BAIA Builds Success with Print Fair Despite a Contracting Market

At a time when the broader art market is experiencing contraction, Black Art In America (BAIA) demonstrated that strategic accessibility, education, and thoughtful pricing can still drive meaningful growth. The BAIA Fine Art Print Fair concluded with over 30% growth in attendance and more than 57% growth in total sales over last years fair, reinforcing the increasing relevance of fine art prints as both a collector entry point and a resilient revenue category.

Rather than retreating in response to market uncertainty, BAIA leaned into one of the strongest and most adaptable segments of the contemporary art ecosystem: fine art prints.

As discretionary spending tightens, collectors are becoming more deliberate — not disengaged. Fine art prints offer a compelling balance of quality, collectability, and accessibility, allowing buyers to remain active while managing risk. For emerging collectors, prints lower the barrier to entry. For seasoned collectors, they provide a way to continue supporting artists, expanding collections, and acquiring meaningful work without the financial exposure of large-scale originals.

Beyond short-term performance, the fair also underscored a compelling long-term opportunity for collectors. Collectors of contemporary printmakers today may be uniquely positioned compared to collectors of the past, as many contemporary artists now work in more restricted editions than earlier generations. Where historical print editions were often more expansive, today’s artists are increasingly intentional — producing smaller runs, and treating prints as finite cultural assets rather than mass-circulated works. In a contracting market, this combination of accessibility and scarcity positions contemporary prints as a particularly attractive collecting category.

This shift was reflected clearly in sales performance at the fair. The top-selling artists included Najee Dorsey (with 28 works sold), Derrick Phillips, Traci Mims, and Dontanarious Kelly, each demonstrating strong collector demand across limited editions. Additionally, the top-grossing secondary market sales by single at the print fair were Sam Gilliam, Michael Ellison, and Evita Tezeno, underscoring that collectors were willing to make decisive, high-value acquisitions within the print format.