Tribeca

For the better part of a decade, Tribeca was anxiously touted as the “next” art neighborhood in New York. It was happening all along. Now, however, it’s indisputably the art neighborhood. Any available storefront (and there were many, post-pandemic) is now a gallery—and likely designed by studioMDA. These short, cross-town blocks are now a packed promenade of emerging to blue-chip spaces, the one we pay attention to. Find the art crowd at the Walker Hotel for coffee, Odeon for dinner, and The River for drinks. It’s good fortune for art lovers and professionals alike; a strong art and community, all within reach.

WALKER STREET GALLERIES

Walker Street b/t Broadway and Church

Tribeca, as an art neighborhood happened, popped up in a very New York way—that is to say, organically. Now the streets between Canal and Leonard, Broadway to Church are teeming with operations from big Chelsea blue-chip to cutting-edge contemporary. Walker Street has become the most-crammed (in a good way!) corridor, where shoulder to shoulder are Bortolami, James Cohan, 52 Walker, Mendes Wood, David Lewis, with Andrew Kreps, Anton Kern and PPOW just catty corner on the Broadway side. It’s right up the road from Independent, where many of the galleries are participating, making it easier to dig deep into their programs.

60 WHITE

60 White Street 

60 White is both an address and the name of a new cultural space tucked into a historic Tribeca warehouse building created by collector Lio Malca. Malca has a veritable stable of art spaces from Fundación La Nave Salinas in Ibiza, Spain; Casa Malca hotel in Tulum, Mexico; and The Art Lodge artist residency in Sian Ka’an, Mexico—and the New York outpost aims to be an ever-evolving exhibition platform of public projects and performances. 60 White opens with a survey of Rafa Maccarón abstract canvases.

Rafa Macarrón, 60 White (before construction) Photo by Ena Boskovic

HAYAL POZANTI AT TIMOTHY TAYLOR

74 Leonard Street

The British blue-chip has left Chelsea for Tribeca, moving into the old Knitting Factory space designed by the neighborhood-starchitect StudioMDA and has opened with a big painting show of Hayal Pozanti. The seamless new space retains Tribeca’s signature—the cast-iron column—which adds historic and visual texture against the ultra contemporary works on view.

All works ©Hayal Pozanti. Courtesy of Timothy Taylor, London/New York

RUTE MERK AT TARA DOWNS

424 Broadway

Tara Downs also joined the neighborhood back in the early Fall, breaking out on her own in an eponymous operation. For her May showing comes Rute Merk, whose hyperreal paintings feel like a grasp from inside a computer’s operating system. In-demand across Europe and Asia, Merk’s techno-themes are certain to resonate here.

Courtesy of the gallery

THE BEAN AT 56 LEONARD

56 Leonard Street

Anish Kapoor has finally unveiled his NYC bean (outside his apartment building nonetheless), a project nearly a decade in the making. Perhaps worth the wait as crowds of New Yorkers from all across the boroughs on all days, at all hours, trek to experience the monumental optical illusion.

Julie Baumgardener