What to See at the 26th Edition of the Armory Show this March 2020

For the first time in the fair’s decades-long history, Pier 90 will be exclusively composed of curator-led projects and initiatives that address pressing themes such as revisionist histories and social satire.

These sections, respectively known as “Perspectives,” “Focus” and “Platform,” have been helmed by guest curators from leading institutions, such as Anne Ellegood and Jamillah James from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

For the inaugural edition of “Perspectives,” Nora Burnett Abrams of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver has selected 18 galleries to examine 20th-century work through a contemporary lens, creating a conversation between modern and post-war icons like Max Ernst, Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hoffmann, Gerhard Richter and Ed Ruscha. Attendees of the Armory Show will notably have the opportunity to discover works from early-20th-century crime photographer Weegee in the light of Nan Goldin’s intimate photographs from the late 1980s and early 1990s.

“My hope is that visitors will experience this section as a fresh and unexpected look to the past, and that this quirky, unpredictable encounter will inform how they move through the rest of the fair. I like the idea of this section being a kind of nexus from which the many currents of thought as represented in the other sections radiate,” curator Nora Burnett Abrams said in a statement.

To make your stroll around Manhattan’s Pier 90 and Pier 94 more agreeable, the fair will offer for the first time a free audio guide providing curatorial insight to works, projects, and booths on view. As is tradition, the Armory Show will also be holding four days of dedicated talks featuring internationally renowned artists, curators, collectors, and art practitioners. Among them are Choctaw-Cherokee painter and sculptor Jeffrey Gibson, who will discuss topics of cultural history, collectivism, and censorship with Brooklyn Museum curator Eugenie Tsai.

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Meanwhile, Renuka Sawhney of the Vera Institute of Justice will lead a conversation looking at issues of representation, body politics and mass incarceration. While in New York for the Armory Show, make sure to check the satellite fairs of Spring/Break Art Show, Volta New York, Independent New York and Art on Paper that will run concurrently in the Big Apple. The 2020 edition of the Armory Show will run March 5- 8, with tickets and additional information available on the fair’s official website.

This story was first published via AFP Relaxnews.