Artwork gala’s are rightly seen as among the many purest distillations of latest artwork commerce in the present day. However many, if not most, gala’s additionally embody a subset of exhibitors who complicate that popularity: non-profit organisations. The return of Armory Week in New York affords a well timed alternative to unpack how charitable entities match into the truthful assemble basically, in addition to tease out the strategic variations in how particular occasions incorporate them into their programmes.
The 2025 version of The Armory Present will function 9 non-profit entities amid its greater than 230 exhibitors. Eight of these non-profits might be clustered collectively in a particular sector. The ninth, Souls Grown Deep, was invited to construct on its mission of championing Black artists from the American South by staging a curated presentation within the truthful’s Platform sector for large-scale and site-specific works.
Kyla McMillan, the director of The Armory Present, says that Souls Grown Deep’s place “will push to the fore that gala’s are about artists at their core. Whether or not in dialog with not-for-profits or galleries, the aim is to amplify and assist the artist, to create a community round their work.”
Artists are discovering group with [not-for-profits], so if we’re to be the foundational truthful we goal to be, then it feels important for not-for-profits to be part of what we do
Kyla McMillan, director, The Armory Present
The inventive rigidity on this trade speaks to a bigger fact concerning the pipeline between charitable entities and the market. Non-profit organisations are “usually the primary degree of assist for artists earlier than they get gallery illustration”, McMillan says, including: “Artists are utilizing their companies and discovering group with these organisations, so if we’re to be the foundational truthful we goal to be, then it feels important for not-for-profits to be part of what we do.”
Like most different gala’s, The Armory Present holds an open name for functions from for-profit sellers. All non-profit exhibitors, nevertheless, have to be invited to use for stands (although McMillan says these invites “typically” come after the truthful receives “outreach from not-for-profits having an anniversary yr or different milestone”).
What concerning the prices of collaborating? The Armory Present awards one New York-based non-profit exhibitor per yr its Highlight prize, which comes with a completely funded stand. (This yr’s winner is the Manhattan-based Storefront for Artwork and Structure.) The others are provided their areas at what McMillan calls “a considerably subsidised fee”, together with the power to ask their donors as VIPs.
In the case of figuring out the content material of their stands, the truthful sometimes provides non-profit exhibitors “a little bit of carte blanche”, McMillan says. Nonetheless, she and her colleagues fortunately supply steerage if requested. “A variety of occasions they do come to us for our insights, as a result of this isn’t essentially the setting they’re most lively in or comfy with. In lots of instances it’s their first truthful,” she provides.
The contours of those preparations usually echo those utilized by Frieze, The Armory Present’s dad or mum firm, at its personal gala’s in New York and Los Angeles. Christine Messineo, Frieze’s truthful director within the Americas, says the corporate invitations non-profit companions to every occasion primarily based on “what feels present for the second and which organisations really feel reflective of the second”. Frieze additionally sometimes donates the area every entity makes use of on-site, offering a golden alternative to fundraise by way of gross sales of editions or different means.
But non permanent actual property will not be all the time the primary foreign money in Frieze’s work with non-profit organisations. Different initiatives have included co-commissioning efficiency works with Excessive Line Artwork throughout Frieze New York and with the Artwork Manufacturing Fund throughout Frieze Los Angeles; collaborating with the Black Trustee Alliance to create an audio archive of residents of the Los Angeles County metropolis of Altadena after it was razed by the Eaton hearth in early 2025; and partnering with Vote.org to supply voter registration at each of its US gala’s.
An Unbiased strategy
One other layer to the interaction between for-profit gala’s and non-profit entities emerges at Unbiased twentieth Century, the invitation-only expo devoted to artwork from round 1900 till 2000. This yr’s version (4-7 September) brings 31 exhibitors to Casa Cipriani on the southern tip of Manhattan. Though not one of the stands might be occupied by non-profits, that final result stems from the agency’s unusually selective ethos on working with charitable organisations.
“The fashions are totally different for big-box franchise gala’s,” says Elizabeth Dee, the founder and chief govt of Unbiased, about her bigger opponents’ technique with non-profit exhibitors. “As a result of we’re extra of a curated challenge, we’ve tried to consider it slightly in a different way. If we’re working with a non-profit, it’s as a result of there’s a particular challenge we wish to get behind.”
One such instance was on view on the 2024 version of Unbiased twentieth Century: a stand commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Hallwalls Modern Artwork Middle, the Buffalo, New York-based non-profit based by a gaggle of artists together with Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman, Nancy Dwyer and Charles Clough.
The presentation comprised a number of posters, flyers, correspondence and video from the archive co-curated by Unbiased and Ryan Muller, a director at Sprüth Magers in New York. (The gallery had no involvement within the challenge.) Not one of the supplies had been exhibited in Manhattan earlier than, and nothing of any form was on the market—partly as a result of Unbiased coated the price of the stand.
“Individuals had been shocked to search out one thing that wasn’t on the market,” Muller tells The Artwork Newspaper of holiday makers’ reactions to the purely archival show. “It felt like an Easter egg for individuals who actually cared about that form of historical past.”
Institutional innovation
Dee and her colleagues have developed different methods to remain engaged with institutional and charitable organisations. In lieu of an ordinary VIP programme, Unbiased twentieth Century works with the patron teams at a slew of non-profit artwork establishments, starting from the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork and the Guggenheim Museum to the Drawing Middle and the Skowhegan Faculty of Portray and Sculpture. These partnerships manifest in personal members-only programmes on the truthful, resembling a tour led by Sheena Wagstaff, the Met’s then chairman of Trendy and up to date artwork, explaining how artists within the museum’s assortment had been being re-historicised at Unbiased twentieth Century in 2021.
“Nobody had actually requested the museums, ‘What are you trying to do together with your patrons? What matters are prime of thoughts together with your curatorial workforce? Are there any overlaps between your assortment or exhibition programme and our present?’” Dee says of the truthful sector. “We began to essentially ask these questions and understood there was a means to do that that gala’s hadn’t actually completed earlier than.”
In the long run, Unbiased twentieth Century’s institutional alliances present how archaic the outdated partitions separating the business’s for-profit and non-profit territories have turn into. The progressive synergies created by artwork gala’s level towards much more methods the 2 sides may mutually enrich each other going ahead—not less than, if the traditionalists can study to abdomen the market-driven format.
“Like them or not, they exist,” Muller says of gala’s. “Individuals who care about what artwork is being made are going to go to them. It might be a flawed vessel, however it’s a vessel.”
