New York’s Best Art Spaces
By Something CuratedA nucleus of artistic activity, New York City boasts a seemingly endless list of shows and cultural events to attend, with new spaces popping up around the city relentlessly. Making a discerning selection from this cornucopia is quite a task — and so Something Curated is here to help. From major museums and cultural institutions, to commercial galleries, independent non-profits and artist-led project spaces, SC has compiled a guide to New York’s most exciting art venues.
A.I.R. Gallery
Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, A.I.R. Gallery is an artist-run non-profit arts organisation and exhibition space founded in 1972 by a cooperative of women artists including Agnes Denes, Judith Bernstein, Patsy Norvell, Sari Dienes, and Maude Boltz, among many others. A.I.R. supports the open exchange of ideas and risk-taking by women and non-binary artists in order to provide support and visibility. A self-directed governing body, the organisation is an alternative to mainstream institutions and thrives on its network of active participants.
155 Plymouth St, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Amant
Amant is a non-profit arts organisation in Brooklyn founded in 2019. With an ethos that fosters experimentation and dialogue through exhibitions, public programmes, and artist residencies, Amant supports both established and mid-career international and local artists who work across diverse creative fields. Their aim is to slow down art-making processes so that residents, collaborators and exhibiting artists can experiment with formats, meaningfully reflecting on the contexts of their work.
315 Maujer St, Brooklyn, NY 11206
Bridget Donahue Gallery
Back in 2015, Bridget Donahue launched her eponymous gallery on the second floor of 99 Bowery. The New York-based curator, who studied anthropology followed by a masters in Textiles, was previously the director of Downtown gallery Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, where she honed her artist-focussed approach to running a space. Rather than becoming absorbed with a singular medium, generation, or cultural era, Donahue presents exhibitions based upon artists’ intrigue and missions.
99 Bowery, New York, NY 10002
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum was founded in 1898 and was originally planned to be the largest art museum in the world. Significant areas of the collection include antiquities, specifically their collection of Egyptian objects spanning over 3,000 years. American art is heavily represented too; artists in the collection include Mark Rothko, Edward Hopper, Norman Rockwell, Winslow Homer, Edgar Degas, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Max Weber. The museum also features the Steinberg Family Sculpture Garden, which showcases salvaged architectural elements from throughout NYC.
200 Eastern Pkwy, Brooklyn, NY 11238
Dia Chelsea
Dia was founded in NYC in 1974 by Philippa de Menil, Heiner Friedrich, and Helen Winkler to help artists achieve visionary projects that might not otherwise be realised because of scale or scope. To suggest the institution’s role in enabling such ambitions, they selected the name “Dia,” taken from the Greek word meaning “through.” Today it consists of eight permanent sites across the United States and Germany, as well as three changing exhibition spaces in New York State: Dia Chelsea in NYC, Dia Beacon in the Hudson Valley, and Dia Bridgehampton on Long Island.
537 West 22nd St, New York, NY 10011
Fortnight Institute
Fortnight Institute was founded by Fabiola Alondra and Jane Harmon in 2016, with the aim of bringing together a programme connecting emerging artists, historical exhibitions, and publishing. Among the diverse roster of artists represented by the gallery today are Shanique Emelife, Trude Viken, Carmen Winant, Chris Oh and more.
21 East 3rd St, New York, NY 10003
Gladstone Gallery
Gladstone Gallery specialises in modern and contemporary art, representing artists and estates like Ed Atkins, Jannis Kounellis and Robert Mapplethorpe, with locations in New York and Brussels. Situated between 10th and 11th Avenue in Chelsea, the NYC site was designed to house large sculpture and installation art. Acknowledging the industrial heritage of the neighbourhood, the façade is made of dark grey extra-long Roman brick, laid with filled joints to underscore the monumental appearance.
515 West 24th St, New York, NY 10011
JTT
Contemporary art gallery JTT reopened in May of 2022 at its current location at 390 Broadway. Founded in 2012 by Jasmin Tsou, JTT is devoted to the presentation of adventurous work in all media, with a focus on emerging and under-recognised artists. Over the past five years, JTT has hosted the first New York solo exhibitions for nine artists, including Jamian Juliano-Villani and Borna Sammak, among others.
390 Broadway, New York, NY 10013
Lehmann Maupin
Rachel Lehmann and David Maupin founded Lehmann Maupin in 1996. In addition to its diverse American artists, Lehmann Maupin represents artists and estates from across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and has been instrumental in introducing numerous artists from around the world in their first New York exhibitions. Known for championing artists who create groundbreaking and challenging forms of visual expression, the gallery prioritises personal investigations and individual narratives.
501 West 24th St, New York, NY 10011
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 with its mission to bring art and art education to the American people. The museum’s permanent collection consists of works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt, paintings, and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The institution’s permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, is by area one of the world’s largest art museums.
1000 5th Ave, New York, NY 10028
MoMA PS1
Founded by curator Alanna Heiss, MoMA PS1, originally known as P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, was a defining force in the alternative space movement that gained momentum in New York in the 1970s. Artist-centred and community-driven, MoMA PS1 embraces boundary-breaking ideas and experimental practices. A place where audiences can encounter and engage with new art and perspectives, the institution has offered insight into artists’ worldviews for nearly 50 years.
22-25 Jackson Ave, Long Island City, NY 11101
The Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of the largest and most influential museums of modern art in the world. The Museum maintains an active schedule of modern and contemporary art exhibitions addressing a wide range of subject matter, mediums, and time periods, highlighting significant recent developments in the visual arts and new interpretations of major artists and art historical movements.
11 West 53rd St, New York, NY 10019
New Museum
The New Museum began as an idea in the mind of founding Director Marcia Tucker. As a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1967 through 1976, Tucker observed firsthand that new work by living artists was not easily assimilated into the conventional exhibition and collection structure of the traditional art museum. Today, with a busy roster of exhibitions and events, the New Museum is a centre for new art and thinking, and a catalyst for dialogue between contemporary artists and the public, embracing practices from around the world, diverse perspectives, and the free exchange of ideas.
235 Bowery, New York, NY 10002
The Noguchi Museum
Founded in 1985 by category-defying artist Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), The Noguchi Museum was the first museum in the United States to be established, designed, and installed by a living artist to show their own work. Located in Long Island City, Queens, the Museum itself is widely viewed as among the artist’s greatest achievements. Holding the world’s largest collection of his works, it features open air and indoor galleries in a repurposed 1920s industrial building and a serene outdoor sculpture garden.
9-01 33rd Rd, Queens, NY 11106
Paula Cooper Gallery
Paula Cooper Gallery, the first art gallery in SoHo, opened in 1968 with an exhibition to benefit the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. The show included works by Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Robert Mangold and Robert Ryman, among others, as well as Sol LeWitt’s first wall drawing. For over fifty years, the gallery’s artistic agenda has remained focused on, though not limited to, conceptual and minimal art. In 1996, the gallery moved to Chelsea to occupy a 19th century building transformed by architect Richard Gluckman, going onto open further exhibition spaces on the same street over the years.
534, 521, & 529 West 21st St, New York, NY 10011
Pioneer Works
Artist and scientist led non-profit cultural centre Pioneer Works is located in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The organisation provides visual and performing artists, musicians, scientists, technologists, community organisers, and educators with the resources and platform they need to expand their practices. Pioneer Works has three floors of interconnected studio, performance, exhibition, and multipurpose spaces, which cultivate collaborations past the boundaries of traditional institutions by placing makers and thinkers in proximity to each other.
159 Pioneer St, Brooklyn, NY 11231
Recess
Over the last decade, since its founding in 2009, the non-profit arts organisation Recess has reimagined the relationship between art and the public. What began as a storefront artists’ residency in SoHo, has morphed and expanded with the artists and community members who have passed through its doors. Recess operates as a gallery and non-traditional residency programme that gives artists space to use as a studio, exhibition venue or grounds for experimentation.
46 Washington Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11205
Swiss Institute
Swiss Institute (SI) is an independent non-profit contemporary art institution dedicated to promoting forward-thinking and experimental art making through innovative exhibitions, education, and programmes. SI serves as a platform for emerging artists, catalyses new perspectives on celebrated work, and fosters appreciation for under-recognised positions. The Institute seeks to explore how a Swiss context can be the starting point for international conversations in the fields of visual and performing arts, design, and architecture.
38 St Marks Pl, New York, NY 10003
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, designed by architect Renzo Piano, presents the full range of twentieth-century and contemporary American art, with a focus on works by living artists. The Whitney is dedicated to collecting, preserving, interpreting, and exhibiting American art, and its collection—arguably the finest holdings of twentieth-century American art in the world—is the Museum’s key resource. The Museum’s flagship exhibition, the Biennial, is the country’s leading survey of the most recent developments in American art.
99 Gansevoort St, New York, NY 10014
Feature image: Vivian Caccuri and Miles Greenberg: The Shadow of Spring, 2022. Exhibition view: New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni. Courtesy New Museum