World's top contemporary art fair opens Wednesday

It’s that time of year when lovers of contemporary furniture and artwork in the New York City area rejoice.  Design fair season is back and bigger than ever, with events old and new.  If a Charles Eames chair excites you more than free candy, here are the shows to check out this month. Collective:  This new fair debuts on May 8 and will run through May 11.  Architect and interior designer Steven Learner founded Collective with the intent to give up-and-coming New York-based galleries a chance to showcase their work alongside better known ones.

The Armory Show, New York’s largest art fair, opened to the press under a menacing gray sky, with the Hudson river churning angrily alongside the two piers it requisitions for exhibition spaces.

SÃO PAULO — On a recent afternoon, 10 of Lucas Arruda’s brooding, impressionistic landscapes sat on the floor of São Paulo’s Mendes Wood gallery, waiting to be hung for a preview show the next night.   The 28-year-old artist is in the vanguard of a group of young São Paulo painters who embody the creative and commercial growth in Brazilian contemporary art.  

Alice Gregory, in the NYT, has been reading her Austen: “It is a truth universally acknowledged,” she writes, “that a young technologist in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a high-end art collection”. Well, maybe she doesn’t put it exactly like that. But that’s her clear message:

The world's first international online art fair hits the Internet this Saturday, putting contemporary art pieces worth $1 million and more just a mouse click away.VIP Art Fair blows away the sometimes fusty, exclusive atmosphere of art galleries by placing 7,500 works from more than 2,000 artists on the Internet for the week-long fair.More than 50 pieces are priced at $1 million or higher, while some 100 items are valued at less than $5,000. About 138 galleries in 30 countries are participating.

The global economy is not at its best at the moment. European economies are struggling and China is no longer growing at a double-digit rate. However, these grim circumstances have done little to derail the art business. Dealers and buyers continue to descend upon art fairs and auctions around the world to sell, bid, and acquire. The Financialist has compiled an agenda of the top art events being held all over the globe between now and 2013.    

The glittering Hong Kong International Art Fair opens on Thursday, featuring works by artists from Picasso to Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei and cementing the city's status as a global art hub.More than 260 galleries from 38 countries, representing an even split from the West and the East, have booked space at the four-day event known as Art HK, now in its fifth edition.

New York's annual Armory Show opened Thursday showcasing art galleries from around the world in Manhattan."New York City hosts some of the world's most exciting arts events every year, and the growing number of shows that run the first week of March -- anchored by The Armory Show and the Art Show -- have become a highly anticipated annual affair," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.The show brings 274 modern and contemporary art galleries from 31 countries to two piers on the Hudson River. Each year some 50,000 people attend the fair.