COURTESY NADA NEW YORK
The New Art Dealers Alliance announced today that it will partner with the Bronx Museum of the Arts to create the NADA Acquisition Gift for BxMA, an initiative that will allow curators from the institution to select one work from NADA’s March fair in New York to add to its permanent collection. The first work will be chosen at this year’s edition of NADA New York, to open March 8 at Skylight Clarkson Square.
“We are thrilled to be partnering with the Bronx Museum,” Heather Hubbs, NADA’s executive director, said in a statement. “NADA was founded in New York, and we could not be more proud to have artwork from our exhibitors in such a venerable collection. This initiative reflects our continued commitment to providing our exhibitors with unique opportunities to connect directly with influential curators.”
The partnership comes following last year’s announcement that NADA’s other fair, in Miami, would partner with the Pérez Art Museum Miami for an acquisition fund. That initiative was inaugurated during the December 2017 fair, where PAMM purchased a work by the Puerto Rican artist Chemi Rosado-Seijo from the booth of San Juan gallery Embajada.
Several other fairs have similar fully funded acquisitions partnerships with neighboring museums. The Frieze Tate Fund is supported the fair’s part owner Endeavor (formerly known as WME | IMG) and has allowed the London institution to acquire over 100 works from Frieze London. In 2017, Endeavor and LIFEWTR, the premium water brand, gave $50,000 to allow Frieze New York to forge a similar bond with the Brooklyn Museum. The institution chose to acquire a work by Virginia Jaramillo from Hales Gallery.
And several other smaller fairs have partnered with local museums to help add new work to their collections—the Dallas Museum of Art benefits from the Dallas Art Fair Foundation Acquisition Program, for instance.
“This is a particularly meaningful collaboration between two New York institutions, especially as our curatorial department focuses on our permanent collection,” Sergio Bessa, the Bronx Museum’s director of curatorial programs, said in a statement. “We look forward to selecting a work that speaks to our curators, and to the 100,000 visitors that come to the Bronx Museum each year.”