A Changing Landscape: Galleries of the Lower East Side

When April Vollmer first moved to the Lower East Side in 1986, she took weekend walks uptown to Soho, where a growing art scene attracted a number of galleries. At the time the only kind of gallery that existed in Vollmer’s neighborhood was the shooting type—places where drug addicts gathered to buy and inject drugs. Vollmer remembers syringes lying on the streets and times when she and her partner found drug addicts outside their apartment.

“They’d be shooting outside of our front door,” said Vollmer, an artist who specializes in Japanese woodblock prints. “All I hoped for was that it’d get a little safer.”

Entrance of ABC No Rio on Rivington Street - Chao Deng/NYCinFocus

Vollmer never imagined that two decades later her own neighborhood would be the center of a burgeoning art scene. From the rooftop of her five-story building, Vollmer has seen century-old tenement houses transformed into condominiums with balcony gardens. Two art galleries that opened in the 1980’s on Rivington Street near her home – Gallery onetwentyeight and ABC No Rio – are still in business, but the landscape around them has dramatically changed.  The days of stray syringes are long gone.

Instead, the Lower East Side is now home to galleries that display artwork from around the world.  While galleries have been popping up in the neighborhood since 2001, the number began to multiply in 2007 when the New Museum of Contemporary Art moved to the Lower East Side from Soho. According to the LES Business Improvement District, visitors can find over fifty galleries in the neighborhood. Sixteen new galleries opened their doors in 2008, compared to only two galleries that opened in 2005.  Despite a weak economy, seven new galleries have opened to date in 2009.

New Museum of Contemporary Art moved to Bowery Street on the Lower East Side in 2007 - Chao Deng/NYCinFocus

“We definitely talk to about one gallery owner every other week looking for space,” said Sion Misrahi of the Misrahi Realty Corporation on the Lower East Side.

Lower commercial rent on the Lower East Side has drawn gallery owners from more expensive art districts, such as Soho and Chelsea. With the economic recession, rent in all districts, including the Lower East Side, has dropped by 20 to 25 percent, said Misrahi. Landlords eager to fill empty space and ease the burden of real estate taxes have been willing to sign short-term leases—an attractive option for some gallery owners.

One relative newcomer, the Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, moved to the Lower East Side from 57th Street in 2007.  In August it moved to a bigger location in the neighborhood on Orchard Street. The gallery displays mixed-media pieces, including digital paintings on its ground floor. With the extra space in the basement, owner Stephen Stoyanov plans to invite outside curators to organize smaller exhibits.

“I chose the Lower East Side because in the 80s, it was where creative people lived,” said Stoyanov, referring to the area’s former underground art and rock scene.  “Here, there is real life.”

Stoyanov’s gallery is one of five galleries on the same block. The latest to join the cluster, the Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, also relocated from another address on the Lower East Side.

For Stoyanov, the increased foot traffic from the galleries nearby was a big draw.  He also chose the area because it didn’t have the corporate feel of art districts uptown, where adjacent galleries can extend for blocks on end. Instead, galleries on the Lower East Side are nestled among a variety of business and residential buildings—settlement houses that speak to the area’s rich immigrant history, decades-old retail stores and newly opened boutiques, restaurants, bars and upscale condominiums.

Alex Guofeng Cao installs an upcoming exhibition at CSquare Gallery on Allen Street. - Chao Deng/NYCinFocus

“It’s not just a homogeneous world,” but one that is “very diversified in an edgy way,” said Jen Davis, director of CSquare Gallery, which opened on Allen Street two months ago.  CSquare Gallery’s upcoming exhibit will feature window-sized pixilated prints of celebrity faces. Next door to the gallery is Congee Village, a popular Cantonese restaurant.  Across the street, Chinese stores sell floor supplies, tires and electronic gadgets.  Just a few blocks away, lively restaurants lure young professionals in the neighborhood with neon BYOB signs.

Visitors who have come to the Lower East Side for its restaurants and bars have often stumbled upon the neighborhood’s art scene. A stop at a nearby gallery often becomes an unplanned part of the post-meal walk.

On the weekend before Thanksgiving, Dani Miller and her boyfriend, Levi Grout, had finished brunch at Stanton Social when they discovered Gallery onetwentyeight two blocks away. Miller, who regularly flies from San Diego to visit her family in Manhattan, said that she sees changes to the Lower East Side each time she visits.  “I’ve noticed a lot of art galleries,” she said. “It’s surprising.”

In a mini-skirt and floral print stockings, Miller paused in front of a colorful canvas in the gallery’s back room. “It’s really cool,” said Grout as the couple looked at the acrylic paintings.  “When I think of art galleries, I think of Williamsburg, Soho and Greenwich Village,” Miller admitted.  “We didn’t even know this was here.”

While visitors like Miller and Grout are not art connoisseurs, gallery owners and curators on the Lower East Side welcome them. Iku Higuchi, an artist and curator, whose work is now showing at Gallery onetwentyeight, has had exhibits in Soho, Chelsea and Midtown. She recalled that women in long dresses from high society dominated the opening of her show at a gallery on Park Avenue. At Gallery onetwentyeight, she said, “there is more of a warm feeling.”

Gallery onetwentyeight on Rivington Street - Chao Deng/NYCinFocus

Longtime Lower East Side resident Vollmer no longer needs to look out for drug dealers who linger on her front stoop.  Instead, she said that she’s noticed an increase in foot traffic from art galleries only steps away from her apartment.

“Sometimes the scene seems rather superficial,” said Vollmer. “Most of [the galleries] seem really young to me and don’t relate to my work.”  “They come and go really fast, so it’s hard to know them,” she said. But mainly, Vollmer is glad that with new visitors streaming in, her neighborhood is a lot safer than it used to be.