Artwork festivals are rightly seen as among the many purest distillations of up to date artwork commerce right this moment. However many, if not most, festivals additionally embody a subset of exhibitors who complicate that popularity: non-profit organisations. The return of Armory Week in New York presents a well timed alternative to unpack how charitable entities match into the truthful assemble on the whole, 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 characteristic 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 festivals are about artists at their core. Whether or not in dialog with not-for-profits or galleries, the aim is to amplify and help 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 purpose 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 reality in regards to the pipeline between charitable entities and the market. Non-profit organisations are “usually the primary stage of help for artists earlier than they get gallery illustration”, McMillan says, including: “Artists are utilizing their providers and discovering group with these organisations, so if we’re to be the foundational truthful we purpose to be, then it feels important for not-for-profits to be part of what we do.”
Like most different festivals, The Armory Present holds an open name for purposes 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 12 months or different milestone”).
What in regards to the prices of collaborating? The Armory Present awards one New York-based non-profit exhibitor per 12 months its Highlight prize, which comes with a completely funded stand. (This 12 months’s winner is the Manhattan-based Storefront for Artwork and Structure.) The others are supplied their areas at what McMillan calls “a considerably subsidised charge”, together with the flexibility to ask their donors as VIPs.
In the case of figuring out the content material of their stands, the truthful usually provides non-profit exhibitors “a little bit of carte blanche”, McMillan says. Nonetheless, she and her colleagues fortunately provide steerage if requested. “Plenty of instances they do come to us for our insights, as a result of this isn’t essentially the setting they’re most energetic 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 guardian firm, at its personal festivals 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 based mostly on “what feels present for the second and which organisations really feel reflective of the second”. Frieze additionally usually donates the house 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 is just not at all times the principle forex 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 festivals.
An Impartial strategy
One other layer to the interaction between for-profit festivals and non-profit entities emerges at Impartial twentieth Century, the invitation-only expo devoted to artwork from round 1900 till 2000. This 12 months’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 completely different for big-box franchise festivals,” says Elizabeth Dee, the founder and chief govt of Impartial, about her bigger rivals’ technique with non-profit exhibitors. “As a result of we’re extra of a curated venture, we’ve tried to consider it just a little in a different way. If we’re working with a non-profit, it’s as a result of there’s a selected venture we wish to get behind.”
One such instance was on view on the 2024 version of Impartial twentieth Century: a stand commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Hallwalls Up to date Artwork Heart, 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 Impartial and Ryan Muller, a director at Sprüth Magers in New York. (The gallery had no involvement within the venture.) 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 Impartial lined the price of the stand.
“Folks have been stunned 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 sort of historical past.”
Institutional innovation
Dee and her colleagues have developed different methods to remain engaged with institutional and charitable organisations. In lieu of a regular VIP programme, Impartial 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 Heart and the Skowhegan Faculty of Portray and Sculpture. These partnerships manifest in non-public members-only programmes on the truthful, comparable to a tour led by Sheena Wagstaff, the Met’s then chairman of Trendy and modern artwork, explaining how artists within the museum’s assortment have been being re-historicised at Impartial twentieth Century in 2021.
“Nobody had actually requested the museums, ‘What are you trying to do together with your patrons? What subjects are high of thoughts together with your curatorial group? Are there any overlaps between your assortment or exhibition programme and our present?’” Dee says of the truthful sector. “We began to actually ask these questions and understood there was a means to do that that festivals hadn’t actually accomplished earlier than.”
Ultimately, Impartial twentieth Century’s institutional alliances present how archaic the outdated partitions separating the business’s for-profit and non-profit territories have change into. The progressive synergies created by artwork festivals level towards much more methods the 2 sides may mutually enrich each other going ahead—a minimum of, if the traditionalists can be taught to abdomen the market-driven format.
“Like them or not, they exist,” Muller says of festivals. “Individuals who care about what artwork is being made are going to go to them. It could be a flawed vessel, nevertheless it’s a vessel.”
