With a slew of new locations&nbsp;in the Hamptons and the Hudson Valley, dealers are COVID-proofing their bricks-and-mortar presence

Auto shops, barns, disused schools: how NYC galleries took to the country

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This summer, as Manhattan galleries prepared to open by appointment following a period of COVID-19 lockdown, New York was further rocked by civil rights uprisings. Between the tense atmosphere in the city and travel limitations, art viewers flocked in record numbers to galleries in the Hudson Valley and the Hamptons, many helmed by Manhattan artworld veterans. Just a car ride or train trip away, these spaces – some established, some recently opened – have created a new art scene. Here, Art Basel speaks to key protagonists who have shaped the movement.


	The Hudson Valley has a storied association with artists. From the 19th-century landscape painting of the Hudson River School and Woodstock’s countercultural movement, to the legendary Minimalist art collection housed at Dia Beacon, the area has long drawn artists with its tranquil beauty and creative communities. Now, contemporary art spaces and galleries are bringing a new vitality.
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	One of the first to establish a presence in the area, Manhattan gallerist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1267/Jack-Shainman-Gallery" target="_blank">Jack Shainman</a> opened The School in Kinderhook, New York, in 2014, a 2,790 square meter space in a former high school that typically hosts two exhibitions per calendar year. ‘The wonderful thing about The School is that it allows us to put on expansive and longer-running shows that wouldn’t work as well within our Chelsea spaces and faster-paced schedules,’ Shainman explains. In 2019, it was the venue for an exhibition for seven (of eight) chapters of Botswana-born artist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7248/Meleko-Mokgosi" target="_blank">Meleko Mokgosi’s</a> sprawling project ‘Democratic Intuition’ (2013-2019), ‘which questions conceptions of democracy in relation to the daily experiences of Southern Africans,’ as Shainman notes.&nbsp;
	
	
		Unlike most Hudson Valley spaces, The School has been shuttered this summer because of the pandemic. Its exterior, however, will serve as one site for the gallery’s social-justice-oriented platform States of Being. Chicago-based artist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8625/Nick-Cave" target="_blank">Nick Cave</a> plans to wrap the building’s facade with the words ‘Truth Be Told’, an election-season retort to the Trump campaign’s racist slogan ‘Make America Great Again’. Back in the city, Shainman’s two Chelsea galleries opened by appointment this summer; this fall, the gallery mounted anticipated solos by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/18855/Toyin-Ojih-Odutola" target="_blank">Toyin Ojih Odutola</a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8638/Odili-Donald-Odita" target="_blank">Odili Donald Odita</a>.&nbsp;
		
	
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Alexander Gray, a fellow Chelsea dealer, calls Shainman ‘a pioneer of sorts with the Kinderhook project,’ praising ‘Jack’s understanding that there was a community responsibility to converting a building that had so much resonance for people who grew up and went to school there. You go to those openings and half the people there spent time in the principal’s office as children!’ Gray, who opened an outpost of his namesake gallery&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1145/Alexander-Gray-Associates" target="_blank">Alexander Gray Associates</a> in Germantown, New York, has a lifelong connection to the Hudson Valley. He grew up in Woodstock among artists; his mother, the sculptor Frances Gray, was married to the Cubist artist Alexander Archipenko. For more than a decade, Gray and his husband, David Cabrera – a co-founder and owner of the gallery – have lived in the quaint village.


	In May 2019, Gray opened a three-meter project space in a barn on Germantown’s Main Street. There, he has presented individual installations by some of his gallery’s artists, including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/19770/Lorraine-O-Grady" target="_blank">Lorraine O’Grady</a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7266/Melvin-Edwards" target="_blank">Melvin Edwards</a>, who has a studio in nearby Accord. This summer, Gray added a standalone location next door, in a former auto garage. ‘It’s a magical space that we were able to both preserve and transform at the same time,’ he says, describing its ‘modest scale that feels very European, rather than Chelsea-like or barn-like.’ Gray inaugurated the new Germantown location in August with minimal, sonic-inspired paintings by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/17754/Jennie-C-Jones" target="_blank">Jennie C. Jones</a>, who lives in nearby Hudson.


	The gallerist has committed to a five-year lease and is planning to mount at least four shows per year. With the area’s low overheads and established artist community, ‘it was an easy decision,’ Gray says. ‘This is not a place where commerce is a priority. This is a place where creativity, where artists are the priority.’ Next, he is planning to show previously unexhibited drawings by the renowned gallerist Betty Parsons, while his Chelsea space reopens in September with a group show bumped from the summer calendar.

Further south, in Beacon, New York, two art dealers have collaborated to turn another former auto shop into a serious art destination. Parts &amp; Labor, co-run by Manhattan gallerists&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1117/Franklin-Parrasch-Gallery" target="_blank">Franklin Parrasch</a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/2961/Nicelle-Beauchene-Gallery" target="_blank">Nicelle Beauchene</a>, opened in summer 2019. Operating independently of Parrasch and Beauchene’s namesake spaces, Parts &amp; Labor pairs work by mid-career artists with those of historical figures. Sales are often made by consignment. ‘It’s not necessarily a comparison of two artists,’ Parrasch says, ‘but a view of how artists from different periods can have similar thought processes and impulses.’ Last year,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/30835/Davina-Semo" target="_blank">Davina Semo’s&nbsp;</a>bronzes were juxtaposed with the late Deborah Remington’s canvases, while the current show features works by painters&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/49037/Shara-Hughes" target="_blank">Shara Hughes</a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/52851/Lois-Dodd" target="_blank">Lois Dodd</a>. Beauchene describes an ‘evolution’ as having happened to their recent programming, from two-person shows to conversations between movements: ‘The last exhibition was the Gee’s Bend quilt makers with contemporary abstraction. That was two ideas in dialogue with each other.’ Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, an artist represented by Beauchene, will curate the next exhibition, which will feature traditional African art objects alongside pieces by contemporary artists.


	The dealers say this summer’s foot traffic and sales have been robust; since reopening in July, Parts &amp; Labor has welcomed an average of 80 visitors per week. In Manhattan this month, Parrasch’s Uptown gallery will reopen a show of Charles Ross that closed back in March, at the start of the pandemic. Beauchene also shuttered her space on the Lower East Side, which she shared for eight years with Jack Hanley, in March. She will open a new gallery space in Tribeca in October.&nbsp;

While the Hamptons also have a rich connection to art history, from the Impressionist William Merritt Chase to Pollock’s Springs studio, they are now known as the summer escape for the wealthy. In the past three months, an influx of blue-chip galleries – including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1242/Pace-Gallery" target="_blank">Pace</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1306/Van-de-Weghe-Fine-Art" target="_blank">Van de Weghe</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1220/Michael-Werner-Gallery" target="_blank">Michael Werner Gallery</a>, and Sotheby’s – opened spaces at Long Island’s eastern end. But despite the concentration of wealth, it has not always been easy to run an art business in the Hamptons.


	Gallerist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/12953/Eric-Firestone-Gallery" target="_blank">Eric Firestone</a> opened his space in East Hampton in 2010, and described his early days as trial and error. ‘I realized quickly what works and what doesn’t,’ he says, noting that fast-turnaround exhibitions were not viable in the low-foot-traffic location. With a stellar spot on Newtown Lane, however, he found the right formula, with approximately three shows a year. In 2015, he opened a second space, in a loft on Great Jones Street in New York’s East Village. ‘It’s kind of a backwards way to enter New York, but it ended up working for me, with a little bit of luck and a little bit of instinct,’ says the gallerist. His historically minded program, which includes&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/36821/Miriam-Schapiro" target="_blank">Miriam Schapiro</a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/41320/Joe-Overstreet" target="_blank">Joe Overstreet</a> found the kind of interest from critics and museums in Manhattan that it often didn’t receive at its Hamptons gallery. Firestone, however, is not banking on an explosion of art activity in East Hampton that would rival the Big Apple’s. ‘The artworld’s still going to be centered in New York City,’ he says. He plans to open a new, ground-level space on Great Jones Street in the middle of October. There, he will give graffiti-art legend Futura his first significant commercial solo show in 35 years.

<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1441/Skarstedt">Skarstedt</a> opened an East Hampton outpost in June, on the same street as Firestone. Having signed a three-year lease, the gallery (which also has locations in London and Manhattan’s Upper East Side) has mounted exhibitions that rotate every few weeks. ‘Our idea for the Hamptons space was to host group exhibitions by the artists in our program, which made total sense, since a number of the artists we show are living, or lived, out east,” says gallerist Per Skarstedt. That list is long and star-studded: <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7551/Willem-de-Kooning">Willem de Kooning</a>, <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7373/Richard-Prince">Richard Prince</a>, <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8291/Cindy-Sherman">Cindy Sherman</a>, <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6902/Eric-Fischl">Eric Fischl</a>, and <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6910/David-Salle">David Salle</a>. Salle, the painter who rose to deconstructionist fame in the 1980s, opened a show of new work in East Hampton this month; Fischl, who came up in the same era, will show work in Manhattan in November.

Similar to Skarstedt, the Swiss gallery&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1153/Hauser-Wirth" target="_blank">Hauser &amp; Wirth</a> which opened a space on Southampton’s Main Street in July, represents a number of artists living nearby, including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/6708/Mary-Heilmann" target="_blank">Mary Heilmann</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7139/Rashid-Johnson" target="_blank">Rashid Johnson</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7355/George-Condo" target="_blank">George Condo</a>. Marc Payot, the gallery’s president, sees the Hamptons space as aligned with Hauser &amp; Wirth’s history of opening spaces in resort towns such as Saint Moritz and Gstaad. ‘We view Southampton less as a place for curated public exhibitions than as a platform for presenting major works of art to collectors in a very personal way,’ Payot explains, noting that the gallery is open by appointment only, with each meeting overseen by a director. When asked about the criticism that some galleries have faced for funneling resources out of New York City, Payot responded that the Hamptons location has supported the existing business: ‘We’ve been fortunate enough to be able to keep our team employed during this period, and the work we are doing in Southampton has contributed in an essential way to this stability.’Whether the Hudson Valley and the Hamptons will remain sustainable locations for gallery outposts – perhaps even become alternatives to Manhattan – will have to be seen. The proprietors of upstate spaces are generally hopeful. In terms of audience, Parrasch insists that, in the Hudson Valley, it is anything but parochial and will continue to grow. Beauchene, a former president of the New Art Dealers Alliance, likens the collaborative energy among upstate gallerists to the Lower East Side of a decade ago. At the same time, she says, ‘I do think [Manhattan] rents are going to go down and I think that’s going to allow more artists to move back to the city. For so many years they’ve been getting pushed out, so maybe this moment affords New York [the chance] to get some of its culture back.’ For Hamptons gallerists, the answers are mixed. Firestone says aspiring gallerists cannot expect to make it from sales in the Hamptons alone. Skarstedt, new to the region, has a measured response. ‘I think the arts community here has done a fantastic job at giving a Manhattan-like experience within smaller spaces,’ he says. ‘[The future is] based on where the arts community plans to stay throughout 2020, but for now I think the Hamptons will continue to be an inventive and enthusiastic place.’Top image:&nbsp;Mary Lethea Pettway, 'In Contact and Joint Together,' 2000. Courtesy Parts &amp; Labor Beacon.

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With a slew of new locations in the Hamptons and the Hudson Valley, dealers are COVID-proofing their bricks-and-mortar presence