The New Art Dealers Alliance (Nada), a non-profit organisation founded in 2002 to promote contemporary and emerging art, will move its springtime New York fair from the first week of May—when it has been held to coincide with Frieze New York since launching in 2012—to March in 2017. The fair is schedule for 2-5 March, to run with the Armory Show. “Essentially, the change in dates was a response to the needs and requests [of] our membership base and our exhibitors,” Adam Abdalla, the spokesman of Nada and a member of the board, which voted unanimously on the change, tells The Art Newspaper. Nada has been considering the move for two years.
The Armory show is not the only event in New York in March that motivated the change. “There’s a confluence of events that take place at that time—the Armory [show], the Independent, the ADAA,” Abdalla says. “It has historically been a time when collectors in New York have been motivated to come out and buy art,” he explains, adding that many museum and trustee groups from around the US also trek to New York then—“so there’s definitely a built-in audience”. He also names the opening of the Whitney Biennial as another reason to move to March, since “the dialogue is focussed on many of the artists that we exhibit at Nada”.
Another major factor is the glut of art world events scheduled to take place or open in late spring in 2017, including the Venice Biennale and Documenta 14 in Kassel, “a difficult landscape to navigate” both for galleries and collectors, according to Abdalla. “I think this move to March gives more flexibility.”
Nada New York will also move locations from Basketball City in the Lower East Side, where it was held from 2014-16, to the Skylight Clarkson North on Washington Street in West SoHo, a 1930s building that was originally the southern terminal of the High Line elevated train. “It’s very user-friendly,” Abdalla says of the new space, since it is more centrally located to other art world events and commercial and non-commercial venues, such as the Whitney Museum. The Skylight Clarkson North and Basketball City are both around 70,000 sq. ft, and the number of exhibitors at NADA New York’s 2017 edition is expected to remain the same as the 2016 edition, which included around 75 exhibitors and 30 projects.
The change in dates “is something that the board felt strongly about and confident about, and I think our new location will be very accessible for collectors”, Abdalla says. Nada plans to hold its 2018 edition in March as well. The 14th edition of its Miami Beach fair runs at the Deauville hotel from 1–4 December.