Highline to open in June!?

Ever since I started visiting my friends in the West Village - long before I moved here - I have heard stories about the Highline Project.

An abandoned above-ground railway - built in 1930 and left empty since the 80s, the Highline has gained a reputation among many of being "one of those dreamed-up projects that was never going to happen". The city has long envisioned it as a new kind of green space, floating above the city - stretching up the West side of Manhattan. Well it looks like Section 1 of the "park", located in the Meatpacking district, may finally be opening in Mid-June.

See the video below from the Sundance Channel

LES

Well I had a great time this past weekend - I made it to Chelsea and saw a lot of work that was really great. I'm planning on heading over to the LES (Lower East Side) at some point this week because I've heard great things about some shows over there.

For starters, there's a project that is in an old medical clinic, entitled HomeBase, where artists are "exploring their own ideas of home".

There are a few other things that some friends of mine said not to miss, so I'll pass them along:

Voshardt/Humphrey, Double Blind / Double Blind at Greene Contemporary

George Sagri, Put Your Money Where Your Mouth is and if Approaching Pain Gives You A Way of Recovering Memory of Flesh Then Go Elsewhere at On Stellar Rays

Hilary Harnischfeger at Rachel Uffner Gallery

Philip Argent, New Paintings at Luxe Gallery

Springtime

So now that it's SPRINGTIME!!! in the city and I'm just about done with finals, I'm going to come out of the dungeons/libraries and make a huge effort to go see a lot (really a lot) of art over the next month or so. There are so many things that I want to see, and that I've been putting off - I really can't wait.

First, I think I'll head over to Chelsea, where I'll be sure to stop by:

Sophie Calle at Paula Cooper

Rosemarie Fiore at Priska C. Juschka

Anne Eastman at ATM

Joseph Grigley at Sara Meltzer

and Charles Ray at Matthew Marks (see image below)

The Met

The weather in NYC has been superb lately! Over the weekend we had 70 degree sunshine and I went to the upper east side with a friend and spent several hours in the Met. I think that when most people visit the Met they just straight to the Impressionist paintings. Or straight to the Modernist works. I spent several hours hanging out with the Greek and Roman sculpture It was incredible. I mean, the way the Met works you sort of have to walk through the sculptures but no one ever actually really sees them.

I took several Greek art classes in college and it has really helped me understand the evolution of art. And to see these masterpieces right in my backyard is just incredible. 

I highly recommend any of you New Yorkers to rediscover the Met. Whether it is the Greek and Roman sculptures or the Tribal Art sections. There are so many treasures in the museum 

We're finished!

We finished our project and it went off without a hitch. I'm really impressed with our group for pulling it together at the last moment!

Part of what really helped us find all these great artists around the world is this new site I've been raving about called MutualArt.com. It's like a content aggregator that lets you put in your preferences and then suggests things that you'd like to read about and artists you'd like to learn about. We put in the names of a few artists we were already interested in and the website popped out all these other ideas. It also has some great recs on galleries, exhibitions, museums and everything. It's especially great if you live in NYC like I do but I imagine that other art world capitals are probably pretty well represented there too.

Check it out!

Project Update

Well, nothing much is going on around here in the big city. Well...I guess its starting to be spring-ish (not counting today where its like 20 degrees). It's been consistently warmer lately, everyone is feeling a little bit less sluggish and a little more annoyed at winter. I've just been going about my business trying not to be too overwhelmed with all the work I have to do at school.

For one of my school projects I have to put together an art collection for a fictitious "private client." It's been really run so far running around to all the galleries and art fairs trying to come up with a coherent collection. The focus of the project is on "new media" works - that means (or so much teacher says) that things plug into the wall. We've already got some cool works lined up by artists like Tim Tate, Anna Frants, and Anselm Reyle. It's a really great look into what the life of an art consultant is really like. 

I'll let you know how things turn out as the project progresses.

Santa Fe

I'm here in Santa Fe, New Mexico right now. And I must say it is considerably colder than I thought it would be, but still an incredible town. There are 200+ galleries for a population of about 65,000 people. That's the largest per capita art gallery population of any city in the world. While not all the galleries are world class, there are quite a few very good ones with some mid-market artists. The most noticeable difference is the "look" of the galleries - they are more like homes with fireplaces, front doors and porches, and the kindness of the owners and operators. This is the only place I've ever been where EVERY SINGLE gallery person said hi, got up and shook my hand, and asked how they could help. It was such a nice change from Chelsea galleries. 

Some of my favorite galleries here were Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Gerald Peters Gallery, Linda Durham Contemporary Art, and William Siegal Gallery. There is one road in town called Canyon Road where a majority of the smaller galleries are - it's worth visiting here for a couple of days just to check out all of these. And to take it slow. We tried to do a whole day of Canyon Road and were completely tired out by the end of it. Seriously exhausting to see that much art.