Looks like Frieze Week has yet another satellite fair in its midst. Enter SELECT FAIR NYC, a 44 booth fair filled with contemporary art galleries and print publications. We don’t know who the exhibitors are yet—the application deadline closes February 14th—but we do know that the fair will be held in the The Altman Building, which is directly beside The Pulse Fair. We also know that the program includes a spring residency program & exhibition opportunity for artists. Artists are invited to apply—at a cost of $50—and will be offered a free studio for one month courtesy of Industry City, and a culminating exhibition at the fair.
It’s hard to say how valuable this offer really is—the number of residencies available has not been specified, and without the exhibitors announced it’s difficult to discern the fair’s quality—but SELECT has calculated the package at $7000. That number sounds about right relative to other art fair fees, but there are still some concerns. First, free studio space for a month is just enough time to move in and out, and the deal comes through Industry City, a complex with a bad history of hiking artist studio rents by more than 50 percent. Second, with Frieze and NADA exhibitors all but decided and Pulse applications closing tomorrow, the fair will have a lot of work ahead of them to appeal to quality exhibitors. And given their showing at Miami, that’s a big question mark.
All that said, the fair is run by artists Matthew Eck and Brian Whitley and they’ve hired artist friendly PR with April Hunt. This is a fair that’s going out of its way to be artist friendly and there’s something to be said for that.
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