New York Art Tours

"...the [Chelsea] area is booming with nearly 240 cutting-edge contemporary galleries... ...take a tour organized by art critic Merrily Kerr for a better understanding of the glitz and the grit behind some of the fabulous pieces of art." "...one of New York's most established art tour guides. [Merrily Kerr] who has lived in New York for 16 years an... d has been showing tourists and locals through museums and galleries for the past decade, offers dozens of tour options. If you're new to New York, though, Merrily recommends starting with her Chelsea art tour. "It's more accessible, the production values are higher and you see art that is sometimes interactive," she says. "There's a big wow factor in Chelsea." Sometimes you can still find that wow factor on the Lower East Side galleries, too, Merrily says, but there's always a risk. "You might walk in a gallery, and there'll be a sheet of plastic on the floor and a piece of wood propped against the wall," she says. "I could explain it! But it tries people's patience a little bit." Without Merrily's assistance, you could easily walk past some of Chelsea's cavernous warehouse-sized galleries and assume they're invitation-only showrooms. But, says Merrily, while all are privately owned, most are free to the public and contain blockbuster works that could compete against anything at the nearby Whitney Museum of American Art. For the past decade or so, Merrily says, local galleries have been putting on museum-quality shows that warrant attention. When we visit the Jack Shainman Gallery, for instance, Cuban artist Yoan Capote has constructed a 2.4-metre high bust of Fidel Castro out of 3000 door hinges collected from his neighbours (after offering to replace their old ones with new ones), an impressive feat of engineering and socio-political commentary. Over in Larry Gagosian's gallery, Michael Heizer has somehow suspended a towering 18-tonne rock, excavated from the Mojave Desert, inside a 12-tonne steel frame. It seems impossible and possibly dangerous that something ...Read More