Frieze New York 2026: The Standouts

Frieze New York opened at The Shed with the usual parade of collectors, curators, artists, gallerists, and the occasional familiar face moving through the aisles as if the fair were a private appointment. Leonardo DiCaprio made his rounds, Anderson Cooper found Klaus Biesenbach, and the room had that familiar New York electricity where business, performance, and people-watching blur together.

Year after year, Frieze gets accused of being too polished, too sealed-off, too much escalator and not enough bite. Regardless, in its 15th edition — 68 galleries, 25 countries — it still manages to give the city a decent excuse to leave work early, stretch a lunch break, or wander through Hudson Yards in the name of "just one more booth." More importantly, it anchors a week that also includes NADA, Independent, TEFAF, and a dense spread of Chelsea and Tribeca openings, makingNew York feel briefly and gratifyingly overcommitted to art.

The booths that held the eye understood that tension between polish and teeth. Perrotin delivered one of the fair’s best presentations with one of their artists Genesis Belanger, whose porcelain and stoneware works sit somewhere between witty, eerie, and slightly haunted. Her little office setup — phone, pen, notebook, side of peanuts — a nostalgic send-up of obsolete technologies and domestic objects that already feel weirdly missed. Victoria Miro went for a quieter, more intimate confidence, pairing figurative works by Chantal Joffe, Alice Neel, María Berrío, Hernan Bass, Saskia Colwell, Paula Rego, and Emil Sands into a room that felt carefully paced rather than overdesigned.

Genesis Belanger

Perrotin booth

David Zwirner brought a strong, large-scale Joe Bradley presentation, all color and swagger. Thaddaeus Ropac had one of the fair’s most striking paintings by recently passed Baezlitz, which sold quickly. Marianna Simnett drew a crowd with her vivid female figures — colorful, cinematic, and slightly uncanny — shown with Société Berlin, while the booth had the extra charge of familiar faces, including friends of the artist and Balenciaga muse Eliza Douglas.

Pace kept things pared back — just Maya Lin and Leo Villareal, both unveiling public commissions this year. Villareal's Golden Game returned in a new size, Lin showed Silver Yellowstone (2026), prices ranging from $100,000 to $200,000. Across the aisle, Hauser & Wirth brought an all-female lineup, with Cindy Sherman's new portraits stopping people mid-stride — and selling just as fast.

Katherine Bernhardt

Katherine Bernhardt brought her own charge of exuberance to the fair with Canada Gallery: those playful, color-pop paintings that look breezy until you realize how precisely they land. Bunny Rogers did what Bunny Rogers does best: made people stop. Almine Rech offered a survey that moved from Pablo Picasso and James Turrell to Dustin Jelinek and Alexandre Lenoir. Turrell, according to reports, sold.

And then there was Gagosian, which rarely discloses sales but always knows how to keep the room talking. This time the booth carried a subtle Venice echo — a Derrick Adams collage, a mural tribute to the late Koyo Kouoh unveiled at the Biennale just days earlier — alongside a Helen Frankenthaler, a Sarah Sze apparently on hold before most people had finished their first lap, a Stanley Whitney, a Gerhard Richter, a Francesca Woodman.

María Berrío

Marianna Simnett

Cindy Sherman

James Turrell

Pace Gallery

The Sales

The deals didn't wait for the champagne to warm. Ropac moved fast — a Baselitz at €1.4 million, a Katz at $600,000, a Rauschenberg at $825,000, a Snyder at $150,000. Zwirner's Joe Bradley paintings were on hold before lunch, confirmation still pending. White Cube had the day's most decisive run: two El Anatsui sculptures at $2.2 and $1.9 million, a Gormley at £450,000, a Pindell at $275,000 — all gone by late afternoon. Sherman's new photographs at Hauser & Wirth moved before the prints even existed; editions two and three are yours if you can wait five weeks. Almine Rech placed a Turrell for close to $1 million.

If Frieze can sometimes feel like a fair designed to be admired more than felt, this year’s strongest booths at least offered friction: wit, beauty, recognition, and a little nerve. Enough, in other words, to make the whole thing worth showing up for.