The Armory Present’s Presents part has grown as rising galleries weigh the prices and potential upsides of artwork honest participation. The part is 20% bigger this 12 months in comparison with 2025, however sellers say collaborating stays a raffle—prompting some to share stands, negotiate charges and discover different methods to restrict prices.
The Presents part at The Armory Present is devoted to galleries based throughout the final 12 years, focuses on solo or twin artist displays and is usually house to a number of the most attention-grabbing work at New York’s largest artwork honest. The part options 54 exhibitors this 12 months, up from 45 final 12 months, as youthful galleries look to the honest as a option to attain new collectors and set up themselves on a world stage. However for a lot of of these younger sellers, collaborating stays a big monetary danger.
Of this 12 months’s 54 Presents exhibitors, 18 are collaborating in The Armory Present for the primary time. The part, traditionally dominated by New York galleries, has additionally expanded its geographic attain, with members together with Martha’s from Austin, Wolfgang Gallery from Atlanta and Rajiv Menon, who based his eponymous gallery in Los Angeles.
In accordance with UBS and Artwork Basel’s most up-to-date Artwork Market Report, sellers with annual gross income of lower than $500,000 skilled the strongest development in 2025, reporting double-digit will increase in common gross sales values. Regardless of a lot artwork world grumbling about artwork honest fatigue and diminishing returns, that very same report discovered that for sellers throughout the board, artwork honest gross sales elevated by 4% year-on-year to comprise 35% of gross income, the very best degree since 2022. Sellers additionally reported that growing honest prices have been among the many largest challenges in working a gallery.
Kyla McMillan, the director of The Armory Present, says stands within the Presents part are intentionally priced beneath these in the principle Galleries part to permit for rising gallery participation. For McMillan, the part’s growth displays the boldness of youthful sellers.
“Seeing a development amongst younger galleries indicators to me a well being and an optimism for experimentation,” McMillan says. “We’re at all times so pleased with that part and the bold displays that come out of it. I feel they’re a little bit of an inspiration for the remainder of the honest, by way of taking a giant swing in a good context.”
One in all Raghav Babbar’s work at Rajiv Menon Up to date’s stand Courtesy the artist and Rajiv Menon Up to date
Some first-time members at The Armory Present say they have been capable of negotiate their charges down, whereas others have shared cubicles or discovered different methods to unfold the expense. Sellers should steadiness advantages like potential honest gross sales, artist publicity and assembly collectors and curators in opposition to a extra instant invoice.
Rajiv Menon is utilizing the honest to introduce each his namesake gallery and an artist to New Yorkers. Menon is exhibiting work by Raghav Babbar, a 28-year-old painter whose latest work attracts on the artist’s expertise on the Maha Kumbh, the Hindu pilgrimage in North India that in 2025 introduced collectively greater than 600 million folks.
“I deeply consider Raghav is essentially the most vital Gen Z painter popping out of India proper now,” Menon says. “We needed to be acutely aware that it wasn’t simply our debut, nevertheless it’s Raghav’s as properly, and it felt like such an acceptable platform for the centre of the artwork world.”
Works on the stand vary from $7,000 for works on paper to the mid-five figures for work. Inside hours of the VIP preview’s opening on Thursday (24 September), all however the works on paper had bought. For Menon, bringing these lower-priced works was a option to make the artist accessible to youthful collectors.
“As a result of I genuinely do consider his apply is critical and could have a really lengthy affect, I need younger collectors to seek out factors of entry,” Menon says. “The inclusion of works on paper was a really deliberate dialog I had with Raghav, realizing that there are younger collectors who might not have the ability to afford his canvases, however nonetheless really feel deeply invested within the apply, within the affect he is making on the tradition and on the truth that he’s a rising, vital voice of South Asian artwork on the worldwide stage.”
Administration and Droste Galladé’s shared stand with work by Willehad Eilers. Courtesy the artist Droste Galladé and Administration
Different Presents exhibitors have discovered methods to make the economics of collaborating in a good extra manageable. The New York-based gallery Administration is sharing a stand with French-German gallery Droste Galladé, splitting the prices between them with a portion additionally subsidised by the German authorities. It’s the first at The Armory Present for each galleries, which collectively are presenting work by their shared artist Willehad Eilers, whose grotesque, bacchanalian scenes critique a tradition of abundance and decadence.
Guests to the stand are “disturbed by it. I feel that could be a condemnation in and of itself, that’s baked into the work,” Anton Svyatsky, the founding father of Administration, says. “In case you are disturbed by this work and also you don’t see your self in it and also you don’t see the way it’s about you, that’s sort of the purpose.”
Going all in on grotesque social critique is an unusual and dangerous selection for a significant business honest, but Droste Galladé and Administration’s joint stand was one of many buzziest within the part in the course of the VIP preview. That curiosity appears to have paid off—about half of the work, priced at $18,500 every, had bought in the course of the preview, with the remaining on maintain. Svyatsky provides: “I feel bold, attention-grabbing work inevitably turns into commercially viable whether it is in reality bold and attention-grabbing.”
Different members within the honest’s Presents sector are rethinking the gallery idea. For Superposition, the cost-saving technique is extra basic: it has no everlasting gallery house in any respect.
“For my gallery, we don’t pay lease as a result of we’re a nomadic entity, and wherever we’re, that’s the place house is at that second. So house proper now’s at The Armory Present,” Storm Ascher, Superposition’s founder, says. “We save all these assets that will be going right into a Tribeca lease or Chelsea lease or Brooklyn, Newark, wherever it’s—New York is simply unimaginable to afford proper now.”
Superposition is presenting work by Zoë Pulley, marking the artist’s first look at an artwork honest. Pulley’s maximalist multimedia works mix textiles, assemblage and typography, drawing on the legacy of her grandmother, a dressmaker who staged runway reveals in Eighties Philadelphia outdoors the mainstream style trade. The presentation examines how Black inventive expression is handed between generations. Pulley’s set up earned the inaugural Bronx Museum Acquisition Prize, with one in every of her works coming into the museum’s everlasting assortment: the museum bought Magnificence No. 1 (2026) for $14,000.
Zoë Pulle’s Magnificence No. 1 (2026) on the Superposition stand. Photograph by Jazz Wong, courtesy the artist
The honest’s organisers additionally supply one alternative that may take away the price of a stand altogether. Forward of the VIP preview, the New York-based gallery Margot Samel was introduced because the winner of the Gramercy Worldwide Prize, which supplies a free stand to a hometown gallery that has not beforehand participated in The Armory Present. In its Presents part stand, the gallery is exhibiting works by Leroy Johnson and Sasha Brodsky.
One other New York-based Presents exhibitor, Lobster Membership, reported promoting 9 of Megan Koons’s work made with acrylic and woven cotton on canvas, within the vary of $3,600 to $8,500 every. Hannah Traore Gallery bought out its stand of works by Kesewa Aboah, priced between $2,500 and $27,000 every. Within the honest’s basic Galleries sector, Chelsea-based Michael Rosenfeld Gallery reported promoting a portray by Joan Mitchell for over $2m to a non-public assortment, essentially the most beneficial sale reported in the course of the VIP preview.
Pietro Alexander, who based his eponymous gallery in New York this 12 months after working Spy Tasks in Los Angeles, is collaborating in Presents. His stand options work by Christian Vincent, whose exhibition was the ultimate present at Spy Tasks. Alexander selected Vincent’s work for The Armory Present partly as a result of he believed it might join with collectors even within the busy context of a sprawling artwork honest.
Christian Vincent’s Speakeasy (2026) Courtesy Pietro Alexander Gallery
“What I like in regards to the work is that this concentrate on narrative over determine in figurative portray. There’s a humorousness, capturing a second in time reasonably than the physique,” Alexander says. “There are some artists whose work may be very arduous to current in a good context. His work is these vibrant moments of weirdness that I assumed might work if I had a 10ft by 10ft sales space, or a 50ft by 50ft sales space,” Alexander says. The gallery has bought six of the eight work, however Alexander was frank in regards to the monetary realities dealing with rising galleries.
“For youthful galleries, artwork festivals are actually tough. I’ve had a number of colleagues and friends who mainly misplaced their shirts at artwork festivals,” Alexander says. “After I did my first honest, I fully face-planted.”
The calculation might be notably tough for galleries with out established collector bases or pre-sold works below their belt.
“It’s a tough pitch to make to youthful galleries, however they sort of should do it,” Alexander says. “You’re purported to be John the Evangelist to your folks, and a part of that’s being the one to encumber these dangers. That’s your job to your artists.”
The Armory Present, till 27 September, Javits Middle, New York
