To mention: The Met is pay what you wish, so you can give them a quarter. There was a huge foundation grant to allow this. (Remember not to feel guilty, many museums in Europe are free for artists). Note that museums have free or pay what you wish nights, again you save a lot of money this way, if that matters. Chelsea galleries are worth a buzz through if you have time. Note the Met takes a long time. Check out the shows on at the Gug, Whit, and Brook before going to them, sometimes there is a bunch of crap that makes it not worth going. A great little museum with older stuff is the Frick, check it out online to see.

I don’t know that seeing as many Basquiats as you can in a week is the best use of your time. I’d say don’t miss the Earth Room or the Broken Kilometer, both free and a few blocks from each other. The Merode Altarpiece + The Unicorn Tapestries + the view at the Cloisters is worth the trip uptown. You’d probably want to do one day in Chelsea, one day downtown galleries. The Frick used to be really special, haven’t been since they relocated. I’d skip the Brooklyn Museum, partly because Kaws sucks. The best use of a day would be to take a train up to Dia: Beacon — they’re open with advanced reservations, and for my money that’s one of the best art viewing experiences in the world.

Get the See Saw app when you get in and checkout all the gallery shows

Isn’t PS1 still around?

The hole

I would look in Chinatown, the LES, and Tribeca. A lot of these galleries just recently participated at NADA art fair. Generally dealing with reasonably priced emerging artists.

Get the See Saw app. It has all the current shows and openings listed. Contemporary art galleries are all free in NY. Some museums also have free nights once a month but not sure what they are rn because of covid

Trying to buy art from galleries without knowing what you’re doing is the most inefficient way to go about this. Needle in a hay stack.

Spend some time on Instagram and Artsy and start finding artists and their galleries that you like and work from that direction.

Field projects, half gallery, shrine, Essex flowers, 11 newel, underdonk, the royal at rsoaa, slagg, paradice palase, the Catskills NYC, false flag, trestle, Jack Barrett , monya rowe.

haul gallery in Brooklyn has an art share program that might interest you.

Yeah, the emperors have no clothes.

What’s hard to accept when you first get into art is that nearly all of its history has been sponsored. Outside grassroots or community fairs, if you’ve heard of an artist, it’s because someone with money wanted you to. The most depressing part is how cheap it is / how little it costs the ultra-rich to completely redirect the cultural narrative. For the price of a single Rothko, they could fund a decade’s worth of transformative public art, build schools, or support entire scenes. But that kind of investment rarely exists. Instead, we get museum lineups that feel more like press releases. The value of most “blue-chip” art today has all the depth of teenagers flipping rare Pokémon cards.

I can't help but think the authors' cynicism is justified after scanning the Hauser and Wirth Frieze preview and seeing it fully stacked with the same artists currently taking over said museum shows in NYC this year. I noticed this also translated to the predicted price increases (one painting by Rashid Johnson was listed for 7 figures while I could have sworn he was a low to mid 6 figure artist a year or so ago). Feels like more evidence of systemic rot in the feedback loop within this system.

Rashid Johnson's work is ass and he's a hack of an artist at that. Only reason he got put on cause he got naked took photos of his 🐤 He's a poor man's Basquiat

This has been true for a while, them and Marian Goodman

Alex Greenberger wrote about it today: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/opinion/hauser-and-wirth-new-york-museum-mega-gallery-shows-1234740036/

Stroll through the many commercial galleries in West Chelsea (in the teens and 20s, west of 9th/10th Aves) and see some very cool stuff. And they're all free to poke around.

The Center has some amazing work and it's free to go visit! Check out the Keith Haring mural!

The Leslie Lohman Museum has an interesting-looking David Wojnarowicz show opening soon.

ClampArt is the gayest gallery

Leslie Loman LGBTQ Center for Keith Haring bathroom (also the bookstore has a well curated gallery) Not queer but if you haven’t gone to the Frick or the Morgan they are beautiful jewel boxes … not enormous, but intimate

Be aware that the Centre Pompidou is closed for a few years. The only part that remains open until mid-September is a temporary exhibit about Wolfgang Tillmans.

For other exhibits, you can have a look at Bourse du Commerce, MACVAL (outside Paris but quite close), and there is also one in the Jeu de Paume about AI.

If you hit Chelsea a Thursday evening (I think) night you can bounce between all the posh openings and drink for free. I've not been into NYC since before the pandemic so I'm not even sure what smaller galleries even survived. There's a Jasper Johns retrospect up now at the Whitney that should be good.

Check out Mary Lynn Buchanan’s blog. She is a really helpful contemporary art blogger and has a section on her website dedicated to lists of galleries to see by neighborhood in NYC (and others). Whenever I go Gallery hopping the rare times I’m in the city, I always check out her page.

Many of the Chelsea galleries are all along the same few blocks. They’re all free.

her blog

If a venue doesn’t list admission prices, there is a 99.9% chance admission is free. Museums will charge, but many offer a pay-what-you-want option and/or student discounts.

Commercial galleries (of which there are like 100+ in Chelsea alone) are always free to enter. If you download the “See Saw” app, it will list all the shows on view at all the galleries in NYC by neighborhood, and will let you create a personalized map and itinerary.

Hi! I suggest downloading the see saw gallery guide app, it has a fairly updated list of shows in chelsea, UES, and Lower East side in NY (all free) You can make a map based on what you are interested in/ see what openings are happening (also free to attend) I usually pick one area and add a museum and that pretty much zaps all my energy for the day, so if I'm doing chelsea hopping I'll go to the whitney (currently a Jennifer packer show up that's getting good press, not free). Often I'll plan my trip around bigger shows or stops at large galleries like David Zwirner/Hauser and Wirth/gagosian/Pace / blum and poe and just go in wherever peaks my interest in between. Enjoy!

Regarding cost to see shows, just check their websites or call and ask. Some charge, some don’t, some will have “free days” every Friday or something like that, some give student discounts, just depends.

If you’re really into it you could find an institution near you that’s part of the NARM (North American Reciprocal Museum) circuit and pay for a NARM level membership, which gets you a NARM card that you can use to get in for free to any NARM participating institution. The NARM organization keeps a map of all participating businesses on its website.

Other than that it’s just a matter of finding places that seem to have something interesting going on and making the time to go.

https://artguide.artforum.com/artguide/place/london

SOUP, Rose Easton, Xxijra Hii, Neven, Split are some of the 'cooler' ones that sometimes show trendy figurative painting

Thaddaeus Ropac & Sprüth Magers

Josh lilley, Sunday painter, bernheim, mamoth

Seb’s art list has done a lot of this legwork

Download the app See Saw. Select London as your city.

Violá. You now have a great list of contemporary galleries.

Artcards, NY Art Beat, Art Forum New York Galleries guide.

Seesaw

There’s a couple of YouTube channels by James Kalm (one is his name, the other is his name and ‘rough cuts’) where he goes around and checks out art shows. Sometimes he has to hide his camera, which is fun. You can watch him and check where he goes to get ideas on what spots you’d like to watch

https://youtube.com/@jameskalm

https://youtube.com/@jameskalmroughcut

Both are active.

Seesaw app

Artforum.com city guide for NYC

I think the gallery scene can feel "exclusive" and invite-only, even if it's not, and sort of operates on an IYKYK basis, so that really reduces the number of people who go there and participate.

They're open while most people are working, with the exception of opening night and Saturdays and those tend to be busy.

I don't think that's necessarily true. In my personal experience, it's a mixed bag, but I would say that maybe 30-50% of the times I've gone to galleries, it's been pretty busy (maybe even more. sometimes I go to random and tiny spaces). Not to mention, some of them, especially some of the bigger ones can be a madhouse especially if they have a well-known artist (Yayoi Kusama at David Zwirner?)

I also feel like galleries are quieter during the summer, so you can't quite judge how popular they are based on the slow season.

I don’t think art galleries are really looking to appeal to the general masses of every day working people but rather are looking to attract a specific type of clientele.

This post is just advertising for the group he linked to that organizes these gallery hops