After eight years as an integral part of The Armory Show, executive director Nicole Berry is exiting not only that fair but the fair sector altogether. Berry has been named the senior director of donor engagement at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. She will begin her new post later this month.
“Since becoming executive director of The Armory Show, it has been my mission to improve the fair with each edition. I am deeply proud of the accomplishments of our team and am grateful for the opportunities I have been provided,” Berry said in a statement. “I wish the remarkable team and the extended Frieze network the best for this important milestone year and in the future.”
Frieze’s search for a new director of The Armor Show is “already underway”, according to a statement attributed to Kristell Chadé, the organisation’s executive director of fairs. Chade and Christine Messineo, Frieze’s director of Americas, will manage The Armory Show until the fair’s next director is hired, with Chade pledging the arrangement will “ensure a smooth transition for all”.
The news of Berry’s departure comes roughly eight months after Frieze announced its acquisitions of The Armory Show and Expo Chicago, arguably the two leading regional fairs in the US. The timing means that Berry will depart without overseeing a single edition of the former fair as a part of Frieze’s larger management structure.
Berry became the executive director of The Armory Show in November 2017. She was hired as the fair’s deputy director the previous year, but leadership at the Vornado Realty Trust, then the owner of The Armory Show, elevated her to replace Benjamin Genocchio after The New York Times published accusations from multiple women saying Genocchio had inappropriately touched them and made sexual comments to them during his time as the director there, as well as during his tenures as an editor at both Artnet and Artinfo.
As executive director of The Armory Show, Berry will perhaps best be remembered for successfully leading the fair’s well regarded move from Manhattan’s West Side Piers each March to the Javits Center each September, starting in 2021, along with her steady stewardship of the brand through the Covid-19 pandemic. Prior to her hiring by The Armory Show, she was the deputy director of Expo Chicago.
“We are grateful for Nicole’s contribution to The Armory Show over the last eight years, and wish her all the best in her new role,” Chade’s statement read in part.
At the Hammer, Berry will join a museum that is itself in transition. It was announced last autumn that Ann Philbin, who has led the institution for the past 25 years, will step down on 1 November. The Hammer’s board of directors was said to have begun the search for her replacement early this year.
