Three years right into a downturn of the worldwide artwork market, festivals and sellers devoted to prints say editioned works on paper are faring higher than different media and have even managed to seize the eye of a brand new collector class. The phenomenon might have been on show finest on Thursday (27 March) on the VIP preview of the annual Worldwide High quality Print Sellers Affiliation’s (IFPDA) Print Honest (till 30 March). Simply as busy as some other artwork honest held on the Park Avenue Armory, the aisles between the 75 stands have been full of attendees of all ages. Greater than 5,000 folks turned as much as the preview, in accordance with honest organisers.
“Though there’s been some softening on the high of the market, folks have a look at night gross sales and make these dire prognostications,” IFPDA government director Jenny Gibbs tells The Artwork Newspaper. “What we’re seeing in our section of the market has been unimaginable progress. We had extra purposes for this honest than we now have had in lots of, a few years.”
The honest noticed a 40% rise in ticket gross sales and a 50% rise in VIP registrations forward of the occasion, organisers stated. (Gibbs provides: “So I’ve ordered 50% extra champagne than we had final yr!”)
IFPDA Print Honest 2025. Picture by Rommel Demano / BFA
In accordance with the latest annual UBS Survey of International Amassing, 35% of high-net-worth people polled acquired prints and multiples in 2023 and the primary half of 2024. What’s extra, prints, multiples and images made up 24% of their collections, up from 16% the earlier yr. ArtTactic additionally reported an 18.3% enhance in print gross sales in 2023.
Gibbs attributes a lot of this progress to the doorway of youthful collectors to the market, and their consolation with buying editioned objects of all kinds, from prints to sneakers. (Transferring the honest from the Javits Middle to the Park Avenue Armory final yr additionally helped enhance attendance, she says: “Talking as a New Yorker, nobody is joyful to must go to the Javits.”)
“It’s the concept of the democratisation of the artwork market, and the concept that you could accumulate a KAWS figurine—maybe not a 40ft-tall KAWS determine, however a smaller editioned work,” Gibbs says. “That’s an space through which we have seen an enormous progress.”
That interprets to prints and works on paper, she says, and the IFPDA honest permits each newer and seasoned collectors to contemplate work by established artists at extra accessible worth factors, additionally a plus in a down market. This yr’s honest options works spanning almost 600 years, and galleries from North America, Europe and one exhibitor, The Artists’ Press, from South Africa. The IFPDA commissioned the artist Mickalene Thomas to create a site-specific set up made out of three-dimensional paper-pulp sculptures that permits the viewer to step into the artist’s inside scene work.
Mickalene Thomas, l’espace entre les deux, 2025, set up view on the IFPDA Print Honest Picture by Dal Perry
The IFPDA Print Honest isn’t the one occasion tapping into prints’ reputation in New York this week—additionally on Thursday, the inaugural Brooklyn High quality Artwork Print Honest (till 30 March) held its preview throughout the East River. Held on the Powerhouse Arts non-profit facility in Gowanus, the honest welcomed 600 VIP friends, organisers stated. Exhibiting on the Brooklyn honest are 41 galleries, 28 self-representing artists and e-book makers, as effectively seven tutorial print departments. Organisers stated exhibitors reported “wholesome and constant gross sales” in the course of the preview.
If there may be something that different segments of the artwork market can be taught from prints, it’s diversifying their collector bases.
“The IFPDA has been a beloved, must-attend honest for ‘print folks’, and it tended to be a extra inward-looking group,” Gibbs says. “We now have made big inroads into new collectors and youthful collectors—we’re positively seeing extra Gen Z and Millennials.”
