Elizabeth Denny, new director of the Outsider Art Fair discusses her role

Elizabeth Denny was appointed as the new director of the Outsider Art Fair last week.

Founded in 1993, the fair is known for its focus on art Brut, folk art, outsider art and self-taught art as well as progressive art studios. It is currently scheduled for the next edition in New York in March 2026.

Denny’s previous experience in the art industry includes directors at Eric Firestone Gallery and in 2013 established his own gallery of the same name, located in New York and Hong Kong. Denny holds a bachelor’s degree in art history from Courtauld, London and a master’s degree in modern art from Columbia University. She also speaks at the Columbia and Sotheby’s Institute and serves less than half as a member of the founding committee of the organization, which aims to address the gap between unrecognized female artists in the art world.

Next, Danny talks Artnews Regarding her decision to play a new role, dealing with the uncertainty of the current art market and how to measure success.

Artnews: Participated in many art fairs as gallerists, what attracted your ideas, more specifically art fairs, rather than going to Art Basel, Fritz or Volta?

Elizabeth Danny: Meanwhile, there is my own gallery – I honestly think I would have that gallery, and it’s the only other job I can imagine myself working at the art fair. I just love the idea of ​​gallery being my clients and being able to promote them. And the importance of art fairs in the calendar, I don’t want to say investing because it sounds purely financial, but how many plans, how many resources, and hope for gallery success. The output comes from the other end and is crucial to whether the gallery survives.

In my experience, I was brought to the untitled when I was a very new gallery and it really helped me. This really changes the process of being able to grow as a gallery. Then, whenever we were able to hold a new expo that allowed us to grow that profile, meet new people, meet new collectors, it was always an important part of my growth as a gallerist.

Although it seems completely different, planning, curatorial relationships, sales, and combinations of these things are actually very similar in my mind, and over the past few months, there have been very similarities between gallery work and art fair work.

When I saw this particular fair ad, I didn’t even hesitate, like I knew it was fairness that I really cared about. The world of contemporary art has always been Tough Over the past few years, I just knew that every time I attended an Outsider Art Fair or visited an exhibitor at the fair, it was always a place that really helped me back to my sense of art and a sense of discovery, and art and artists did really come out.

Feels like [Outsider Art Fair is] It’s just that there’s a right feeling now – I really want to be cautious about me saying that – in the downhill of the contemporary art world. I know this is my dream.

That was the elephant in the room. There is definitely something to sell, but there is a discussion about low-priced art sales and especially good performance online. At this particular moment, how do you expect to deal with the uncertainty of art fair sales and the challenges of slowing sales reported by many gallery?

I think the art world refuses to change to update many things about their behavior, which makes it even harder for itself. Things that are not very transparent about the price. I think the new generation of buyers just don’t understand this, they don’t want to buy art in this way, which is not comfortable for them. Exclusiveness and lack of transparency, lack of information feel – I just think millennials and Gen Z buyers don’t want to buy that way.

Experience buying at the Outsider Art Fair is Different. Those who don’t think they are collectors at all feel comfortable walking into that fair thing and buying things. I keep hearing from people. The artist told me if they bought it from the fair. The Art World workers who didn’t make a lot of money told me that they bought it from that fairly. Maybe the collector’s budget is more modest, as you can walk in there to buy something with three or four numbers and always love it, which is your favorite artwork you’ve ever purchased.

You are not experiencing this uncomfortable need to prove yourself or anything else that might be attending one of the big expos. I just thought it was a better experience.

I wrote about this large report, where people at the gallery shared “We’re tired of the Art Fair Tour” and “We don’t know how much we need to pay before we move forward” and concerns about the huge cost of attending these fairs. If you are a non-US gallery, you won’t even consider the exchange rate or something.

And we cost much less.

After attending the fair and now playing this role, how do you define success despite the current challenging moments? There are obvious numbers, such as increasing the number and sales of participants or attendees. But I have always been interested in the personal definition of success separate from outside expectations.

First of all, stick to your love for indicators, and I’m glad to see that the exhibitor survey last year was really strong. Almost all exhibitors were happy with their sales, and I’m sure this was not the result at other fairs. Ticket attendance increased last year. I hope to attend and continue to grow. But there is one thing we need to continue to increase attendance, we need to have more space, otherwise it will affect people’s experience.

All exhibitors said the entire expo was very crowded last year. I went there when it was supposed to be a very quiet time and it was absolutely full of people. This was before I didn’t even know the character so I was just going alone so I didn’t actually pay much attention to things, but I remember it was busy.

I think I want to continue to feel like fairness is growing in all directions. All these different types of exhibitors participated in the expo. You have progressive studios that are known for always showing the art of self-taught, larger galleries, and then you will have some galleries that showcase the combination of contemporary and self-taught and some international exhibitors that I think are very important. This is another topic we can talk about. But I really want to stay locked fairly, not in one direction.

There are a lot of tariffs and all immigration policies this year and a lot of things happening. What do you want to keep, what are the core of the spirit or operation of the fair, and what you want to change in the next edition or the upcoming edition under your leadership? Remember that for a new director, how much you can change in the first year and what you expect from previous versions is always a challenge.

One of the goals is to continue to find new exhibitors who bring new things that people have never seen before. You might go to frieze and want to see the works of the same famous artist, but at the Outsider Art Fair, your expectation is that you will see something unexpected and new. I want to continue bringing it to the fair and keep making it a place loved by ordinary non-art world figures, and the art world loves it. I think it’s really important. These are the things I want to keep the same.

In terms of change, I hope to see the 2027 edition of the fair grow to gain more space, have more exhibitors and things that I focus very much on. Internally, I really want more partnerships to make the exhibitors experience better. I think that’s my bias. I have been thinking a lot, do we need hotel partners, logistics partners, transportation partners? We need to make sure we have a nice event for exhibitors and other types of partners that really like to make things as easy as possible right now. Because, even if it’s a super profitable part of their timeline, it’s hard to do all these expos, we still need to get these investments three to eight months ahead of the expo, which is really difficult.

We will have a curated space for Canadian Inuit Art next year, and we will be working on this stall with some partners from the Canadian Gallery. I think this is really special.

But in fact, I’ve been following emails from many exhibitors around the world, no matter they did a million times, they’ve done it a few times, otherwise they’ve never done an expo before, saying, “I’m worried about tariffs, I’m worried about immigration, I’m worried about rules changing.” There’s no doubt that I can reply in detail what the tariff law actually is, uncertain Is it a problem? I totally understand this.

I can only talk about how we lose control, what is happening in the country. But I can only hope it works because here to show and see their American clients attend international galleries, all galleries around the world, this Market, right?

If they are a gallery showing the work, namely, Europe, Asia, whatever they want to meet their clients here – this is an incredible risk for them compared to the past few years. There are only too many that I can mitigate these risks. They have to make their own decisions.

Tell me about your favorite memories from previous Outsider Art Fairs.

Last year, I just felt like there were a lot of different stalls and a lot of different artists and I wanted to take the time to come. I definitely recognize some artists like Sal Salandra, the older gay guy doing super pornographic detailed embroidery.

I like some artists don’t know. No one has ever said, “Oh, you can’t spend 20 weeks working on this piece.” So you get people who do incredibly detailed work that you won’t see anywhere else.

It’s always a pleasure to see some contemporary artists joining more mature artists. Martín Ramírez is an artist I really like, always outstanding, but there are a lot of small discoveries elsewhere.

One year, [Abigail Goldman who] He was a former defense attorney, making these tiny crime scenes look like tiny dioramas, calling them “Die-oo-ramas.”