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: (1) identical triplet female artists who photograph themselves in different guises to examine social and personal identity, (2) cutting-edge light-emitting diode works by a Chinese artist collective that re-define exotic Shanghai, and (3) artist Deborah Brown, who will speak to our group when we visit her haunting painting show of Brooklyn industrial landscapes.  These are just 3 of 7 exhibits we’ll visit that day.

Let’s backtrack a little bit, to see how the Lower East Side gallery scene came to be.  To much of the world, the name Soho is still (erroneously) associated with gallery neighborhood greatness.  Around 20 years ago, when Soho had in excess of 100 galleries, and Chelsea had zero, Soho was indeed the world’s premier gallery neighborhood.  But times have changed.  Soho became a victim of its own success, when rents for galleries became so excessive in the 1990s that the large bulk of its galleries moved to Chelsea, an industrial neighborhood with far cheaper rents and far larger spaces to better accommodate installation art.  Today, Soho is down to only around 25 galleries, a shell of its former self.  It is still a fantastic neighborhood, but maybe too fantastic for its own good.

Meanwhile, enter the Lower East Side, which until not so long ago 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.

Besides being a residential neighborhood, the L.E.S. was brimming with storefront properties, which turned out to be perfect 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.  Notable examples are Lehman Maupin, which now has a space in both Chelsea and on Chrystie St. in the L.E.S.; 11 Rivington, which is a branch of Greenberg Van Doren Gallery on 5th Ave. at 57th St.; and Salon 94, which kept its Upper East Side townhouse gallery while constructing a new space on Bowery.  I hear plans from lots more established galleries to follow suit.

The ambiance of the Lower East Side is absolutely 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 and Soho, which are basically industrial neighborhoods, the residential nature of the Lower East Side makes for a comfortable, lived-in feel.

I’m still going to lead gallery tours in Soho, but in combination with other adjacent neighborhoods.  Look for my first-ever West Village/ West Soho gallery tour and my first-ever Tribeca/ Soho gallery tour in the next several weeks.  But neither of these new tours is going to match the Lower East Side in quality and excitement of its art, for at least years to come.  The sudden emergence of the Lower East Side 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