Art Review: Armory Show Signals Return to Normal Life

I had a long, happy visit to the Armory Show in New York last Friday. It’s the first in-person art fair I’ve attended in New York — or anywhere — since late February 2020, when I spent a few hours at, coincidentally, the Armory Show. I wrote about it at the time. The Chinese coronavirus had just reached America, Purell was aplenty, people were nervous but at the anxious-giggle stage. The show went on, with dealers from Hong Kong, Tehran, and a hundred other places. Schools were open, workers worked in places called offices, the federal debt was $5 trillion less, and the hegemony of Dr. Pinocchio and the COVID Kooks was of the stuff not even science fiction could conceive.

That was then. First of all, the Armory Show I just visited was the best organized, most spacious, and most comfortable art fair I can remember. The Javits Center, so out-of-the-way that it seems a Jersey encroachment, was transformed, and magic must have been involved, into an elegant setting.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

I had a long, happy visit to the Armory Show in New York last Friday. It’s the first in-person art fair I’ve attended in New York — or anywhere — since late February 2020, when I spent a few hours at, coincidentally, the Armory Show. I wrote about it at the time. The Chinese coronavirus had just reached America, Purell was aplenty, people were nervous but at the anxious-giggle stage. The show went on, with dealers from Hong Kong, Tehran, and a hundred other places. Schools were open, workers worked in places called offices, the federal debt was $5 trillion less, and the hegemony of Dr. Pinocchio and the COVID Kooks was of the stuff not even science fiction could conceive.

That was then. First of all, the Armory Show I just visited was the best organized, most spacious, and most comfortable art fair I can remember. The Javits Center, so out-of-the-way that it seems a Jersey encroachment, was transformed, and magic must have been involved, into an elegant setting.