I have a love/hate relationship with the Upper East Side galleries.  On the one hand, the actual spaces are hands down the most gorgeous art galleries in the world.  Half of them are situated in old-world mansions and townhouses, breathtakingly elegant and tastefully ornate.  You feel as if you’ve been transported to another century.  On the other hand, half the art there IS from another century: the twentieth.  We’re living in the twenty-first century, people!  The whole point of my gallery tours is to bring the public to the freshest, most cutting-edge art, but the Upper East Side frustrates that vision, as their galleries are far less prone to experimentation.  Video art?  Computer art?  Installation art?  What’s that?

Still, there is one compelling reason I will forever lead tours in the Upper East Side.  Next to Chelsea, it’s often my most popular tour.  “The People” have spoken loud and clear.  Besides, sometimes the art there, especially very current art, ends up being wonderful.

While the large majority of UES art is technically “contemporary” (defined as 1960s on), their galleries show more work by non-living artists than any other NYC art neighborhood.  In some ways they’re more like museums.  Except that, unlike museums, they are selling their art.  Still, the good amount of current work that they show does sometimes achieve the kind of daring and innovation that I live for.

The Upper East Side streets where the bulk of its galleries reside—E. 79th St. to E. 67th St., from 5th Ave. to Park Ave.—reek of money and opulence.  It just so happens that my first residence in New York City, fresh out of college in 1980, was not too far away, on E. 69th St. and First Ave.  I never felt at home there, and within the year I moved to a communal house in Brooklyn.  I came to realize I’m much more of a “downtown” person, so I’m currently happy living in the West Village, and the gallery neighborhoods Chelsea, Soho, and Lower East Side are much more my scene.  Because I don’t dress to the nines, and I carry a clipboard to take notes, whenever I visit an UES gallery where there is a new director or receptionist, they inevitably mistake me for a messenger.  Then their eyes pop out several days later when I inundate their space with several dozen visitors, and I begin expounding about the art.

Okay,so which are the most beautiful, the most stately mansion galleries in the Upper East Side?  One would be Acquavella, located on E. 79th St. in a five-story French neo-classical townhouse.  The marble floors in the vestibule set the tone for the gallery’s lavishness.  Just one block away is the sumptuous L & M Gallery, where the interior molding has been restored to 19th Century grandeur.  This gallery admits just 20 people at a time, so when we visit we sometimes need to split into a couple of shifts.  It’s always worth it.  Knoedler Gallery, a few blocks away on E. 70th St., is a family enterprise that has been dealing art for over 160 years.  I love that they supplement their stately ground floor space, usually exhibiting vintage art, with a renovated basement gallery housing very current art (they once even had a computer art exhibit in the basement—SCANDALOUS!).  And let’s not leave out Feigen & Co., on E. 69th St., even if they almost never show contemporary art.  Climbing their magnificent spiral staircase, appearing to be several centuries old, is itself a reason to visit.

About half the UES galleries are in these “grand” spaces, while the remainder are situated in storefronts and office buildings.  The most important of these is Gagosian, the wealthiest gallery in the world, situated on three floors of an office building on Madison Ave. near 77th St.  This is not the primary location of the Gagosian, or even their secondary space—those would be in Chelsea—but even the number three space of a gallery as significant in the art scene as Gagosian is, tops the shows of most every other gallery around.

While most Upper East Side galleries have been entrenched there for decades (some from before I was born), there are actually a couple of newcomers to report.  McCaffrey Fine Art, on a 3rd floor space on E. 67th St., specializes in Japanese art from the 1960s and ‘70s.  They have opened my eyes to a burgeoning Asian experimental art movement I previously knew very little about.  Alex Zachary recently opened a quirky duplex gallery with a garden, on E. 77th St.  Having been a director for years at the edgy downtown GBE Gallery before forging out on his own, Zachary brings a distinctly eccentric slant to the UES scene.  Most of his first few shows have been heavy on video art, which I’m not sure is even legal in the Upper East Side.  I’d better write a full blog about his gallery soon, before he gets run out of town.

The Upper East Side galleries will continue to frustrate me, bore me, and—just when I least expect it—thrill and delight me, as they will you.  Join me on my next UES gallery tour on Sat. Oct. 2.  This dysfunctional relationship is here to stay.

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