How do the wealthy choose their art these days?
Peek inside TEFAF New York’s annual “wealth pageant,” as writer Aaron Short puts it. There was plenty to dazzle the patrons of the Nouveau Gilded Age at this year’s edition of the Park Avenue Armory fair.
“Inside, prospective clients trailed by their art advisors nibbled seafood hors d’oeuvres and sipped glasses of rosé while inspecting the presentations of 88 galleries from 14 different countries,” said Short.
Read more at hyperallergic.com.
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All photos Aaron Short/Hyperallergic
Image 1: A Kathleen Ryan sculpture on view at Gagosian’s booth at TEFAF New York
Image 2: TEFAF has long held a reputation for attracting the upper tier.
Image 4: François-Xavier Lalanne, “Canard” (2008)
"Frieze New York is an assembly-line salad," says Senior Editor Valentina Di Liscia (@valentina.diliscia ).
"At risk of running this analogy into the ground, if visiting a museum exhibition is steak au poivre, attending an art fair has the jittery energy of scarfing down an assembly-line chopped salad in a drab Sweetgreen in midtown Manhattan," Di Liscia writes.
But there were pieces that gave her finding a reprieve from the monotonous rhythm and made her forget she was at a trade show.
Read the full review at Hyperallergic.com
Every art fair season the question arises: If you aren’t an arts journalist or a patron looking to augment your collection, why attend an art fair at all?
“With regard to the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, the answer I find is that it keeps offering surprise and the genuine pleasure of discovery,” says art critic Seph Rodney. “Among the spring art fairs that take place in New York, 1-54, still features work that’s unexpected.”
Read the full review at hyperallergic.com.
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Photos Seph Rodney/Hyperallergic
Image 1: Marcel Gotène, “Untitled” (1990), oil on canvas
Image 2: Rommulo Vieira Conceição’s work at Aura Galeria’s booth
Image 3: Work by Candice Tavares
Staff writer Rhea Nayyar explores the seemingly interchangeable tropes and trends present at the 12th annual New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) fair including vibrant kitsch, zany little sculptures, shiny stuff™, and lots of florals (in the spring? groundbreaking!).
"All of that is to say that there were many works — including those among the aforementioned tropes and their varying combinations — that I did enjoy, and probably would have felt more strongly about outside of the context of NADA," Nayyar says.
Watch along for her standouts and read Nayyar's full take on our website.
In New York City, spring fairs are in full throttle. Hyperallergic went behind-the-scenes to get more information about what it costs to participate in these highly coveted events.
We asked 13 New York art fairs to open up about booth costs, and what they shared (and didn’t) revealed much about affordability and the cost-benefit equation for galleries weighing their options in an increasingly tight market.
Get all the details at hyperallergic.com.
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Image: A bird’s-eye view of Frieze New York 2025 (photo Casey Kelbaugh, courtesy Frieze and CKA)
Artist Maia Chao will activate the Whitney’s seventh-floor galleries with her performance “Being Moved” as part of the museum’s 2026 Biennial. The piece “presses on the idea of art as a catalyst for social or political change, and on the museum’s tendency to present itself as the stage for that possibility,” says writer Clara Maria Apostolatos.
Across performances, participatory projects, and interventions, artist Maia Chao approaches the museum less as a neutral space than as a structure that quietly trains behavior and participation. “Being Moved” is a continuation of that thread.
Read the full feature at hyperallergic.com.
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Image 1: Maia Chao, “Being Moved” (2026) (photo Amelia Golden, courtesy Maia Chao and the Whitney Museum of American Art)
Image 2: Maia Chao (photo Amelia Golden, courtesy the artist)
Image 3: Top: Maia Chao, “Being Moved” (2026) (photo Amelia Golden, courtesy Maia Chao and the Whitney Museum of American Art); Bottom: A visitor engaging in Maia Chao, “Scores for the Museum Visitor” (2026), vinyl on wall, dimensions variable (photo Beatriz Cifuentes, courtesy Maia Chao and the Whitney Museum of American Art)
In response to the new 22-foot-tall golden statue of Donald Trump at his golf course in Miami, art critic Ed Simon likens this “Don Colossus” to idolatry, using theological narratives to bolster his argument.
While televangelist Mark Burns posted on X that this statue was “not a golden calf” — though he believes the president was “divinely appointed” — Simon leads us through religious history that begs to differ.
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Image 1: Golden Donald Trump statue at his National Doral golf club in Miami, Florida (photo Ben Jared/PGA TOUR via Getty Images)
Image 2: Andrea di Lione, “Adoration of the Golden Calf” (1626–1629) (via Wikimedia Commons)
Opening Saturday, May 16 at The Bishop Gallery, “Our Friend, Jean,” is an intimate collection of art and ephemera from the precipice of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s career explosion. This exhibition returns to Brooklyn after traveling to six historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) — a major first for Basquiat’s work.
The artist was frequently othered and endured racial discrimination within and beyond the art world. When “Our Friend, Jean” was first shown at The Bishop Gallery in 2019, his story was finally being told by Black Brooklynite gallerists who shared and intrinsically understood his background. This return marks a continuation of his story.
While thousands will descend upon Manhattan this week for the bulk of New York’s spring art fairs, The Bishop Gallery encourages visitors to tune out the numbers and trends and spend time with some of the most important samples of contemporary art history ever produced in the city.
Read more about the exhibition at hyperallergic.com.
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All images courtesy The Bishop Gallery
Image 1: Jean-Michel Basquiat, “Blue” (c. 1979–80)
Image 2: One of dozens of portraits Alexis Adler took of Jean-Michel Basquiat when they lived together (photo Alexis Adler)
Francisco de Zurbarán, the brilliant, 17th-century Spanish painter, is showing off the fruits of his piety (perhaps) on the grand scale at London’s National Gallery for the very first time. The artist’s enormous depictions of crucifixions, monks in tattered habits, and richly adorned female saints once hung in churches or monasteries in Spain.
They have the effect of “frightening you back to God,” says art critic Michael Glover. But for all of this godliness, Glover ponders, was Zurbarán himself a pious man? Does belief actually make a difference in how well you paint?
Read Michael Glover’s full review at hyperallergic.com.
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All images courtesy the National Gallery, London
Image 1: Francisco de Zurbarán, “Saint Peter Nolasco’s Vision of Saint Peter the Apostle” (1629)
Image 2: Francisco de Zurbarán, “Virgin and Child with Infant St John the Baptist” (1658)
Image 3: Francisco de Zurbarán, “Hercules and Cerberus” (1634)
Image 4: Francisco de Zurbarán, “The Crucified Christ with a Painter” (c. 1650)
You know Mozart’s music—but what do you know about his life?
A new exhibition at NYC’s Morgan Library has the answers, guiding visitors through the life and career of the virtuoso via art and well-preserved ephemera—from his childhood violin made of spruce and maple, to original sketches of the set design of the opera “The Magic Flute.”
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Image 1: Attributed to Giambettino Cignaroli, “Mozart in Verona” (1770), oil on canvas (photo courtesy Morgan Library & Museum)
Image 2: Jean-Baptiste Delafosse, after Louis Carrogis de Carmontelle (1717–1806), “The Mozart Family, Paris” (1764), copperplate engraving (photo courtesy Morgan Library & Museum)
Image 3: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mozart’s earliest compositions (1761), musical manuscript in the hand of Leopold Mozart Andante in C (K. 1a) (photo Anthony Troncale, courtesy Morgan Library & Museum)
Image 4: Installation view of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Treasures from the Mozarteum Foundation of Salzburg at the Morgan Library & Museum (photo Greta Rainbow/Hyperallergic)
Image 5: Josef Gail, set design for act 2, scene 4, in the original production of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute, K. 620) in Vienna in 1791, graphite and ink on paper (photo courtesy Morgan Library & Museum)
What exactly is an Artist Corporation, and should you start one? Paddy Johnson (@netvvrk.art ) explains this new type of business structure that was in a bill introduced in the Colorado state legislature.
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Image: Have you registered your “A-Corp” already? (edit Shari Flores/Hyperallergic)
