Last month, New York played host to not one but two major print fairs, underscoring the growing demand for prints and multiples in a market that has otherwise cooled. The International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) Print Fair, which for years has been considered the gold standard for fine art print collecting, saw record-breaking attendance, while the inaugural Brooklyn Fine Art Print Fair (BFAPF) positioned itself as a fresh and vital player in the city’s art fair landscape.
At the IFPDA Print Fair, which ran March 27 to March 30 at the Park Avenue Armory, attendance topped 21,000 over four days (surpassing last year’s 19,000), with more than 5,000 guests visiting on opening night alone. Similarly, VIP registrations soared by 57 percent and there was a 26-percent uptick in advance ticket sales from last year.
The fair continues to be a magnet for serious collectors and institutions, with major figures in attendance such as MoMA’s newly appointed director Christophe Cherix, currently the head of the museum’s drawings and prints department; Nadine Orenstein and Constance McPhee from the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Catherine Daunt from the British Museum. Notable artists made their way to the fair as well, including Marilyn Minter, Lothar Osterburg, Yashua Klos, Polly Apfelbaum, and Mickalene Thomas, who did a special installation at this year’s edition. Also spotted, on closing day, was Larry Gagosian.
The fair has established itself as the premier event in the field, bringing together top-tier galleries like David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, and Pace with independent publishers such as Black Women of Print and Mixografia. The fair’s programming, featuring conversations with artists like David Salle and Terry Winters, also emphasized both the historical depth and contemporary relevance of printmaking. This year’s edition featured 75 exhibitors showcasing works ranging from a few hundred dollars to nearly $2 million.
There was no shortage notable sales. Pace Prints sold a screenprint on canvas by Jean Dubuffet, Site de Mémoire III (1979), for a six-figure price on the second day of the fair, while Hauser & Wirth sold a new editioned mural by Rashid Johnson for $150,000 as well as new work by Amy Sherald. Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art sold works by Johnson, Louise Bourgeois, Alyson Shotz, Kiki Smith, Nari Ward, Thomas Schütte, and Donald Judd at prices ranging from $5,000–$140,000. Massachusetts-based Hill-Stone gallery sold a woodcut by Friedrich Capelari, a Western artist who specialized in Japanese woodblock prints, for $30,000.
Commissioned by the IFPDA and produced by the family foundation of ARTnews Top 200 Collector Jordan Schnitzer, Thomas’s site-specific l’espace entre les deux (2025) transformed an entire space into an immersive collage of prints and cast-pulp paper, demonstrating how artists are pushing the boundaries of printmaking.
Mickalene Thomas, l’espace entre les deux, 2025, installation view, at IFPDA Print Fair 2025, New York.
Photo Dal Perry
Meanwhile, across the East River, the Brooklyn Fine Art Print Fair debuted with a VIP opening at Powerhouse Arts in Gowanus, which had over 600 attendees at its VIP opening on March 27. Featuring 41 print-focused galleries, 28 self-representing artists, and seven academic print departments, the fair’s inaugural edition adds a new opportunity for print producers and sellers to further fuel an already-thriving market.
“What make prints so appealing is their blend of magic and science,” artist Crystalle Lacouture, who was showing with Boston-based gallery Praise Shadows, told ARTnews. “It’s such a democratic medium, with roots in protest movements and going back to the Gutenberg press, that really allows artists to experiment and expand their practice without too much of a financial burden.”
Praise Shadows founder Yng-Ru Chen noted that prints also allow art dealers to open up their program to different audiences: “Art shouldn’t be about gatekeeping, and prints offer a way around that mentality. As a gallerist I want people to know a lot about our artists and what we’re offering. Prints make it more inclusive for people to be able to collect.”
The surge in enthusiasm for prints is not just anecdotal. Market reports confirm that prints and multiples have been a bright spot amid a broader slowdown in the art world. Art Basel and UBS’s 2023 global collecting survey found that Gen Z buyers allocate more of their art budgets to prints than any other generation. High-net-worth individuals increased their acquisitions of prints and multiples by 35 percent in 2023 and the first half of 2024, with these works now making up 24 percent of their collections—up 16 percent from the previous year. According to ArtTactic, sales in the print sector grew by 18.3 percent in 2023, even as the broader market contracted.
“Over the last few years, we keep seeing younger people become print collectors, often people who’ve never collected before,” IFPDA executive director Jenny Gibbs told ARTnews. “We’re seeing this growth that is real [in terms of] the bare facts of an increase in the market in terms of volume, but not price.”
Molly Steiger, a senior vice president at Sotheby’s and global head of its prints department, agreed, noting that prints and works on paper have been consistently popular among collectors. That the market for prints seems booming is likely just now more visible thanks to a downtick in other areas of the market. “The prints that we sell are by the same artists that are sold in the unique markets [of painting and sculpture] in the Impressionist sales and the contemporary art sales, just at a much more attractive price point,” she said.
Steiger pointed to an artist like Jean-Michel Basquait, whose auction record stands at $110 million, achieved at a Sotheby’s evening sale in 2017. By comparison Basquiat prints at the high-end, go for around $1 million, or less than 1 percent of the record price.
That lower price point is also attractive to newer, younger participants in the art market. “We’ve definitely seen some newer bidders participating in the market, especially in the modern and contemporary segments,” said Sarah McMillian, a prints specialist at Swann Auction Galleries. “I think a lot of the growth is coming from newer buyers who are interesting in the more traditional prints, even Old Masters, while our regular clients have remained active.”
As collecting habits shift, the print market is not just surviving—it seems thriving, offering both established collectors and newcomers an accessible entry point into the art world. And that might be exactly what the still shaky art market needs.
