Brafa
Brussels, Belgium, 26 January- 2 February
One of the world’s oldest art fairs will hold its landmark 70th edition in 2025. Launched in 1956 in Brussels, Brafa has expanded over the years to include 20 categories of art and antiques, from Oceanic and African tribal sculpture to Old Masters and antiquities. Among the 130 galleries taking part in the anniversary edition are some that have exhibited at the fair for decades. The prominent Belgian antiquarian and design dealer Axel Vervoordt has been a mainstay at the fair since 1976, while Antwerp’s N. Vrouyr, which focuses on carpets and textiles, has been showing at Brafa since the first edition.
Newcomers to the 70th edition include Hoffmans Antiques from Stockholm, which specialises in Gustavian furniture and art from the 18th and 19th centuries, and Colnaghi, the oldest commercial gallery in the world, which will bring a rediscovered male marble torso from the 17th-century Giustiniani Collection in Rome, priced around £500,000. To mark the anniversary, Brafa will also partner with Belgium’s Royal Institute for Culture Heritage, which will display its conservation and restoration work.
Courtesy Vima art fair
Vima
Limassol, Cyprus, 15-18 May 2025
Vima, the first international contemporary art fair in Cyprus, will open in the spring in Limassol. Taking place in a former winery overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, it will feature around 20 emerging and established galleries from Cyprus and the surrounding Mediterranean region. The fair is founded by three Russian art and marketing professionals—Edgar Gadzhiev, Lara Kotreleva and Nadezhda Zinovskaya—who have all moved to Cyprus within the past three years. Participation in the fair is by invitation only, and an exhibitor list for the inaugural edition will be revealed later in the year. The organisers say that for each edition an international curator will be invited to take up residence in Cyprus and work with regional artists.
Courtesy Houston First Corporation. Photo: Lance Childers
Untitled Art Houston
Houston, US, 19-21 September
Everything is bigger in Texas, but does that include art fair sales? Participating galleries will find out when Untitled Art expands to Houston. The event at the George R. Brown Convention Center will mark Untitled’s first expansion outside of its annual Miami fair since halting its San Francisco edition. It will be under the direction of the writer and curator Michael Slenske. This is the latest new fair to be announced in the Sun Belt region in the American South. Houston is the US’s fourth-largest city and a recent study found the metropolitan area is home to nearly 100,000 millionaires thanks to its diverse economy and attractive lack of a state income tax.