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Frieze, one of many world’s preeminent artwork honest firms, has purchased New York’s Armory Present and is about to buy Expo Chicago. The 2 occasions are among the many most carefully watched unbiased artwork festivals in the US. Phrases of the offers weren’t instantly out there, however each occasions will proceed to function below their current manufacturers, and can retain their present groups.
The acquisitions characterize an incredible coup for Frieze, which already operates festivals in London, New York, Los Angeles, and Seoul, and is itself a subsidiary of sports activities, style, occasions, and media conglomerate IMG, whose mum or dad firm is international sport and leisure megalith Endeavor. “These are each iconic, historic festivals with deep roots into their communities.,” Frieze CEO Simon Fox instructed the New York Occasions. “It was an exquisite alternative for us to speculate additional within the US artwork scene and play a much bigger position in that.”
The Armory Present was based in 1994 because the Gramercy Worldwide Artwork Truthful. Conceived by a unfastened collective of sellers, it was initially held in rooms on the Gramercy Park Lodge; it has since expanded to take over the Jacob Javits Middle on town’s far west aspect every fall. Expo Chicago grew out of Artwork Chicago, which was established in 1980; the newer honest rose from its ashes in 2012. Frieze presently operates its personal New York artwork honest out of New York nonprofit the Shed, within the metropolis’s tony Hudson Yards district; Chicago represents a wholly new marketplace for the honest organizer.
The dual takeovers arrive a little bit greater than a yr after Frieze competitor Artwork Basel, which on the time operated annual festivals in Basel, Miami, and Hong Kong, introduced the launch of its new Paris+ occasion, which displaced French artwork honest FIAC from its iconic longtime Paris residence, the Grand Palais.
“We’ve been rising and innovating throughout all elements of our group,” Fox instructed Artnews. “I see plenty of future progress alternatives for us, excited about Frieze as an entire quite than merely as an operator of festivals.”
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