The Artwork Sellers Affiliation of America (ADAA) has introduced the exhibitor checklist for the primary version of The Artwork Present since organisers cancelled the 2025 honest a number of months earlier than it was as a result of open, describing the hiatus as a “strategic pause”. The return additionally marks the primary version conceived fully below the ADAA’s present govt director, Kinsey Robb, who was appointed in 2024 shortly earlier than that 12 months’s version.
“Our pause is one thing that was necessary for us and strategic, and one thing that we wished to utilise throughout a second the place the panorama of the artwork world and the market had shifted a bit bit,” Robb tells The Artwork Newspaper. “We’re constructing a good that’s approaching the realities that we’re dealing with at this time.”
The temper surrounding the artwork market at this time is mostly extra optimistic than when the ADAA referred to as off the 2025 honest a 12 months in the past. In response to the newest Artwork Basel and UBS International Artwork Market Report launched final March, world artwork gross sales rose by 4% in 2025 to an estimated $59.6bn. Whereas the could appear a modest enhance, it represents a big turnaround from the earlier two consecutive years of decline. Public sale home totals, probably the most public determine by which to measure the artwork market, have additionally made important rebounds this 12 months.
This 12 months’s Artwork Present will return to the Park Avenue Armory, from 13 to 16 November, with 63 exhibitors—round 20% fewer than in 2024, a discount of about 19 galleries. Robb describes the smaller line-up as “extra centered”, saying it permits exhibitors extra space, significantly these mounting group displays.
“Festivals are … considering a bit bit extra about their accountability to the exhibitors, and I feel galleries in return have been asking more durable questions on the place they need to make investments their time and assets,” Robb says. “From a vital perspective, I feel that is good for the trade as a result of it challenges all of us to create occasions that ship worth reasonably than scale for scale’s sake.”
“We’re constructing a good galleries need to return to, not merely a good that has to occur to be bigger and bigger each single 12 months,” Robb provides. “Each technology of galleries faces totally different units of realities, and I feel our accountability as an affiliation is to make sure that the honest evolves alongside the group it serves.”
The exhibitor checklist displays the breadth of the ADAA’s membership, from founding members to a few of its latest additions. Founding ADAA members Hirschl & Adler and Kraushaar Galleries will take part alongside galleries that exhibited on the honest’s inaugural version in 1989, together with Berggruen Gallery, Grey and Schoelkopf Gallery. This version may also function a dozen first-time exhibitors, together with Alexander Berggruen, Sargent’s Daughters and Hollis Taggart from New York, Piero Atchugarry Gallery from Miami and Nicodim from Los Angeles.
“In contrast to most festivals, our honest does not simply start with an utility course of; it begins with membership. Each gallery has earned admission to the ADAA by one of the crucial rigorous peer-reviewed processes within the occupation, and the honest exists to showcase that collective experience of the group,” Robb says. “I do not actually imagine that the honest was created initially to compete with different festivals, it was created to precise one thing distinctive concerning the artwork sellers right here in the US.”
The honest’s checklist of individuals displays a shift in the direction of regional US galleries and newer members of the ADAA. Galleries from Dallas, Baltimore, Memphis, Chicago and St Louis are represented this 12 months, whereas a number of of the affiliation’s most up-to-date inductees—together with David Lusk Gallery from Nashville, AH Arts from New York and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles—are making their Artwork Present debuts. On the similar time, the honest options fewer worldwide blue-chip galleries than in earlier years. Exhibitors from 2024 that aren’t returning embody Lehmann Maupin, Almine Rech, Timothy Taylor, Michael Werner, Tina Kim and Anton Kern.
Notable displays from exhibitors which have been revealed to this point embody a show of Alex Katz’s works on paper at Peter Blum Gallery; a solo presentation by assemblage artist Betye Saar to mark her centennial at Roberts Tasks; work by Julie Buffalohead at Jessica Silverman; and a gaggle presentation of artists born within the American South like Purple Grooms and Maysey Craddock from David Lusk Gallery.
For 36 years earlier than final 12 months’s hiatus, The Artwork Present partnered with Henry Road Settlement, the Decrease East Aspect non-profit, elevating greater than $38m by its annual preview gala. In the course of the honest’s year-long break, Henry Road as a substitute partnered with Unbiased to boost cash throughout that honest’s preview in Could. This 12 months, The Artwork Present’s preview gala will profit the Whitney Museum of American Artwork.
“In fact we wish sturdy attendance and profitable gross sales for our exhibitors. That is at all times one thing to contemplate once you’re organising a good,” Robb says. “However I feel success additionally means galleries really feel the festivals justified their funding, that the artist’s work is offered with care, that the Whitney advantages meaningfully from the preview gala and that guests depart feeling they’ve skilled one thing distinct.”
