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 next ALL-NEW Chelsea “Best Exhibits” gallery tour.

I’d say a substantial reason for Chelsea’s greatness is the staggering number of galleries – 300 total – in a very compact 12-block stretch, running from 29th St. to 17th St., mostly between 10th & 11th Ave. And 90% of those galleries are in an even narrower 6-block stretch between 26th St. and 20th St.  In comparison, cities besides New York with a major gallery presence – namely London, Beijing, Los Angeles, and Berlin – house 100 – 200 galleries in their respective cities, but they are spread apart throughout different neighborhoods, hardly the concentration to be found in Chelsea.  In total, New York has about 600 galleries, half of them in Chelsea.

Almost all the world’s “great” galleries – those with the highest international reputation – have at least one space in Chelsea.  Some of them – including Gagosian, Pace, Barbara Gladstone, Matthew Marks, and David Zwirner – have 2 or 3 spaces in Chelsea.  Sure, there are exceptions: the great Marian Goodman Gallery seems to be staying put on 57th St.; L & M Gallery is happy in its Upper East Side mansion; and Sperone Westwater moved from the West Village to a much talked-about architecturally designed gallery space in the Lower East Side.  But, all in all, the world’s great galleries are located in Chelsea.

This is not to say that a majority of Chelsea galleries – even the “great” ones – show interesting art at any given moment.  But the fact that I get to choose what I consider to be the top 7 exhibits from 300 galleries ensures that my “Best Exhibits” tour is a breathtakingly rich experience.  And because exhibits completely change over every 4 – 6 weeks, I’m able to offer the most extraordinary Chelsea gallery tours – all new – a dozen times a year.  Other weeks I offer tours in other NYC gallery neighborhoods, including  the Lower East Side, the Upper East Side, Soho, and Midtown, which have far fewer galleries from which to choose.

It is remarkable to learn that Chelsea’s first gallery did not appear until 1994, and that in just a half-dozen years from that time there was a mass migration to Chelsea of over 200 galleries, mostly from Soho, which until then was the world’s center for galleries (Soho now houses a relatively scant 25 galleries).  The main reason for the move was that real estate prices in Soho exploded in the 1980s and ‘90s, while Chelsea’s rents remained relatively low, since the neighborhood at the time was rather undesirable (prostitutes and drug dealers used to make their living in Chelsea at night).  Another important reason for the migration was that Chelsea, being at the time an industrial neighborhood – factories, storage facilities, car repair shops, etc. – had much larger open interiors than Soho, and so could accommodate the expanding size of contemporary art pieces, particularly enormous, room-filling installation artworks.  And Chelsea was in Manhattan, a critical requirement.

From the challenge of competing month after month with 300 neighboring galleries, Chelsea galleries have had to learn to exhibit art that stands out from the pack, in order to get noticed.  Hence, the variety of Chelsea art is unparalleled: painting, sculpture, photography, video art, computer art, fabric art, installation art, sound art, conceptual art, and more.  New York’s 45 Upper East side galleries, in contrast, sell to a more culturally conservative clientele, and so U.E.S. gallery art is almost exclusively painting and sculpture.  This harks back to another extraordinary era in the history of gallery art, namely Paris in the mid-1800s to early 1900s, where the only kind of art available was painting and sculpture, and where the standards for “acceptable” art were much narrower than they are today.  Some people miss those “glory days,” and if so, all they have to do is attend one of my Upper East Side tours and view contemporary art that evokes traditional splendor.  Myself, I find the variety of Chelsea art – and now Lower East Side art, as well – to be as thrillingly cutting edge as contemporary art gets.

I’m happy to say that my tour participants have become savvy in their choices of tours, especially when they choose to attend my Chelsea tours, which show completely different artwork every month.

Rafael Risemberg, Ph.D.
Founder and Director
New York GalleryTours