The 30th edition of The Armory Show, New York’s largest art fair, will return to the Javits Center in autumn with more than 235 exhibitors and a newly redesigned floor plan. The fair will be open to the public from 6 to 8 September, with a VIP preview on 5 September.
With more than 235 stands from more than 30 countries, the size of the fair is in line with recent years. This will be The Armory Show's second edition since its July 2023 acquisition by London-based Frieze and its fourth year at the sprawling Javits Center. The lineup of exhibitors represents a slight uptick from last year’s 225. The number of participating exhibitors peaked in 2022, when around 250 galleries took part in the fair. American Express has come on this year as The Armory Show lead partner.
More than 145 of this year's exhibitors are returning galleries, including familiar names like 303 Gallery, Sean Kelly, Almine Rech, Kasmin and Silverlens, which all have locations in New York, along with Vielmetter Los Angeles, San Francisco's Jessica Silverman, Victoria Miro from London and Tehran’s Dastan Gallery.
More than 25 galleries are also returning to The Armory Show after a hiatus, the fair said in an announcement, including New York galleries Marianne Boesky Gallery, Cristin Tierney and Sperone Westwater, as well as New York and Los Angeles dealer Jeffrey Deitch.
Hannah Traore Gallery, based in New York, is among this year’s more than 55 first-time exhibitors, according to organisers, along with major Chicago gallery Corbett vs. Dempsey and Los Angeles's Commonwealth and Council. Mignoni from New York, Labor from Mexico City and Experimenter from Kolkata, India will also stage their first Armory Show stands this year.
Like last year, none of the so-called global mega-galleries headquartered in New York—Gagosian, David Zwirner and Pace—are taking part in the fair, nor are Hauser & Wirth or White Cube, the latter of which opened a gallery on New York’s Upper East Side last October.
This year’s Focus section, for solo- and dual-artist presentations, is being curated by The Kitchen’s senior curator Robyn Farrell. Eugenie Tsai, a former curator of contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum, will lead the Platform section, made up of site-specific works and large-scale installations throughout the fair. The annual Gramercy International Prize—named for the original iteration of the fair, first held in the Gramercy Park Hotel—has been awarded to Blade Study, a New York gallery based in the Lower East Side.
The fair will also feature a new floor plan, reoriented fair sections, an on-site theatre for programming and "reimagined meeting spaces", Frieze’s Americas director Christine Messineo said in an announcement. The Armory Show’s former executive director Nicole Berry announced in March she was leaving the fair after eight years at the helm for a development position at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
