Frieze New York, Despite Its Small Size, Remains a Major Draw

Andrew Edlin Gallery has been operating since 2001 in New York City, with a particular specialty in self-taught makers. One, for instance, the American outsider artist Henry Darger (1892-1973), has works in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago; Andrew Edlin has represented his estate since 2006.

Given its location and reputation, then, why would the gallery need a booth at Frieze New York, too?

“There’s no getting around it,” Edlin said. “More people will see a work at a fair in three or four days than will come into your gallery in 10 years.”

Hence his participation in Frieze New York, running at the Shed from May 8 to 11 with 67 galleries, including first-time exhibitors King’s Leap of New York; Lodovico Corsini of Brussels; and Voloshyn Gallery of Miami and Kyiv, Ukraine.

“In so many ways, it’s a mandatory part of the art ecosystem,” said Edlin, who has an even deeper investment in fairs than other dealers, since he is also the owner of the Outsider Art Fair, which takes place in late winter in New York.

“I understand when people say they’re doing fewer fairs,” Edlin said, referring to a sentiment among some dealers. “It’s not always the most dignified way to present an exhibition, but kudos to them if they are able to pass on such an opportunity.”

As an example of the power of the Frieze platform, Edlin pointed to last year’s edition of the fair, when he showed a work by Beverly Buchanan (1940-2015), the pastel “Dataw Island, S.C.” (1993). Buchanan grew up in South Carolina and explored Southern traditions in her paintings and sculptures.

The noted collector Agnes Gund, a life trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, bought the work after seeing it at Frieze’s V.I.P. preview in 2024.

“She gave it to MoMA,” Edlin said of the work, which went on view in the fall and is still on the walls. “The most prominent place in the art world. It doesn’t get much better than that.”

This year, Edlin’s booth will have works by several artists including the self-taught painters Abraham Lincoln Walker (1921-1993) and Frank Walter (1926-2009), who were roughly contemporaries. The latter artist, who lived in Antigua, is represented by the undated oil “Untitled (Figure Clasping Bottle),” among other works.

Gund was not the only one buying last year; another collector was Kim Manocherian, who lives in Manhattan and has a large contemporary trove particularly stocked with work by women artists like the pastel specialist Paula Rego (1935-2022), who worked in London.

Manocherian said she purchased the Nate Lowman oil “Aira’s Ovenbird” (2024) from David Zwirner gallery at Frieze New York last year.

“I can’t help myself,” she said of the temptations of a fair in her own city; she said she has been to every edition of the fair. “It’s hard for me to look at art without buying it — I usually pray I don’t see something I like.”

Manocherian also patronizes other fairs including Frieze London; Art Basel’s editions in Miami Beach and Paris; and Zona Maco in Mexico City.

Though open to impulse, she is strategic, too. Manocherian corresponds with galleries before the event, since dealers will email top clients a sneak peek at their offerings, and the chance to put something on hold or buy it in advance.

“Most of the time I know what I’m buying before I get there,” she said.

That suits dealers just fine. “You have to presell as an insurance policy,” Edlin said. “It takes a lot of the risk out.”

Although locals like Manocherian are a big part of the fair’s audience, last year Frieze New York had visitors from 66 countries. Christine Messineo, director of Frieze’s New York and Los Angeles editions, said that for visitors, the famed Manhattan museum scene was a major motivating factor.

“That’s one of the reasons people return to New York, they can’t miss the spring shows,” said Messineo, returning to run her fourth edition of the fair. “People come for the fair and also for these amazing institutions.” (Spring also brings one of the year’s two heavily stocked auction seasons, with upcoming major sales of modern and contemporary art at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips.)

Galleries at Frieze purposely highlight the museum presence of their artists. Messineo cited Hauser & Wirth’s offerings by Amy Sherald and Rashid Johnson, both of whom have large surveys on view now, at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

“These connections are what set us apart,” Messineo said.

Another link between the fair and the museums is the Hudson, N.Y., artist Jennie C. Jones, who in April debuted a Roof Garden commission atop the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Ensemble,” a sonic installation that hums in the wind.

Jones is represented in the booth of New York’s Alexander Gray Associates by works that include the collage “Met Standing” (2024), a work related to the museum project.

The Gray presentation will also show pieces by the artist Donald Moffett, who lives in New York and works in several media. One of his sculptures on view at the fair, “Lot 031419 (blue looks back at itself)” (2019), looks like a piece of bright blue coral; it will be hard for visitors to resist touching it.

As it happens, Jones and Moffett are also friends.

“Both are interested in activating our senses,” Alexander Gray said. “Both of them are quietly demanding that as viewers, we slow down.”

The size of the fair at the Shed — smaller than the other Frieze editions in London, Los Angeles and Seoul, and smaller than most other major fairs — is one of its defining characteristics.

Gray noted that the Shed can fit fewer booths than the event’s original tent, on Randall’s Island, could.

“The size is not by design, it’s by circumstance,” said Gray, a veteran exhibitor at the fair who is also on the Frieze London selection committee (which decides what galleries get booths).

But he added that the limitations reflect a reality of the local art world.

“For New York to be home to the most competitive fair makes sense in a way,” he said.

The fellow exhibitor Angelina Volk, a director of the London gallery Emalin, called it a “manageable size.”

She added, “It’s selective and concentrated. People go and they can actually see everything.”

Now in its third year as an exhibitor, Emalin has always done a shared booth at the fair and is doing so again, this time partnering with Apalazzo Gallery of Brescia, Italy.

Among the works on hand will be paintings by the Polish artist Karol Palczak, one of several Eastern European artists that Emalin shows. Palczak makes paintings based on videos, including “Gnijaca osmiornica,” 2025, an oil depicting an octopus.

“The moving image is the source material for the paintings,” Volk said. “He feels something essential is captured that he wants to reproduce in a painting.”

Another collaborative dealer showing at the fair is Lucy Chadwick, who founded the gallery Champ Lacombe in Biarritz, France, in 2021 (“It’s a Covid baby,” she said) and then expanded to her hometown, London, last fall.

She will share a booth with New York’s Company Gallery in the Focus section, which is dedicated to younger galleries and is organized this year by the curator and writer Lumi Tan.

The booth is a solo presentation of the painter Stefania Batoeva, who lives and works in Paris. Her work straddles the line between figuration and abstraction, as seen in the oil “Triple Portrait” (2025).

Chadwick formerly lived and worked in New York.

“New York is one of the undeniable epicenters of the creative community,” she said, noting that the current political and economic turmoil made fairs even more important.

“When we’re in a moment of instability, it feels nice to seek out one community and be together,” she said. “We can engage in real conversations.”