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