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<\/p>\n\n\tThe inaugural edition of Untitled Art, Houston, though half the size of its Miami Beach counterpart with 88 participating galleries, was a buzz, with robust sales, strong attendance, and a commitment from local collectors that seems to be following a shifting market all the way to Texas.<\/p>\n
\n\tBy the end of opening day on Thursday, September 18, Los Angeles\u2013based gallery Megan Mulrooney, who showed artists Mason Owens and TJ Rinoski, completely sold out, while others like Rajiv Menon from Los Angeles and Swivel Gallery\u00a0from New York reported steady sales.<\/p>\n
\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n
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\n\tLeading the sales was Houston\u2013based gallery Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino, which sold a work by Carlos Cruz-Diez for $415,000. Additionally notable acquisitions include\u00a0San Francisco\u2019s Jessica Silverman\u00a0who sold a bronze piece by Clare Rojas to the tune of $150,000 and\u00a0Houston\u2019s McClain Gallery, which fetched between $70,000 and $125,000 for two John Alexander paintings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tMost galleries reported consistency with strong mid-market sales in the $25,000\u201350,000 range. A mix of local and (somewhat) regional collectors from Houston, Dallas, Austin, the Bay Area, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and San Francisco were in attendance and acquiring. Houston\u2019s Laura (The Gallery) said it had sold five works by Shuling Guo to prominent local collectors, a trend echoed at by other dealers.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI started to see more advisors and collectors reaching out from Houston,\u201d Erin Goldberger at Half Gallery of New York and Los Angeles told ARTnews. \u201cIn the past few years we\u2019ve switched up the fairs we\u2019ve been doing in general.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen asked why Half Gallery decided to skip New York\u2019s Armory Show earlier this fall, Goldberger explained, \u201cMostly the cost. The booth is extremely expensive. We\u2019re not a blue-chip gallery, but we\u2019re too old to get these emerging gallery prices.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tShe added, \u201cThe exposure wasn\u2019t really enough. I didn\u2019t feel like I gathered a bunch of new clients. And you\u2019re basically breaking even, even when you\u2019re in New York. This is a good way to expand into new territories without fully breaking the bank.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThough it\u2019s hard to beat the critical mass in large city centers like New York and Miami, gallerist Michael Kohn said that there are still many collectors outside of those areas and diversifying among cities like Aspen, Houston, Dallas, and Seattle is important as the fair model and market changes.<\/p>\n
\n\tAt the fair\u2019s VIP preview opening on Wednesday, September 17, around 1 p.m., Goldberger also noted that \u201cthe energy was extremely high.\u201d The excitement stood in stark contrast to the sluggishness at fairs since the market downturn began at the end of 2023. For a few days at least, market concerns seemed like a far-off fever dream\u2014evidenced by the daring selection of large-scale works in multiple mediums on view at the fair.<\/p>\n
\n\tFor its part Texas has a rich history in the art world, with Donald Judd\u2019s compound in Marfa and strong museums and institutions spread across Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas. Houston, in particular, is home to a number of institutions like the Menil Collection, which oversees the Rothko Chapel and the Cy Twombly Gallery, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, among others.<\/p>\n
\n\tOther participating dealers like Charlie James, for example, who is based in Los Angeles, told ARTnews that he traveled to the fair to further solidify relationships with those institutions, which have acquired work by some of the artists on view in his booth for their respective collections.<\/p>\n
\n\tHard to miss at the fair was Houston\u2019s own Moody Gallery, which celebrated its 50-year anniversary concurrently with the fair\u2019s opening. The gallery\u2019s assistant director Lee Steffy said a few art fairs have come to Houston in the recent past, which Moody was keen to support through their own participation, but noted that Untitled was not only \u201cwonderful to work with, [but] so professional\u201d and added that they were \u201ctickled\u201d and \u201cexcited to support\u201d this fair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The inaugural edition of Untitled Art, Houston, though half the size of its Miami Beach counterpart with 88…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":238084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[130280,4345,358,3187,127588],"class_list":{"0":"post-244713","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-art-market-2025","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-texas","11":"tag-tx","12":"tag-untitled-art-houston"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115244257257719243","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}