Three years right into a downturn of the worldwide artwork market, festivals and sellers devoted to prints say editioned works on paper are faring higher than different media and have even managed to seize the eye of a brand new collector class. The phenomenon might have been on show greatest on Thursday (27 March) on the VIP preview of the annual Worldwide Fantastic Print Sellers Affiliation’s (IFPDA) Print Honest (till 30 March). Simply as busy as every other artwork truthful held on the Park Avenue Armory, the aisles between the 75 stands had been filled with attendees of all ages. Greater than 5,000 individuals turned as much as the preview, in keeping with truthful organisers.
“Though there’s been some softening on the prime of the market, individuals take a look at night gross sales and make these dire prognostications,” IFPDA government director Jenny Gibbs tells The Artwork Newspaper. “What we’re seeing in our section of the market has been unimaginable development. We had extra functions for this truthful than now we have had in lots of, a few years.”
The truthful noticed a 40% rise in ticket gross sales and a 50% rise in VIP registrations forward of the occasion, organisers mentioned. (Gibbs provides: “So I’ve ordered 50% extra champagne than we had final 12 months!”)
IFPDA Print Honest 2025. Photograph by Rommel Demano / BFA
In response to the latest annual UBS Survey of World Accumulating, 35% of high-net-worth people polled acquired prints and multiples in 2023 and the primary half of 2024. What’s extra, prints, multiples and pictures made up 24% of their collections, up from 16% the earlier 12 months. ArtTactic additionally reported an 18.3% enhance in print gross sales in 2023.
Gibbs attributes a lot of this development to the doorway of youthful collectors to the market, and their consolation with buying editioned objects of all kinds, from prints to sneakers. (Transferring the truthful from the Javits Heart to the Park Avenue Armory final 12 months additionally helped increase attendance, she says: “Talking as a New Yorker, nobody is completely satisfied to should go to the Javits.”)
“It’s the concept of the democratisation of the artwork market, and the concept which you could accumulate a KAWS figurine—maybe not a 40ft-tall KAWS determine, however a smaller editioned work,” Gibbs says. “That’s an space wherein we have seen an enormous development.”
That interprets to prints and works on paper, she says, and the IFPDA truthful permits each newer and seasoned collectors to think about work by established artists at extra accessible worth factors, additionally a plus in a down market. This 12 months’s truthful options works spanning practically 600 years, and galleries from North America, Europe and one exhibitor, The Artists’ Press, from South Africa. The IFPDA commissioned the artist Mickalene Thomas to create a site-specific set up made out of three-dimensional paper-pulp sculptures that permits the viewer to step into the artist’s inside scene work.
Mickalene Thomas, l’espace entre les deux, 2025, set up view on the IFPDA Print Honest Photograph by Dal Perry
The IFPDA Print Honest is just not the one occasion tapping into prints’ reputation in New York this week—additionally on Thursday, the inaugural Brooklyn Fantastic Artwork Print Honest (till 30 March) held its preview throughout the East River. Held on the Powerhouse Arts non-profit facility in Gowanus, the truthful welcomed 600 VIP company, organisers mentioned. Exhibiting on the Brooklyn truthful are 41 galleries, 28 self-representing artists and ebook makers, as nicely seven tutorial print departments. Organisers mentioned exhibitors reported “wholesome and constant gross sales” through the preview.
If there may be something that different segments of the artwork market can study from prints, it’s diversifying their collector bases.
“The IFPDA has been a beloved, must-attend truthful for ‘print individuals’, and it tended to be a extra inward-looking group,” Gibbs says. “We now have made big inroads into new collectors and youthful collectors—we’re undoubtedly seeing extra Gen Z and Millennials.”
