BMW Art Guide by Independent Collectors

The City That Can’t Sit Still

Taken from the third edition of the BMW Art Guide by Independent Collectors which features 236 collections in 39 countries, the Art Guide features a number of short texts that take a closer look into the vast world of collecting with new texts from Moscow, Miami and Tel Aviv.

The New York art scene is thriving like never before. With this growth comes a shifting and expanding geographic landscape for the city’s dealers, artists, and museums. A majority of the city’s most important galleries remain—and are expanding—in Chelsea. David Zwirner now has a second gallery, as does Andrea Rosen. 303 Gallery returned to its former home on 21st Street, which is located within a new Norman Foster-designed high-rise. London’s beloved Lisson Gallery opened a vast space underneath the High Line, between 23rd and 24th Street. Others, like Casey Kaplan, who moved northeast to the city’s Flower District at the beginning of 2015, after twenty years in Chelsea, are turning their backs on the neighborhood. For many, the non-stop increase in rent in New York’s favorite gallery neighborhood has pushed them away. Others hope to rediscover the city’s artistic heart—Chelsea and Soho were once artist neighborhoods too, after all. Today, the pulse driving New York’s art scene is Brooklyn. The borough’s mainstay galleries, such as Pierogi, Clearing, and Regina Rex, still add an experimental touch in the ever-more-gentrified neighborhood of Williamsburg. New spaces are popping up with feverish pace, especially in Brooklyn’s further reaches. A cluster of impressive young galleries has settled at 56 Bogart Street, off the Morgan Avenue stop, in Bushwick. Others, like artist Dustin Yellin’s nonprofit exhibition space and residency, Pioneer Works, have headed south to Red Hook, which, while still quiet these days, won’t be for long. But it’s not just the galleries that are moving. The Whitney Museum inaugurated its new High Line-abutting Meatpacking District location in spring 2015. Meanwhile, the Breuer Building—the Whitney’s home for nearly 50 years—has been temporarily placed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s hands, giving new wings to the museum’s contemporary art department. The only real challenge to seeing unparalleled art in New York? Keeping up with where to go next.

Alexander Forbes is a New York based art writer and critic, currently serving as Artsy’s News Editor. Prior to relocating to New York, Alexander was based in Berlin as the European Editor for artnet and German Bureau Chief for Louise Blouin Media.