In a Turbulent Time, TEFAF New York Keeps Its Focus on the Classics

New York Times

01-05-2025

When the European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) held its very first New York fair at the historic Park Avenue Armory in 2016, the global art market was in robust health: Art sales had marked a near-record of $64 billion worldwide in the preceding year, and were at a peak in the United States, according to an art market report by the cultural economist Clare McAndrew.
As TEFAF New York prepares to welcome visitors again — running from May 9 through 13, and coinciding with the closely watched May auctions — the outlook is downright cloudy. Global art sales tumbled for the second year in a row in 2024, totaling an estimated $57.5 billion, and the U.S. market was down 9 percent from the previous year, according to the recent Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report. More recently, stock markets have been jittery since President Trump announced sweeping tariffs on countries around the world on April 2, then said he would back down on tariffs on goods from most countries, except China, for 90 days. Economic turbulence has an immediate impact on the net worth — and the collecting appetite — of those who buy art.
'The volatility that you see in the markets writ large is reflected in the art market,' said Alex Logsdail, chief executive of the Lisson Gallery, an international art dealership. He said business had 'slowed significantly,' though it was 'still happening' and 'has not fallen off a cliff' as it did at the time of the 2008 global financial crisis.
'This is a funny thing for me to say out loud, but it's true: Nobody needs any of the things we are selling,' he said. Collecting art is 'a question of want and desire and passion and confidence. It is up to us to create those conditions,' regardless of the economic context, he added.
Lisson has exhibited at TEFAF New York's spring fair from its first iteration in 2017, and Logsdail served for a time on its selection committee (which decides which galleries will get booths). He said TEFAF New York was well positioned for the current circumstances, because in unstable economic conditions, the focus turns to quality and value, and to 'well-tested' and affordably priced objects. And right now, he said, 'people are taking a very active interest in artists whose prices are quite low.'
The Lisson stand this year will feature artworks by Hiroshi Sugimoto, Sean Scully, Olga de Amaral, Carmen Herrera and Anish Kapoor, priced between $200,000 and $1 million, Logsdail said. Last year at TEFAF New York, Lisson said that it sold, among other objects, an Anish Kapoor sculpture for 625,000 pounds ($840,000). Other exhibitors at TEFAF New York bring artworks that are in a similar price range. By contrast, at the world's largest contemporary-art fair, Art Basel, works can sell for seven- and even eight-digit sums.
TEFAF is a Dutch organization whose main event — held in Maastricht, the Netherlands, each year — offers treasures and objects spanning 7,000 years of art history, most of them pre-20th century. Its New York offshoot shows much more recent art: Two-thirds of exhibitors are modern and contemporary galleries, and other exhibitors offer antiquities and jewelry.
TEFAF branched out to New York in 2016 as part of an effort to rejuvenate and geographically broaden its collector base. Initially, there were two New York fairs: one in the fall, focused on galleries of older art and of antiques; the other in the spring, focused on modern and contemporary work. After the coronavirus pandemic broke out in 2020, the fall event was scrapped.
Highlights at this year's fair include a circa 1933 mask-shaped plaster sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, a 1930s painting of a girl by the French artist Marie Laurencin, a blue acrylic coffee table (from 2012) designed by the architect Zaha Hadid, and a 1948 entrance canopy in folded sheet steel that was once part of a school in France, designed by the French architect Jean Prouvé.
Leanne Jagtiani, director of TEFAF New York, said the fair had a similar range of objects and historical periods as Maastricht, but was about one-third the size, with around 90 booths.
'Because we're small enough, we can mix it all up,' she said. 'You can walk past a design dealer, then your favorite modern and contemporary dealer, then a jewelry dealer, and there's this element of discovery. We don't section people off.'
That format allows visitors to 'open their eyes to opportunities they might not be looking for,' said Jagtiani, who recalled that when she previously worked in private sales at Christie's, she found that buyers 'collect across much broader categories than perhaps we had realized.'
Jagtiani acknowledged the impact of 'external economics' on this year's event. She said President Trump's initial tariff announcement had the effect of a 'hand grenade' before it was rolled back. 'Art fairs are a long-lead, live event. Galleries are going to start planning what they're bringing, and how they're getting it here, months in advance,' she said. To be faced with the prospect of tariffs as high as 40 percent came as a 'shock wave,' she said.
Cross-collecting at TEFAF New York has been observed firsthand by one exhibitor: Charles Ede, an ancient art and antiques gallery founded in 1971 specializing in Egyptian, Greek and Roman art, as well as in European art from before A.D. 1000. 'We're selling to a lot more modern and contemporary collectors who are fascinated by our objects,' said Charis Tyndall, a director of Charles Ede who said that she attends the New York event every year. She said the aim was to remove antiquities from a 'more stuffy academic or museum context,' and 'make people see them as works of art, not as antiquities.'
She said at TEFAF New York, she often met new faces: Most visitors to the stand had never seen antiquities before, and those who had — museum curators from antiquities departments around the United States — did not attend the main fair in Maastricht, where there were a large number of antiquities galleries.
Charles Ede will show 70 objects at its booth this year, the priciest being an $850,000 Roman marble torso of a youth, and the most affordable being a Byzantine silver spoon (from the 4th to the 6th century B.C.) priced at $2,000.
Tyndall said the comparatively low prices made the antiquities market much less market-dependent and speculation-prone, and 'very slow and steady.'
'There's a comfort in what we deal in, because it seems like a, relatively speaking, inexpensive area of the art market,' and not one where buyers can 'flip objects very quickly and make vast amounts of money,' she said. 'You'll always be able to get your money back, plus inflation and maybe a little bit more.'
Lisson's Logsdail agreed that TEFAF New York's price points made it potentially more immune to financial-markets headwinds than fairs offering much bigger and much pricier works. 'Every fair has its ups and downs,' he said. 'Every year is not excellent, but I've always felt that it's well worth it.'
Lisson certainly had a disappointing result in 2017, TEFAF New York's inaugural spring edition, when its booth was dedicated exclusively to small works by the Cuban American artist Carmen Herrera (1915–2022), and 'we didn't sell a single thing,' Logsdail recalled. 'A museum came and put everything on hold, and then unheld it.'
Yet Lisson has sold many works by Herrera ever since. And not only will there be Herrera works on its stand this year, but there will be a stand-alone exhibition of her art at the Lisson Gallery's physical space in Chelsea in New York.
'Sometimes you do something that's very beautiful and really makes a statement, and the dividends you reap from it come later,' Logsdail said.
As for the market turmoil, he said, 'one hopes that people see this moment as an opportunity.'