From AAM to ULAE, Know Your Art World Acronyms

Let’s face it: we’re all pressed for time. A technique we economize on our use of that valuable useful resource is acronyms, these helpful abbreviations that use the primary letters of a multi-word identify or phrase. In on a regular basis dialog, for instance, when your automobile breaks down and also you want a tow, you name AAA (pronounced triple A), not the American Vehicle Affiliation, and it’s NASA, not the Nationwide Aeronautics and House Administration, that sends astronauts into house. 

The artwork world is not any exception, with nonprofit organizations, galleries, advisories, museums, and even people being recognized by acronyms which have turn into a lot a part of the way in which artwork worlders speak that we could not even give it some thought. 

Right here’s a listing of a lot of a very powerful artwork world acronyms it is advisable to know so that you just keep within the loop and don’t get caught not realizing an artwork world abbreviation.

AAM
Based within the nation’s capital in 1906, the American Alliance of Museums represents artwork and historical past museums in addition to establishments you won’t consider as museums, like science facilities and zoos. It has about 4,000 institutional members, in addition to greater than 25,000 particular person professionals and volunteers.

AAMD
A extra specialised group than AAM, the New York-based Affiliation of Artwork Museum Administrators represents round 200 such establishments, from the Ackland Artwork Museum at UNC Chapel Hill to the Yale College Artwork Gallery in Connecticut.

ABMB
You could be there as you’re studying this! This one, after all, stands for Artwork Basel Miami Seashore, one of many world’s greatest artwork festivals, with some 285 exhibitors this time round. (It’s associated to ABHK, Artwork Basel Hong Kong, and Artwork Basel in Basel, however nobody actually says ABB, so you’ll be able to skip that one.)

ADAA
The Artwork Sellers Affiliation of America, established in 1962, is a New York-based nonprofit group that represents over 200 member galleries in practically 40 US cities, and organizes an annual New York truthful, lately rebranded from the Artwork Present to the ADAA Truthful, on the Park Avenue Armory. 

AIG
Artwork Intelligence International is a high-powered advisory with places of work in New York and Hong Kong, established in 2021 by ex-Sotheby’s execs Amy Cappellazzo and Yuki Terase. Even amid a market contraction, the agency has been increasing, lately including Matt Bangser (previously managing companion of Blum) as senior director and Sotheby’s veteran Sebastian Fahey as chief working officer in Asia.

AIR
Established in 1972 as the primary not-for-profit, artist-directed and -maintained gallery for ladies within the US, AIR (Artists in Residence, Inc.) counted amongst its founders stars like Dotty Attie, Judith Bernstein, Agnes Denes, and Howardena Pindell. (You’ll be able to name it “air” gallery, and also you’d be justified, since Pindell initially urged it’s referred to as EYRE Gallery in tribute to Charlotte Brontё’s beloved character Jane Eyre.)

ARCO 
The Arte Contemporáneo truthful, in Madrid, celebrates its forty fifth version in 2026, with about 200 galleries. German-Spanish vendor Helga de Alvear, who helped lay the groundwork for the truthful’s founding, died just this year at 88.

FIAC
This one goes within the truthful historical past column: the Foire Internationale d’Artwork Contemporain was launched in 1974 and was for many years the supreme French artwork market occasion, happening at Paris’s Grand Palais, till 2021, when it was knocked out of its coveted slot by what was at first referred to as Paris+ by Artwork Basel and is now merely referred to as Artwork Basel Paris.

IFPDA
Based in 1987 because the Worldwide Advantageous Print Sellers Affiliation, a New York nonprofit that promotes effective prints as unique artworks, this group rebranded just last month because the Worldwide Advantageous Prints & Drawings Affiliation. Its annual truthful, coming within the spring, will embrace 77 exhibitors, for the primary time together with some who specialise in artists’ drawings.

LGDR
This one was short-lived, however nonetheless has a pleasant ring. In 2021, New York sellers Dominique Lévy, Brett Gorvy, Amalia Dayan, and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn shaped a gallery to fight the megas. The “R” dropped off when Rohatyn jumped ship after two years to renew working Salon 94 gallery. The remaining principals dropped the acronym and are actually Lévy Gorvy Dayan.

MBS 
Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman al Saud purchased the most expensive artwork ever to come back to public sale, paying $450.3 million for Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, at Christie’s in 2017. Extra lately, he has been placing into place his Vision 230, which goals to open the nation up from its previously culturally remoted place; it contains Artwork Week Riyadh and the Islamic Arts Biennale. There’s additionally a less-flattering identify by which individuals seek advice from him after he, per US intelligence companies’ reporting, ordered the homicide and dismemberment of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi on the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018: Mister Bone Noticed.

NADA
The New Artwork Sellers Alliance is, like ADAA, a New York-based non-profit that represents business artwork galleries; based in 2002, it has run carefully watched annual artwork festivals in New York and Miami whereas additionally organizing year-round programming in locales as distant as Paris and Warsaw, in addition to its Decrease East Aspect exhibition house, LUNCH (Positioned Beneath NADA’s Central Headquarters—an acronym that accommodates an acronym!).

PDS
The most recent entry to the listing was shaped just this month by Arne Glimcher, CEO of world mega gallery Tempo, vendor Emmanuel Di Donna, and ex-Sotheby’s personal gross sales skilled David Schrader. The joint artwork gallery will open on New York’s tony Higher East Aspect in 2026. The founders, in Glimcher’s phrases, hope collaboration can sign a method out of a “low margin, excessive overhead arms race” ensuing from an “obsession with competitors.”

PPOW
This New York gallery based mostly its identify (which it kinds as P·P·O·W, with dots, not durations) on the initials of the co-founders, Penny Pilkington and Wendy Olsoff (with the latter’s initials reversed, after all). Within the East Village, different sellers had been beginning galleries with unconventional names like Gracie Mansion (winkingly named for the New York mayor’s residence), and Olsoff and Pilkington likewise wished to face out. 

TEFAF
The European Advantageous Artwork Basis was based in 1988 and represents sellers in effective artwork, antiques, and design. Its flagship occasion is the TEFAF Maastricht artwork truthful, in that Dutch college metropolis, that includes hundreds of years of artwork historical past; in 2016 it expanded to supply the TEFAF New York, specializing in fashionable and modern artwork and design. Each are recognized for multimillion-dollar choices and acquisitions by main museums.

ULAE
Based in mid-century America by Russian-born Tatyana Grosman, Common Restricted Artwork Editions started when Grosman, who was publishing illustrated books and reproducing work by artists from Marc Chagall to Grandma Moses out of her Lengthy Island cottage, was inspired by a MoMA curator to work with artists to create unique prints. Main figures like Helen Frankenthaler, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cy Twombly had been among the many first to work with Grosman, and MoMA continues to amass the primary print of each ULAE version.