{"id":270428,"date":"2025-10-01T23:38:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T23:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/270428\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T23:38:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T23:38:11","slug":"outsider-art-fairs-new-director-elizabeth-denny-discusses-her-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/270428\/","title":{"rendered":"Outsider Art Fair’s New Director Elizabeth Denny Discusses Her Role"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tElizabeth Denny was named the new director of the Outsider Art Fair<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n

\n\tFounded in 1993, the fair is known for its focus on art brut, folk art<\/a>, outsider art, and self-taught art, as well as Progressive Art Studios. It is currently scheduled to hold its next edition in New York in March 2026.<\/p>\n

\n\tDenny\u2019s previous experience in the art industry included director at Eric Firestone Gallery and founding her own namesake gallery in 2013, with locations in New York and Hong Kong. Denny holds a bachelor of arts in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and an masters of arts in Modern art from Columbia University. She also lectures at Columbia and Sotheby\u2019s Institute, and serves as a founding board member of the organization Less Than Half, which seeks to address the gap of underrecognized women artists in the art world.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Outsider<\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, Denny spoke to ARTnews about her decision to take the new role, dealing with the uncertainty in the art market right now, and how she measures success.<\/p>\n

\n\tARTnews: Having attended so many art fairs as a gallerist, what attracted you to the idea of running one, and more specifically this art fair, instead of going to, say, Art Basel, Frieze, or Volta?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tElizabeth Denny<\/strong>: At the same time, as well, having my own gallery\u2014I really thought I would have that gallery for the rest of my life, to be honest\u2014the only other job that I was ever able to imagine myself having was working for an art fair. I just liked the idea of galleries being my client and being able to promote them. And how important art fairs are in the calendar, and I don\u2019t want to say investment, because that sounds just purely financial, but how much planning, how many of the resources, and hopes for success of a gallery go into them. The output is that comes out of the other end is just so essential for whether a gallery survives.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd early in my experience, I was led into Untitled when I was a very new gallery, and that really helped me. It really kind of changed the course of being able to grow as a gallery. And then every time we were able to do a new fair that let us grow that profile, meet new people, meet new collectors, it was always such a big part of how I grew as a gallerist. <\/p>\n

\n\tEven though it seems completely different, the actual combination of planning, curatorial relationships, sales, that kind of combination of those things is actually very similar in my mind and in my experience over the last few months, between gallery work and art fair work.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tInstallation view of Hashimoto Contemporary booth featuring Abigail Goldman, Outsider Art Fair 2024. Photo by Olya Vysotskaya.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen I saw the advertisement for this particular fair, I did not even hesitate, like I knew that this was a fair that I would really care about. The contemporary art world has been a tough place over the last few years, and I just knew that every time I went to the Outsider Art Fair or visited one of the exhibitors at the fair, it was always a place that really transported me from that and back to what I love about art and a feeling of discovery, and the art and the artist really coming first.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt just felt like [Outsider Art Fair is] exactly the right place to be right now with the kind of feeling of\u2014I really want to be careful about how I say this\u2014things going downhill in the contemporary art world. I knew that this my dream.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat is the big elephant in the room. There are definitely still things that are selling, but there\u2019s a lot of discussion about lower-priced art selling<\/a> and doing well especially online<\/a>. At this particular moment, how do you anticipate handling those challenges regarding the uncertainty of sales at art fairs, as well as the slowdown in sales that lots of galleries are reporting?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI think the art world has refused to change, to update a lot of things about their behaviors at the regular fairs that is making it harder for themselves. Things about not being very transparent with what prices are. I think new generations of buyers just don\u2019t understand that, and they don\u2019t want to buy art that way, and it\u2019s not comfortable for them. The feeling of exclusivity and lack of transparency, lack of information\u2014 I just do not think that millennial and Gen Z buyers want to buy that way. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe experience of buying at the Outsider Art Fair is different. People who do not think of themselves as collectors at all are comfortable walking into that fair and buying things. I hear from people all the time. Artists tell me if they buy from that fair. Art world workers who don\u2019t make a lot of money tell me that they buy from that fair. And maybe collectors that are a little bit more modest with their budgets because you can walk in there and buy something for three figures or four figures and love it forever, and it\u2019s your favorite artwork that you\u2019ve ever bought.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019re not put through this kind of uncomfortable needing to prove yourself, or whatever, that you might be at one of the big fairs. I just think it\u2019s a much better experience.<\/p>\n

\n\tI wrote about that big report where people at galleries shared sentiments like \u201cWe\u2019re tired of the art fair circuit<\/a>,\u201d and \u201cWe don\u2019t know how much we need to pre-sell before going\u201d, as well as concerns about the sheer costs of participating in these fairs. And that\u2019s not even factoring things like exchange rates, if you\u2019re a non-American gallery.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tAnd our costs are much lower.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tOutsider Art Fair, 2025.\u00a0 Photo by Olya Vysotskaya.<\/p>\n

\n\tHaving attended the fair and now stepping into this role, how do you define success, despite this current challenging moment? There are obvious numbers, such as growing the number of participants or attendees and sales. But I\u2019m always interested in personal definitions of success separate from outside expectations.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tTo stick with your love of metrics first, I was excited to see that last year\u2019s exhibitor surveys were really strong. Almost all exhibitors were happy with their sales, which I\u2019m sure is not the outcome at other fairs. Ticket attendance grew a lot last year. I would like attendance to keep growing. However, there is a point at which to keep getting bigger attendance, we would need to have a bigger space, or it\u2019s going to impact people\u2019s experience. <\/p>\n

\n\tAll the exhibitors said it was very crowded throughout the fair last year. I went during what should have been a very quiet time, and it was absolutely packed. This was before I even knew about the role, so I was just going as a person, so I actually didn\u2019t pay that much attention to things, but I remember it being very busy.<\/p>\n

\n\tI think that I want to keep feeling like the fair is kind of growing in all of its directions. There\u2019s all these different kinds of exhibitors that participate in the fair. You have the progressive studios, the galleries that have really been known for showing self-taught art forever, the bigger galleries, and then you would have some galleries that show a combination of contemporary and self taught and some international exhibitors that I think are really important. That\u2019s a whole other topic that we can talk about. But I would really like the fair to kind of keep growing in lockstep and not go too much in one direction.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s a lot that\u2019s just happened just this year with tariffs and all the immigration policies. Which things would you like to keep as they are, that are core to the ethos or the operations of the fair, and things that you would like to change for the next edition or the upcoming editions under your leadership? Keeping in mind that it\u2019s always the challenge for a new director in how much you can change in the first year and the expectations that you\u2019re being held to from prior editions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the goals is to keep finding new exhibitors who bring really interesting, new things that people have never seen before. You might go to a Frieze and expect to see this same famous artist\u2019s work, but at the Outsider Art Fair, your expectation is really that you\u2019re going to see some things that are unexpected and new. And I want to keep bringing that to the fair, keep making it a place that regular non-art world people love, and the art world loves. I think is really important. Those are things that I would want to keep the same.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn terms of changing, I would love to be able to see the fair grow for the 2027 edition, to get a bigger space, have more exhibitors, and something I\u2019ve been very focused on. Internally, I really want more partnerships that make the exhibitor experience better. I guess that\u2019s my bias. I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about, do we need a hotels partner, a logistics partner, a shipping partner? We need to make sure that we have a nice event for the exhibitors and other kinds of partnerships that really like make things as easy as possible on them right now. Because, it\u2019s so difficult to be doing all these fairs, even if it is a super-profitable part of their timeline, we\u2019re still needing to, as we know, make those investments three to eight months ahead of the fair, which is really tough.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tInstallation view of Fehely Fine Arts booth, Outsider Art Fair, 2025. Photo by Olya Vysotskaya.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOlya Vysotskaya<\/p>\n

\n\tWe are going to have our curated space this next year feature Canadian Inuit art, and we\u2019re going to be partnering with some of our Canadian gallerists to do that booth. I think that\u2019ll be really special.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut really, I have gotten concerned emails from many exhibitors throughout the world, whether they\u2019ve done the fair a million times, they\u2019ve done it a couple times, or they\u2019ve never done the fair before, saying, \u201cI\u2019m concerned about tariffs, I\u2019m concerned about immigration, I\u2019m concerned about rules changing.\u201d And as much as I can write back in detail what the tariff laws actually are, the uncertainty is the problem, right? And I completely understand that. <\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s only so much I can talk about how how out of control we are, of what\u2019s happening in the country. But I can only hope that it works out, because showing here and seeing their American clients for an international gallery, all galleries throughout the world, this is the market, right? <\/p>\n

\n\tIf they are a gallery that shows this work\u2014Europe, Asia, wherever they want to come see their clients here\u2014and it\u2019s an incredible risk for them right now compared to what it was in past years. There\u2019s only so much that I can mitigate those risks. They have to make their own decisions.<\/p>\n

\n\tTell me about your favorite memory from a previous Outsider Art Fair.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tLast year, I just felt like there were so many different booths and so many different artists that I wanted to spend time in. There\u2019s some artists that I definitely recognized, like Sal Salandra, who\u2019s this older gay guy making super erotic detailed embroideries.<\/p>\n

\n\tI love how it\u2019s as if some of the artists just have no idea. No one\u2019s ever said, \u201cOh, you can\u2019t spend 20 weeks working on this one piece.\u201d So you get some people who\u2019ve made just incredibly detailed work, stuff you\u2019d never see anywhere else.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s always great to see some of the contemporary artists alongside the more established artists. Mart\u00edn Ram\u00edrez is an artist that I really love is always featured really prominently, but then there\u2019s so many little discoveries to make in other places.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne year, [Abigail Goldman<\/a> who] was a former defense attorney, made these tiny little crime scenes as little dioramas and she called them \u201cdie-o-ramas\u201d.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAbigail Goldman, Teleworking (2024), \u201cdie-o-ramas\u201d series. Courtesy Hashimoto Contemporary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Denny was named the new director of the Outsider Art Fair last week. Founded in 1993, the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":270429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[648,1032,1033,171,91244,140559,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-270428","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-folk-art","13":"tag-outsider-art-fair","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115301548897257817","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270428","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=270428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}