The Art F City Guide to This Week’s Art Fairs

The Luxury Fair. It wasn’t four years ago that people were talking about the The ADAA Art Show identity crisis. Could it compete with the mammoth Armory Fair? Thanks to some competition from Frieze and the ineffective management of the Armory (thank you Merchandise Mart), the ADAA seems to have recovered. This year, with 72 members exhibiting, it’s regained its reputation as the fair that displays the best secondary market art in New York. Memorize a few catalogue raisonnés before attending. The only way to identify a strong work within an artist’s oeuvre is to be familiar with all of it.

The One-Stop Shop Art Fair. The Armory Show is the largest of the New York March fairs, which means 200 exhibitors and shit ton of art. Pier 92 hosts modern art, and Pier 94 contemporary. The two piers are connected by what AFCers have dubbed “The staircase of death”. If you really want to navigate this fair efficiently wear sneakers.

The Curator Driven Fair. Who can guess the quality of a fair like this in advance of seeing it, but the preview  images posted on their site look pretty good, so that’s raised our expectations a little. Last year SPRING/BREAK got a moderate review from us, so we’ll visit again to see how the show’s grown.

The White Cube Fair. Buyer beware: No work of art in this fair will look as good as it did when it was purchased. This fair’s showroom is the former DIA Center and that works to their advantage.. Bucking the art fair booth tradition, the Independent opts for sprawling installation-type displays. Over 50 exhibitors this time around. Read last year’s review on the fair. It’s one of our best.

The Video Art Fair. Expect long lines of high definition TVs hung from the ceiling, big projection screens, and lots of places to sit. Video art fans be careful: There’s work by 35 artists on display, whichwill equal a time vortex.

The Office Space Art Fair. We haven’t seen reason to go to VOLTA in about three years, but perhaps their move out of that terrible office space on 34th will breath new life into the fair (and offer us an opportunity to give them a more appropriate nickname). They are now hosting the event in a SoHo loft. The seventh installment of Volta NY will feature over 90 international galleries.

The Fair We Promised to Stop Picking On. We’ve never claimed Scope was great but we recommend seeing it because it exists and this is a fair guide. It hosts 60 international galleries plus 20 Breeder Program galleries.

The DIY Art Fair. They’re the true “independents” The Independent Art Fair somewhat inaccurately claims for itself; self-taught artists, artists without gallery representation, and small mom and pop galleries.  Their logo is a Duchamp toilet. Over 70 exhibitors will present work this year.