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.  These are just 3 of 7 visits we’ll make.

Truth be told, I’ll still be leading gallery tours all summer long, but only private tours, not my Saturday afternoon scheduled tours.  That’s because galleries will be closed on weekends in July and August, and many exhibits that will be up in the galleries those months will be extensions of shows that I already included in my Spring scheduled tours – several of them quite wonderful.  I’ll supplement those with the new summer shows that I deem are most worthy.  So if you want to book a private gallery tour over the summer on a weekday, you’ll have a terrific experience.

Before the current season began I had completely re-tooled my website: overhauling the look of it completely, and adding social media elements that included a Facebook page, Twitter account, and weekly blogs.  Now I see that the time and expense of these efforts clearly paid off, for this season’s tours had better attendance at scheduled tours and on private tours than any year so far.

I didn’t even need to raise my prices to reflect the amount I spent on the overhaul – it ended up paying for itself.  Indeed, as prices go up everywhere else, I’m charging the same for gallery tours that I’ve charged for the last 6 years, and I have no plans to make any changes in that regard next season.  I believe I’m New York City’s biggest cultural bargain: the quality of art that I show on gallery tours is the equivalent of the most innovative Broadway theater, while the cost is decidedly off-off Broadway.

Next season, when my scheduled tours resume in mid-September, I’ll continue leading monthly “Best Exhibits” Chelsea tours and monthly LGBT tours.  For the first time I’ll be increasing the frequency of my cutting-edge Lower East Side tours to once a month as well, now that the L.E.S. neighborhood has surpassed 100 galleries, and the quality of the art there continues to skyrocket.   I’ll also continue to lead occasional tours in the Upper East Side, Midtown, Soho, and Tribeca, whenever the art in those neighborhoods warrants attention.

For those of you who attended my tours this past season, I hope to see you one last time on June 25 before the long hiatus begins.  THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT, AND HAVE A WONDERFUL SUMMER!

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