The Armory Show has lined up more than 200 galleries for its next edition (4-7 September), which will kick off the autumn art season in New York City. That includes more than 135 returning galleries and around 55 first-time exhibitors taking up stands at the Javits Center. The initial list of exhibitors released today (12 June) features just over 200 galleries, but organisers say the final number of participants will be more than 230, in line with last year’s tally.
The fair, the first fully under the leadership of director Kyla McMillan, will include a new sector devoted to design. And Platform, its large-scale sculpture sector, will be led for the first time by a non-profit, Souls Grown Deep. The foundation's chief curator, Raina Lampkins-Fielder, will select the artists for the sector. The foundation’s dedication to championing Black artists from the American South will resonate with the fair’s Focus sector, which is being curated this year by Jessica Bell Brown, the executive director of the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, and will highlight works by artists from the South.
The fair will also include a new sector, Function, highlighting artists working with (and sometimes against) the principles of design. It is being curated by Ebony L. Haynes, a senior director at David Zwirner and 52 Walker, and will feature around ten exhibitors from across the US and Mexico, including Corbett vs. Dempsey, Móran Móran and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery.
As ever, the fair will have a strong US contingent, and more than 75 participating exhibitors operate a space in New York City. Among those are returning local heavyweights such as Kasmin, Sean Kelly, 303 Gallery, James Cohan and Michael Rosenfeld Gallery. International galleries returning to the fair include Victoria Miro, Nature Morte and Dastan. Among the galleries partaking for the first time are Timothy Hawkinson Gallery and Megan Mulrooney from Los Angeles, Saatchi Yates from London, and House of Gaga from Mexico City. Several exhibitors are returning to the fair after a hiatus, including Marianne Boesky Gallery, White Cube, The Pit, Andrew Kreps, Esther Schipper, Uffner & Liu and Instituto de Visión.
The fair’s non-profit sector will feature stands by more than a half-dozen arts organisations, among them the Tamarind Institute from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Tierra del Sol Gallery from Los Angeles, and local stalwarts including the New York Academy of Art, the Lower East Side Printshop and this year’s Armory Spotlight honoree, Storefront for Art and Architecture. The fair’s Gramercy International Prize, named in tribute to The Armory Show’s original name on its founding in 1994, is the Tribeca-based gallery Silke Lindner, which will have its stand costs covered for its inaugural presentation at the fair.
“The 2025 edition of The Armory Show will build on our legacy with a programme rooted in New York’s cultural vitality and shaped by dialogue between American and international perspectives,” McMillan said in a statement. “This upcoming edition looks to provide expanded points of access for a range of collectors. Through newly imagined formats, the fair will foster deeper connection and discovery.”
McMillan, who was previously a director at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and David Zwirner, was brought on to lead The Armory Show in July 2024, but this will be the first edition of the fair fully under her direction. It will also be the first edition of the fair following Ari Emanuel’s purchase of Frieze from his previous company, Endeavor, for around $200m, which was announced on 1 May. (Frieze purchased both The Armory Show and Expo Chicago fairs in 2023.)
