Discoveries in the Shed

Frieze New York is smaller but still packs a global punch

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Visiting Frieze New York used to include a frisson of danger amid acres of great art. Held in a 400m-long tent on Randall's Island, the New York edition of the art fair that appears on three continents offered world-class vistas of Manhattan as well as the threat of squalls that could flood the exhibits or fears that the big tent might take off like a kite in high winds.

Not any more. For the fifth year, Frieze New York, which runs until Sunday, is anchored firmly in the Shed, the bunkerlike building in Hudson Yards. There's less art here than in the old days—67 galleries, compared with nearly 200 booths in 2019 — but also less distraction.

As art fairs have proliferated, it’s refreshing to find Frieze New York still presenting work that is brash or downright risky, along with elements of the resolutely blue-chip TEFAF on Park Avenue and the cool midlevel Independent in TriBeCa.

While art tourists can always gorge locally on art — for example, TriBeCa Gallery Night on Friday offers more than 70 participating galleries and art spaces — Frieze is a chance to travel through the global art world without leaving Manhattan.

Here are a handful of booths that show you what art still has the capacity to do.

VICTORIA MIRO

The London gallerist Victoria Miro is showing a handful of in-your-face artists who are not (or were not) afraid to speak their minds. Chief among them is the glorious Grayson Perry, a Turner Prize winner and cross-dressing potter who also wrote an iconoclastic autobiography titled Grayson Perry: Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Girl (2007). On display here is a tapestry,