The Armory Show opened its VIP preview at the Javits Center on Thursday, September 24, and the first sales reports arrived the same evening. The fair, which we previewed last week, counts 242 exhibitors this year and runs to Sunday, September 27.

The first-day picture, as reported by dealers to the trade press, is a fair that sold steadily at both ends of its price range and not much that was surprising in between.

The top of the floor

The largest reported sale was a Joan Mitchell painting placed by Michael Rosenfeld Gallery with a private collection for more than $2 million. The same stand reported a Richmond Barthé bronze and a Louise Nevelson collage, each in the $100,000 to $250,000 range, and two works by Benny Andrews at $50,000 to $100,000 each.

Below that, the reported figures cluster between $100,000 and $300,000:

  • Edwynn Houk Gallery: a László Moholy-Nagy gelatin silver print at $320,000.
  • Nara Roesler: a Sheila Hicks linen work at $260,000, alongside works by Abraham Palatnik ($60,000) and Marco A. Castillo ($50,000).
  • Gazelli Art House: a Lilly Fenichel canvas at $200,000, which Hyperallergic reported went to a European museum.
  • Norr Cohan: Yinka Shonibare's The Landscape Project (Cotton Plantation) at more than $180,000.
  • Galerie Maximillian: Rashid Johnson's Untitled (Large Mosaic) (2025) at $175,000 in the first hour, then Jonas Wood's Five Bonsais at $125,000 and a Peter Doig at $45,000.
  • Sean Kelly: a Janaina Tschäpe at $170,000 and a Sam Moyer at $125,000.
  • 303 Gallery: two Rob Pruitt paintings at $155,000 each and a Doug Aitken lightbox at $150,000.

A $2 million sale is not a record for the Armory, and it is a secondary-market work by an artist who died in 1992. It tells you that a New York collector base still shows up in September for blue-chip names. It does not tell you much about the fair's own identity, which is what this edition was built to test.

Where the fair actually proved something

The more interesting reports came from Presents, the section for galleries under twelve years old, where stands are priced deliberately below the main floor. The Art Newspaper counted 54 galleries in the section this year, 18 of them first-time exhibitors, and several reported clearing most of their stands during the preview:

  • Hannah Traore Gallery sold out its Kesewa Aboah works, priced between $2,500 and $27,000.
  • Rajiv Menon Contemporary sold all but the works on paper from its Raghav Babbar presentation, priced from $7,000 into the mid-five figures.
  • Lobster Club sold nine paintings by Megan Koons at $3,600 to $8,500 each.
  • Pietro Alexander, a New York gallery that opened this year, sold six of eight paintings by Christian Vincent.

The fair's director, Kyla McMillan, told the paper that "seeing a growth amongst young galleries signals to me a health and an optimism for experimentation." The dealers themselves were more guarded. "For younger galleries, art fairs are really difficult," Pietro Alexander said. "I have had a lot of colleagues and peers who basically lost their shirts."

Both can be true. A sold-out stand at $5,000 a work does not necessarily cover a New York fair week for a gallery flying in its staff, and the Armory's pricing of the Presents stands is the reason those numbers work at all. Management and Droste Galladé, who shared a stand, told the paper that the German government subsidised part of the cost.

The Caribbean thread, so far

The question we set before the fair was whether the Caribbean focus across Focus and Platform would produce institutional acquisitions beyond the two museum prizes. The first-day reports do not answer it yet. The Caribbean-linked sales that did surface came mostly from the main floor: Perrotin reported six prints by the Haitian-American artist Kathia St. Hilaire at $5,000 to $45,000, and Nara Roesler's Marco A. Castillo is a Cuban artist.

Winners of the Pérez Art Museum Miami and Bronx Museum acquisition prizes had not been reported by Friday. We will come back to both once the fair closes on Sunday and its own sales report is out.

Opening-day sales and prices as reported by dealers to Galerie (Eileen Kinsella) and Hyperallergic (Aaron Short), both September 25, 2026, and by Artsy. Presents section figures and quotes from The Art Newspaper (Carlie Porterfield). Fair dates and exhibitor count from The Armory Show's mailing of September 24. Prices are as reported by galleries and have not been independently verified.