From May 15 to 19, the European Fine Arts Foundation transforms the Park Avenue Armory into one of the most demanding and seductive art showcases in the world.
Founded in Maastricht in 1988, TEFAF has established itself as the world's leading art fair. Its New York edition, launched in 2016, embodies the same high standards in a more focused format: 88 galleries from 15 countries and four continents, works spanning centuries and disciplines, and a vetting process conducted by independent expert committees—curators, researchers, and specialists—that guarantees the authenticity and quality of each piece presented. It is this rigorous approach that has built TEFAF's reputation and attracts the world's leading collectors and institutions year after year.
The Park Avenue Armory is a setting worthy of its ambition. Its vast spaces—the monumental Drill Hall and the sixteen historic salons on the first and second floors—offer a scenography unparalleled in New York. This year, Tom Postma Design has conceived a layout that allows the artworks to breathe while creating unexpected dialogues between the booths. The transition from painting to design, from antiquity to contemporary sculpture, is nothing short of miraculous. This is one of TEFAF's rare qualities: its ability to make diversity coherent.
Among the works announced as previews, several stand out. Shahzia Sikander's monumental mosaic, The Hour Glass (2025), by a major artist of her generation, opens the exhibition with a rare visual power. Pierre Soulages's Painting 162 × 114 cm, August 29, 1958, held in the same private collection for sixty years, is an exceptional appearance. Alongside these historical works, Willem de Kooning's Woman on a Sign IV and Cecily Brown's Functor Hideaway recall the richness of the American Expressionist legacy, while Ludovic Nkoth, Minjung Kim, and Camilla Moberg embody strikingly powerful contemporary voices.
It is precisely this balance between past and present that distinguishes TEFAF from any other fair. Antiques, fine jewelry, 20th-century designe 20th century, modern painting and contemporary art coexist without hierarchy, inviting the visitor to construct their own lines of meaning across eras and cultures. A Roman sculpture facing an abstract canvas, a brutalist piece of furniture in dialogue with a light installation: these juxtapositions, far from being arbitrary, reveal continuities that were previously unsuspected.
Beyond the selection of artworks, TEFAF New York is also a meeting point for the international art community. Gallery owners, curators, collectors, and discerning art lovers gather there in an atmosphere that is as much a cultural event as a social gathering. The opening night on May 14, reserved for collectors by invitation only, sets the tone: here, art is experienced as much as it is viewed.
For ten years, TEFAF New York has confirmed edition after edition that an art fair can be much more than a marketplace. A place of discovery, dialogue, and wonder, in one of the most beautiful settings New York has to offer.
Eve Kaplan
Practical information
TEFAF New York 2026
From 15 to 19 May 2026
Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue, New York
Collectors' opening: May 14, 2026 (by invitation only)
