This past weekend the Street Art Museum of Saint Petersburg hosted its first modern art fair – Sam Fair, which featured artist carefully selected by the organisers. They could exhibit for free on just one condition: their work had to be priced between as little as 500 rubles and 30 000 rubles.

Over the weekend the fair attracted over 3 000 visitors, having sold most of its lots. Among headliners were such commercially successful artists as Oleg Kulik and Andrey Bartenev. The organizers hope it will become an annual event. In a city like Saint Petersburg, where the art scene is polarized between the very official and the backstage of small galleries and apartment sales, such a bridge between the artists and their audience is crucial.

The .ART founder, Ulvi Kasimov, gave a talk on the importance of online presence for artists and explained the simplicity and benefits of obtaining .ART domains. His talk was followed by a presentation by the biggest Russian registrar reg.ru, an official .ART ambassador in Russia. The representative said: “If you are thinking of a fitting domain name, it’s most probably already out there. And if you’re in the creative industry it’s definitely .ART”.

Many of the artists who presented their works at the fair were gifted .ART domain names, among them Andrey Bartenev, Oleg Kulik, Slava Ptrk, Ivan Gorshkov, creative cooperative “Kuril chto” and many others. For most of them a big part of their work is communication – with their fans, buyers, collectors and spectators. We expect some beautiful websites to come!