business

Writing about the Armory Show comes with a caveat: people lie. Ask a dealer if they’ve made any sales, and they’ll often say “yes,” whether or not they’ve actually sold anything. Often, though, those tales reveal themselves. Some lies come with errors. This year, for example, a dealer told us collectors only buy at the end of a fair—an obviously false statement—but yes, she’d sold some small works. Other tales reveal themselves years later. Like when a dealer tells you he was “losing his shirt” at a past fair, forgetting that he’d told you that very same year that he’d sold out the booth.