NY Gallery Tours

My Skyscrapers gallery tour in Midtown on Sat. May 19 at 1:00 PM will include a Russian artist’s exhibit whose subject matter is BEYOND CONTROVERSIAL – buying or selling these works as other than art could land a person in JAIL!  These artworks also happen to be strikingly beautiful.  The tour’s 6 other stops will include wonderful all-new painting, sculpture, and photography shows.  There’s usually nothing in the Midtown galleries that is remotely controversial, as these galleries tend to be wealthy and conservatively safe in their tastes, unlike, say, the Lower East Side galleries, which take a lot of risks.  Therefore, this Midtown tour is an exciting exception. [...]

It may come as a surprise that NOT that many gay artists produce blatantly homoerotic artwork.  At least this is true for artists who are established enough to be “players” on the international art scene, such as the ones who show in the Chelsea galleries.  So take advantage of my Sat. May 12 LGBT gallery tour, where one featured exhibit will be a gay artist’s large-scale paintings of nude and semi-nude chiseled male athletes.  HOT.  And innovative, as you’ll see for yourself. [...]

It has been an entire year since I led a gallery tour in Soho, the origin of many legendary, ground-breaking galleries, but that drought will come to an end on Sat. April 21 at 1:00 PM, when I lead my next Soho gallery tour. And it may be another year before I lead the next such tour, so TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS ONE while you can, whatever the weather turns out to be, and whatever your tentative other plans.

Why have I waited this long, when I lead a scheduled gallery tour every week in different parts of town? It’s not that I haven’t been visiting Soho galleries on my own all these months – I have. It’s just that now that Soho is down to 25 galleries (compared with 300 galleries in Chelsea and 120 in the Lower East Side), I was waiting for the right time when there would be enough extraordinary exhibits in Soho at the same time, to make the tour worth leading.

Well, the time is NOW.  Highlights of my April 21 tour will include: [...]

Our Sat. April 14 Gay & Lesbian gallery tour in Chelsea will include 6 queer artist exhibits and just one straight artist show, the highest percentage of queer artists we’ve shown on a gallery tour in 3 years.   Usually on our LGBT tours the exhibits are about half gay/ half straight, because there are generally 3 or 4 gay artist shows exceptional enough that are worth showing.  But on this tour there are an unusually high 6 gay artist exhibits that are outstanding.  Let’s face it: straight artists outnumber gay artists around 9-to-1, so of course it’s easier to find extraordinary straight artist shows.  This time it’s different, and it may be another 3 years before we include as many queer artists as we’ll be showing this Saturday, so take advantage. [...]

Naturally, I haven’t visited every art neighborhood in human history.  No one has.  Nevertheless, a strong case can be made that Chelsea today is the world’s most extraordinary gallery neighborhood, past or present.  You’ll have a chance to see for yourself the very best that Chelsea has to offer on my ALL-NEW Chelsea “Best Exhibits” gallery tour, taking place Sat. April 7 at 1:00 PM and 3:45 PM.  It so happens that this particular tour will include the single most extraordinary show of the past season, in ANY neighborhood we’ve led tours.  It’s a show by a rising South Korean artist that participants young and old on several recent private tours have unanimously raved about, with one client purchasing a piece on the spot.  You’ll be talking about this show for years to come, and it’s just 1 of 7 “best” exhibits we’ll visit. [...]

It was on the 2nd Saturday of March 2002 that I led my first gallery tour, under my newly-formed enterprise “New York Gallery Tours.”  Therefore, my Sat. March 10, 2012 Chelsea “Best Exhibits” tour will mark my company’s 10-year anniversary.  I can hardly believe how profoundly different my life is from back then.

Ten years ago I was a tenured college professor in New Jersey’s Kean University, and I thought I had the rest of my life mapped out.  I liked teaching (I thought), and was good at it.  The work schedule was decent, salary was acceptable, benefits were good.  It was a safe life.

I spent my days off obsessively visiting the newly emerging Chelsea galleries.  And one day I thought to myself that I’d like to share what I know about art, and about the Chelsea galleries, with other people.  It was supposed to be a once-a-month hobby leading tours, if that.  I didn’t need the money, so I charged next to nothing.  I set up a ridiculously primitive website using Front Page, sent out a few press releases to publications that listed walking tours for free, and waited to see if anyone would show up.

They did. [...]

The singular experience when you attend my ALL-NEW Skyscrapers gallery tour in Midtown Manhattan’s business district, taking place Sat. March 3, is that it will likely be the most elevators you will have ever ridden in one day.  This is my “vertical” gallery tour, with great views and world-class art, all visited in a total walk of just 2 blocks (by far the shortest walking distance on any of my tours).  The only other art experience on the planet I can compare it to is in one of Tokyo’s art neighborhoods, also in skyscrapers, but where the art is not nearly as high quality as in New York City’s Midtown.

Highlights of my Sat. March 3 Skyscrapers gallery tour will include (1) a subversive artist group’s Persian rugs made from discarded lottery tickets, (2) gorgeous double-sided landscape paintings depicting the earth before human existence, and (3) large-scale abstract sculptures from an artist that a N.Y. Times reviewer called “Brancusi on steroids.”  These are just 3 of 7 exhibits we’ll visit that day. [...]

The Lower East Side art scene has become what I would call breath-taking!  Six years ago the L.E.S. had just 10 galleries, but it recently reached the 120-gallery mark.  In comparison, the Upper East Side, a quite respected gallery neighborhood, has but 45 galleries.  However, what distinguishes the L.E.S. the most is that its artists and gallery owners are significantly younger on average than in any other Manhattan neighborhood.  Therefore, the art there is as fresh and cutting-edge as it gets.

Let’s backtrack a little, to see how the Lower East Side gallery scene came to be.  Not so long ago, the L.E.S. was a haven for drug dealers, and therefore had substantially lower rents than its neighbor Soho.  The New Museum for Contemporary Art took a big gamble several years back by deciding to construct an architecturally innovative space on what was then the relatively run-down Bowery in the Lower East side.  Since the museum opened its doors, Bowery has begun transforming itself into a fashionable area, and I believe the New Museum’s decision to move was the single greatest impetus for the galleries to sprout around it.

The L.E.S. was brimming with storefront properties, which turned out to be ideal for gallery conversion.  Unlike the en masse gallery exodus in the 1990s from Soho to Chelsea, the newly created L.E.S. galleries came from all over: several from Chelsea, a handful from Midtown, one from the West Village, a couple from the Upper East side.  But most of them were start-up galleries that were drawn to the neighborhood’s rents that were reasonably low for Manhattan.  Some galleries didn’t move to the L.E.S., but instead set up a satellite gallery space there while keeping their original space in another neighborhood.  And I hear plans from lots more established galleries to follow suit.

The ambiance of the Lower East Side is charming and vibrant these days.  Crime rates in the gallery area are now among the lowest in the city, and all kinds of yuppie bars and ethnic restaurants have opened up.  Unlike Chelsea, which is essentially a cold, industrial neighborhood, the Lower East Side is residential and multi-cultural, making for a lively, personable feel.

Month by month, as galleries continue to open in the L.E.S., my tours there get more and more extraordinary.  The sudden emergence of the Lower East Side galleries as a world-class rival to Chelsea is the single most dramatic development in New York’s art scene in the last decade.

Rafael Risemberg, Ph.D.
Founder and Director
New York Gallery Tours

It’s kind of staggering to realize that my Gay & Lesbian gallery tour on Sat. Feb.18 at 1:00 PM in Chelsea, open to people of any orientation, will be the 100th completely different LGBT tour I’ve led since I founded New York Gallery Tours 10 years ago.  My LGBT tours have been happening like clockwork once a month for 10 months of the year, during the gallery season from September through June.  Every single one of the tours has included all-new exhibits of contemporary art – I never once repeated any shows.

I’m pulling out all the stops to make this Saturday’s all-new tour a most memorable experience, including TWO gay artist speakers – Scott Hunt and Frank Yamrus – when we visit their respective drawing and photography exhibits, plus the opening of lesbian art star Lucy Skaer’s latest sculpture show.  You’ll also see painting, video art, and an innovative sound art installation – 7 exhibits total!  And, as always, you’ll get a chance to socialize with culturally adventurous gay men and lesbians. [...]

Canadian artist Donald Ian McCaw, my Artist Career Consultants client, recently opened his first-ever Chelsea solo show at the Anna Kustera Gallery, located at 520 W. 21st St.  This ground-floor gallery happens to be next door to the Gagosian Gallery, the wealthiest gallery in the world, and is in the same building as Maurizio Cattelan’s brand new gallery that will have its grand opening later this month.  What a fantastic location for McCaw to make his art world splash!  His show runs from February 2 – March 3, 2012, and I encourage you to see the exhibit before it closes. [...]

British artist Damien Hirst is the quintessential “bad-boy” artist of our time, and reputedly the wealthiest artist alive.  He skyrocketed to world fame with groundbreaking sculptures of dead animals suspended in glass vats of formaldehyde, including an entire shark (now owned by NYC’s Museum of Modern Art) and segmented sections of a cow.  Later on, he created a diamond-encrusted human skull for $100 million – the most expensive piece of art EVER sold by a living artist – to a Japanese buyer.  Hirst’s latest exhibit that opened two weeks ago – of abstract paintings created over the past 25 years – is being called by some critics his most audacious yet.  Naturally, we’re going to be visiting this show, among others, on my next Upper East Side gallery tour on Sat. Feb. 4.  The critics have been either admiring it or trashing it.  No one is on the fence on this one! [...]

My Lower East Side gallery tour on Sat. Jan. 28 is shaping up to have collectively the most mind-expanding, unconventional art I have ever shown in the nearly 10 years I have been leading gallery tours.  If you’re looking for an afternoon of safe, predictable art, this particular tour is NOT for you (do attend any of my other, more “normal” – and wonderful – gallery tours, such as my Upper East Side gallery tour the week after).  But if you’re a culturally adventurous, open-minded person who enjoys having your art vistas expanded, then this tour is for you. [...]

Artist Barbara Sandler, who has had a female partner for 26 years, likes to paint portraits only of men.  That has put her at odds with the lesbian community, who throughout Sandler’s 40-year career has accused her of being anti-feminist.  You’ll get a chance to see Barbara Sandler’s latest artwork, and meet her in person, when we visit Sandler’s show as one of 7 stops on our Sat. Jan. 21 Gay & Lesbian gallery tour in Chelsea.  She’ll speak to us about both her artwork and her sometimes tense relationship with the gay community.

As a gay man, I can tell you that Sandler’s men are strikingly handsome, athletic, and sexy.  Her anonymous male subjects – based on collages made from found 19th and early 20th century photographs and printed ephemera – reflect a continued interest in the iconography of masculinity. [...]

A Chelsea gallery exhibit, newly opened, is likely to be THE talk of the New York art scene this year, and it will certainly be included in my Chelsea “Best Exhibits” tour on Sat. Jan. 14, as one of 7 shows we’ll visit that day. The piece is a massive sculptural installation by a Chinese artist who made international headlines when he was arrested by the Chinese government last year, and was tortured for weeks. His stated “crime”? Tax evasion, according to the Chinese authorities. Closer to the truth: some of his artwork is a negative commentary on the Chinese government and Chinese society. Just before they arrested this artist, they bulldozed his new state-of-the-art Beijing studio that was 2 years in the making.

The Chelsea exhibit we’re going to see on our tour premiered recently at the London’s Tate Museum, where it caused a sensation. It consists of 5 TONS of hand-painted porcelain sunflower seeds, each one meticulously made by Chinese artisans. [...]

A gallery opening is the single most festive time in an exhibit’s run. Because the artwork is being shown publicly for the first time, artists, gallery owners and gallery directors are all likely to be there, excited to see and hear everyone’s reactions. Sometimes the bulk of that month’s sales happen in those first couple of hours. Free-flowing alcohol serves as a critical social lubricant.  Whether or not you’ve been to a gallery opening, you can experience several openings back-to-back on our Chelsea Gallery Openings Tour on Thursday Jan. 5 at 6:00 PM. [...]

Out of the blue last month, I got an e-mail from Alex Erikson, an editor at Next Magazine, New York City’s premier glossy gay weekly, with a circulation in the tens of thousands.  He wanted to do a feature on art exhibits of interest to the gay community, and he asked if I could recommend some exhibits.  He sure came to the right person – that’s literally what I do with my life!  I wrote up my current picks, got Alex in contact with a gallery willing to send photos of its extraordinary December show of a gay Canadian artist, and the result is a FABULOUS full-page feature in Next Magazine’s current issue, that came out this past Friday!  It’s on page 28.

The timing for my next LGBT gallery tour on Sat. Dec. 17 couldn’t be better. [...]

Our Gallery Tour Gift Certificates – for friends, family members and co-workers – are unique, thoughtful, and inexpensive.  You can buy Scheduled
Tour gift certificates for just $20 each, or purchase a Private Tour gift certificate for 1 – 12 people for $300.

Gift Certificates for Scheduled tours cost $20 each and are valid for one person on any one of our Saturday scheduled tours.  If you purchase more than one gift certificate, the same person could use those certificates for more than one tour, or several people could use them together on one tour.  [...]

Whether you’re hosting guests over Thanksgiving weekend, or just catching up on sleep, you know that 4 days is a lot of time to entertain and be entertained.  So we suggest you spend the Saturday afternoon after Thanksgiving on our Lower East Side gallery tour Sat. Nov. 26 at 1:00 PM.  Bring your family and friends – or come solo.  As always, the exhibits we visit that day will be ALL-NEW.  This is NYC’s hottest, edgiest art spot, growing from 10 galleries 5 years ago to over 115 galleries today.  The artists and gallery owners in this neighborhood are younger on average than in any other New York gallery area, so you’re going to see the freshest contemporary art anywhere. [...]

I’m excited to announce that my LGBT gallery tour on Sat. Nov. 19 will be the most extraordinary such tour of the past year!  What will make this particular tour so exceptional?  To begin with, it will include an Argentine artist’s brand-new photo exhibit of 32 nude Latino men, the most male nudes I’ve ever shown on one tour, in the close to 10 years I’ve led them.  Also, there will be 3 exhibits on the Nov. 17 tour featuring LGBT artists that were included on my Chelsea “Best Exhibits” tour the week before.  This was an all-time record of gay artists on one “Best Exhibits” tour, for which I choose the top 7 current shows from Chelsea’s 300 galleries, regardless of the artists’ sexual orientations.   [...]

When people attend my Chelsea gallery tours – which are the most extraordinary ones I lead – they’ll likely assume that a lot of art in the Chelsea galleries is fantastic.  Well, sorry to disillusion you, but nothing could be further from the truth.  What makes my ever-changing Chelsea tours such jaw-dropping experiences, and the foundation of my enterprise, is that this is the one neighborhood where I have 300 galleries from which to choose what I consider to be the top 7 exhibits.  My tour attendees are NOT seeing the 293 exhibits that didn’t make my cut, and the vast majority of those shows are frankly boring. [...]

There is no better venue for painting – even contemporary, cutting-edge painting – than the gorgeously finished rooms of the Upper East Side mansion galleries.  And you’ll be seeing plenty of both in my first Upper East Side gallery tour of the season, to take place Sat. Nov. 5 at 1:00 PM.

Paintings BELONG in these mansions, because before these spaces were converted to galleries, they were residences for the wealthy, who graced a good amount of artwork on their homes’ walls.  Unlike other gallery neighborhoods, where the current galleries were once industrial factories and warehouses (Chelsea) or mom-and-pop stores (Lower East Side), or office buildings (Midtown), the Upper East Side is and has always been primarily residential. [...]

Installation art is rare enough, but sound art installation is rarer still, since galleries are all about visual art.  I happen to be a huge fan of sound art in galleries, even if I hardly ever encounter it (or perhaps BECAUSE I hardly ever encounter it), so it’s with great excitement I announce that on my Sat. Oct. 29 Lower East Side gallery tour, one of our 7 stops will be an extraordinarily inventive sound art installation. [...]

It used to be that gay Western artists didn’t want to be known as gay, because it would likely ruin their careers, and it could even lead to their imprisonment. In the decades following the 1969 Stonewall riots, gay artists became more comfortable being open about their orientation, and some even embraced it as part of their artistic identity. While that is more or less the case today, it seems that a new phenomenon is emerging: “Post-Gay” artists, especially younger ones, are less likely to be openly gay than their older cohorts. Not because they fear stigma and reprisal, but because they don’t want themselves and their art to be pigeon-holed as such. Welcome to a new phase in gay liberation. [...]

Installation art is a rare – and thrilling – type of art in galleries. Rare because these enormous, room-filling works are much riskier to sell, as they can’t possibly fit into anyone’s living room, and even museums would likely have to build special cavernous spaces to house the pieces. Thrilling because viewers are not looking AT the art, but are usually immersed INSIDE the art as they navigate its complex, often cutting-edge, contents. How especially exciting, then, that my Sat. Oct. 15 Chelsea “Best Exhibits” tour will include not one but FOUR extraordinary shows of installation art, among the 7 exhibits we’ll visit! [...]

My Skyscrapers gallery tour in Midtown is an event I lead only around 3 times a year, and when I do it’s a winner.  In the case of my Sat. Oct. 8 tour, I visited over 100 new gallery exhibits in Midtown, Upper East Side, Soho, West Village and Tribeca, pit the neighborhoods up against each other, and this time the Midtown skyscrapers region took the prize for the most fascinating art.  Highlights of this Skyscrapers gallery tour will include: (1) a world-renowned Mexican artist’s pointilist paintings made by using Q-tips, not brushes, and (2) a walk-in bus inside a gallery containing life-size sculptures of colorful, quirky transit riders.  These are just 2 of 7 exhibits we’ll visit. [...]

Just since this past June, the Lower East Side has opened 15 new galleries, bringing its total number to around 115.  I don’t know when the explosion of galleries in what has become NYC’s hottest art neighborhood is going to abate, but it’s not going to be any time soon.  Within a year or two, I predict the L.E.S. will reach half the number of Chelsea’s 300 galleries, something that was unimaginable not too long ago.  More galleries means more chances of finding extraordinary exhibits for my gallery tours, and that’s exactly what is happening for my Sat. Oct. 1 Lower East Side gallery tour.  Highlights of this tour will include: (1) brilliantly cutting-edge computer art projected onto enormous crystalline sculptures, and (2) New Orleans artist Lorna Williams, of whom the NY Times said “Put her on your artists-under-25 watch list,” who’ll speak to our group about her haunting assemblages that evoke sex and birth. [...]

As I prepare for my first Gay & Lesbian gallery tour of the new season on Sat. Sept. 24 at 1:00 PM (my 95th such tour!), I remind myself why they are so central to my enterprise.  As it happens, the first gallery tour I ever led—in March 2002—was a gay men’s event.  And my second tour—four weeks later—was for gay men and lesbians.  Surprised?  It turns out that straight people were merely an afterthought in my venture.  And a great afterthought, I must add!  If it weren’t for straights, who now make up two-thirds of my clientele, my business would never have become the success that it is.  But it was members of the LGBT community who helped launch my business, and who remain some of my most loyal and enthusiastic supporters. [...]

What a difference a week makes.  At the time I wrote my last blog about the 2011 gallery season about to open, 90% of Chelsea’s galleries were completely shut down, and the remaining 10% were mostly on the last legs of their typically weak slate of summer group shows.  Then this past Thursday and Friday about half of Chelsea’s 300 galleries had openings of their first-of-season’s solo shows all at once, and I managed to visit just about all of them, in order to prepare for my First-of-Season gallery tour last Saturday.  And what a fantastic tour it was!  This coming week most of the rest of Chelsea’s galleries come alive as well, just in time for my Chelsea “Best Exhibits” tour on Sat. Sept. 17. [...]

In the days leading up to Labor Day, the Chelsea gallery district is like a dormant volcano.  “Off-season” doesn’t begin to describe it: as of this writing (Sept. 3), only 20 or so of Chelsea’s 300 galleries are open for business, and most of these shows are hardly inspiring.  Soon enough, though, that volcano will erupt, and if you’re smart, you’ll duck for cover.  I, on the other hand, will be plunging head first into that cultural maelstrom, as I do every year.  It’s my job. [...]

After what felt like an endless summer when the New York galleries were off-season, I’ve now finalized the calendar for my first month of gallery tours for the new season, and it begins Sat. Sept. 10.  This will be my 10th year leading gallery tours, and it is shaping up to be the most extraordinary one ever!  Chelsea is in fantastic shape, the Lower East Side continues to be NYC’s meteorically-rising gallery neighborhood, and I expect galleries in the Upper East Side, Soho, Midtown, the West Village and Tribeca to more than hold their own.

Here are my first 4 scheduled tours: [...]

The gallery season that began in September 2010, and comes to an end with my ALL-NEW Chelsea “Best Exhibits” tour on Sat. June 25, has been the most remarkable in the 9 years I’ve been leading gallery tours.  I’m glad to report that my final scheduled tour is going to be SPECTACULAR, with highlights including: (1) a female Chinese artist’s delightful shadow finger puppetry video that a NY Times reviewer called “incredibly skillfull,” (2) a French artist’s utterly original sculpture exhibit that creates a bizarre symphony of sounds when triggered by the movement of people in the room, and (3) an artist’s achingly intimate photography installation of her crying every single day for an entire year.  [...]

I’m thrilled to announce that my final Lower East Side gallery tour of the season on Sat. June 18, showing all-new exhibits, will include a talk by transgender artist Amos Mac when we visit his fascinating photo exhibit of female-to-male transgender people.  This is NOT being billed as an L.G.B.T. gallery tour, though there will certainly be gay & lesbian folk in attendance – it is a general public tour, and I expect the public will be riveted by both Mac and his artwork.  Of the dozens of artists who have spoken on my tours over the past 9 nine years, Mac will be the first transgender artist to do so, and it’s about time! [...]

What an extraordinary season this has been for my Gay & Lesbian gallery tours – in the past two months alone my groups have attended major solo exhibits by some of the queer giants of the art world, including Robert Mapplethorpe, Keith Haring, and Ellsworth Kelly.  My final LGBT tour of the season, on Sat. June 11, will be equally terrific.  Highlights of this tour will include: (1) BRAND NEW artwork by legendary 81 year-old gay artist Jasper Johns, arguably the most famous and important LGBT artist alive, and (2) lesbian artist Jen P. Harris, who will speak to us when we visit her exhibit of paintings of androgynous couples kissing.  These are just 2 of 7 exhibits we’ll see that day.  Because the gallery season is about to end, if you miss the June 11 tour you’ll have to wait 3 months for the next LGBT tour. [...]

The gallery season runs only through June, but it is clear that many galleries have saved their best for last. Highlights of my ALL-NEW Chelsea “Best Exhibits” gallery tour on Sat. June 4 will include: (1) a British artist’s show of ROBOTS that move and perform tasks, including artistic ones, (2) a breath-taking computer art animation that is set to gorgeous newly-commissioned music by legendary composer Philip Glass, and (3) Brooklyn-based artist Sonya Blesofsky, who will speak to our group when we visit her haunting and exquisite exhibit of life-size architectural elements constructed entirely from animal skin parchment. These are 3 of just 7 exhibits we’ll visit that day. In my opinion, this is one of the 2 or 3 highest-quality gallery tours of the current 10-month season! [...]

The gallery season runs from mid-September through June, then in July and August galleries are closed weekends.  The more stately uptown galleries start wrapping up their season a bit earlier, and therefore my ALL-NEW Upper East Side gallery tour on Sat. May 21 will be the FINAL Upper East Side tour of the season, while that neighborhood still has a large selection of terrific shows on view.  If you miss this one, you’ll have to wait until October or November for my next U.E.S. gallery tour, so take advantage!

Highlights of my Upper East Side tour will include: [...]

I’m THRILLED to announce that a major Robert Mapplethorpe gallery exhibit, and much more, will be included on my LGBT gallery tour Sat. May 14 in Chelsea.  By the time Mapplethorpe died in 1989 from AIDS-related causes at age 42, he was both revered and reviled as a pioneer photographer of explicit homoeroticism.  For the exhibit we’ll be visiting on the tour, the gallery asked 50 Americans of diverse backgrounds to choose one photo each from thousands of Mapplethorpe’s works that personally resonated with them.  The result is a true retrospective that spans much of the artist’s tragically shortened career. [...]

Contemporary artists are treasured for pioneering new directions in art, the more innovative the better. And with over 300 galleries in Chelsea, the sheer amount of originality can be staggering, if you know where to look. As is the case almost every month, my all-new Chelsea “Best Exhibits” gallery tour on Sat. May 7 will reflect this diversity in the most stimulating way, with several artists using strikingly unusual materials, or using traditional materials in completely unexpected ways. Highlights of this tour will include (1) a South Korean artist who “paints” with sequins on canvas, to astonishing effect, (2) a Tennessee artist who constructs masses of intertwined colored ribbons that evoke Jackson Pollock’s dripped paint, and (3) a German couple who carve the highest quality Italian marble to create quirky, puffy-looking creatures that endear and delight. [...]

I’m exited to announce my FIRST-EVER Tribeca/ Soho gallery tour, taking place Sat. April 30 at 1:00 PM.  TriBeCa’s name is an acronym of sorts meaning “Triangle Below Canal” St.  This area has had a small number of galleries for years, though not enough to sustain a gallery tour on its own.  That’s where Soho comes in, with its 25 galleries located directly north of Tribeca.  With the combination of the two neighborhoods, this upcoming gallery tour will feature some wonderfully edgy and interesting contemporary art. [...]

The Lower East Side galleries are growing so rapidly that I’ve decided to designate them as L.E.S. “Cutting-Edge” tours, effective with my Sat. April 23 tour.  The only other tours that have received a special honor in their titles have been my monthly Chelsea “Best Exhibits” tours, alerting clients that Chelsea is the very best tour I offer.  Now I’ll also be touting the terrific edgy pulse of the Lower East Side galleries.

The reason for the “Cutting-Edge” designation is that the Lower East Side’s artists and gallery owners are younger on average than in any other Manhattan art neighborhood.   [...]

One of the gay artists whose exhibit we’ll be visiting on our Sat. April 16 LGBT gallery tour is arguably the world’s most famous living gay artist, second only to Jasper Johns.  Currently 87 years old, his paintings are in the permanent collections of every important museum across the globe.  In the 1960s this artist was a pioneer of his particular art movement and soon became a legend in his time.  The exhibit of his we’ll be visiting is showcasing all-new abstract paintings that are selling in the range of $1.5 – $2 million, about the most expensive new works of art this month in all 300 of Chelsea’s galleries.  No, it’s not Robert Rauschenberg, who died a few years ago, but this artist is in Rauschenberg’s league.  Find out who this artist is, and enjoy his latest creations, on Saturday’s tour. [...]

Our Frequent Tour Cards have been the most popular promotion we’ve ever run.  They work something like frequent flyer miles: at the end of each tour you get a stamp on your card, and after 10 stamps your next tour is free.  Dozens of people have already claimed free tours this way.

There’s NO expiration date for Frequent Tour Cards, so you can carry them over into the next season, and the season after that, indefinitely.

Here are the rules for redeeming Frequent Tour Cards for your free tour: [...]

It’s not as easy as you’d think to arrange for an artist to speak to our group when we visit their show on one of our gallery tours.  Many of them live out of state or out of the country, or they loathe the idea of public speaking, or are maybe just not interested in addressing a gallery tour.  How fortunate, then, that our Sat. April 2 Skyscrapers gallery tour in Midtown will feature not just one but TWO artists – Mariana Vera and Gregg Louis – who will speak to our group when we visit their respective exhibits.   [...]

Even I’m stunned at how suddenly the Lower East Side galleries have become an international art destination.  The number of galleries and quality of art continue to grow on a monthly basis, and my Lower East Side gallery tour on Sat. March 26 will be showing the most fascinating combination of exhibits so far on any L.E.S. tour I’ve ever given.  Highlights will include: (1) a young Puerto Rican artist who ingeniously handles oil paint as thought it’s fabric, and “drapes” rather than “brushes” it onto canvas, (2) a seasoned South African artist who creates stunningly realistic human skin on his giant cast silicone statues, and (3) a female artist who builds an imaginative room-filling installation out of ripped and shredded fabric pieces.   [...]

There is SO much to see on our L.G.B.T. gallery tour in Chelsea on Sat. March 19.  The talk of the city’s art scene is a gay Chinese artist who has been doing a LIVE performance art piece in a Chelsea gallery 8 hours a day for 5 weeks, and his performance ends on March 19, just in time for our tour to visit.  Other highlights of this tour: (1) a British lesbian artist whose porcelain breast creatures were called “lascivious” and “subversive” in a NY Times art review, (2) gay artist David Wojnarowicz’ headline-making video that was recently removed from the Smithsonian after demands by Washington’s religious and Republican leadership, and (3) gay artist Tim Saternow, who will speak to our group when we visit his show of paintings of some of the decayed sections in Chelsea.  These are just 4 of 7 exhibits we’ll visit that day. [...]

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that live performance art is the very rarest type of exhibit in art galleries and museums, especially performances that are designed to take place continuously from doors opening to closing each day.  In the 9 years that I’ve led gallery tours, I’ve been able to bring my groups to live performance artworks a total of only 3 times, the most well-received being Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla’s piece at Barbara Gladstone Gallery, in which pianists propelled a piano forward as they played a Beethoven piece while facing the piano keys backwards.

Therefore, one reason (of many) that my Sat. March 12 Chelsea “Best Exhibits” tour will be a can’t-miss event is that one of the seven extraordinary exhibits we’ll visit that day will be a live performance that happens continuously for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.   [...]

I’ve lived in the West Village for almost 20 years, so I’ve been watching with great interest the recent emergence of a gallery cluster in my neighborhood.  These galleries are more of a “cutting-edge” variety like the downtown gallery concentrations of Chelsea and the Lower East Side, not the more conservative-type galleries in the Upper East Side and Midtown.  It’s not a large enough cluster yet to merit its own gallery tour, but in combination with the remaining Soho galleries nearby, there are enough there for a very interesting tour.  And so I’m leading my first-ever West Village/ Soho gallery tour on Sat. March 5. [...]

The Upper East Side galleries are most notable for their gorgeous mansions and townhouses.  When exhibits take place in these spaces, it’s hard not to take into account the artworks’ posh surroundings, with the result that the artwork can at times be strengthened and other times diminished in comparison.  Sometimes the artists, knowing in advance what the setting of their artwork will be, even play up to the luxurious settings.  It so happens that my Sat. Feb. 26 Upper East Side gallery tour will be particularly remarkable for the interplay between the artwork and the mansion environments in which some of them are placed.   [...]

My Sat. Feb. 19 Gay & Lesbian gallery tour in Chelsea will be the 90th LGBT tour I have led in 9 years, all of them showing completely different exhibits.  Highlights will include: (1) gay artist Trey Speegle, who will speak to our group when we visit his show of paint-by-numbers works that comment on creativity in society, (2) a photography show by a lesbian Aborigine artist from Australia, and (3) an internationally renowned gay Italian artist who superimposes faces of supermodels onto 16th century religious masterpieces.  These are just 3 of 7 exhibits we’ll visit that day.  Here’s more about these highlights: [...]

I’m thrilled to announce that the single most extraordinary art exhibit of the entire season so far, which began in September, will be part of my Sat. Feb. 12 Chelsea “Best Exhibits” tour.  I don’t make this statement lightly.  Indeed, I’m even going to ramp up my accolades by saying this particular show is one of the top three exhibits in all 9 years I’ve been leading gallery tours.  Yes, it’s even better than last month’s 3D painting works by Patrick Hughes in Chelsea that stunned group after group I brought in.  And it’s better than any museum exhibit I’ve attended in ages.  You’re not going to want to miss it. [...]

The single most popular exhibit this season so far, as enthusiastically expressed by my participants, was Patrick Hughes’ stunning 3D paintings – requiring no special glasses or electricity of any kind – that I showed on my Jan. 15 & 22 Chelsea tours, and has since closed. Likewise, Seth Wulsin’s layered spray paint works on my Jan. 29 Lower East Side tour were hugely popular. And on my Sat. Feb. 5 Skyscrapers gallery tour in Midtown, half of the shows we visit will be painting exhibits – all of them freshly made – including one at which the artist will be there to talk about his work. Yes, even with the rise of digital media, painting continues to THRIVE in New York’s galleries. [...]

For years I’ve been leading a combination Soho/ Lower East Side gallery tour, and it has been my second most extraordinary tour, topped only by Chelsea.  The reason for combining the adjacent neighborhoods into one tour at the time was that neither Soho nor the Lower East Side had enough galleries by themselves to make for an outstanding tour.  That is, until now.  Starting with my Sat. Jan. 29 Lower East Side gallery tour, the Lower East Side is going to be a stand-alone tour, and for me it’s a bit like seeing a child graduate college.  Four years ago the Lower East Side had just 10 galleries, but it recently reached the 100-gallery mark.  In comparison, the Upper East Side, a quite respected gallery neighborhood, has but 45 galleries.  The Lower East Side art scene is sizzling!

To give you a sense of L.E.S. gallery offerings, highlights of my Sat. Jan. 29 tour will include: [...]

Let me throw a hand grenade into the LGBT community: I have found that there are 4 times as many gay male artists as lesbian artists who show in contemporary art galleries.

How did I arrive at the number “four”?  One way I prepare for my monthly LGBT gallery tours in Chelsea – at this point I’ve led 85 completely different such tours in 8 years – is to systematically ask just about all of Chelsea’s 300 galleries what gay or lesbian artist exhibits they have coming up in the next few months.  The vast majority of galleries are happy to comply with my request, and, when I compile my list, it is remarkably consistent: four times as many men as women each year.   [...]

You may have seen the recent headlines about a major Washington, D.C. museum bowing to pressure by yanking a video from its exhibit. Well, we have just learned that a Lower East Side gallery has begun to show the 20-minute video in its entirety.  This screening happens to coincide with my Sat. Dec. 18 Soho/ Lower East Side gallery tour, and our group will be there front and center.  Tear yourself away from holiday shopping for just the short length of my tour, because for contemporary art-lovers who value REAL freedom (not the Republican kind), this video is a must-see. [...]

There are a TON of special exhibits lined up for my Gay & Lesbian gallery tour on Sat. Dec. 11 at 1:00 PM, including a monumental show of early work by Robert Rauschenberg, arguably the second most important gay artist of the 20th century (Andy Warhol being, by most accounts, number one).  Though Rauschenberg died just two years ago, and he exhibited new work all the way until his last days, it was his earliest work of “combines” that was the most groundbreaking, and that’s what this gallery show mostly contains.  These pieces were constructed from mostly foraged trash in New York City streets, and they are audacious and original for their time.

But the most controversial stop on our tour is the first exhibit we’ll see.  A Minneapolis-based artist visited the homes of families after meeting them online and took sexy pictures of their domestic life.  You’ll see gay couples, lesbian couples, and straight families, and they’re unclothed much of the time.  The controversial part is [...]

New York City has a staggering 600 galleries, and growing, a number that is unparalleled in human history within one metropolis.  I like to call New York the “Hollywood of Contemporary Art,” as this is where artists and gallery owners from all over the planet eventually want to show their work.  And it’s not just the quantity of New York galleries that are extraordinary, but the quality, as evidenced by such NYC gallery giants as Gagosian, Pace, Matthew Marks, Barbara Gladstone, and dozens more.  But specifically where does New York stand among the world’s other gallery metropolises?
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Thanksgiving is, of course, a time for families to gather.  On the day itself galleries are closed, but on the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving they are open, and every year I get requests from families to lead them on a Chelsea gallery tour that holiday weekend.  Those who can afford it book a private tour just for their loved ones.  And those who would like to spend less ask about a scheduled tour they can attend.  Some express concern about whether such a tour would be suitable for children and teenagers, or even adult family members who are visiting from more conservative regions of the country.  Therefore, I’ve come up with my first-ever “Bring Your Family” gallery tour in Chelsea, on Sat. Nov. 27 at 1:00 PM. [...]

The words “controversial” and “Upper East Side galleries” are not often uttered in the same breath.  The U.E.S. is, after all, the most conservative art neighborhood in New York City, and the last thing those galleries want to do is turn blue blood into red.  That would be more the province of NYC’s edgier art neighborhoods, notably Chelsea, the Lower East Side, and Williamsburg.  And yet, two well known, highly controversial artists recently opened exhibits in galleries in the Upper East Side, and these will certainly be among the highlights of our Sat. Nov. 20 Upper East Side gallery tour.

Here’s how the Upper East Side galleries get away with showing controversial artists, while still remaining straight-laced: [...]

We are excited to announce that three artists will speak at our Sat. Nov. 13 LGBT gallery tour when we visit their latest shows: gay painter Keith Mayerson, lesbian photographer Lori Nix, and gay artist Brice Brown.  This will be the most live artists to make an appearance on any tour we have ever led, gay or straight, in the 8 years we have been offering them.  At an LGBT tour, where we gather to celebrate queer culture, it is particularly thrilling to have queer artists address us.

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Galleries are businesses.  Except when they’re not.  Of New York’s 600 galleries, 15 or so are legally non-profit entities, and 7 of them reside in Soho, making that neighborhood the go-to destination for non-commercial gallery art.  And since there are only about 25 galleries left in Soho, there is a reasonable chance that one of these non-profit galleries would be included on any given Soho/ Lower East side gallery tour that I lead, the next one taking place Sat. Oct. 30.

The main difference between a commercial gallery and a non-profit gallery is that non-profit spaces don’t sell the art they exhibit, much the same as museums. [...]

A photo of a guy pissing into another guy’s mouth, or of a bullwhip sticking out of someone’s ass, wouldn’t raise many eyebrows in the porn-saturated gay male community.  But when those and other homoerotic works by Robert Mapplethorpe appeared in the art world in 1989, the same year he died of AIDS at age 42, they propelled a Washington, D.C. museum and the U.S. Congress into a censoring frenzy.  The following year, a Cincinnati museum director was actually indicted and forced on trial over displaying this work.  Now you’ll get a chance to see for yourself exactly what the fuss was all about, as all 13 of Mapplethorpe’s incendiary photos from this series—titled Portfolio X—are being shown in a Chelsea gallery, and you can be sure our LGBT gallery tour will be there front and center.  Not only is it Mapplethorpe’s most famous (or rather “infamous”) set of works, historically speaking it is one of the most important gay-themed art collections of all time. [...]

A central feature of my gallery tours is introducing participants to new, barely discovered talent when their art merits it.  Well, it doesn’t get any newer or younger than 26 year-old lesbian artist Daphne Arthur, fresh out of Yale’s MFA program, who will give an informal Q&A session at our October 16 LGBT tour when we visit her show of brand-new mixed media paintings.  Hers is one of seven exhibits we will visit that day—including a collaborative show by two other lesbian artists, and two solo exhibits by gay male artists, one of them Robert Mapplethorpe!—at an event that is open to people of any orientation.

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My enterprise is completely dependent on the financial and creative health of New York City’s galleries, particularly in Chelsea, where I lead the most tours.  So no one has paid more attention to the state of this neighborhood during the worst economic crisis of my lifetime.  Of course, I can’t ask galleries how they are doing money-wise, no matter how close our relationship.  But using one crude but telling barometer of financial health, namely the number of galleries that have shut down for good, I have to conclude that the Great Recession has had surprisingly little lasting impact on the gallery scene.  Chelsea houses the same number of galleries today—approximately 300—as when the recession began.

Yes, around 20 Chelsea galleries did fold over the last two years.  But even in the BEST of times a half dozen of them close every year, so the recent shutdowns [...]

I have a love/hate relationship with the Upper East Side galleries.  On the one hand, the actual spaces are hands down the most gorgeous art galleries in the world.  Half of them are situated in old-world mansions and townhouses, breathtakingly elegant and tastefully ornate.  You feel as if you’ve been transported to another century.  On the other hand, half the art there IS from another century: the twentieth.  We’re living in the twenty-first century, people!  The whole point of my gallery tours is to bring the public to the freshest, most cutting-edge art, but the Upper East Side frustrates that vision, as their galleries are far less prone to experimentation.  Video art?  Computer art?  Installation art?  What’s that?

Still, there is one compelling reason I will forever lead tours in the Upper East Side.  Next to Chelsea, it’s often my most popular tour.  “The People” have spoken loud and clear.  Besides, sometimes the art there, especially very current art, ends up being wonderful. [...]

You wouldn’t know that we were mired in an economic slump if you gauged it by the continued robust expansion of the Lower East Side galleries.  Four years ago there were only around 10 galleries there, and today that number is approaching 90.  New York Gallery Tours was, of course, among the first to lead gallery tours in the L.E.S., and this year I will be expanding my offerings there, commensurate with its growth.  My first Lower East Side tour of the season (combined with the neighboring Soho galleries) will take place Sat. Sept. 25 at 1:00 PM, and my second tour there, showing completely different exhibits, will happen Sat. Oct. 30.

The Lower East Side now boasts New York City’s second highest concentration of galleries (in comparison, the third largest has 45), and its growth is so rapid it’s not inconceivable—though I am not quite predicting it yet—that one day it may even claim the number one spot from Chelsea, which is currently holding its ground at 300 galleries.   [...]

The gallery earthquake of the year was undoubtedly the announcement in January that Jeffrey Deitch was closing down the two branches of his Soho gallery Deitch Projects – arguably one of the world’s greatest galleries (I would argue yes, others would violently disagree) – to become the director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.  Deitch had its final show in May this year, and shuttered its doors.  Did this mean the final nail in the coffin for the Soho gallery scene, already on its deathbed from years of gallery exodus to Chelsea and elsewhere?

Against all expectations, the answer seems to be “No,” at least for the time being.  First, some background: [...]

The art that I show on my gallery tours has always been the most cutting-edge I can find. Indeed, one of my specialties is identifying and sharing artwork that incorporates technology. Yet, until now, my website and my business haven’t kept pace with the most recent technological wave. So this summer I decided to hire social media consultant Zachary Adam Cohen (I met him at a Chelsea gallery opening, which assured me that he has a foot in the art world) to scrap my website and overhaul it from top to bottom. [...]