First the good news: one month after the severe flooding in the Chelsea gallery district due to Hurricane Sandy, only a handful of Chelsea’s 300 galleries – fewer than 10 – are still out of commission.  The other 290+ galleries are fully operational.  Indeed, they are putting on some of the most extraordinary shows of the season so far, and we’ll visit a number of them on our ALL-NEW Chelsea “Best Exhibits” tour on Sat. Dec. 8.

That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a lot of pain in this recovery.  It was gut-wrenching and expensive.  But I don’t foresee that even a single Chelsea gallery will close permanently from this unprecedented natural disaster. Come January, 100% of them will be open for business.

Let’s backtrack a little bit.  What happened in late October 2012 was that the most destructive hurricane in recorded New York history caused the Hudson River to overflow its banks, flooding around 75 Chelsea galleries – the ones on street levels and basements.  The galleries closer to the river naturally suffered the worst of the brunt.  And certain blocks – especially W. 27th St., W. 24th St. and W. 21st St. were hardest hit.  Fortunately, if you can look at it that way, for the most part it was the wealthiest galleries that were situated at street level, and so these were the galleries most able to afford the feverish re-construction that took place during the week after power was restored to the neighborhood.  The dozens of galleries that are located on upper floors were untouched, though some of them stayed closed a week or two after the storm from the flood’s effects on their buildings’ infrastructures.

Three weeks ago when surveying the damage, I ran into a shaken Bruce Silverstein in front of his 24th St. ground floor “Silverstein Gallery.”  He told me this: “My entire gallery was destroyed.  We’ll be back in business next week.”  And he was!  His gallery – and his show – looks EXACTLY the way it did pre-Sandy.  This was the same story from gallery to gallery.

The greatest losses was not art from current exhibits,  though there was some damage there.  Most of what was affected was office equipment, including computers, and gallery archives that were commonly stored in basements.  This is a significant setback to the business-side of galleries, as it involved authentification records.  But from the point of view of a gallery visitor, things are almost completely back to normal.

We had to delay our most recent Chelsea tour by just one week, to take place Nov. 17 instead of Nov. 10, and it went magnificently well.  At this point the galleries tell me that their biggest problem is the public perception that the Chelsea galleries are still a disaster area, and so they’re experiencing a lot fewer visitors.  As crazy as this sounds, by attending my Dec. 8 Chelsea tour and adding to the foot traffic in Chelsea, you’ll actually be helping the relief effort!

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