ADAA: The Art Show 2024 Champions Unity Among American Galleries

Hors d’oeuvres, sharp outfits, and the clink of champagne glasses greeted the 5 p.m. VIP opening of the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA)’s The Art Show at the Park Avenue Armory on October 29th. The vernissage of the fair’s 36th edition might not have boasted the A-list guests of last year but appeared to have lost none of its glitz in the grand Upper East Side venue.

Founded in 1962, ADAA is a nonprofit membership organization that supports galleries from across the U.S. Today, it has more than 200 members from more than 30 cities, and this year’s edition of its annual fair brings together 75 galleries (down from 78 last year). More than half of the exhibitors are presenting solo booths, and the VIP evening was an intimate occasion where the ADAA’s sense of community took center stage.

“One of the cool things about The Art Show is that there’s a coming together—a sense of pride for not just the high bar set by the membership, but also this sense you’re part of a group, you’re not an island,” said Kinsey Robb, who took up the role of executive director after Maureen Bray announced her departure in September.

As always, at the heart of the event is the ADAA’s philanthropic mission: Each ticket sold supports the Henry Street Settlement, one of the oldest social service organizations in New York. “We’re setting an example of the good that can be done,” Robb noted.

Throughout the fair’s VIP evening, guests took a relaxed but keen approach to perusing the booths on view—a refreshing shift from the more frenzied environments of the European art fairs earlier this month.

The team at Kasmin’s booth effectively served as the welcoming committee throughout the evening, surrounded by massive photographs by the 79-year-old photographer Tina Barney, who is currently the subject of a solo show at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. The booth featured pieces, including Julianne Moore and Family (1999), with prices ranging from $30,000 to $65,000. Director Nick Olney noted that Barney’s reputation as a cultural anthropologist provided an intriguing perspective as guests arrived.

“It is great being here in the front because you’re seeing everybody as they come in and to be a real entrance, and [Tina’s work] is really welcoming,” said Olney. “It’s great to come in with these gazes of the subjects of Tina’s photos. She’s often shooting gatherings or family communities, so it sets a really great tone as you step into the fair.”

For Olney, the fair holds a special significance, recalling when he first presented at The Art Show in 2001. “It’s an incredible jewel box and a fantastic representation of what’s happening in American art right now,” he said.

Indeed, the mood of the fair was a far cry from the typical nerves associated with a vernissage. This was particularly true for Tribeca’s Charles Moffett, who is participating for the first time.

“It’s just a really warm welcome. It’s honestly everything we hoped for,” Moffett said when Artsy spoke to him two hours into the fair. He mentioned that ADAA president Anthony Meier and other committee members had already stopped by the booth to show support. “It’s been everything you’d want in a community of dealers.”

The gallery presented a solo booth featuring works by C’Naan Hamburger, the 40-year-old former skateboarding world champion turned painter. After her egg tempera–based paintings sold out at the gallery’s exhibition of the artist in March, the gallery sold five works and placed two more on hold within the first few hours of the fair, priced between $8,000 and $15,000. “Everything about these paintings exudes a New York quality to it—whether it’s the park, the packages outside of a UPS truck, or in a doorman building,” said Moffett.

Because it’s situated in the historic Park Avenue Armory, one of New York’s most iconic venues, it can be difficult to separate The Art Show from the city itself. But with its nationwide scope, The Art Show is far from a single-city fair, and it is making moves to emphasize this further.

New to The Art Show 2024 is the former director Maureen Bray’s swan song, the newly introduced “Spotlight On…” program, which will focus on member galleries from a different U.S. city. This year’s edition starts with Bray’s hometown, Houston, and features four exhibitors: Inman Gallery, McClain Gallery, Josh Pazda Hiram Butler, and Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino. The section is also accompanied by a series of related talks and events throughout the weekend.

“We’re not just a community that only exists with New York galleries in New York City for The Art Show,” said Robb. “We’re trying to expand that playing field to make it inclusive and have a spotlight shared on some of our galleries in areas where we don’t always think that there’s a big burgeoning art scene, when there really is. Why wouldn’t we want to highlight that?”

And Houston more than rose to the occasion. A stronghold in Houston’s art community for four decades, McClain Gallery is a standout in this year’s program.

“[It’s an] interesting approach because [the Spotlight On… program] continues the discussion about things decentralizing,” said founder Robert McClain. “We know that all these other cities outside of New York have very talented artists that live and work there, so it’s a good opportunity for New York collectors to get a better sense of what’s going on outside New York.”

The gallery brought a mix of historical and contemporary works from the Lone Star State. The gallery, which last participated in The Art Show in 2020 with Texas-born abstract painter Dorothy Hood, has once again brought her work into the spotlight this year. Alongside Hood’s pieces, the gallery is presenting figurative mixed-media works by fellow Texan Delita Martin, depicting Black women in collages marked by various colorful patterns. Hood’s work is priced between $4,000 and $120,000, while the works by Martin range from $25,000 to $35,000.

With solo booths such a prominent part of the fair, there are plenty of new perspectives and discoveries to be found, presented in depth by exhibiting galleries.

One such discovery is Venus Over Manhattan’s solo booth of works by Seth Becker. These textured, small-scale oil paintings—each paired with a postcard from the New York–based artist’s collection—capture mundane yet somewhat surrealistic scenes, such as Nude and Pheasant (2024), depicting a naked figure with a pheasant holding an envelope walking across the bed. All works are available for $20,000 each.

“I do love this fair; I love the diversity of it,” said the gallery’s founder Adam Lindemann. “I like fairs that are a little unpasteurized and unhomogenized. I like some of the art to just feel a little more from a source or a surprise. And a good thing about this fair is you walk around, and it’s full of surprises.”

Another revelation to many was Timothy Taylor’s solo booth of works by Alice Tippit. The Chicago-based artist’s whimsical paintings—which use no more than five colors for each piece—generated buzz among guests trying to uncover the nature of the illustrations. Choses (2024) is a minimalist, abstract composition with a striking contrast between mint green and pitch black, split diagonally, where a small black pear and a green kitchen knife rest on either side. These works were priced between $8,000 and $12,000 apiece.

“It’s a very conceptual process,” said gallery partner Chloe Waddington. “She’s thinking about double entendres, metaphors, pulling a lot from literature, and things like crosswords that she’s seeing in her daily life. She’ll never tell you explicitly what she’s trying to get at. It’s more about leading the viewer to a specific place.”

Elsewhere, a fair standout was Petzel’s booth of works by Isabella Ducrot. The Italian textile artist, who is in her nineties, is gaining widespread recognition from galleries and institutions, including her first international solo museum show at Le Consortium in Dijon, France. Petzel’s booth at the fair features works from Ducrot’s “Surprise” series, which weaves her late husband’s handwriting into the fabric of the collages. Prices range from $7,000 to $42,000.

“Scale-wise, the booths are more intimate here, and there’s that same intimate quality in her work, the fabric and textile collages, and the handmade paper,” explained director Francesco Longenecker of the presentation. “The medium matched the fair in a way, and the scale of the booths are more domestic in scale, and the work is as well.”

This attention to storytelling is also evident at Michael Werner Gallery’s booth, which brought a collection of delicate pencil drawings by French avant-garde pioneer Francis Picabia. The works at the fair serve as a companion to the gallery’s current show of paintings, “Francis Picabia: Femmes,” intending to broaden the artist’s narrative for collectors browsing the Upper East Side—no mean feat for an artist of Picabia’s stature.

“To bring a show like this, it takes a few years in the making because it takes such a long time to get the works together,” said the gallery’s director Birte Kleemann. “It is beautiful to be able to show them as a suite, and the way [The Art Show] is set up lends itself to a solo presentation.”