Dealers managed to do strong business on opening day at the pared-down Frieze New York.
May 5, 2021
A fairgoer uses her phone in the cafe during the first day of Frieze art fair. (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)
This is not a drill not-online, not-remote, fully inside, honest-to-god art fairs are back.
After 14 months of staring at images of paintings in digitally rendered booths, art-world VIPs lined up Wednesday morning at the Shed in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards district to enter Frieze New York.
This was by no means a foregone conclusion. Frieze, owned by the recently IPOed Endeavor, came close to scrapping its 2021 edition. (Plans for a scaled-back Los Angeles edition were indeed cancelled.) But thanks to rigorous safety protocols that prevent anyone from entering without proof of vaccine or a negative test not to mention a head-scratching requirement for shipped works to be isolated for three days the fair did indeed go off, with everyone wearing masks of co
Reiring reflects on how her role as a dealer changed over 40 years.
March 8, 2021
Janelle Reiring and Helene Weiner, the founder of Metro Pictures, in 2009. Photo by Patrick McMullan via Getty Images.
Many art-world players were surprised to receive a candid email from legendary contemporary art gallery Metro Pictures on a Sunday afternoon, no less announcing the founders’ decision to close after 40 years at the end of 2021.
The platform, co-founded by Janelle Reiring and Helene Winer, launched the careers of famous Pictures Generation artists including Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, Sherrie Levine, and Louise Lawler, whose witty exploration and appropriation of mass media and advertising imagery immediately resonated with both collectors and broader audiences.