The standard problem with taking a group to look at art is that looking at art is not an activity. Four people stand in front of a work at slightly different speeds, two of them are secretly bored, and an hour later everybody agrees it was nice. For four days in late September there is a version in Santa Monica that solves this by handing you a putter.
The best group plans are the ones where nobody has to stand around admiring things politely. Ask Karpo what is on near you that people can actually do together.
What The Other Open is
It is an artist-designed miniature golf course — part sculpture, part installation, and fully playable — built inside the fair rather than displayed next to it. Three artists have each designed their own course: Suze Riley, who is local, along with Isabel Arenda and Heather Bellino.
The distinction that matters is between interactive and playable. A great deal of so-called interactive art means you may walk through it and photograph it. This is a thing with rules, a score and an outcome, which changes the social dynamic of the room completely — you are not appreciating it, you are losing at it.
The fair it sits inside
The Other Art Fair runs at Barker Hangar at Santa Monica Airport from 24 to 27 September, with more than a hundred and sixty artists from Los Angeles and around the world selling directly, without galleries in between.
That last point is the reason the room feels unlike a conventional art fair. You are talking to the person who made the thing on the wall, about the thing they made, and the price is the price. Alongside the stands there are immersive installations, performances, DJs and a fully stocked bar.
Which session to book
The four days are not interchangeable and this is the single most useful thing to know. Thursday runs six until ten in the evening and Friday five until ten — those are the party sessions, with the DJs and the bar doing most of the work, and they are the better nights if you are coming as a group and the golf is the point.
Saturday, eleven until seven, and Sunday, eleven until six, are daytime sessions. Those are the ones to take if you are seriously looking at work, want to talk to artists without shouting, or are bringing anybody who would be miserable in a hangar full of people at nine at night.
- Barker Hangar, 3021 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica
- Thursday 24 September 6-10pm; Friday 25th 5-10pm
- Saturday 26th 11am-7pm; Sunday 27th 11am-6pm
- 160-plus artists selling directly, plus installations, DJs and a bar
- On-site parking runs at $20 per vehicle across the four days
Read the ticket before you buy it
The ticketing here is unusual and worth understanding, because the headline price looks higher than it is. One of the options covers two admissions, four drink tokens, and two hundred dollars of credit against art bought at the fair, with re-entry on Friday to Sunday.
If you were even slightly considering buying something, that credit changes the arithmetic entirely and the ticket stops being a cost. If you were definitely not buying anything, work out what you are actually paying for two people and four drinks and decide on that basis. Either answer is fine — what is not fine is discovering the structure at the door.
The hangar, and why the venue works
Barker Hangar is a genuine aircraft hangar on Santa Monica Airport, which gives you an enormous clear-span volume with a curved roof and no columns. That is why a fair of this size fits into a single room and why sound behaves the way it does in there — it is loud, and it carries.
It also means the whole thing is on one level with a concrete floor, which is a practical advantage nobody mentions: it is straightforwardly accessible, easy to navigate with a pushchair, and you cannot get lost the way you can in a converted building.
Getting there and the parking
On-site parking is available across all four days at twenty dollars a vehicle, which is reasonable for Santa Monica and worth paying rather than circling the surrounding residential streets, where parking rules are enforced with enthusiasm.
The airport sits between Santa Monica and Mar Vista, a little inland from the beach, so it is a short rideshare from the E Line at 17th Street or Bergamot. If your group is doing the evening session and drinking the four tokens, that is clearly the better plan than driving.
How to play it as a group
Do the golf first, before the room fills and before anybody has had two drinks. Three courses by three artists means three quite different sets of problems, and the first one you play will be the one you play badly while working out what kind of object you are dealing with.
Then split up and walk the stands separately for half an hour, and meet at the bar to compare what everybody found. That structure — an activity, then independent wandering, then a comparison — is why this works as a group outing when a gallery visit generally does not.
Practical notes
The Other Open is an artist-designed, fully playable miniature golf installation by Suze Riley, Isabel Arenda and Heather Bellino, inside The Other Art Fair Los Angeles at Barker Hangar, 3021 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica, from 24 to 27 September 2026. Sessions run Thursday 6-10pm, Friday 5-10pm, Saturday 11am-7pm and Sunday 11am-6pm; evenings are the social sessions and daytimes are the ones for looking properly. The fair has more than 160 artists selling directly, plus installations, performances, DJs and a bar. Check which ticket you are buying — one option bundles two admissions, four drink tokens and $200 of art credit. On-site parking is $20 per vehicle.
Tags: #LosAngeles #MiniGolf #TheOtherArtFair #BarkerHangar #SantaMonica #SportsAndSocial #ArtFair #ThingsToDoLA #Interactive #WeekendLA #Installation #GroupPlans #LAArt #Putting
Please drink responsibly. Must be of legal drinking age.
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Ask Karpo first
Want plans near you that a group can actually do rather than just look at? Tell Karpo who you are going with and it will find the version that works.
