Salon Art + Design 2026 Celebrates 15 Years Strong

The 15th edition of Salon Art + Design, which ran November 4-8 at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan, remained committed to proving its position as a single destination for the two sectors in its title. A balanced display of art and design from various geographies and eras across 40 booths cemented the outing’s must-visit status in the pre-holiday season. This year’s returning exhibitors included Wexler Gallery, Todd Merrill Studio, Twenty First Gallery, David Gill, and Maison Gerard, joined by newcomers such as Vitra, ABASK, and Pierre Augustin Rose. Overall, the showcase paid equal attention to heritage and experimentation.

The riveting overlap of art and design in visual cues, materials, and narratives enriched the environment, which felt elevated by the Park Avenue Armory’s dramatic interiors. It was, in fact, this nuanced alchemy of art and design that Salon’s executive director Nicky Dessources recognized as a key quality of longevity for her brand. “The fair has proven that the two can work well together in the same space,” she tells Interior Design and adds: “More and more dealers and collectors have started to take notice of the importance of paying attention to both.” She also takes pride in observing that many collectors take the first step to start collecting with design and grow from there.

The fair also provided an ideal ground to explore how new generations respond to collecting under the impact of the grand wealth transfer. “While we see that heirloom pieces are passed down, emerging collectors also pay attention to crafting their own voices and hold onto few key pieces from previous generations and build spaces with their own DNAs,” says Dessources who is always keen to observe the young audience stepping into her fair. The fair kicked off with its annual benefit, which once again supported Dia Art Foundation and included three-thousand guests, among them Drew Barrymore, Irina Shayk, and Ralph Lauren.

Top Picks From Salon Art + Design 2026

Cristina Grajales Gallery

The Tribeca stalwart returned to the fair after a few years of hiatus with a designer who also makes a comeback of sorts. In the heart of Cristina Grajales’s large booth is a vignette of new sand and crushed glass pieces by Fernando Mastrangelo who had recently opened a new exhibition at the gallery with a series of furniture pieces and paintings in the same material palette. Similar to his first one-person outing in nearly a decade, the theme here is the Hudson-based designer’s interpretation of landscapes that currently experience political tension. Using imagery pulled from vastly online, he both abstracts and emphasizes beautiful mountainscapes and sunsets into thoughtfully-constructed pieces, such as credenzas, side tables, and light fixtures, evoking both sensory and critical reactions for the viewers about the works and their inspirations.

Baobab

While an art and design fair immediately caters to seeing, another main sense—smell—was not amiss in the show’s thoughtful programming. The decision was not surprising given many leading hotel chains across the globe strengthen their brand profiles with signature scents that become synonymous with their hospitality experiences. Salon’s official scent provider was candlemaker Baobab which diffuses the layout’s critical points with olfactory notes to compliment the guests’ visual and physical stimulations. The ticketing desk for example is diffused with their leather-forward Stone Marbles smell while board of directors where this year’s panels are held are filled with Sand Sioli with its wood and mineral forward notes. The Tanzania-born and Brussels-based company is known for their elegant design which often includes glass jars handblown in Germany.

ABASK

The fair’s now-famous special presentations not only activated the ornate nooks at the Park Avenue Armory but also gave visibility to makers and studios without formal gallery representation. “We celebrate craftsmanship by individuals and and studios,” Dessources says about the initiative, which this year included the British design platform ABASK. The relatively young online source promotes the work of over 400 global designers and studios, and for the fair, they focused on lighting created by over 20 of its designers based across Europe, US, and India. Floral artist Hamish Powell’s immersive take-over backdropped the lighting fixtures that included Londoner Jamie Gaunt’s moody scorched oak lamp in a thick shade of black and Brooklyn-based Yuxuan Huang’s colorful flower-shaped hand-painted Kozo paper and wooden statement.

ZAROLAT

Dumbo’s own ZAROLAT presented a rich display of around 10 designers and studios from a range of practices and materials in its second Salon participation. The young design gallery’s selection reflects its energetic and approachable ethos with, for example, Melbourne-based designer Steffi Ström’s softly-formed Brazilian Carrara marble seater Chair 11 and Georgian studio Gypsandconcrete’s burnt wooden and steel chess set. Lisa Sacco’s Impossible Relic balances strong materials into a striking sculptural form in which honeycomb calcite stone and blown glass elegantly marry to demonstrate strength and vulnerability at the same time. 

Todd Merrill Studio

A Salon veteran, Todd Merrill delivered another distinctly maximalist booth to reflect his studio’s materially rich offerings. To ground the presentation, he colored the booth’s walls with Farrow & Ball’s pearly white shade Blanc de Chine and Phillip Jeffries’s wallpaper with abstracted metal hues. A standout in the diversely organized booth is Amsterdam-based artist and designer Maarten Vrolijk’s over six-foot plus tree sculpture orchestrated in a rich palette as a testimony to the gallery’s equally expansive material selection. A bronze tree blossoms with branches held together with bronze cast ropes, and from the extremely life-like branches grow examples fro Vrolijk’s Sakura glass collection, featuring individually-crafted metal and glass orbs. The pièce de résistance was accompanied by furniture and art pieces by wood makers John Procario, Jordi Sarrate, and Yun Hwan Kim.

Sten Studio

A standout debut came from Sten Studio with its presention of the Mexico City-based studio’s first lighting collection. Titled ENTRETIEMPO, the series marries function with an emotional exploration comparable to sculpture. The result is a group of tabletop fixtures that are visually lush and nostalgic while reflecting a historical research with elegant outcomes. Looking at 1960s when home decor was starting to become a reflector of new age personality and a standard for self-expression without compromise, the collection brings together timelessness of stone for the lamps’ bases with pleated origami used in shades. A thick red velvet stage-like display showcases romantic tones of onyx and travertine paired with bold natural patterns, each crowned with fabric and paper shades ruffled into elegance. 

Polmar Gallery

The newcomer New York fitting, founded by British architect Alex Shepel, made its Salon debut with furniture and sculptures. Limited editions made in the UK include Tale sofa which stands out with its globular walnut forms and armchairs titled Enoki, continuing the spherical visual code in red padauk wood. Two Points is a sculpture of black-stained oak and earth-brown mohair. Intentionally playful and inquisitive of balance, the pieces push visual experimentation with a grounded understanding of traditional materials and careful production. Rich tones of red and blue appear in different pieces in which unexpected forms and lush textures coalesce with elegance.

Vitra

A tour-de-force among special presentations positioned across the venue was Vitra’s unveiling of the Panton chair in gold. The Swiss company timed the grand reveal to Verner Panton’s 100 birthday and presented, for the first time, a material which was not possible to produce during the Danish designer’s lifetime. Interpreting the iconic polymer chair’s singular curves and unmistakable whimsical energy into a timeless material, the first edition in the 999-piece worldwide release shines and glares through a sleek matellization process which means the material particles are embedded in various layers of varnish. The presentation at Salon Art + Design also paid homage to 1968’s Furniture Fair when the very first Panton chair was displayed in Cologne.