Palate Cleansers at Frieze NY
What art are the wealthy buying these days? Also, remembering the performance artist who looked misogyny in the eye.
I don’t care much for salad, nor for sprawling art fairs, but it never occurred to me the two might be connected. Senior Editor Valentina Di Liscia, who visited Frieze New York last week, likens visiting the behemoth fair to “scarfing down an assembly-line chopped salad in a drab Sweetgreen.”
Still, she encountered several works that pulled her out of the white-cube monotony and into worlds of lush canopies, diaphanous portraiture, and ancestral gardens. Meanwhile, our team shares dispatches from Future Fair, 1-54, and TEFAF elsewhere in the city.
We also remember Austrian artist Valie Export, who died last Thursday at age 85. Critic Olivia McEwan looks back on her radical life and decades of guerrilla performance that paved the way for future generations of irreverent, feminist artists.
—Lakshmi Rivera Amin, associate editor
Art Fair Week in NYC
Frieze New York Is an Assembly-Line Salad
On finding a reprieve from the monotonous rhythm and the art that made me forget I was at a trade show. | Valentina Di Liscia
Inside TEFAF New York’s Annual Wealth Pageant
There was plenty to dazzle the patrons of the Nouveau Gilded Age at this year’s edition of the Park Avenue Armory fair.
The Joy of Discovery at 1-54 Art Fair
Though smaller than previous editions, the contemporary African art fair draws our attention to works that are tactile, surprising, and alive with material expression. | Seph Rodney
Between Tropes and Treats at NADA New York
In a sea of zany little sculptures and assemblages, shiny stuff™, abstracted horniness, and kitschy vibrancy, there were works I did enjoy. | Rhea Nayyar
Independent Art Fair Trades Downtown for the World
As it settles into a sprawling new venue on the Lower East Side waterfront, the fair feels older, glossier, and increasingly global. | Lisa Yin Zhang
Future Fair Is a Big Artist Party
Instead of presenting a series of segmented gallery booths, the New York show fosters connections between them. | Isa Farfan
My NADA Sketchbook
I found myself wanting to draw all the three-dimensional pieces at the New York art fair. | Steven Weinberg
RISD Grad Show 2026
Graduate student work representing 19 advanced degree programs will be on view online and in person at the Rhode Island Convention Center starting May 21.
Community
Artist Valie Export, Who Saw Right Through the Male Gaze, Dies at 85
Her performances and filmed media works reclaimed the female body through guerrilla modes of delivery that bypassed institutional restrictions.
A View From the Easel
Lavett Ballard — artist and Barbie curator extraordinaire — organizes exhibitions and transforms wood in the former chemistry lab of a high school-turned-community center. “The Barbies belong to my six-year-old granddaughter, who sometimes joins me in the studio to paint.”
Lucid Perturbations: The Sewn Drawings and Books of China Marks
This exhibition at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art marks the first major solo exhibition of the artist’s hypnagogic artworks.
Memorable Moment
From the Archive
The Serious Joy of Joyce J. Scott’s Beaded Art
The decorative allure of Scott’s textile and beaded creations seduces viewers into her sharp critiques of racism, misogyny, and other social ills. | Isabella Segalovich
