The Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) has announced some program highlights of the 2017 edition of The Art Show, along with a special silent auction of an important Alexander Calder work. The nation’s most respected and longest-running art fair will take place March 1-5, 2017, at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, with a Gala Preview on February 28 to benefit Henry Street Settlement. 

For the fair’s keynote public program, the ADAA will host a panel discussion featuring insights from arts and museum leaders on the health of the country’s cultural nonprofits. Gathering Lawrence J. Wheeler, Director of the North Carolina Museum of Art; Kaywin Feldman, Nivin and Duncan McMillan Director of the Minneapolis Institute of Art; and Zannie Voss, Director of the National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University; the discussion will be moderated by Art in America Editor-inChief Lindsay Pollock and will take place at the Park Avenue Armory on Friday, March 3, at 6:00 p.m.

ADAA Member Presentations at The Art Show 2017   

The Art Show’s 72 presentations are selected from over 100 proposals from ADAA member galleries, providing audiences with high-quality presentations of works from the 19th century through today, by artists of a variety of genres, practices, and national and international origin. The 2017 show will include a number of first-time exhibitors, including Fergus McCaffrey, who will present works by Viennese artist Birgit Jürgenssen; James Fuentes, who will juxtapose works by Tamuna Siribladze and Noam Rappaport; Hosfelt Gallery, who will highlight four decades of work by Argentinian artist Liliana Porter; and Casey Kaplan, who will present paintings by American artist Sarah Crowner. Longtime ADAA members who are newly returning to the fair include Paula Cooper Gallery, presenting new works by post-conceptual artist Kelley Walker; and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, debuting new works created for The Art Show by Brian Belott.

“We’re pleased to welcome new and returning members to The Art Show in 2017,” said Chair of The Art Show, Anthony Meier. “This year’s fair will showcase an amazing range of international artists and works that span over two centuries of art history. Through both solo and group exhibitions, members will provide a platform for artists who deserve further exploration as well as offer exciting approaches to well-known artists and helping to shed new light on their work.”

With its distinctly intimate and contemplative atmosphere, The Art Show serves as a platform for many ADAA members to develop thoughtful presentations curated around specific conceptual or formal themes of visual art practice. Such highlights this year include Women of (New) Abstract Painting, organized by Crown Point Press, which will bring together paintings by Tomma Abts, Jacqueline Humphries, and Charline Von Heyl; while Barbara Mathes Gallery will explore Painting and the Photographic Image through works by Allan D’Arcangelo, Jan Dibbets, Joe Goode, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Sigmar Polke, and others. Pace/MacGill Gallery’s collection of photographs by Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, William Eggleston, Irving Penn, and others, will focus on light as both subject and medium.

Many of the fair’s solo exhibitions will explore the practices of some of the most significant artists working today, including several debuts of artworks created specifically for The Art Show 2017. David Zwirner will present new paintings on canvas and on paper by Chris Ofili, which have never been shown publicly before. Tanya Bonakdar Gallery will present recent environmentally focused works by Olafur Eliasson, including watercolors formed with water from a melting ice cube. Coinciding with the Ohio-based artist Scott Olson’s first solo exhibition with James Cohan at its Lower East Side location, the gallery is dedicating its Art Show booth to new paintings by Olson that reflect the centrality of material production and transformation in his practice. Salon 94 will debut work by MoMA-honored Pakistani sculptor Huma Bhabha; 303 Gallery will unveil a new triptych, Antiquarian Sleeping in His Shop, created specifically for The Art Show by Rodney Graham; and Petzel will present the first four-decade survey of Joyce Pensato’s work.

In addition to presentations of leading contemporary artists, member galleries’ exhibitions will offer new insights on established and influential artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Abstract Expressionist Lee Krasner, whose Solstice Series collages will be presented by Paul Kasmin Gallery; and Richard Diebenkorn, whose major prints from the Ocean Park series will be presented by Van Doren Waxter. Additional exhibitions of note feature Louise Bourgeois, whose rare and early works will be highlighted by Peter Blum Gallery; Norman Lewis, whose paintings will be presented by Michael Rosenfeld Gallery; Post-Impressionist Édouard Vuillard, whose paintings and works on paper will be presented by Jill Newhouse Gallery; and American landscape painter George Inness, whose work will be featured in a historical survey for the first time in decades by Thomas Colville Fine Art.

The fair also includes notable surveys of Latin American and Mexican artists, including an exhibition spanning more than 40 years of work by Cuban artist Zilia Sánchez, presented by Galerie Lelong. CRG Gallery will present a solo exhibition of works by Brazilian artist Alexandre da Cunha, and Alexander Gray Associates will present works created collaboratively by German-born Uruguayan artist Luis Camnitzer and The New York Graphic Workshop. Mary-Anne Martin/Fine Art, noted for its Latin American art program, will celebrate the gallery’s 35th anniversary with selections from modern Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo, 20th-century Abstract Expressionist and Surrealist Roberto Matta, Afro-Cuban painter Wifredo Lam, and Uruguayan-Catalan Modernist Joaquín Torres García.

Meredith Ward Fine Art's exhibition of works at The Art Show will explore the influence of the Abstraction-Création group in 1930s Paris on 20th-century American artists, situating them among the broader international community that championed abstract art in the 20th-century. The exhibition will include works by Charles Biederman, Ilya Bolotowsky, Flora Crockett, Stuart Davis, Werner Drewes, Frederick Kann, Paul Kelpe, Blanche Lazzell, Ad Reinhardt, Rolph Scarlett, Charles Shaw, Albert Swinden, Charmion Von Wiegand, Steve Wheeler, and Jean Xceron.

In conjunction with The Art Show, the ADAA Foundation will present for sale The Clove (1936)—a painted steel metal sculpture by Alexander Calder—through a silent bidding process.  Bidding will begin online through Paddle 8 on February 17 available at paddle8.com/auction/ADAA, and will continue in-person at the Park Avenue Armory through the run of The Art Show from February 28 through March 5. This marks only the second time in the work’s history that The Clove will be on public view, the first being the 1937 exhibition Calder: Stabiles & Mobiles at Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. The work of the Foundation reflects ADAA members’ long-held commitment to advancing broad engagement with the full scope of the arts. Proceeds from the sale of The Clove will strengthen the Foundation’s mission to encourage the appreciation of art and art history through its support of curatorial research and exhibition development.