The minute that NADA Miami opened its doors on Tuesday morning at Ice Palace Studios in the Design District, crowds were streaming through the aisles and art was selling. It was a buoyant start to the week’s action, with Art Basel Miami Beach welcoming VIPs on Wednesday.

“We felt tremendous energy at the fair today,” New York art dealer Polina Berlin told me late in the afternoon. “A lot of my favorite people came through, including other dealers exhibiting at Basel, who bought works by young artists.”

The brisk sales and upbeat mood were a relief following a multi-year contraction in the art market. The New Art Dealers Alliance, which hosts the annual fair, canceled a planned sophomore edition in Paris, and it has had to compete for exhibitors with the decade-old Untitled Art Fair, which is held in a bespoke tent on the beach. Despite a post-lunch lull at NADA, amid talk that attendees had decamped for Untitled, the event seemed to be holding its own.

NADA lined up some 140 exhibitors this year, about the same number as last year, and one veteran participant proposed that the material they brought is stronger than in recent years. Sure, the days of quickly selling out booths may be a thing of the past, but dealers were still busy.

Berlin sold a painting by Tamo Jugeli for $45,000, four works by Parmen Daushvili at prices ranging from $5,000 to $22,000, five Casey Bolding works for $4,500 to $22,000, a painting by Brian Degraw priced at $8,000, two Loretta Dunkelman works on paper for $5,000 apiece, two Loral Raphael works on paper for $4,000 each, and a work by Carrie Rudd sold for $12,500.

Another New Yorker, Charles Moffett, sold 10 new paintings by Kenny Rivero at prices from $12,000 to $25,000. Rivero’s NADA presentation is prelude to a solo exhibition that he will open next Thursday at the dealer’s Tribeca headquarters.

Moffett last participated in NADA Miami in 2023, “which in some ways feels like a lifetime ago in terms of market cycles,” he said. But those cycles “are an inevitability in this business,” he said, adding that he was “confident heading into this week” and “happy that confidence has borne out.”

Deanna Evans, who’s also based in Tribeca, was showing work by three New York artists, including dyed fabric pieces by Lisha Bai, glazed paintings by Keiko Narahashi, and paintings by Dan Perkins. This is her third time doing NADA Miami. “I was happy to place some works before the fair and today in the booth.,” she said. “Lots of new and old faces, which I think is a great sign.”

London dealer Alice Amati took part in NADA Miami for the first time last year and did NADA New York back in May. Being in Miami during Art Basel “is a really important moment for the gallery, especially in this growth phase,” she told me.

Christiana Ine-Kimba Boyle, a former Pace Gallery staffer who owns the nomadic Gladwell Projects termed her NADA debut “incredibly successful,” having made sales to institutions, corporate collections, and individuals. “Given my gallery program still being quite young, inaugurated in April of 2025, the incredible success today was quite a feat,” Boyle said.

Sara Hantman, of the three-year-old Los Angeles gallery Seaview, said that she had nearly sold out her booth by the end of the first day. A museum acquired a Yu Kobayashi piece and works also sold by Jay Payton, Alessandra Acierto, Grigoris Semitecolo, and Zenobia Lee. Hantman said that she made connections with “a really great wave of serious and new local collectors in Miami, which has been refreshing since we’re a West Coast gallery.”

The Miami-based Knight Foundation is also helping to make sales happen, providing matching funds tied to a portion of admissions fees to finance acquisitions by the Pérez Art Museum Miami. This year, the fund’s budget doubled, to $20,000, and PAMM curators Jennifer Inacio, Maritza M. Lacayo, and Fabiana Sotillo selected three works by three artists: Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, from ABRA Gallery (of Fort Lauderdale, Florida); Thomas Bils, from Baker—Hall (Miami); and Pallavi Sen, from Twelve Gates Arts (Philadelphia).

NADA is also working with the Knight Foundation to host public programs in collaboration with PAMM and the firm Cultural Counsel. At one of the talks, whic was moderated by Cultured magazine’s Julia Halperin, NADA’s executive director, Heather Hubbs, said that, when the fair launched in 2003, it provided free admission, in an aim to connect with the local community. But after a dozen years, when that was no longer tenable, it linked up with PAMM to start the acquisitions program with ticket revenue. She said that her board was asking: “How could we do something to give back that was both important and impactful?”