On Thursday afternoon, as much of the New York art world streamed toward the Javits Center for the Armory Show, which has over 230 exhibitors, I headed downtown to Open Invitational, a micro-fair hosting nine studios that support artists with disabilities. It’s taking place through Sunday afternoon at 356 Broadway, in the gallery-rich Tribeca neighborhood. 

Open Invitational 2025 in New York. Photo: Nikola Strbac.

The granddaddy of these progressive art studios (also sometimes called supportive art studios or disability art studios), founded in 1974, is the San Francisco Bay Area’s Creative Growth, which is on the roster here, along with New York’s Artech Collective; Philadelphia’s Center for Creative Works; Community Access Art Collective, New York; Creativity Explored, of San Francisco; LAND Studio and Gallery, Brooklyn; the Living Museum, from Queens; Progressive Art Studio Collective, Detroit; and Studio Route 29, of Frenchtown, New Jersey. All have worthy offerings, and prices start as low as a hundred bucks (I bought a Paulino Martin work at that price from Creative Growth; you’ll find your own bargains). 

At midday Thursday, the vibe was strong; portable speakers played an invigorating playlist as New York VIPs came through, including musician David Byrne; curator Gary Carrion-Murayari from the New Museum; Matthew Higgs, director of White Columns; critic Bob Nickas; and curator Valérie Rousseau of the American Folk Art Museum.

The fair is the brainchild of New York dealer David Fierman and Miami-based arts patron Ross McCalla, who were both beaming. It launched in Miami’s Design District in December 2024; Artnet’s Andrew Russeth proclaimed it “a stunner, the quiet hit of the week.” (With Land Gallery’s Rachel Carle Cohen, Fierman also recently opened a New York gallerydevoted to artists with disabilities.)

“The exhibitors gave me $500, and I put on this fair for half what I would pay for an ‘Armory Presents’ booth,” Fierman told me, seated on a bench in the middle of the room. (According to recent Artnet reportingby Annie Armstrong, those go for between $13,000 and $21,000.) “Our friend Efraín López has a gallery in the building, and he let us know the space was available,” Fierman added. Dealers are all showing in one long room, with no dividing walls, promoting a sense of togetherness. 

“The market is down,” Fierman added, “so it’s a time for ingenuity, good energy, building community, and lifting all boats together.” This particular boat really does seem to be rising; Fierman told me that they’ll be back in Miami in December in a bigger space, and that they’ll also soon do a fair with Creativity Explored in San Francisco. Though other galleries and fairs are closing left and right, spirits are high at 356 Broadway.

At the Living Museum, I loved paintings by Nyla Isaac, in which she depicts herself on the back of a winged horse soaring through the air, accompanied by eagles. You can practically feel the brisk air at her altitude. For Fierman, the scene recalls the Rococo stylings of François Boucher; for me, seeing a Black woman painted in the style of an Old Master recalled Kehinde Wiley. The Trinidadian-American artist studied art and fashion illustration at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, but schizophrenia knocked her off the professional track in her 20s. The larger painting is tagged at $5,000.

I’m trying to figure out how I could possibly install Robert Latchman’s charming large paintings on cardboard depicting the Brooklyn Bridge, on view courtesy of Brooklyn’s Land Gallery, in my small apartment. Some hang on the wall, but the ones I have my eye on are done on sheets of cardboard several feet wide that are folded and propped on the floor, recalling Japanese screens. Rachel Carle Cohen of Land, tears in her eyes, told me that the artist has steel bars in his legs after a devastating 2010 car accident; the bridge similarly has steel bars in its columns, so the artist feels he can relate to the iconic structure. Wall-hung paintings go for $2,500, the floor-standing pieces for $5,000. 

Studio Route 29 is offering painted-over found photographs by Katie House, who works in many mediums and was the first artist to begin working at the studio. There’s a very nice sense of mystery to the unknown backstories of the photographs, some of which show people formally sitting for portraits, some of which are candid shots; in just about all cases, eyes are painted over, lending a sometimes eerie, sometimes funny effect. “I just want to know who these people are, you know what I mean?” says the artist in a statement, also saying, “I want there to be a before and after to the photographs.” Prices are in the range of a few hundred dollars.

Andrew Li’s ink and watercolor works, at Creativity Explored, are ambitious in scale and rich in detail, teeming with animal and human figures, sometimes painstakingly labeled, and, since the artist loves public transportation, planes, trains, and automobiles. In Untitled (Dog Rescue), from 2019, dogs are lovingly inscribed with names: Wendy, Ann, Kim, and Barbara are all in attendance. Even large sheets, ranging more than four feet wide, are priced between just $1,000 and $2,000.

At a fair for outsider artists, there’s a fundamentally different vibe from events where the artists are generally more professionalized. The dealers take evident joy in promoting the artists, helping people support themselves when the odds are stacked against them. And buying similarly brings an invigorating feeling of rooting for the underdog.

Harriet Salmon, staffing the fair for Creativity Explored, told me that some contemporary artists’ goals—a show at the Whitney Museum, say—can be a stretch. The artists showing at fairs like this are different. “They say, ‘I want people to see my work,’ or ‘I want to have a show my family can come see,’ or ‘I want people to know how I see the world,’” she told me. “Those are very achievable goals. And I can do it. And it feels really good.”