Frieze New York shows signs of stability in challenging US art market

New York once again finds itself at the epicentre of the art world for much of May, hosting around a dozen fairs, hundreds of gallery shows and two weeks of auctions. The month is anchored by the Frieze New York fair (7-11 May), holding its 13th iteration this year.

The weeks leading up to Frieze have been a turbulent time for the art world. Global sales of art and antiques were found to have declined by 12% in 2024, driven by a drag on growth at the highest ends of the market, according to the latest edition of the economist Clare McAndrew’s Art Market Report, released by Art Basel and UBS in April. President Donald Trump’s back-and-forth decisions on international tariffs have sent the stock market on a rollercoaster. One week before the fair, Frieze’s owner, Endeavor, announced Frieze’s acquisition by a new company founded by Ari Emanuel, Endeavor’s former chief executive. Still, Christine Messineo, Frieze’s US fair director, is optimistic that the strong sales at Frieze’s Los Angeles fair in February would continue at its East Coast counterpart. “There was quite a bit of momentum and success in Los Angeles. We had strong institutional sales,” Messineo told The Art Newspaper before the New York fair kicked off. “There were great collectors coming through that fair. Hopefully, some of that will continue to translate into what’s happening in New York.”

One sign of stability for Frieze New York is that for the fifth consecutive year, the fair is hosting around 65 galleries at the Shed, including the mega-galleries the fair has become known for, such as Gagosian, David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, Pace and White Cube. Those galleries do not typically occupy stands at The Armory Show in September, a larger fair now also owned by Frieze. Despite some early speculation that Frieze would fold the two New York fairs into one event after the 2023 acquisition, they appear to purposefully occupy different spaces in the art market.

Gagosian is staging a solo stand dedicated to Jeff Koons sculptures from the artist’s Hulk Elvis series. Pace’s stand has been curated by the artist Adam Pendleton—whose just had 35 works from his 2021 exhibition Who Is Queen? acquired by the Museum of Modern Art—and consists of his paintings alongside sculptures by Lynda Benglis. David Zwirner is presenting a solo stand of new works by Sherrie Levine, and White Cube’s stand includes works by Tracey Emin, Christine Ay Tjoe and Georg Baselitz. Thaddaeus Ropac is featuring new works by David Salle, Baselitz, Martha Jungwirth and Megan Rooney, while Jenkins Johnson Gallery has a solo stand devoted to the South African artist Esther Mahlangu.

Frieze’s Focus section offers opportunities for emerging galleries and artists; this year, seven of the 12 exhibitors in Focus are first-time participants in the fair, including the buzzy New York galleries King’s Leap and Management, Voloshyn Gallery from Kyiv, Ukraine (which also operates a space in Miami) and Public Gallery from London. Voloshyn is presenting a solo stand by the Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan, and Public is showing works by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, whose interactive pieces bring video-game interfaces and mysticism to bear on timely sociopolitical issues.

“These international galleries are using the New York fair as an opportunity to introduce more established artists into the New York market,” Messineo says. “It’s this moment of discovery—not just about younger, emerging voices, but voices that may have presence internationally but haven’t necessarily been shown previously in New York or the US.”

Frieze has also partnered with nearby High Line Art to commission performances at the fair and throughout public spaces at the fair’s venue, the Shed, as well as along the High Line elevated park in Chelsea. One such project is The Pin by Pilvi Takala, a Finnish visual and performance artist.

“I can’t talk too much about it, because a lot of it is about unexpected interactions, which is often ingrained in Pilvi’s practice,” Messineo says. “She thinks often about the different societies or organisations that you have access to, and the differences between public and private.”

Constellation of satellite fairs

Running concurrently with Frieze is the New Art Dealers Alliance (Nada) New York fair (7-11 May), this year welcoming 120 galleries at the Starrett-Lehigh Building, just blocks away from Frieze. Nearly half of the galleries taking part are first-time exhibitors, according to the organisers at Nada.

Another notable satellite fair is Independent New York (8-11 May), hosting 82 galleries in Tribeca. This year the fair is launching Independent Debuts, an initiative formalising its longtime reputation as a place to discover emerging and overlooked artists. The inaugural Independent Debuts section features 25 artists’ first solo presentations in New York, including Adam Higgins’s photorealistic paintings of salads at Chris Sharp Gallery’s stand.

Taking place further downtown is the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair (8-11 May), the first and only international art fair for contemporary African art and art of the African diaspora. This year, for its 11th edition in the city, the fair is bringing 26 exhibitors to Halo, an event space at 28 Liberty Street in the Financial District.

The European Fine Art Foundation (Tefaf) New York (9-13 May) continues beyond Frieze and offers a range of objects, from antiquities to contemporary art. Of its 91 exhibitors from around the world, 13 are newcomers while four are returning to the New York fair after an absence. This year’s Tefaf will mark the first New York edition of the fair since the new managing director, Dominique Savelkoul, took over.

Also returning this year for the second time is Esther (6-10 May), the alternative fair launched by two Estonian gallerists: Margot Samel, who operates her eponymous gallery in New York, and Olga Temnikova of Temnikova & Kasela in Tallinn. Esther II, as it has been dubbed, welcomes 25 exhibitors at New York’s historic Estonian House.

Just as Tefaf New York comes to a close, the city’s auction houses will kick into high gear, with Bonhams, Christie’s, Phillips, Sotheby’s and others holding their marquee spring sales of Old Masters, modern and contemporary art. Despite the cloudy economic forecast, many trophy lots and prized collections will go up for sale—from Christie’s offering the collection of Leonard and Louise Riggio and works with eight-figure estimates by Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Claude Monet, to Sotheby’s offering works from the personal collections of two taste-making dealers: Daniella Luxembourg and the late Barbara Gladstone.