characterizes as part instrument, part sculpture; his drawn and written work flashed by on large screens as he played. MutMuz Gallery, of LA, was selling prints hand-made by Mothersbaugh in Devo’s 1980s heyday for just $750, as well as CDs of his music and his art books. (At the concert, cowboy hats were joined by several examples of the conical stepped “energy dome” headgear that Devo made famous.) Mothersbaugh’s rousing set ended with an updated version of “Uncontrollable Urge,” the first track from his old band’s first record (Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!), with its stuttering-but-anthemic chorus (“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, y-y-y-y-y-y-yeah!”). Will enough collectors and dealers say “yeah” to the High Desert Art Fair to make it a lasting part of the art market? Only time will tell. As for me, I certainly won’t wait another 20 years to return.