Rising Painter Danielle Fretwell's Decadent Still Lifes Reinvent the Dutch Masters https://ift.tt/h58Fkaf

In her New Hampshire studio, painter Danielle Fretwell arranges opulent banquets for no one.

She thinks of herself as the host of an imaginary party and carefully selects pieces of silverware and table linens from a collection she’s assembled over years of scouring New England vintage shops. She arranges fresh fruit, scoops ice cream, and pours wine. When the table setting feels just right, Fretwell photographs it. Then, she packs everything away.

She uses her photographs as the basis for her visually seductive still-life paintings. Fretwell is best known for her “split” compositions, in which she juxtaposes her hyperrealistic renderings of banquet scenes with abstracted fields of color that seem like veils or curtains concealing the image below. The paintings are visual riddles challenging perception and blending illusion and truth.

Fretwell arrived at this characteristic style of painting several years ago, and she’s steadily been gaining the art world’s attention since. Two years after earning her MFA at Boston University in 2021, Fretwell was included in “Infinite Loop,” a group show at Alice Amati in London. That was soon followed by “Shallow Invitations,” her first solo exhibition with Amati in 2024.

Now, Fretwell is making her New York solo debut with “Terms of Consumption” at Olney Gleason, showcasing a suite of new paintings that revel in luminous textures from iridescent tablecloths to the glittering scales of fish. The centerpiece of the exhibition, In Good Taste (2026), measures five and a half feet tall. In it, a crimson veil hangs above a decadent banquet of cakes, bowls of ice cream, and fruits. A crisp white linen napkin hangs off the edge of the table with a trompe l’oeil effect.

The splendor and decadence of the Dutch Golden Age banquet scenes certainly come to mind in the presence of these new works.

“What I love so much about 17th-century Dutch still life painting is that it had this focus on opulence, but the paintings are also about skill,” Fretwell explained. “These painters were showing off this full array of everything that they could do with surfaces.”

One painting in particular inspired the works at Olney Gleason. Last fall, during a trip to the National Gallery in London, Fretwell was captivated by the painting A Banquet Still Life (1622) by the artist Floris van Dyck, which was recently acquired by the museum. The painting is a bountiful, almost encyclopedic display of foodstuffs arranged on a tabletop.

“It’s probably my favorite painting that I’ve ever seen,” Fretwell remarked. After seeing the painting, Fretwell began researching the subgenre of banquet still life painting, which focused on large arrangements of objects.

Painting food allows Fretwell to show off what she can do, too. “Food is already attractive to us because we need it to survive,” she said. “But in painting, I can get a level of glossiness that heightens its appeal. When I paint a fish, how can I extend how wet the scales are? Painting is always pushing the effect further than it is in reality.”

But there’s a counterbalance to the controlled perfection of these still lifes. Fretwell’s passages of abstraction rupture the hyperreality of the rest of the canvas, offering a sense of release and distance. Fretwell creates these abstract veils by dragging and pressing bed sheets across a wet canvas. “I’m crawling all over it. It’s a very physical process, and sometimes you see handprints, knee prints, footprints,” she said. In some ways, she sees these passages as more visually honest than the still lifes. “I use fabric in order to depict fabric on the canvas,” she said, “That feels closer to the truth.”

These abstract passages, she says, were inspired in part by works made by Mark Rothko during the mid-20th century. “I saw a Rothko painting that looked like a tabletop with this veil coming down on it,” Fretwell recalled. “That arrangement of geometry and color-blocking was very inspiring to me.”

For Fretwell, her paintings are ruminations on the limits of perception in our oversaturated age. “I think it’s just important for me to remind viewers with these paintings to be skeptical of what they’re looking at,” she said, referencing the rise of AI and the proliferation of internet misinformation. “We are having to discern what is true all the time. Even in a painting, we can see the same thing and come to different conclusions.”

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All the Art You Need to See During Art Basel 2026 https://ift.tt/dn20l4E

Every June, Art Basel reminds us where the modern art fair tradition began. The gold standard of art fairs since its founding in 1970, the Swiss fair is both sprawling and exacting, with top galleries from around the world offering a sweeping view of the commercial art market now—from buzzy emerging names to breathtaking blue-chip masters.

The fair itself is very much the center of gravity, but the city has more to offer. Basel may be one of the most enjoyable fair weeks precisely because its list of essential stops is finite: a sprinkling of fairs, museum exhibitions, and gallery shows with a strong track record of excellence. It’s a refreshing counter to the typical jam-packed art week that sends you crisscrossing a major metropolis at warp speed.

From the fairs of the Messeplatz to standout museum shows and the genre-defying Basel Social Club, here are 10 stops to make during Art Basel 2026, whether you’ll be there in person or are simply curious about what you’ll be missing.

If you are Basel-bound, save the locations below to your phone with our Google Maps list.

1. Art Basel

June 18–21 (Invitation-only days on June 16 and 17), Messe Basel, Hall 2

For its 2026 edition, Art Basel’s flagship fair brings together 290 galleries from 43 countries and territories, with works ranging from exceptional 20th-century pieces to fresh contemporary art from some of the most sought-after artists working today.

Excitingly, this year marks the launch of Basel Exclusive, a new initiative that will see galleries unveiling select marquee works for the first time at the fair’s VIP opening—meaning they have not been circulated online or shared with collectors in advance. While we don’t know what exactly is coming, Artnet News reported a long list of participating artists spanning major names Marcel Duchamp and Leonora Carrington through to rising voices like Alvaro Barrington, Poppy Jones, and Klára Hosnedlová.

2. Art Basel Unlimited

June 18–21 (Invitation-only days on June 15 evening and June 17), Messe Basel, Hall 1

A sector within an art fair rarely warrants its own spot in a guide like this, but Unlimited is the exception. It is an annual, sprawling showstopper, bringing together artworks so large, ambitious, or performative that you would hardly expect to encounter them at an art fair. It presents the kind of work you might expect to find in a museum—at a much larger volume.

This year, Unlimited features 59 projects spanning installation, sculpture, performance, film, and immersive environments, and is curated for the first time by Ruba Katrib, chief curator and director of curatorial affairs at MoMA PS1. Among the artists likely to make an impression are Matthew Barney, Tracey Emin, Ryan Gander, Theaster Gates, Eva Jospin, Zsófia Keresztes, Woody de Othello, Dana Schutz, and Wael Shawky.

3. Liste Art Fair Basel

June 16–21 (Invitation-only day on June 15), Messe Basel, Hall 1.1

Founded in 1996 as Basel’s “young art fair,” Liste has built a reputation for platforming emerging galleries and artists. This year brings together more than 100 galleries from around the world.

Among the booths to seek out are Pangée, presenting Bronson Smillie’s sculptural drawings; Sorondo Projects, with a geologically driven conversation through works by Nikolay Morgunov and María Elena Pombo; Afriart Gallery, showing Fiker Solomon’s fiber works and emotive ecological forms; and max goelitz, presenting Ju Young Kim’s sculptures, which reimagine the infrastructure and psychology of airplanes.

4. Basel Social Club

June 14–20, Erdbeergraben 1

Though it’s become a fixture on the Basel calendar, Basel Social Club reinvents itself every year. Less art fair than socially driven meeting place, the annual event has previously taken shape in a former factory, a farm, and an old bank; for its fifth edition, it settles into a vacant office building a few minutes’ walk from the Basel SBB train station.

The context is fitting for a sprawling exhibition centered on the workplace as a site of critical reflection, with some artists creating work in response to the building itself. Throughout the week, Basel Social Club will bring together art, performances, music, food, and space for conversation—while considering labor and productivity in this moment, when remote work is normalized and AI is radically disrupting entire industries. There’s even an “Out of Office” zone where you can take a break.

5. MAZE/Design Basel

June 14–18, Offene Kirche Elisabethen, Elisabethenstrasse 27

Now in its second edition, MAZE/Design Basel returns to the majestic Offene Kirche Elisabethen, a Neo-Gothic church in the middle of Basel’s Old Town.

This year, there’s also an adjacent pavilion added to accommodate more galleries. Founded in 2025 in response to the absence of Design Miami/Basel, MAZE has quickly positioned itself as a go-to destination for collectible design. It will convene an international group of galleries including Laffanour | Galerie Downtown, Mitterrand, Ketabi Bourdet, Galerie kreo, Salon 94, and more.

6. Kunstmuseum Basel

St. Alban-Graben 16

The oldest public art museum in the world, Kunstmuseum Basel reliably delivers an impressive slate of shows each June. This year brings an exciting contrast: the largest Helen Frankenthaler exhibition in Europe to date and “Cao Fei: Testimonies to the Near Future,” a survey of the acclaimed Chinese artist exploring digitalization, street culture, and speculative futures. And the museum’s permanent collection is always a treat, with Old Masters, 19th-century paintings, modern icons, and contemporary works spread across three buildings.

7. Kunsthalle Basel

Steinenberg 7

Kunsthalle Basel, one of Europe’s sharpest contemporary art spaces, presents two solo exhibitions by artists making their European institutional solo debuts. Shuang Li examines how digital technologies shape relationships, bodies, and desire, premiering a film installation that takes up extreme weather to consider climate crisis and capitalist extraction. And Janiva Ellis shows 11 new paintings that delve into three loaded traditions in painting: the religious, the landscape, and the erotic.

8. Fondation Beyeler

Baselstrasse 101, Riehen

A short tram ride from the Messe, Fondation Beyeler is presenting the first major Pierre Huyghe solo exhibition in Switzerland (through September 13th). The French artist is known for unsettling, boundary-crossing works that bring together film, technology, biology, digital systems, and physical environments, often blurring the line between fiction and reality. Conceived specifically for Fondation Beyeler, the exhibition will pair new and recent works, offering a rare look at Huyghe’s evolving practice.

9. Basel gallery shows

Various locations

Basel’s gallery scene is small, but there are several strong shows worth catching. Start with Hauser & Wirth, which presents a dedicated exhibition of Max Beckmann curated in close collaboration with the artist’s granddaughter Mayen Beckmann, promising an intimate view into his practice (through July 11th). A short walk away, Gagosian is presenting an extension of its Art Basel booth at its Basel outpost. And nearby, MASSIMODECARLO stages “DEE-TOUR,” a pop-up presentation of works by France-Lise McGurn at Domushaus, where the Glasgow-born artist’s paintings extend beyond the canvas and across the exhibition space (June 15th to 21th). And keep heading northwest to see the newly renovated von Bartha, which reopens during Art Basel week with “Fable and Form,” pairing works by Barry Flanagan and Ursula Reuter Christiansen (June 15th to August 7th).

10. Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger (KBH.G)

Spitalstrasse 18

Artist Chloe Wise, best known for her lush figurative paintings, presents her first major institutional exhibition in Switzerland with “EXTRASENSORY,” her most ambitious film project to date. For the show, the foundation’s roughly 5,400-square-foot Kunsthalle space will become a cinematic environment, with screens surrounding viewers as performers play figures that draw from religion, mythology, sci-fi, and mass media. The film channels the heightened lighting of Wise’s paintings and the drama of late 20th-century cinema, using its seductive visuals to poke at fantasy, consumer culture, and the stories we choose to believe. The show runs through September 6th.

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Argentinian artist Pablo Bronstein joins Olney Gleason. https://ift.tt/3IrkpZA

New York gallery Olney Gleason has announced representation of London-based artist Pablo Bronstein, in collaboration with London gallery Herald St and Galleria Franco Noero. Bronstein’s first exhibition with Olney Gleason will open in September 2026.

Over the past twenty years, the Argentina-born artist has playfully reimagined histories of architecture in elaborate drawings that freely blend Baroque, Rococo, and Postmodern aesthetics in fantastical visions. His practice also expands into printmaking, site-specific installations, films, and choreography. He is known for works that toe the line between satire and kitsch, presenting invented narratives in the guise of historical documentation.

The upcoming exhibition will feature a new series of enlarged clock faces in acrylic on paper, an ongoing series the artist has been working on for close to a decade. These works extend the artist’s longstanding engagement with architectural history, decorative arts, and the visual culture of the bourgeoisie.

Classical Triumphant, 2026
Pablo Bronstein (b. 1977)
Olney Gleason

The show will also mark a return to New York for the artist. In 2009, Bronstein was the subject of an influential, early-career solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in which he pondered whimsical histories and futures for the New York museum.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1977 and based in London, Bronstein immigrated to London as a child. He earned his BA from Slade School of Fine Art in 2001, followed by a Master of Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2004.

In 2006, Bronstein had a breakthrough moment when he took attendees of Frieze Art Fair on a bus tour of London’s less-than-stellar postmodern buildings. That same year, the artist orchestrated Plaza Minuet, a choreographed performance piece at the Tate Triennial using Baroque-trained dancers.

New World, 2026
Pablo Bronstein (b. 1977)
Olney Gleason

The representation announcement comes on the heels of several institutional presentations. In 2025, Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, England, presented “The Temple of Solomon and its Contents,” an installation comprising imagined designs for the biblical structure. Bronstein is currently included in the Chengdu Biennale, on view through August, and a work by the artist remains on view at Tate Britain following the museum’s major collection rehang in 2023.

Other exhibitions have included “We Live in Mannerist Times” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 2015; “Historical Rhode Island Decor” at the RISD Museum in Providence, Rhode Island, in 2019; and “Hell in Its Heyday” at London’s Sir John Soane’s Museum in 2021.

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David Hockney, whose paintings chronicled modern life, has died at 88. https://ift.tt/aVqKoF9

David Hockney, the British artist whose vibrant paintings of swimming pools, landscapes, portraits, and domestic life made him one of the most influential figures in contemporary art, has died at the age of 88. According to the artist’s representatives, Hockney passed away peacefully at home.

Over a career spanning more than six decades, Hockney continually reinvented both his subject matter and his methods while remaining committed to the act of looking. From the sun-drenched swimming pools of Los Angeles that helped define his international reputation in the 1960s and ’70s to his expansive Yorkshire landscapes and later iPad drawings, he combined technical experimentation with a bright, deeply personal visual language.

Born in Bradford, England, in 1937, Hockney studied at the Royal College of Art in London and emerged as one of the leading voices of postwar British art. His early work explored themes of identity, desire, and everyday life at a time when homosexuality was still criminalized in Britain. Later works, including A Bigger Splash (1967) and Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972), became defining images of 20th-century art.

Hockney’s artistic influence extended far beyond painting. He was an accomplished draftsman, printmaker, photographer, stage designer, and theorist of image-making. His experiments with photographic collage in the 1980s superimposed photographs together to play with perspective. Later, he embraced digital technologies, showing a willingness to evolve that is rare for painters of his stature. In 2010, Hockney began drawing on iPads, producing ambitious digital landscapes and portraits. “It’s just a medium,” he said in an interview at the Louisiana Museum. “But I am aware of the revolutionary aspects of it, and its implications.” In later years, he used this medium to depict his home region of Yorkshire, which he returned to in the 2000s, and Normandy, where he moved in 2019.

Hockney also became one of the most commercially successful artists of his generation. Demand for his work surged in the decades before his death, driven by both institutional recognition and a growing global collector base. In 2018, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972) sold at Christie’s for $90.3 million, briefly making Hockney the most expensive living artist at auction. While that record was later surpassed, his market remained among the strongest in contemporary art, with paintings, drawings, and editions regularly commanding significant prices across both the primary and secondary markets.

In recent years, Hockney remained remarkably active. Major exhibitions at institutions including the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris and the Serpentine in London reaffirmed his status as one of the most celebrated living artists. Future shows at Tate Britain, London, and the Munch Museum, Oslo, among others, are also in development.

Even in his late eighties, he continued to produce new work and advocate for the enduring power of figurative painting.

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Katherine Bernhardt, Hank Willis Thomas among artists creating soccer-ball sculptures in New York for FIFA World Cup 2026. https://ift.tt/6913ykc

Artists Katherine Bernhardt, Hank Willis Thomas, and Tomokazu Matsuyama are among 23 artists who will debut soccer-ball sculptures across New York City and New Jersey as part of a major public art project tied to the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

The participating artists were nominated by the leadership of museums, including MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, El Museo del Barrio, and the Brooklyn Museum. Organized by ARTS 14C, a non-profit that focuses on arts accessibility, the large-scale installation is an official partnership with the FIFA World Cup 2026 organizing body.

This project, which will see sculptures installed across all five boroughs, also marks the realization of the late arts patron Agnes Gund’s last philanthropic project. Gund was a close friend of Diana Burroughs, the ARTS 14C’s residency program director, who conceptualized the initiative. Gund was asked to help bring institutionally celebrated artists onto the project, to cultivate a new contemporary art audience through the global popularity of the World Cup, which kicks off today.

Among the installation locations are Grand Central Terminal, the Brooklyn Museum, MetLife Stadium, and sites overlooking the Manhattan skyline.

The participating artists include Katherine Bernhardt, Hank Willis Thomas, Kevin Beasley, Eddie Martinez, Fred Wilson, Bony Ramirez, Tomokazu Matsuyama, Ronny Quevedo, Leo Castañeda, Taína H. Cruz, Nyugen Smith, Edgar Heap of Birds, and Futura 2000, among others.

The sculptures will remain on public view through Labor Day. Following the exhibition, a selection of the works will enter permanent public collections while others will be auctioned by Christie's, the project's official auction partner, with proceeds supporting charitable causes.

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Why Art Basel’s Swiss Edition Is the World’s Most Important Art Fair https://ift.tt/CT9URbr

In the art world, nothing can be said to be certain except death, taxes, and Art Basel delivering a must-see fair in its namesake city. Since its founding in 1970 by gallerists Ernst Beyeler, Trudi Bruckner, and Balz Hilt, Art Basel has turned its small namesake Swiss city into the contemporary art world’s beating heart for one week each June.

Here, hundreds of the world’s top galleries bring their strongest works from the 20th century to today, attracting tens of thousands of visitors, including scores of serious collectors and curators from both private and institutional backgrounds.

Though the fair has grown to include editions in Miami Beach, Hong Kong, Paris, and, most recently, Qatar, it’s the hometown event that remains the industry’s gold standard. Here, we break down why this remains the case more than 50 years after it started.

Art Basel’s consistency has continually set the art market tone

More than 300 annual art fairs have launched globally since Art Basel began, yet none have matched the Swiss fair’s reputation for quality control that it’s built over that half-century.

The fair’s foundational commitment to showing only the best galleries and artists is enforced through a rigorous—and much-discussed—selection process.

That has ensured Art Basel has weathered industry cycles, pandemics, and market crashes, thanks to the passion of both its team and its attendees.

Few people understand this longevity more acutely than Stefan von Bartha, whose first time at Art Basel came at just six weeks old, when his family’s local namesake gallery was run by his parents, Margareta and Miklos.

“What continues to make Art Basel in Basel unique is the combination of visionary leadership,” he explained to Artsy.

“From its founders to its current director, Maike Cruse, and an exceptionally knowledgeable and engaged audience that returns year after year.”

Curation remains at the core of Art Basel

The quality of Art Basel begins with the fair’s eight-person committee, made up of gallerists themselves. Each year, they’re tasked with sorting through hundreds of proposals, submitted nine months ahead of the fair with the exact artists each gallery will choose and intricate mockups of the booth layout.

And with no gallery guaranteed a spot—no matter their history with the fair—the selection process ensures that each exhibitor must rethink their approach year after year.

The fair often receives more than 750 applications from around the world and must whittle down the final number to just below 300.

It’s this peer-driven approach that has ensured the fair remains consistently high-quality, with first-class programming drawing many gallerists to reapply despite the financial risks.

“Art fairs are a huge burden we choose to take every year,” Lorraine Kiang, co-founder of New York gallery Kiang Malingue, told Artsy. “Art Basel in Switzerland is not as much a social event as its other locations. For institutions and curators, it is an essential time to see the best-quality work by artists.”

Part of the draw for dealers, including Kiang, comes from Art Basel’s special sectors. These include the public art program Parcours, which transforms the nearby Clarastrasse and Rhine riverbank into a public gallery of site-specific installations. Unlimited, its platform for monumental sculptures, immersive video programs, and other similarly ambitious works, also takes place in a hall opposite the fair.

The Art Basel flywheel

Art Basel is built on a feedback loop of excellence. Galleries bring must-see pieces because they know they’ll be seen by big collectors and curators, and these visitors come because they know they’ll see great work.

The fair ensures there’s a solid range by selling booths to a mix of mega-galleries such as Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, and Pace, as well as fast-rising spaces from around the world. Major collectors maintain a regular presence too: It’s not uncommon to see some of the world’s leading patrons cutting a path through the fair.

“Art collectors who come to Basel are the most serious and dedicated to long-term art collecting. [They] do their homework, learning about works that compel them,” noted Kiang. “For me, it’s not the quality of the hotels, nor the hospitality and food; it’s the content and quality of the collectors.”

And with the introduction of this year’s “Basel Exclusive” initiative, Art Basel has shown that the old fair can learn new tricks. The program asks exhibitors to hold back at least one major work from digital previews sent to clients, opting instead to show it when the fair opens. Nearly 200 of the 232 exhibitors in the main Galleries section are taking part, sending a strong signal that first encounters don’t always have to happen through a screen.

Constellation events in Basel bring the buzz

Art Basel is more than just a singular fair. Each year, it anchors a constellation of events throughout the city, including the smaller satellite fairs Liste and Basel Social Club (BSC), and major institutional shows at the likes of Fondation Beyeler, which “always [delivers] the best show of the year, when it comes to foundations,” collector Domenico Positano told Artsy (this year it will mount a solo presentation of French artist Pierre Huyghe).

Unlike other major cities hosting tentpole art fairs, like Paris or Miami, it’s the smallness of Basel that becomes a strength: Every essential event revolves around art. There are enough gallery dinners, foundation openings, and unorthodox side events—BSC’s locations have included a former bank vault—to fill the week. It combines to create a condensed yet focused pilgrimage for both casual and committed art lovers.

What sells in Basel matters everywhere

The high bar for quality that sets Art Basel apart also ensures that the fair remains a key barometer for the art market at large.

What sells and to whom is closely watched by galleries, auction houses, advisors, and market watchers.

The primary-market benchmarks of Art Basel sales can set the agenda for the secondary markets and later auction seasons, while works that sell quickly to institutional collectors can signal wider collecting patterns and genuine validation for an artist.

Prices ripple outward, and many artists have had breakout moments of visibility on the fair floor as collector appetites and momentum play out in real time.

For example, in 2013, a young collector bought a work by then-27-year-old Oscar Murillo at a June auction for £146,500 ($224,145)—smashing its $30,000 estimate—after discovering him at Carlos Ishikawa’s Basel booth. The Colombian artist has since gone on to win the Turner Prize in 2019, and his works are in collections ranging from the Fondazione Prada and the MoMA to Tokyo’s Taguchi Art Collection.

More than anything else, Art Basel is defined by the extent to which every corner of the industry comes together to show why contemporary art remains relevant today.

“Art Basel remains the one week of the year when the only thing you're going to do is see art, engage with it, and talk about it 24/7,” Positano told Artsy. “The quality of artworks presented in Messeplatz is the best of the year; every gallery is waiting for June to show their top-notch works.”

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Frieze announces almost 300 galleries to take part in its 2026 London fairs. https://ift.tt/ehwm8SD

Frieze has announced the details of Frieze London and Frieze Masters 2026, which will both take place from October 14 through 18 in Regent’s Park. The two fairs will together host almost 300 galleries from 48 countries and regions, with Frieze London welcoming 172 galleries and Frieze Masters welcoming nearly 140 (some galleries will mount booths at both fairs).

The exhibitor count marks a slight uptick on the fairs’ 2025 editions, which brought together 282 galleries from 45 countries.

This year’s edition of Frieze London will introduce a new curated section, “The Code Universe,” organized by Carol Yinghua Lu, director of the Inside-Out Art Museum in Beijing. The section will examine how artists respond to societal transformation through mass culture, with solo presentations including Selma Selman with Budapest’s acb and Carolyn Lazard with Berlin’s Trautwein Herleth.

At its entrance, Frieze London will open with solo artist stands by Márcia Falcão (presented by Brazilian gallery Fortes d’Aloia & Gabriel) and Agata Ingarden (presented by Cologne gallery Berthold Pott). Major returning galleries include Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace Gallery, White Cube, and David Zwirner. The section Artist-to-Artist returns for its fourth edition with seven solo presentations—up from six last year. Meanwhile, the Focus section, supported by Stone Island, welcomes back several galleries that sold out their booths in 2025, including Ginny on Frederick and Harlesden High Street. New galleries to Frieze London this year include hometown galleries Alice Amati and Galerina, as well as Paris’s Galerie Jocelyn Wolff and Kyiv’s Voloshyn Gallery.

“Frieze London and Frieze Masters are built around a shared idea: that contemporary practice and art history are most compelling in dialogue,” said Kristell Chadé, Frieze’s executive director of fairs, in a statement.

Frieze Masters, meanwhile, returns for its second edition under director Emanuela Tarizzo. Spotlight, its section dedicated to solo presentations of 20th-century artists, returns in its largest edition to date under new curators Dr. Devika Singh and Dr. Sofia Gotti. Among others, the section will include Roland Dorcely presented by Loeve&Co, Syed Sadequain presented by Grosvenor Gallery, and Anna Zemánková presented by The Gallery of Everything.

The fair will also debut “Queering Modernism: Visual Languages of the 20th Century,” a curatorial theme conceived by Anke Kempkes foregrounding works around the fair that engage with queer experience, while Reflections, curated by Abby Bangser, returns for its second edition. That section, spread throughout the fair, includes works from and inspired by the collections of Casa Luis Barragán in Mexico City and The Cosmic House in London.

“Frieze Masters has always resisted the idea of a single art history,” said Tarizzo in a statement. “The 2026 edition builds on that position.”

Frieze Sculpture—Frieze’s outdoor display of large-scale sculptural works—will also run from September 16 through November 1 in Regent’s Park’s English Gardens.

Last year’s Frieze London and Masters fairs closed with stronger-than-expected results, with reported sales led by Hauser & Wirth’s placement of a Gabriele Münter painting for CHF 2.4 million ($3.01 million) at Frieze Masters.

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