IFPDA Print Fair Expands Mandate to Include Drawings Dealers

For nearly four decades, the International Fine Print Dealers Association’s annual print fair has been a crash course in how artists approach creating in multiples. In 2026, that picture will grow larger. The IFPDA will officially become the International Fine Prints & Drawings Association, and when the print fair opens next spring, its broaden mandate will be on view via the 77 exhibitors who specialize in dealing in aritsts’ drawings. This change has been years in the making. This past March, the fair was already showing signs of outgrowing the prints category. The 2025 edition drew more than 21,000 visitors, a record that dealers attributed to a surge of interest from younger collectors and institutions, with VIP registrations jumping 57 percent. As ARTnews reported at the time, Gen Z and millennial buyers have been driving much of this momentum, pouring into the prints market as other sectors cooled. Related Articles Art Basel Has Been Offering Discounts to Some New Galleries at Its Fairs After a 12 Percent Drop in Global Art Market Sales, Collectors Bet on Stability Over Speculation It is the fair’s first structural expansion since 1990, when the group voted to admit print publishers to its membership that only allowed dealers of prints until then. But that change didn’t cause the organization to update its name to reflect it. Following a membership vote earlier this year, the IFPDA will now welcome drawings dealers along with its new name; the organization has already completed the legal paperwork required to facilitate the change. This new change is more than cosmetic, executive director Jenny Gibbs told ARTnews this week. “It is a mystery to me why there is such a bifurcation in the market between prints and drawings,” she said. Every museum has a department of prints and drawings. Yet the auction houses put drawings with paintings. That’s how collectors have been taught to understand the medium.” The expansion will roll out in stages. For the 2026, which will run April 9–12 and is the first year under the updated guidelines, one new drawings-focused member, Sigrid Freundorfer Fine Art, will join the fair, while several longstanding exhibitors plan to widen their presentations to include more drawings. Meanwhile returning exhibitors include Crown Point Press, Gemini G.E.L., Hauser & Wirth, Pace Prints, and Universal Limited Art Editions. Dealers such as David Tunick, Inc., Hill-Stone, John Szoke Gallery, and Long-Sharp Gallery will bring significant works on paper as part of the transition. This edition will also see a first-time invitational presentation from the Drawing Center, which will anchor the fair’s expanded footprint; the Hammer Museum, the National Gallery of Australia, and Print Center New York will round out the fair’s institutional partnerships. The full impact of the change is expected in 2027, when a larger cohort of newly admitted drawings specialists will be eligible to mount dedicated booths. The addition reflects how artists’ practices—and collectors’ habits—are evolving, Gibbs said, noting that many contemporary artists move fluidly between drawing, printmaking, and editioned work; the market has simply lagged behind that logic. If the expansion is philosophical, it’s also practical. Demand for space at the fair, which is staged at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, has surged. The floor plan now includes extra-extra-large booths, added at the request of returning exhibitors after the 2025 edition drew record attendance and brisk sales. “We completely sold out of booths six months ago,” Gibbs said. “I was gobsmacked. This ran counter to what we were hearing from other colleagues in ‘Art-Fair Land.‘” The momentum tracks with larger market data. As the most recent Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report made clear, sales under $50,000 account for 85 percent of all global art transactions—a sweet spot for prints, editions, and works on paper. With price points ranging from three figures to as high as seven figures, the IFPDA Print Fair has become a gateway for younger collectors as well as a venue for historically important material coming to market via specialist dealers and publishers. For Gibbs, the addition of drawings dealers is both overdue and obvious. Historically, prints were often considered more valuable than drawings: the finished product rather than the path taken to reach it. Understanding that relationship, she believes, may help collectors see works on paper with new clarity—and now it wants to name that outright. “We hope people recognize the organic relationship between these mediums,” she said. “It’s how artists think. And it’s how museums collect.” The full exhibitor list for the 2026 IFPDA Print Fair follows below. BORCH Editions Burnet Editions Cade Tompkins Projects Carolina Nitsch Center Street Studio Childs Gallery Cristea Roberts Gallery Crown Point Press Dolan/Maxwell Dranoff Fine Art The Drawing Center (Invitational) Durham Press F.L. Braswell Fine Art Flying Horse Editions Galerie Martinez D. Galerie Maximillian gallery neptune & brown Gemini G.E.L. at Joni Moisant Weyl Georgina Kelman :: Works on Paper Gilden’s Art Gallery Goya Contemporary Gallery / Goya-Girl Press Graphicstudio/USF Hammer Museum at UCLA (Invitational) Harlan & Weaver, Inc. Hauser & Wirth Heather Gaudio Fine Art Highpoint Editions Hill-Stone Isselbacher Gallery Jacobson Graphics Jim Kempner Fine Art John Szoke Gallery Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art Jörg Maass Kunsthandel Josh Pazda Hiram Butler Jungle Press Editions Kahan Gallery Kim Schmidt Fine Art Knust Kunz Gallery Editions Krakow Witkin Gallery LELONG EDITIONS LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies Leslie Sacks Gallery Long-Sharp Gallery Lower East Side Printshop Manifold Editions Mannekin Press Mixografia National Gallery of Australia (Invitational) Pace Prints Paragon Paramour Fine Arts Paulson Fontaine Press Planthouse Print Center New York (Invitational) Ruiz-Healy Art Scholten Japanese Art Sigrid Freundorfer Fine Art SOLO Impression, Inc. Stoney Road Press STPI Gallery Tamarind Institute Tandem Press The Old Print Shop, Inc. The Paris Review (Invitational) The Tolman Collection of Tokyo Timothy Baum David Tunick, Inc. Two Palms Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) Wetterling Gallery Weyhe Gallery William P. Carl Fine Art William Shearburn Gallery Wingate Studio David Zwirner 12on12 (Invitational)