Pace Returns for a third time with Presentation by Maya Lin and Leo Villareal at Frieze New York 2026
Installation view of Pace at Frieze New York, Booth B10 The Shed, May 13–17, 2026 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery
At the 2026 edition of Frieze New York, Pace presented works by Maya Lin and Leo Villareal, celebrating two major figures in public art as they unveil significant new commissions in the US this year. The gallery’s booth will feature sculptures by Lin, inspired by her interest in the shape and flow of water and her environmental concerns, and new wall- mounted works from Villareal’s latest series, titled Golden Game, which incorporates wood, LEDs, and custom software to produce abstractions that reflect the power and mystery of the natural world.
On its booth, Pace will show works by Lin that call attention to natural sites that have seen or will see significant environmental change. A new silver sculpture by the artist, however, celebrates the exception to this trend. Titled Silver Yellowstone (2026), this work is inspired by the only untouched river in the continuous United States.
Villareal, Leo Golden Game (Medium) 9, 2026 LEDs, white oak, acrylic, custom software and electrical hardware, aluminum 52" × 52" × 6-1/4" (132.1 cm × 132.1 cm × 15.9 cm) © Leo Villareal, courtesy Pace Gallery
The gallery’s booth at Frieze New York will also showcase sculptures, rendered at new scales, from Villareal’s Golden Game series. Villareal presented Golden Game at Pace Tokyo in 2025, furthering his exploration into the relationships between nature, technology, chance, and the human experience. The series title, which references a book of 17th century alchemical engravings, speaks to the influence of esoteric knowledge and the mystical on the works. Through Golden Game, Villareal invites viewers to consider the boundary between the physical and digital worlds.
Further details about the artists’ recent and forthcoming public projects follow below:
Officially opening this spring, Lin’s large-scale artwork A Parallel Nature—the centerpiece of a new public plaza on Madison Avenue in Midtown Manhattan—is inspired by the natural bedrock of the city and the rockfaces of Central Park. Commissioned by JPMorganChase, A Parallel Nature comprises two monumental sculptural granite walls based off a scan of an actual rock ledge from Central Park, bringing the natural world to the heart of New York City. Lin has also been commissioned to create two major stone sculptural fountains that will anchor the Ann Dunham Water Garden at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. Titled, Seeing Through the Universe, this work will be located near the north entrance of the Center, which opens June 19.
Installation view of Pace at Frieze New York, Booth B10 The Shed, May 13–17, 2026 Photography courtesy Pace Gallery
Villareal recently unveiled Celestial Passage, a permanent, site-specific artwork commissioned by JPMorganChase for the crown of its new global headquarters at 270 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Using custom-built software and 1.5 million programmable LEDs, Villareal has sculpted harmonious swaths of light that play across the exterior of the 60-story skyscraper in symphonic movements. In San Francisco, the artist’s The Bay Lights—which debuted in 2013 and is one of the largest public artworks in the world, spanning 1.8 miles of the Bay Bridge—has returned to the city for an additional ten years following the installation of a newly designed and fabricated lighting system.
This will be the third consecutive year that Pace presents a two-artist booth at Frieze New York. Conceived by the gallery’s President Samanthe Rubell, these pairings bring artists into unexpected dialogues and encourage new ways of seeing and experiencing their work.
Lin, Maya Arctic Circle, 2017 Blanco Macael marble 8-5/16" × 60" (21.1 cm × 152.4 cm) © Maya Lin Studio, courtesy Pace Gallery
Samanthe Rubell, President of Pace Gallery, says: “We’re very excited to show works by Maya and Leo at Frieze New York during this year of incredible public projects by them both. Pace has a long history of supporting artists’ commissions in New York and beyond, including works by Louise Nevelson, Claes Oldenburg, and Jean Dubuffet. The new, large-scale works by Maya and Leo will be enduring gifts to the city, bringing a renewed energy to the spaces we move through every day.”
Pace is a leading international art gallery representing some of the most influential artists and estates of the 20th and 21st centuries, founded by Arne Glimcher in 1960. Holding decades-long relationships with Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, and Mark Rothko, Pace has a unique story that can be traced to its early support of artists central to the Abstract Expressionist, Minimalist, Pop, and Light and Space movements. Now in its seventh decade, the gallery maintains enduring ties with its legacy artists and estates while also making long-term investments in the careers of contemporary artists, including rising painters Pam Evelyn, Li Hei Di, and Lauren Quin as well as established figures such as Loie Hollowell, Kylie Manning, Robert Nava, Adam Pendleton, Marina Perez Simão, and Anicka Yi. Under the current leadership of CEO Marc Glimcher and President Samanthe Rubell, Pace has established itself as a gallery of and for the future. It has played a key role in shaping and building major public and private collections across the globe since its founding. Pace highlights the shared lineages among its intergenerational artists through a robust global exhibition program encompassing 20th-century masterworks and contemporary art, as well as scholarly projects from Pace Publishing, one of the longest standing gallery imprints. Its artist-first ethos extends to public installations, philanthropic events, performances, and other interdisciplinary programming.
Pace also has a strong reputation for collaboration, and it shares representation of some artists with various small and midsize galleries around the world. In 2025, in this spirit of community, Pace became a partner in Pace Di Donna Schrader, a boutique gallery devoted to secondary market sales operating on a global scale. Pace continues its long history of collection-building with this venture, which charts a new path for its work in the secondary market and its stewardship of historic artworks.
Today, Pace has nine locations worldwide, including two galleries in New York—its eight-story headquarters at 540 West 25th Street and an adjacent 8,000-square-foot exhibition space at 510 West 25th Street in Chelsea—and 125 Newbury, an experimental project space in Tribeca named for the gallery’s original address on Newbury Street in Boston. Through an exhibition program directed by Arne Glimcher, 125 Newbury mounts innovative shows by emerging artists as well as curated presentations focusing on specific aspects or periods of historical artists’ practices. Pace’s origin in New York dates to 1963, when it opened its first space in the city on East 57th Street. Pace has also been active in California for some 60 years, opening its West Coast flagship in Los Angeles in 2022.
It maintains European footholds in London, Geneva, and Berlin, where it established a gallery space in 2025. Pace was one of the first international galleries to have a major presence in Asia, where it has been active since 2008, the year it first opened in Beijing’s vibrant 798 Art District. It now operates galleries in Seoul and Tokyo, along with offices in Beijing and Hong Kong.
Pace Gallery is located at Booth #B10, at the Shed from May 13 – 17, 2026. For more information about Pace Gallery during this year’s Frieze New York, please visit the Pace Gallery’s website here. Pace Gallery can be found on Instagram and Artsy. To keep up to date on all the latest news from Frieze, sign up for the newsletter here and follow on Instagram, X, and Frieze Official on Facebook.
