The Armory Show jumpstarts New York art market after summer of hand-wringing – The Art Newspaper

Exhibitors at this year’s edition of The Armory Show kicked off the art market season reporting solid sales during the fair’s VIP preview on Thursday (4 September), a welcome signal for New York’s largest fair after a summer of gallery closure announcements. When revealing the exhibitor list earlier this year, the fair’s organisers touted the return of more than 20 galleries after a hiatus as a victory, and a testament to the fair’s influence and ability to draw in tens of thousands of visitors. Returning galleries with New York locations include Marianne Boesky Gallery, Andrew Kreps, Uffner and Liu, Instituto de Visión and, notably, White Cube for the first time since debuting at the fair in 2017.

“It was important for me that this fair feels rooted in New York,” says fair director Kyla McMillan. “I’m really thrilled with the resurgence of New York galleries that have come to do the fair this year, but also just the strength of the presentations, which I think exhibits a confidence and an optimism in the potential.”

These returns followed “a lot of conversations” between gallerists and the fair, she says. Still, some prominent dealers—like Cristin Tierney (showing downtown at Independent 20th Century), Sperone Westwater and Jeffrey Deitch—did not return this year after taking part in the 2024 edition. The absences come as the art market remains soft, with many dealers tightening their belts and scrutinising their expenditures on fairs, and after a series of gallery closures this summer, including Clearing, Venus Over Manhattan and Blum.

“Challenging moments really breed transparency and communication and collaboration,” McMillan says. “If those challenges lead to what I’ve experienced in my first year as director, which is better relationships with gallerists, then the outcomes can only be positive.”

Experimental work pays off

McMillan praised exhibitors for using their stands to show work that might be more difficult to sell, even at a time when sales at art fairs have yet to return to pre-Covid levels. According to the most recent Art Market Report published by Art Basel and UBS, sales at live events (aka fairs) accounted for 31% of dealer sales in 2024, compared to 42% in 2019.

McMillan highlighted 56 Henry, a trendsetting New York gallery in the fair’s new Function section for design. The gallery devoted its entire stand to a new version of Nikita Gale’s Interceptor (2025) installation made of microphone stands and cables wrapped around a metal frame. The piece stretches across two walls, creating a barricade that separates viewers from the stand’s single corner.

“It feels so experimental and so risky in a fair context. And it’s challenging everybody to take risks and remain optimistic,” McMillan says. “That’s what I dream for as a fair director, that people feel confident in presenting that kind of work in a fair context.”

Interceptor sold for $60,000 before the VIP preview began, 56 Henry’s founder Ellie Rines says. She says the gallery is working with the buyer to place it in an institution. Despite the risks inherent in showing one large installation in a commercial setting, Rines says the piece fits The Armory Show’s Function section perfectly. It was Rines who first introduced the section’s curator, Ebony L. Haynes, to Gale, which later led to Gale’s 2022 solo show at 52 Walker, the David Zwirner space run by Haynes.

“There’s a lot of talk about the market being slower, but we’re not going to change what we exhibit based on that,” Rines says. “We’re lucky to have really supportive collectors who believe in the artists that we work with. The collector who bought the work is someone who has been championing our artists.”

Rines says the art world goes through cycles, and while this down market has been tough compared to the booming market of 2021, “that doesn’t mean the quality of the art has dropped”. She estimates that around 70% of collectors attending the fair’s VIP preview were from New York.

“Collectors are still buying art. There’s been so much press about the market being bad,” Rines says. “There’s some people who care deeply about art. They’re just less hype for wet painting.” She adds: “A lot of [the work selling during the 2021 boom] wasn’t that good.”

One of the fair’s buzziest stands belongs to New York’s Swivel Gallery, which sold five ceramic sculptures by the Mexican artist Alejandro García Contreras within hours of the VIP opening. The intricate ceramic sculptures were inspired by occultism, Japanese anime and Mexican folklore, fetching prices between $20,000 and $11,00 each.Graham Wilson, Swivel Gallery’s founder, says that while it’s unfortunate several New York galleries closed this summer, it is also how businesses operate—openings and closings happen in every industry. A shuttering gallery in a challenging market just attracts more attention than, for example, a neighbourhood grocery store, he says.

“It’s a shame, but it is part of the game. It’s like anything else in the world. Businesses come and go,” Wilson says. “The gallery business, if you’re not on it 24/7, really can slip out from under you so fast.”

‘Show what you love’

Instead of opening a show at its Tribeca base during Armory Week, Dimin Gallery opted to focus on its fair stand and saw results. The gallery sold five works by Emily Coan, priced between $8,500 and $40,000, including two of the three works on display in the stand.

“I made the decision in the middle of the year, seeing how the market trends were going and thinking about a realistic way to approach it, rather than the same old, same old. Opening up a show and a fair the same day—that’s not sustainable for a small team,” Robert Dimin, the gallery’s founder, says. “It’s about slowing down and having a realistic focus and realistic expectations.”

Dimin says he hopes the market will move away from the investment-minded way of collecting works by emerging artists as a financial asset in hopes of making a profit down the line.

“People who collect emerging artists—including myself—collect because I love art and I want to live with it, and I want to support living artists,” he says. “I believe that these works will hold sustained value, but that’s not the sales pitch. The sales pitch is: ‘You want to support a living, breathing artist, because that just makes our world better.’”

During the VIP preview, the New York-based dealer Marc Straus sold three 2025 paintings by Antonio Santín for prices ranging from $30,000 to more than $500,000. Straus, who opened his gallery in 2011 after decades as a serious collector, emphasises price discipline and long-term planning, especially for emerging artists who are vulnerable to the effects of speculation.

“To begin with, the gallery business is a terrible business model. It’s almost the worst one can think of, and yet so many good people do it, and I applaud them,” Straus adds. “The only way you can defend yourself, in my opinion, is to stick to what you absolutely believe in, show what you love and be very careful how you price it.”

Sales up to seven figures

Galleria Lorcan O’Neill led the top end of opening day sales with a series of major placements, including a Tracey Emin painting, a Kiki Smith tapestry and works on paper by Rachel Whiteread. Works sold ranged in price from $15,000 to $1m, representatives for the Rome-based gallery said. Sean Kelly, headquartered a couple of blocks away in Hell’s Kitchen, sold a Kehinde Wiley painting for $265,000 and a José Dávila sculpture for $90,000, while multiple works by Hugo McCloud sold for $35,000 each.

The Stuttgart-based gallery Thomas Fuchs sold two Rainer Fetting paintings for $165,000 and $50,000, along with six Logan T. Sibrel works priced between $3,000 and $20,000 each. The Florida-based gallery Clubhouse sold more than five works by Russell Craig sold for a combined total between of $150,000 and $250,000. Tang Contemporary—which has locations in Beijing, Hong Kong, Seoul and Bangkok—says it placed Ai Weiwei’s sculpture Toilet Paper for between $150,000 and $180,000. New York’s James Cohan Gallery sold a Kennedy Yanko sculpture for $150,000, two Tuan Andrew Nguyen sculptures for $95,000 each and a Trenton Doyle Hancock canvas for $85,000. White Cube reported strong sales from its solo stand dedicated to the artist duo TARWUK, with paintings ranging from $65,000 to $100,000. Other sales included an Emmi Whitehorse mixed media work for $150,000, a Tunji Adeniyi-Jones painting for $85,000 and an Emin bronze for £60,000.

Mariane Ibrahim, which has locations in Chicago, Mexico City and Paris, sold a bronze by Eva Jospin for $110,000, a Carmen Neely textile and wood piece for $31,000 and a Djabril Boukhenaïssi canvas for $25,000. Galerie la Forest Divonne of Brussels and Paris sold four works by Vincent Bioulès, including a historical painting acquired by a prominent collection for $100,000.

The only gallery to report a sold-out stand after the VIP preview was Los Angeles’s Megan Mulrooney Gallery, whose solo presentation of artist Piper Bangs was priced between $5,000 to $20,000 each. One of the acquisitions has been promised as a gift to a US institution, according to the gallery. The New York, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro-based gallery Nara Roesler sold Sheila Hicks’s La Ronde (2025) for $87,000; Vik Muniz’s Gipsy, after Joaquín Sorolla (Brushstroke series) (2025) for $45,000; Manoela Medeiros’s How forms are born (2025) for $20,000; Marcelo Silveira’s Seed III (2025) for $18,000 and Bruno Dunely’s Luar do Sertão (2023) for $8,000. James Fuentes sold Pat Lipsky’s painting Winter Landscape (1971) ahead of the fair for $180,000, according to representatives for the New York-based gallery.

Another New York gallery, Berry Campbell, reported selling Perle Fine’s 1952 oil painting Floating Forms for $125,000. Library Street Collective from Detroit reported more than a half-dozen sales, including Gary Lang’s paintings BLUELIGHTHREE (2015) and SQUARE (yet untitled) (2024) for $110,000 and $60,000, respectively, plus Patrick Alston’s large mixed media canvas Metanoia (2025) for $27,000 and five pieces from his 2025 Studio Notes series on paper, each priced at $2,250.

The New York-based Miles McEnery Gallery reported sales of a piece by Karel Funk and a work by Jacob Hashimoto, both in the $70,000 to $90,000 range. The South African gallery Southern Guild says it sold two Roméo Mivekannin paintings priced between $40,000 to $60,000 each, and a Madoda Fani sculpture in the range of $16,000 to $20,000. Anat Ebgi, which has locations in New York and Los Angeles, placed a Tammi Campbell painting for $50,000, a Marisa Adesman painting for $35,000 and two Sigrid Sandström paintings for $32,000 and $25,000, respectively.

Martha’s from Austin, Texas, nearly sold out its Focus stand featuring works by R.F. Alvarez during the VIP preview, finding homes for six of the seven paintings, with the last on hold as of Thursday afternoon. Priced between $4,500 and $20,000, the works explore gender identity and cultural expectations, drawing on Alvarez’s background as the son of a Mexican immigrant and a descendant of Texas cattle ranchers. He was also awarded the inaugural The Armory Show and Delfina Foundation residency prize.

• The Armory Show, until 7 September, Javits Center, New York