Frieze

About Frieze

Launched in London in the summer of 1991, frieze began life as a rebellious young art magazine and grew into one of the most powerful brands in the global art world. From its origins as an alternative to the established American art press, it became closely associated with the Young British Artists who defined British art in the 1990s — and then, in 2003, its founders launched an art fair in Regent's Park that would transform the magazine into the anchor of an international empire of fairs spanning London, New York, Los Angeles, Seoul and, from 2026, Abu Dhabi.

Today frieze the magazine sits within a publishing and events business that also produces frieze masters magazine and frieze week, alongside Frieze Studios, its media production arm, and the Frieze Music performance programme. The print magazine appears eight times a year, publishing contemporary art news, features, reviews and listings, and remains one of the most widely read art publications in the world. Below is a detailed profile of the magazine: its founding, its editorial character, the fairs it spawned, its ownership history and its cultural significance.

History and Founding

frieze was founded in 1991 by Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover, with the artist Tom Gidley. The inaugural issue featured a Damien Hirst butterfly painting on its cover — a statement of intent that placed the magazine squarely within the emerging Young British Artists movement. Sharp and Slotover, longtime friends, conceived the magazine as an alternative to more established art publications such as Artforum, hoping it could widen the appeal of serious contemporary art with the approachable writing, lush imagery and smart design found in popular magazines about music, style and other cultural touchstones.

Early contributors included writers such as Hilton Als, Peter Schjeldahl and Lynne Tillman, and the magazine quickly became closely linked with the YBA phenomenon of the 1990s, covering the artists, galleries and exhibitions — from Sensation at the Royal Academy onwards — that made London the centre of the contemporary art world. Sharp and Slotover ceased direct involvement in editorial decisions in 2001, and in 2003 — the year the Frieze Art Fair was founded — they assumed the roles of publishing directors of the magazine and directors of the fair.

Editorial Character

The magazine publishes contemporary art news, features, reviews and listings eight times a year. A redesign led by art director David Lane gave the magazine what he described as a "less beautiful" and "more striking and arresting" style, divided into four sections — Columns, Features, Review and On-View — with two typefaces: Filosofia, designed by Zuzana Licko, who had created frieze's original logo in 1991, and a bespoke typeface developed with the type designer Radim Pesko. The redesign placed greater emphasis on commissioned photography and gave individual features bespoke looks rather than a one-size-fits-all template.

Editorially, the magazine has retained its founding spirit: serious contemporary art criticism and long-form features written in an accessible, engaged voice, aimed at readers who are passionate about art without necessarily being art-world insiders. Long-serving editorial director Jennifer Higgie, who worked on the publication for more than two decades, stepped down in 2019 to become editor-at-large, focusing on a podcast and on editing frieze masters magazine; former New York-based senior editor Andrew Durbin was then appointed editor-in-chief in 2020.

The Frieze Art Fair

In 2003 Sharp and Slotover launched the Frieze Art Fair in Regent's Park, London — the city's first major contemporary art fair. Early editions saw steady growth in attendance, rising from 27,700 visitors at the first fair to 105,000 by 2016. The fair helped unite London's art scene at a moment when the city was gaining prominence following the opening of Tate Modern in 2000, and multiple writers have credited it with helping to establish the contemporary art world as it exists today.

The fair was noted for practices that were innovative at the time, including commissioning works from artists and holding artist talks during the fair, and it embraced immersive art experiences — in 2007, Gavin Brown's Enterprise transformed its booth into a flea market. Since the mid-2000s, auction houses including Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips have expanded their mid-season contemporary sales to coincide with Frieze London, cementing the fair's week in October as a fixture of the global art calendar.

Global Expansion of the Fairs

Following the success of Frieze London, the fair brand expanded internationally. Frieze Masters, dedicated to art made before the year 2000, launched in London in 2012, the same year as Frieze New York. Frieze Los Angeles followed in 2019, Frieze Seoul in 2022, and Frieze Abu Dhabi was announced for 2026. In 2023 Frieze acquired two further American fairs, The Armory Show in New York and EXPO Chicago, extending its footprint across the United States.

The expansion has made Frieze one of the dominant organisers in the international art-fair business, alongside Art Basel. The magazine remains the editorial heart of the enterprise, with the fairs generating the commercial engine that funds the wider business — a model that has drawn both admiration for its ambition and criticism from those who see the fair system as privileging commerce over art.

frieze d/e

From April 2011 to autumn 2016, frieze published frieze d/e, a bilingual German/English quarterly magazine with its own editorial team and independent content. Edited and produced in Berlin, the magazine served the German-speaking art world and reflected the growing importance of Berlin as a centre for contemporary art in the 2010s. It closed in 2016, with its concerns folded back into the main magazine's international coverage.

Ownership

In 2016 the American holding company Endeavor acquired a reported 70 per cent controlling stake in Frieze, covering its publishing, art fair and music interests. The deal brought the formerly independent company into the orbit of the Hollywood entertainment conglomerate then known as WME-IMG. In April 2020 Simon Fox, formerly chief executive of Reach plc — the British publisher behind the Daily Mirror and the Daily Express — was appointed as Frieze's first chief executive, with Sharp and Slotover stepping back from executive management while remaining involved in shaping the brand's direction.

In 2025 the company's ownership changed hands again: Endeavor's co-founder Ari Emanuel agreed to buy Frieze in a deal reported to be valued at $200 million, taking the magazine and fairs business private once more under new ownership.

Publications and Media

Beyond the flagship magazine, the Frieze publishing operation produces frieze masters magazine, the publication accompanying the Frieze Masters fair, and frieze week, its listings and preview title. The business model also encompasses Frieze Studios, the media production arm of the company, and Frieze Music, the off-site performance programme. The magazine itself celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2021, with founders Sharp and Slotover reflecting on how the London art world they started in "could comfortably (and often did) fit in a single pub" — an intimate, revolutionary scene that the magazine set out to communicate to a wider audience.

The company's publications and fairs work in concert: the magazine's editorial coverage, reviews and criticism provide the intellectual ballast for a commercial operation built around the fairs, while the fairs in turn give the magazine unrivalled access to the artists, galleries and collectors who drive the contemporary art market.

Digital Presence

The magazine's website, frieze.com, publishes art news, features, reviews and interviews on a continuous basis, extending the print magazine's coverage between issues. The site also serves as the digital home of the Frieze fairs, with online viewing rooms, fair previews and editorial content tied to the fair calendar. Frieze's social media channels and video output, including Frieze Studios productions, reach a global audience of art professionals and enthusiasts.

The company's digital strategy has grown in importance alongside the physical fairs, particularly since the pandemic years demonstrated the value of online viewing and editorial content when physical events were curtailed. The magazine's online archive stretches back across more than three decades of contemporary art history.

Cultural Significance

frieze's trajectory — from scrappy upstart magazine to the centre of a global art-fair empire — mirrors the transformation of contemporary art itself over the past three decades. When the magazine launched in 1991, the contemporary art market as it is known today barely existed; the first evening sale of contemporary art did not take place until the late 1990s at Sotheby's. Frieze has been pivotal in building that market, certainly in London, where its fair helped to turn the city into one of the art world's twin capitals.

The founders themselves have acknowledged the double-edged nature of that success: the internationalisation of the art world has meant that more artists can live from their art and that artists from outside traditional Western centres can be appreciated globally, but it has also brought a nostalgia for the camaraderie of the early days. As a magazine, frieze remains committed to the serious, engaged art writing that was its founding mission — even as the fairs it spawned have made it one of the most commercially significant names in art. Its official website is frieze.com.