[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/ARTNEWS-SIZING-2.png?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen Sotheby\u2019s reported first-half consolidated sales of $4.4 billion in July, some suggested that the business was now stretching beyond the auction room and into hospitality and real estate. If this Frieze Week is anything to go by, it seems smaller art fairs like Minor Attractions and London Invitational (an extension of the Dallas Invitational) have also taken note.<\/p>\n
\n\tMinor Attractions changed locations for its fourth edition and picked The Newman as its new home, a recently opened hotel in central London. And for the London Invitational\u2019s inaugural fair, running through Sunday, 13 suites at The Chancery Rosewood in Mayfair have been taken over by galleries including Andrew Reed Gallery, Broadway, Charles Asprey, Europa, Fran\u00e7ois Ghebaly, James Cope Gallery, James Kelly Contemporary, Lomex, Marinaro, Franklin Parrasch Gallery and Vardaxoglou. The all-suite property ranges from \u00a31,200 to \u00a324,000 ($1,600 to $32,000) per night and opened its doors back in September.<\/p>\n
\n\tJames Cope, the British-born, Dallas-based art dealer and founder of the fair, told ARTnews<\/em> this model is slowing down the art fair experience. It\u2019s what\u2019s needed, he said, when the market is \u201cslow and steady\u201d after the sudden splurge post-Covid. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI hate hearing about the doom and gloom of the art market\u2014it\u2019s not in a bad place. We\u2019re just coming out of a real bullish market and everyone\u2019s recalibrating,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n \n\tCope, who participated in Frieze London with his namesake gallery, is intentionally alluding to a bygone era of art fairs with his participation in the Dallas and London Invitationals. (New York\u2019s Armory Show began in 1994 in the small rooms of the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York.) \u201cThis environment creates a more human time with dealers, collectors, curators and being in a domestic setting helps you understand how the artwork might look in your home,\u201d Cope said.<\/p>\n \n\tHe said his measure of success extends beyond the transactions taking place\u2014even though the participating galleries in the Dallas Invitational have continuously returned, which shows \u201cbusiness is being done.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cAre people happy and smiling? I\u2019m a gallery owner, and I want to obviously make sales and enjoy my time,\u201d Cope said. <\/p>\n \n\tIn his suite, he had the works of young artists Michelle Rawlings and Coco Young on display, fitting right into the plush wooden interiors of the hotel. Cope\u2019s collector demographic runs from mid- to late 20s and 30s to established collectors in their 50s, 60s and 70s who work in industries such as shipping, oil, gas and banking.<\/p>\n \n\tThe London Invitational may be intimate, but the sums associated with its offerings are big. <\/p>\n \n\tThe Los Angeles\u2013based gallery Bel Ami offered pieces from several of its artists: Minami Kobayashi, Guillaume D\u00e9nervaud, Soshiro Matsubara, Isabelle Frances McGuire, Dan Mitchell, Ian Miyamura, Lauren Satlowski, and Marina Stern, ranging from $5,000 to $33,000. Matsubara\u2019s work is currently on display at the Gagosian London as part of the Ren\u00e9 Magritte exhibition \u201cThis Is Still Not a Pipe: The Afterlife of Magritte,\u201d which has been the gallery\u2019s most visited show to date in London. <\/p>\n \n\tBel Ami director Lee Foley told ARTnews<\/em> that she has found avid interest in her artists from new collectors ages between 20 and 40 that work in film and tech. \u201cThere is something special about the art scene being a close-knit community in a time when that\u2019s harder and harder to find. It\u2019s our job to teach new collectors about the artists as we rely on them for business,\u201d Foley said.<\/p>\n \n\tAt Franklin Parrasch Gallery, the works start from \u00a32,800 ($3,700) and go into the high five figures; they range from Peter Alexander\u2019s block wedges to Soyoung Lee\u2019s distorted portraits to Sylvia Snowden\u2019s abstract figures to Joe Goode\u2019s blue skies. Franklin Parrasch, the gallery\u2019s namesake founder, told ARTnews<\/em> that he joined the London Invitational because he\u2019s interested in new ways to \u201cshape the model,\u201d and the current trend is to include experiences with understanding art to counteract a \u201cstruggling market.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cAt the same time, I think artists are finding ways to survive and thrive in their own environments. Sometimes not having the copious amounts of money they were making a few years back is good for generating new energy and thought in other areas besides commerce,\u201d Parrasch said, noting that collectors are less impulsive in their purchases.<\/p>\n \n\tResponding to the tough market, New York dealer Lauren Marinaro of Marinaro Gallery took a conscious decision to feature artworks under $10,000 from artists Ever Baldwin, Ridley Howard, Ron Isaacs, Ryan Johnson and Alessandro Teoldi. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt\u2019s an approachable number right now and a way for introducing my program to London,\u201d she told ARTnews<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely been a hard three to four years, but there\u2019s been a light at the end of the tunnel in the past six months. Art advisers are doing really good work in educating people that\u2019s resulted in new collectors coming in and meeting a lot of young people.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe London Invitational also gave two dealers without galleries the opportunity to exhibit their artists.<\/p>\n \n\tDealer Charles Asprey displayed Alessandro Raho\u2019s small to large paintings ranging from \u00a36,000 to \u00a335,000 ($8,000 to $46,8000) depicting scenes from Los Angeles to the flowers found in his London home. The artist\u2019s most famous work is a portrait of actor Judi Dench at the National Portrait Gallery in London. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cMy artist doesn\u2019t like exhibiting on white walls and the art world has changed, you don\u2019t necessarily need physical spaces anymore to represent someone,\u201d said Asprey, who is also a trustee at Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.<\/p>\n \n\tAt Frieze London and the London Invitational, the London-versus-Paris debate remained a topic of conversation. The New York\u2013based gallery Broadway tested out the waters by doing both fairs; the gallery participated in Frieze London two years ago. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe felt that the combination of these fairs despite what\u2019s been going on with the popularity of Art Basel Paris is that London is getting its footing back,\u201d Joe Cole, cofounder of Broadway, told ARTnews<\/em>, adding that the gallery had its strongest curatorial attendance at Frieze London on the VIP day. \u201cI certainly met a number of new collectors from the UK, Europe, and the Middle East that I don\u2019t think I would have met in the US.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tNow that London Invitational has extended to the UK, is Paris next on the cards? \u201cI don\u2019t really like Paris,\u201d Cope said, praising London for its metropolitan nature. \u201cThere\u2019s people from Asia and the Middle East and Russia and everywhere in London. There\u2019s so much hype around Paris and I\u2019m not trying to compete with that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/market\/london-invitational-international-collectors-frieze-1234802564\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/ARTNEWS-SIZING-2.png?w=1024″] When Sotheby\u2019s reported first-half consolidated sales of $4.4 billion in July, some suggested that the business was now stretching beyond the auction room and into hospitality and real estate. If this Frieze Week is anything to go by, it seems smaller art fairs like Minor Attractions and London Invitational (an extension of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2203340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2203340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2203340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2203340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2203340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}