Art Fairs: Big, Small and Ours
By Linda Lee –
Let’s look at the scale of art shows, fairs and important galleries this season.
The Hamptons Fine Art Fair July 9 – 12 2026
It was the big one in the Hamptons, in a white tent in the Southampton Fairgrounds, running for the public from July 10 – 12. On Sunday, the fair closed at 6. Bargain hunters couldn’t expect sales on the artworks on the last day, but some galleries, which pay about $5,000 to rent a booth, are happy to sell the odd chair or table rather than ship or schlep it home.
Don’t ask Rick Friedman, the organizer, how this year’s fair went, because it’s always the biggest and the best. We saw sculpture by Oscar Molina, a Southampton artist, at the Martinez gallery, booth 337. There was a lot of excitement about the photographs at the Bert Stern booth of “The Last Sitting,” the one Vogue magazine commissioned in 1962, with a very young-looking 36-year-old Marilyn Monroe, six days before her death. Her skin really did glow from the inside. (Whispered discussion outside the booth: “It’s a nude. No, it’s art.”)
Workmen hurried to secure this photo of Marilyn before the opening. The orange grease pencil “X” indicates a rejection on the contact sheet.
Shepard Fairey’s series of woodblock prints, in numbered and signed editions, were in booth 205A. His style is instantly recognizable whether the series is “(Obey) Universal Dignity”or “Arts Vote.” They make perfect wall art in a kitchen, dining room or hallway.
Shepard Fairey’s 600 “Universal Dignity” screenprints on cream Speckletone paper sold for $60 in June 2022 when they were issued; the more exclusive edition of six signed and numbered silkscreens on wood are highly prized. Sold at the One Art Space booth. One Art Space is in Tribeca.
There is always another art fair coming.
Harlem Fine Arts Show & Summer Festival July 17 – 19
This is widely referred to as “From Harlem to the Hamptons.” The widower of B. Smith, who died of Alzheimers, is one of the organizers, thus the Alzheimers Association is a backer and beneficiary. This is the first time the fair, a sometimes thing, is coming to the Hamptons, although there was a Harlem Fine Arts Show and Summer Festival in New York City in 2008.
The Harlem Fine Arts Show Summer Fest in New York, in 2008. A touch of “Summer in the Park with George.”
Top tickets for Saturday, July 18, $268, for 21 and older only, include daytime admission to the exhibition hall and vineyard, unlimited Creole Food Festival tastings and premium open wine bar, plus the 6 pm to 10 pm pass to the night’s entertainment, a tribute to Robert Graham Carter, who lived, painted and taught in Huntington. That’s Suffolk County which to someone in New York City is almost the Hamptons.
“Hanging Laundry # 4,” by Robert Graham Carter (2015) Acrylic, pencil, washboard, on joined wood panels, in the Robert Graham Carter Family Collectio
There is optional valet service, which is not included but recommended. For any Hamptonite bored with local offerings, a lesson in Creole. The professional chefs at this event were born in Antigua, Cuba, Haiti, Barbados, Senegal and the Dominican Republic, as well as the US and then have interpreted their cuisine through French, Southern, barbecue and/or Cajun influences. It’s a world of flavors.
There are ten, count them ten (or maybe more), chefs doling out food over the three days, on a strict schedule. With chefs it is hard to tell. Things get competitive. And then they get collaborative. You’v seen “The Bear.”
[Things are also a little discombobulated, since the Harlem Arts Festival says it is collaborating with the Creole Food Festival, but the Creole Food Festival has a different list of chefs. Food fight! Could be interesting!]
Chef Yala, Carmen Baez, runs a catering business in New York City, primarily in the Bronx. She offers cooking lessons for those who want to make sancocho at home.
You can study the culinary schedule to make sure you get there during the right rotation. Some of them were James Beard semi-finalists in their region. Many have thousands of Instagram followers. A day ticket is $28.50 for Friday the 17th from 8 am to 5 pm, when the chefs on duty will be Jennifer Corporan (Dominican-American), Chef Yala (Dominican American), and Chef Rudy Straker (a Cuban-Barbadian master of modern Caribbean grilling and smoking). For that price, you could eat to your heart’s content, at the price of lunch in a diner including a piece of pie, and have money left over to buy art.
One caution. The entertainment on Saturday night could be jazz. Or classical music. Information seems tightly held. It is possible it is going to be a play called “Mal Aria,” about, uh, malaria. I could be wrong. All takes place at the Duckwalk Vineyards, 231 Montauk Highway. Elsewise, there is reggae Friday night in East Hampton with Stephen Marley, and several loud indoor and outdoor venues (21 and over) in Montauk.
C Fine Art Gallery Saturday & Sunday
Cheryl Sokolow knows art, and is a familiar face as an art advisor and producer of exhibits. On July 3 she opened her own gallery on Shelter Island, at 21 North Ferry Road, and it was a smashing success despite the heat. Her first show, “The Cadence of Form,” runs through August with artists including Kevin Barrett and Bill Barrett, John Van Alstine, Isobel Folb Sokolow and the Spanish textile artist Mercedes Vicente. All of the work, even those on the wall, is dimentional, because that’s what interests Sokolow.
Cheryl Sokolow of C Fine Arts on Shelter Island
Visitors to her small gallery, which is listed here because the art is on a level equal to or higher than that available at the Hamptons Fine Art Fair, where she used to show, may be surprised at the pricing. Works can range from $4,000 to $80,000. Sculpture is popular and practical in Hamptons seasonal homes, where property owners do not need to worry about temperature and humidity or theft if a piece weighs a thousand pounds and is made of steel.
The sensuous artwork by Vicente shown on the exhibition catalog looks to be the size of a Volkswagen. In fact it is the size of a toaster oven, and priced at around $6,000.
“I know pricing,” Sokolow says. “It not arbitrary. It is based on how long an artist has been practicing. We are realistic, and bronze is more expensive. It’s an honest price.” Shelter Island is becoming an art hotspot she believes. (The fact that Geoge Soros is buying up property there helps.) A Shelter Island Art Center will be opening next to her gallery.
Despite its address, she is close to the south ferry, she says, which is where her customers come from.
The Fourth Annual Bridgehampton Art Affair on Labor Day Weekend
If you think you have seen this before, you have, but it was called “Bridgehampton’s Third Annual Fourth of July Art Affair.” That was put on by the same company, Howard Alan Events, about which see further down, with many of the same vendors. They had terrible luck on the 4th, when scorching temperatures kept people away. We can only hope that Labor Day weekend will be kinder.
Will people be looking for art for their daughter’s college dorm rooms? Something to take home to remember the summer? Perhaps a painting of … the beach.
AND NOW…
For orientation in the larger art world, let’s look at the art fairs that took place here and in the city before the Hamptons Fine Art Fair rolled into town. Let’s start in May. These set the tone for what happened in the Hamptons.
TEFAF New York May 15 – 19
It’s a funny name. People don’t really remember that TEFAF means The European Fine Art Foundation, or more familiarly, Fair. The “real” TEFAF goes on in March in Europe, but people just call that one Maastrict, for the city in the Netherlands where it is held. That art fair offered 2,000-year old stele (sold to an American museum at the preview for half a million dollars), a pair of Monets, Picassos, Cassatts, antequarian books and an 18th-century Meissen flute once owned by Frederick the Great.
The consensus is that Maastrict is important without being fun (Maastrict is a city known for “four seasons in one day” that month), or convenient. Thus was born TEFAF New York nine years ago, an instant hit. A booth at TEFAF New York rents for about $75,000.
TEFAF famously uses flowers for decor. Opening night in New York offered excellent sight lines for spotting celebrities like Drew Barrymore, Ryan Murphy, Aerin Lauder, Anderson Cooper and Jack Antonoff. (Photo credit: Jitske Nap. Courtesy of TEFAF New York)
Both TEFAFs are the real deal. It’s as if the Europeans needed to teach Americans how to have an art fair, the same as they have had to teach Americans how to eat, make a sportscar, dress, play football and tie a scarf.
It’s not just the marquee names at these fairs. Each year there are startling works, the old épater routine that should be part of every art fair. Gagosian had Kathleen Ryan’s “Bad Fruit” series (2018 -), with decomposing fruit portrayed by rinds ripped from salvaged vehicles and gems and semi-precious stones representing healthy and decaying flesh. Pieces from the “Bad Fruit” series have already been exhibited in Norway, Germany and London.
Kathleen Ryan’ “Bad Fruit” at Gagosian (Photo credit: : Gary Mamay)
TEFAF New York was held on the august second floor of the Armory Building, and should not be confused with the Armory Show, which is held at the Javits Center.
FRIEZE New York May 13 – 17
This is the friskier, younger more Jet Set version of TEFAF, with blue ribbon galleries exhibiting at both. This art fair started with “Frieze,” the magazine. Then it became the Frieze Art Fair in London 23 years ago in Regents Park, for living and contemporary artists. Then Frieze Masters, for art before 2000. Frieze Sculpture in 2006. Frieze New York in 2012. Frieze Los Angeles 2019. (Then, following the money, Frieze Seoul and this year Frieze Abu Dhabi.)
A guest on opening night considered an artwork. Booths at Frieze New York range from $7,000 to $40,000.
Celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Sharon Stone, Julia Fox, the known art collector Anderson Cooper, Michael Stipe and the designer Kelly Wearstler–perhaps clued in by the LA version of Frieze–turned up on opening night. And sales were impressive. White Cube sold work by two African artists for $2.2 million and $1.9 million. Other notable Frieze sales included a Robert Rauschenberg for $825,000, an Alex Katz for $600,000 and work by James Turrell, Helen Frankenthaler, Gerhard Richter, Maya Lin and Leo Villareal.
The Hamptons are filled with billionaires and millionaires, some of whom buy art. But serious art collectors fresh off these two May art fairs, when they come to open their houses in the Hamptons, are not going to flock to art fairs organized on the level of garage sales. That is why so many art fairs have failed to crack the Hamptons market. Art Hamptons. Art Southampton. Art Market Hamptons.
NOMAD HAMPTONS June 25 – 26
This should not have missed your attention. It was hyped in Cultured magazine and New York magazine. It took place at the Watemill Center.
How could you have missed this?
Among the cognoscenti, this was among the most exciting art happenings in Europe, now coming to the United States for the first time. Previous intermittent events had taken place in Karl Lagerfeld’s former clifftop residence, Villa La Vigie, in Monaco, in St. Moritz, in Venice, in Capri. You get the drift. After this show it is going in November to … you guessed it, Abu Dhabi.
An artwork, perhaps a lamp, shown indoors, possibly for sale.
What as there to see? It was almost as if Bob Wilson had come back to life. Mysterious things were there without any guidebook. Visitors could wander, sit, interact. It was one of those “If you know, you know” kind of shows. Were you supposed to buy something? Find an expert? Ask a question?
Were you meant to sit on it? They felt sure you were. Confidence was required when visiting NOMAD.
People who went already seemed comfortable just interacting with their environments. Perhaps commerce was too intimate an activity to be conducted in public.
Were these cars? Or were they art?
It was rumored that the NOMAD people were so happy being at Watermill Art Center they planned to return. Perhaps, if you paid attention, you will catch this event next time around. Set your alert for the word “NOMAD.”
Bridgehampton’s 3rd Annual Art Affair on 4th of July Weekend
Did you go? Not many people did. It was a brutal weekend. weekend had nothing to do with the art inside the Bridgehampton Museum (although the museum presumably gets a piece of the proceeds). The carefully worded “Bridgehampton’s 3rd Annual Art Affair on 4th of July Weekend” was merely “taking place on the stunning lawns of the Bridgehampton Museum.”
Unfortunately, this Fourth of July was brutal. Restaurants in the Hamptons were empty. On what is normally the kickoff to the Hamptons summer, some New Yorkers stayed in the city. Others hunkered down in their airconditioned homes and looked at the ocean. That was bad news for an outdoor art show.
“Sorbet Summer” by Natalie Katz, acrylic on wood 72 X36, $8,000.
Natalie Katz, a local professional artist who participated in previous Fourth of July shows, saw the difference. “Unfortunately the brutal heat kept the show from being the usual, full crowd,” she said. “This year it was mostly older adults, just a couple of young families and the elderly.” That was not a good market for her work, which she described as “popping and vibrant.” There were several disappointed artists. “Sorbet Summer,” she says, is still available on her website.
The company producing the show, Howard Alan Events, does 85 art shows around the country including such places as Aspen and Venice Beach, which you’d think wouldn’t need any more paintings of palm trees, sunsets and sandy beaches. The company also produces Bridgehampton’s Third Annual Labor Day Art Affair.
Dennis Goodman Fine Art photography. Photographs, especially black-and-white nature shots, are safe decor.
Real art dealers do not take Howard Alan Events level of connoisseurship very seriously. Many Howard Alan Event art fairs are combined with craft fairs, which makes them useful for someone furnishing a summer home, kitchen, garden or a child’s bedroom.
One top seller: framed fine art photos by the photographer Dennis Goodman. His large, framed prints run about $200.
Resale value, what you can get.
The East Hamptons Antiques & Design Show July 10 – 12
The East Hampton Design & Antique Show at the Mulford Farm
In a big white tent at Mulford Farm. This was the antidote to the Hamptons Fine Art Fair, the kind of local offering that is a friendly gathering of pieces you might like from trusted dealers, like a local Brimfield.
First, it was a benefit for the East Hampton Historical Society. Second, it’s antiques and mid-century items for home and garden.
Didn’t the back yard need something new? Doesn’t the garden always need another bench?
So put a reminder in your 2027 calendar to look it up for next year. Tickets were $20, but the Friday evening cocktail party ($275) was the event where you saw everyone.
