NEW YORK, NY.- The 2019 edition of The Armory Show will celebrate the fair’s 25th Anniversary. To mark this historic milestone, The Armory Show is announcing the creation of the Gramercy International Prize, a new, yearly initiative that supports the advancement of young and pioneering New York galleries who have not previously participated in The Armory Show.

In the spirit of the fair's founders, a jury will award a nominated gallery with a booth at no cost to showcase a solo or dual-artist presentation, providing a platform for experimentation and discovery with minimal financial risk. Ramiken has been selected as the recipient of the inaugural Gramercy International Prize and will exhibit a dual-artist presentation of works by Darja Bajagić and Andra Ursuţa. Combining wall sculptures from Ursuțaʼs Vanilla Isis series with paintings on printed and sewn canvas by Bajagić, the presentation offers idiosyncratic and complicated views on extremism, sexuality, and politics.

“The founders of The Armory Show – originally named the Gramercy International Art Fair – sought to provide an alternative platform for contemporary art through presentations by artists who challenged the status quo,” says Nicole Berry, Executive Director of The Armory Show. “In the spirit of our founders, we are honored to offer this new prize to a gallery committed to showing a robust and experimental program of emerging talent in the hopes that they too may continue to push the boundaries of contemporary art practice.”

For its inaugural year, the Gramercy International Prize jury includes: Stefano Basilico, Collector and Advisor; Clarissa Dalrymple, Independent Curator; Nicole Klagsbrun, Owner and Founder, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery; Andrea Rosen, Owner and Founder, Andrea Rosen Gallery; and Lisa Spellman, Owner and Founder, 303 Gallery.

Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co. Tribute, co-presented by Galerie Nagel Draxler and The Armory Show
In honor of the 25th Anniversary, The Armory Show will celebrate the legacies of two of its co-founders, Pat Hearn and Colin de Land, with a special presentation of works by Andrea Fraser and Renée Green. As an homage to Hearn and de Land’s championing of neo-conceptualism, this commemorative presentation of Fraser’s Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk (1989), May I Help You (1991) and Green’s The Pigskin Library (1990), will pay tribute to their visionary gallery programs. Situated next to the Gramercy International Prize-winning gallery on Pier 94, the booth provides historical context for fair visitors, celebrating the mission of their galleries, as well as highlighting the influence Hearn and de Land had on the New York and international art scenes.

Armory Live Talks
Armory Live celebrates the fair's anniversary with four days of dedicated talks featuring internationally renowned artists, curators, collectors, and art practitioners. This year Armory Live takes the fair’s 25th Anniversary as a point of departure to consider the significant developments in production, experience, criticism, and patronage in the arts over the last quarter-century. Highlights will include: ARTnews Editor-in-Chief Sarah Douglas, writer Linda Yablonsky, gallerist Mitchell Algus, and artist Betty Tompkins will take stock of the great American culture wars, considering how notions of sexuality and provocation have changed over the last twenty-five years; Charlotte Burns, Executive Editor of In Other Words, writer Antwaun Sargent, artist Paul Anthony Smith, and Lauren Haynes, curator at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, will reflect on the methodologies currently being used to rewrite historical narratives, probing what aspects of the American identity remain unaddressed and overlooked; using the infamous 1993 Whitney Biennial as a starting point, writer and curator Christian Viveros-Fauné, Whitney Museum of American Art curator Elisabeth Sussman, and critic Ben Davis will debate what political art looks like today in a time of increasing connection, image-literacy, and social-collectivism; Sally Tallant, formerly Director of Liverpool Biennial, will lead a discussion on the shifting relevancy of biennials with artist Ryan Gander, Director of the Istanbul Biennial, Bige Örer, and Candice Hopkins, Senior Curator, Toronto Biennial of Art; and Artforum’s Senior Editor Jennifer Krasinski will sit down with and artist Carroll Dunham and writers Rhonda Lieberman and Tobi Haslett, to address how the relationship between artist and critic has evolved over time.