Sanford L. Smith, an art lover and a businessman who founded some of the most well-known art and design exhibitions in New York, died on Saturday, May 25, at a senior living facility in Manhattan. He was 84.
Smith brought attention to underappreciated artistic genres and generated millions of dollars in sales.
According to his wife Jill Bokor, congestive heart failure was the cause of his death.
Evan Snyderman, the owner of R & Company, said at a Salon Art + Design, one of Smith's fairs, that they always reconnect with clients they do not see in other places, including New Yorkers who never come downtown.
Some dealers claimed they sold more work than they did during the entire year at their galleries at a Sanford Smith event.
Smith ran over 150 fairs throughout his years in what he called the "show business," including the Outsider Art Fair, Modernism, and the Fall Antiques Show. They were critical successes and well-known, drawing as many as 10,000 visitors over a three- or four-day weekend.
In 2012, The Times referred to his Salon as "a museum in the making."
In 2022, when asked about his career in an interview, Smith responded, "I filled holes." He noted that he saw gaps in the offerings of other art fairs and developed new events to cover those gaps.
Paul Donzella, a Manhattan dealer in 20th-century lighting and furniture, told in a 2022 interview that Smith was a one-man institution in the New York City art and design worlds.
Donzella claimed that Smith showed incredible vision at a time when all of the fairs were the same old thing.
"Modern design, outsider art, works on paper - no one was shining a light on these categories when Sandy took big risks on them," he added.
