London’s Premiere Art Fair Arrives In New York

If you’ve got the resources to buy contemporary art—or the admirable envy suppression to spectate as others do—it’s a good week to be in New York. Sotheby’s and Christie’s contemporary art evening sales commence next week, and beginning tomorrow, London’s Frieze Art Fair arrives for its first-ever New York residency, setting up shop on Randall’s Island, where upwards of 25,000 people are expected to descend. Frieze’s tireless directors, Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp (he, London-based; she, New York), have not only corralled 180 galleries for the event; they’ve also commissioned sculptures for an outdoor sculpture park; audio works for a sound-art program; a speaker series; a slate of on-site performances and projects, including a reconstruction by John Ahearn of his 1979 exhibition South Bronx Hall of Fame; and pop-up restaurants, cafés, and food trucks from art-world hangouts like Sant Ambroeus, the Fat Radish, Roberta’s, and the Standard. On the eve of the fair, Slotover spoke with Style about New York versus London, the fair and the gallery, and fashion’s enduring fixation with the world of contemporary art.