After holding the first five editions of its annual New York fair during Frieze Week in May, the New Art Dealers Alliance announced today that its 2017 iteration will take place in March, coinciding with the Armory Show. It will also leave Basketball City, the Lower East Side event space that has housed the fair since 2013, and set up shop on the far west side of Manhattan, near Houston Street, at Skylight Clarkson North, a venue at 571 Washington Street that has 70,000 square feet of exhibition space.
“NADA is always looking for new ways to bring contemporary art to the public on behalf of our international exhibitors and membership base,” said executive director Heather Hubbs. “We’re looking forward to this venture with Skylight Clarkson North, and returning to the west side for our sixth edition of NADA New York in March.
NADA, which was founded in 2002 and is based in New York, has held its other fair in Miami Beach since 2003. And though it’s always run concurrently with Art Basel Miami Beach, NADA Miami Beach has operated out of a number of venues during its run: an abandoned lot off of Lincoln Avenue, the Ice Palace film studios in Wynwood, the Deauville Beach Resort, and the Fontainebleau hotel. This year, it will be held at the Deauville.
The move from the East to the West represents a return to the New York fair’s original side of Manhattan (the 2012 edition was held at the former Dia Art Foundation Building at 548 West 22nd Street in West Chelsea), but it also places it fairly close to the Armory Show, which opens to VIPs March 1 at Piers 92 & 94 (near West 53rd Street) on the Hudson River and runs through March 5. NADA New York, which opens March 2, is an 11-minute taxi cab ride from the Armory Show (according to Google Maps, though bear in mind that’s without traffic).
The scheduling shift means that NADA New York will open the same day as Independent, the fair started in 2010 by gallerists Elizabeth Dee and Darren Flook. Independent has opened the Thursday of Armory Week since its inception, and with NADA’s move, the two fairs will open on the same day, March 2. (Though proximity is also key here: Independent’s Tribeca location, Spring Studios at 6 St Johns Lane, is a quick 15-minute walk away—or five minutes on bike!)
The move leaves Frieze Week without one of its prominent satellite fairs. Art New York has already made plans to once again open in May, while Spring Masters and 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair have not yet announced plans for their 2017 fairs in New York.
One casualty of the move, one would presume, is the NADA Hoops programming, which allowed for some balling on a Basketball City court designed by the artist Michael Genovese. Last year, the fair hosted a fiercely competitive three-on-three tournament, as well as more casual pick-up games between fairgoers and art magazine editors.