As Frieze Los Angeles nears its closing on Sunday, the fair finds itself facing the same challenge that many, if not most, of the once-fresh-faced Hollywood stars roaming its aisles overcame to sustain their place at the industry’s upper echelon: the onset of midlife.
Now in its fifth edition, Frieze Los Angeles is no longer the hot, fresh newcomer to the art fair scene that it was in the immediate pre-pandemic era. It is no longer even the youngest Frieze fair; the brand’s event in Seoul currently owns that honour by virtue of its launch in 2022.
This is, to be sure, a situation that both Frieze and Endeavor, its entertainment-conglomerate parent company, are happy to think through. It did not take much effort to find doomsayers when the companies announced in early 2018 that they would stage a major international fair in Los Angeles the following February. That the event has not only survived but become essential to homegrown and international dealers alike a half-decade later means that, on one level, the gamble has already paid off.
A Frieze visitor looks on at a photograph by Gillian Wearing on Maureen Paley’s stand Eric Thayer
“Art Week brings so much energy to Los Angeles, and that excitement is still palpable five years in,” says Davida Nemeroff, the owner of Night Gallery in downtown Los Angeles. She calls Frieze “a critical moment” on the programme’s yearly calendar, given that “the influx of curators, collectors and press will be able to see whatever we put on view”.
“I think this fair means a lot to LA people, because this is the fair that made the city grow up into a real boy,” says Alex Logsdail, the chief executive of Lisson Gallery. Lisson is among the well publicised group of commercial galleries headquartered elsewhere that has debuted a permanent expansion in Los Angeles since Frieze’s inauguration, along with David Zwirner, Marian Goodman, Karma and more. The stampede was already well underway in the years before the fair, but its arrival has undoubtedly been a catalyst.
“Frieze LA has cemented itself as the most important fair in the US over the first several months of the calendar year,” says Adam Green, a New York-based art adviser. “The quality of participating galleries is something we don’t see again in this country until Frieze New York or perhaps Art Basel Miami Beach.”
Finding a ‘permanent home’
A significant part of maturing is finding what works. “We really got into our stride operationally this year,” Simon Fox, the chief executive of Frieze, says of this year’sLos Angeles fair. Although he also cites the event’s enlarged food and beverage area and improved logistics as key upgrades, fundamental to his feeling is the brand’s long-term comfort with its newly refined presentation at the Santa Monica Airport.
In the five editions staged to date, Frieze Los Angeles has occupied three different locations in three different neighbourhoods: the Paramount Studios lot in Hollywood (2019-20), 9900 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills (2022) and the Santa Monica Airport (2023-24). (The fair did not take place in 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.) Even this accounting understates the churn, given that Frieze centralised all of this year’s exhibitors in its signature purpose-built tent after placing a subset of them roughly ten minutes away on foot in the Barker Hangar in 2023.
Fox demurs when asked about the length of the brand’s commitment to the Santa Monica Airport, but he hints that Frieze has no plans to look elsewhere for the foreseeable future. “Hopefully, we’ve found a permanent home,” he says, adding that the single-tent structure at the airport “will only work for Frieze if it works for the galleries. We’re hearing loud and clear from the galleries that it works for them.” (The brand has received universally high marks from veterans of the Barker Hangar who returned to show in 2024.)
Just as important as the shifting geography, each new venue has also resulted in considerable alterations to Frieze Los Angeles’s scale. This year’s fair hosted 95 exhibitors, compared with an all-time high of 120 last year and 70 in each of the two editions at Paramount. When asked how he responds to industry chatter that a roughly 100-exhibitor fair cannot be profitable for the company, Fox says: “I’m happy other people are worried about our economics. That’s my job, and you can tell them not to worry.”
Based on conversations with collectors and advisers in Los Angeles, a wellspring of affection remains for the fair’s Paramount days. But true to form, your metaphorical mileage on the issue probably depends on your literal mileage. “Is the airport a little farther than the Paramount lot for some of us who live on the east side? Sure. But it’s still just a drive away,” says Nemeroff.
Pedigree and persistence
Combined with the pedigree of its exhibitors, Frieze Los Angeles’s transition into midlife tracks with a larger evolution in the rest of the world’s perception of the city as a nexus for fine art. According to data from the Los Angeles Tourism Board, only about one-third of visitors to the City of Angels included museums and commercial galleries in their itineraries before the Covid-19 pandemic, and a little more than 20% did the same with the performing arts. This year, those figures are each poised to increase by at least 10%, indicating a modest but significant shift in the public consciousness.
Any market participants who sensed lower-wattage interest in the aisles would also be wise not to attribute to the city or the fair what may be a macro-level lull. “I do think excitement levels at this year’s edition of the fair waned, largely due to the softening market, which is beginning to impact certain galleries in a significant way,” Green says.
Yet multiple exhibitors at the fair say that long-discussed concerns about the size of the organic collector base in metro Los Angeles miss the point. Katey Acquaro, the director of first-time Frieze Los Angeles participant Silverlens Galleries of Manila and New York, calls Los Angeles “the doorway to America” for all of Asia. This is not to say that the gallery is overlooking local buyers and institutions, only that any dealer thinking locally, or even domestically, is sacrificing a larger opportunity.
Frieze is also cognisant of the way hypervigilance on the top of the sales pyramid can shape perceptions, particularly in what generally remains a buyer’s market. “To define the success of a fair by the number of seven-figure sales is absurd,” Fox says. “What I want is for every gallery, no matter their size, to be selling what they brought.” He adds that his preferred measure is the number of “swap-outs” of art on the stands between the end of one day and the start of the next—and this year, he contends, the swap-outs were numerous enough to make the event “almost a different fair” by Friday.
Fox also cautions against the default expectation that Frieze will continue growing its presence in Los Angeles by once again scaling up its exhibitor count. Instead, those seeking to understand the company’s attitude towards expansion should think “less about the tent and more about the city and the week”.
“I see the fair as the epicentre of a whole ecosystem that extends to the institutions, the non-participating galleries, the artists working in LA,” he says. The fair’s organisers are aware of around 550 cultural events scheduled in Los Angeles during this year’s Frieze Week, almost twice as many as the approximately 300 such events staged during last year’s equivalent period.
Throughout its history, the agency side of Endeavor has helped guide hundreds of actors, filmmakers and other creative talents from blazing-hot starts into decades-long careers of sustainable success. Five editions in, Frieze appears to be shepherding its Los Angeles fair along a similar path. Youth, it turns out, isn’t everything.
