In 2024, New York City’s gallery infrastructure continues to feel the structural changes that began in 2023. Last year, all eyes were on Tribeca as Chelsea’s red-eyed art dealers either expanded into the chic downtown neighborhood or completely swapped their spaces for the greener pastures (and cobblestone streets) of Lower Manhattan. .
To some, this year seems bleaker than last. Chinatown and the Lower East Side, often a petri dish for exciting new artists and project spaces, have suffered two major losses this year, with both Simone Subal and Helena Anraser deciding to close their doors permanently. Two months after closing the gallery, Subal announced she would join Paula Cooper, who had been an intern at the gallery in 1999 and a staff member from 2000 to 2003.
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Subal’s decision to accept Paula Cooper’s senior director role echoes JTT founder Jasmin Tsou’s decision last year to close shop and join the blue-chip world as director of Lisson Gallery, as well as Tribeca’s David Lewis joining mega-gallery Hauser in September. & Wirth serves as senior director.
“It’s been a very difficult year for the market,” Anton Svyatsky, founder of Contemporary Art Gallery Management, told me by phone. “The cost of doing business is as high as it’s ever been.” Swiatsky believes one of the reasons galleries are suffering is a lack of serious patronage.
This lack of patronage was the subject of an op-ed by Miami art dealer Nina Johnson. In December, just before Art Basel in Miami Beach, she wrote: “Over the past year or so, as colleagues have closed their doors, I have come to realize that as the art market grows, we win buyers, but lost patrons.”
“The downtown scene has definitely shrunk,” Swiadski also told me. “Fewer and fewer people are willing to take the financial risk of opening a curatorial space. At this point, if you want to open a space, you need sponsorship. On the bright side, the general consensus is that if you can do it this year, absolutely Survive the business carnage and you’ll be fine for a while.”
While shrinkage is evident — from this year to last, the downtown scene also lost Foxy Production, Queer Thoughts, Deli and Jack Hanley Gallery — Alexander Meurice, an art dealer with foreign and domestic galleries, said , “the closing of some galleries doesn’t mean” On the Lower East Side, I don’t feel like there’s a problem because the art scene in the neighborhood is more than just galleries. Its scope is much broader. Morris said there are studios, pop-up spaces where performances last only a week or a few days, literary spaces like Sovereign House, and photography and fashion studios, all of which have contributed to the Lower East Side’s growth. Heterogeneous art scene.
“Galleries closing is not a downtown story,” Morris said. “It’s a universal story.”
He was not wrong. In June, Mitchell-Innes & Nash closed its Chelsea space, moving from a traditional gallery business to a “project-based consulting space” model. Cheim & Read gallery closed at the end of last year after 26 years in business, and the Marlborough Gallery announced in April that it was winding down the business after 80 years.
“There’s a plateau, and for a lot of the galleries that hit it, they realize that they can’t go any further without the support of big money,” said art dealer David Fellman. Fierman, whose gallery is located on Henry Street, a bustling Chinatown gallery destination. “As money exits the market to a certain extent, smaller or more emerging areas will struggle to compete.”
Still, Firman said the downtown scene, especially on the Lower East Side, is booming. Rent is affordable, and exciting curatorial space is able to operate on a shoestring budget but still be valued by the larger arts community. “The neighborhood and along the Henry Street corridor have been particularly busy this fall,” he said.
new york magazine Art critic and polarizing art-world sage Jerry Saltz has been interested in views of downtown on Instagram, as has Metropolitan Museum of Art director Max Hollein of regular customers.
“Sometimes galleries don’t last that long and they close for various reasons,” Firman said. “More importantly, there are always new people wanting to start businesses. Given the current state of the world, I think people are embracing chaos energy. That’s the only way we’re going to ride the wave.”
2025: Bring chaos.
