Sara's art gallery in NYC
Image Courtesy of Instagram / @saras.worldwide
January 22, 2025

It’s Freezing and You’re Looking for Things to Do Inside: Art Galleries in NYC

For when you still want to get out of the house this winter.

While we’ve been spending much more time holed up inside with the cold temperatures in New York lately, we still sometimes crave ways to get out of our apartments. One obvious way? Visiting art galleries. If you haven’t already, download the SeeSaw app, which compiles current shows at contemporary art galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, London and Paris. You can browse by neighborhood once you choose a city, find the dates of openings (so you can go to the receptions) and even create a custom map of which shows you want to visit.

While most of us already know Gagosian and David Zwirner, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite smaller art galleries in NYC.

Jeffrey Deitch Gallery

Our favorite booth at Art Basel Miami this year was Jeffrey Deitch’s. The gallerist has been involved with the art world as an artist, writer, curator, dealer and advisor. The gallery is in the final days of a show by painter Alfonso Gonzalez Jr., which just got extended until January 25. From February 8th until the 22nd, Kim Hastreiter, the co-founder of the PAPER magazine, will curate a group show called My Amazing Friends in honor of the launch of her new book STUFF: A New York Life of Cultural Chaos. Participating artists include iconic artists like Pedro Almodóvar, David Byrne, Keith Haring, KAWS, and John Waters.

Location: 18 Wooster Street

Maxwell Graham

Maxwell Graham showcase a lot of object art, which we love. According to Art Basel, the gallery’s niche is “conceptual, critical and socially reflective practices by historic, mid-career and emerging international artists.” Photography by Fred Lonidier will be up until March 1st.

Location: 55 Hester Street

Fierman

Fierman’s The Living Museum presents a group show of artists who make their work at the Living Museum, which is an institution focused on the art by patients at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center—the largest psychiatric care center in New York City.

Location: 19 Pike Street

Efraín López

Video art by Felipe Romero Beltrán, Paul Stephen Benjamin, Cristine Brache, Jen DeNike, Max de Esteban, Kim Gordon, Anuar Maauad and Emeka Ogboh are on view at Efraín López. According to their website, “Single Channel presents eight international artists who demonstrate through their respective works the extent to which video determines, rather than documents, reality. The artists offer a variety of visual approaches, ranging from the faux-vintage fuzziness of Super 8 to the sterility of millennial camcorder footage and the hallucinatory hyperreality of contemporary digital imagery, evidencing how our understanding of history is shaped by the aesthetics of period-specific technologies. Through their unflinching engagement with forms of video both maligned (pornography, music videos, home movies) and malignant (surveillance and data mining), the artists reveal how we rely on moving images to formulate our collective concepts of what constitutes “real” sex, citizenship, and history—and how we determine which subjects are excluded from these categories.”

Location: 356 Broadway, Unit LL15

O’Flaherty’s

Jamian Juliano-Villani, Billy Grant (both painters) and Ruby Zarsky (a musician) own O’Flaherty’s. While it’s hard to describe the gallery (it’s often labeled “subversive”), the saying “expect the unexpected” is what first comes to mind.

Location: 165 Allen Street

Anonymous Gallery

Jesse Gouveia’s show wrapped at Anonymous Gallery towards the end of December, and their next won’t be until February with Hugo Montoya. They primarily feature international emerging, mid-career, and historically significant artists.

Location: 36 Baxter Street

Blade Study

We first found out about Blade Study through their representation of Brad Phillips. They currently have art by Pap Souleye Fall up until early February, who is a Senegalese-American artist who works between the mediums of sculpture, installation, performance, cosplay, digital media and comics.

Location: 17 Pike Street

Canada 

After going to a Katherine Bernhardt opening at Canada years ago, we’ve since been a fan of the gallery. The Rest and Reprieve: A Window into Creative Solitude group show curated by Christiana Ine-Kimba Boyle opens with a reception tomorrow evening, which will remain on view until late February.

Location: 60 Lispenard St and 61 Lispenard St

Karma

Karma has multiple locations, two of which have solo shows on by Verne Dawson and Ulala Imai. We also love their bookstore, which we recommend going to as well.

Location: 549 West 26th Street, 172 & 188 East 2nd Street and 22 East 2nd Street

Shrine

Hunter Potter’s The Pasture is in its final days at Shrine. The gallery is a go-to for emerging contemporary artists, both trained and self-taught, and European art brut.

Location: 368 Broadway

Gern en Regalia

An artist-run project space, Gern en Regalia has paintings by Tyler Ormsby. We love going here to discover more niche artists.

Location: 105 Henry Street, #5

Long Story Short

A co-founder of the former ATM Gallery in the Lower East Side started his own galleries called Long Story Short in NYC, LA, and Paris. Their website shares, “He is most enthusiastic about introducing young emerging artists who haven’t had their talent recognized or shown before in the art world. His goal is to help them find a path in their early careers and eventually raise their profile nationally and internationally.” Bliss Point by Maciej Kość opens there this Friday evening.

Location: 52 Henry Street

Sara’s

Sara’s was founded by Sara Blazej in 2023. The programming feels refreshingly unique and dynamic, featuring regular exhibitions, live performances and events, including film and video screenings.

Location: 64 Fulton Street

Essex Flowers

Stop by Essex Flowers before February 1st for JANUS, which includes Jamie Chan, Jonathan Ehrenberg, Patrick Carlin Mohundro, Sara Murphy Doshi, Chen Peng and Dino Takashi.

Location: 19 Monroe Street

Hannah Traore Gallery

Hannah Traore Gallery is described as “a space committed to advocating for and celebrating artists who have been historically marginalized from the mainstream narrative.” Currently, work by Noa Yekutieli is displayed, which uses a mixture of hand-cut paper, wood and textiles put together like a puzzle.

Location: 150 Orchard Street, New York, New York, 10002

Nicola Vassell Gallery

Nicola Vassell Gallery looks to create discourse within the history and future of art, aspiring to broaden the industry’s horizons. With talent like Moses Sumney and Alvaro Barrington, they focus on an inter-Generational, cross-disciplinary program of international artists.

Location: 138 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY 10011

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