Dealer and owner of the Outsider Art Fair, Andrew Edlin. Photoshop magic by Art F City’s Michael Anthony Farley. (We do not actually know if Edlin owns a CBGB shirt.)
The Bowery used to brim with punks and local drunks, but with the close of new-wave and hardcore venue CBGBs in 2006, followed by the entry of the New Museum in 2007, the neighborhood hasn’t been the same since. The floodgates opened and Lower East Side Galleries cropped up everywhere; there are now close to 70 galleries in the district.
Add one more to that list; after 13 years in Chelsea, Andrew Edlin Gallery is moving to the ground floor of 212 Bowery this fall. Wide Open Arts, which owns and operates the Outsider Art Fairs in New York and Paris, will also relocate to the new space. The new office space will be located directly across from the New Museum and beside the International Center for Photography (ICP).
Like Monya Rowe Gallery, Feature INC (RIP), and Bitforms before him, Edlin’s gallery is moving out of Chelsea, and into the Lower East Side. Other galleries located on Bowery include The Hole (312 Bowery), Garis & Hahn (263 Bowery), and Sperone Westwater (257 Bowery).
Does this move signal the diminishing importance of Chelsea or simply the continued rise of importance in the Lower East Side as an arts district? Given that galleries such as Boesky East, Lehmann Maupin, and Marlborough have all maintained spaces in both locations, the latter seems most likely. The New York gallery ecosystem is now large enough to support two districts for two markets: Chelsea for the really expensive art—mid-career blue chip and the LES for slightly less—secondary-market and emerging blue-chip art.
We reached out to Andrew Edlin to find out if an opening date or show has been scheduled, but we’re told nothing yet. “Gotta do the buildout first,” he said.
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