The best Lower East Side art galleries

Formerly director at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Bridget Donahue opened this contemporary art gallery in 2014. The gallery isn’t Donahue’s first: She was one of the four cofounders of Cleopatra’s in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

In 1996, Nathalie Karg co-founded Chelsea's Anton Kern Gallery, named for her husband whom she divorced in 2012. Two years later, she opened her own gallery in Noho before moving to the Lower East Side in 2015. She currently represents a stable of artists that includes Jessica Craig-Martin, Simon Ko, Lisa Beck, Paul Hosking and Scott Young. 

A filmmaker as well as a founding member of the legendary (and sadly now closed) Thread Waxing alternative space in Soho, Miguel Abreu ventured into dealing in 2006. Hosting a highly intellectual series of performances, art-theory seminars and readings as well as exhibitions, the gallery represents conceptually inspired artists and is among the Lower East Side's top venues.

This is the New York branch for the powerhouse Parisian gallery opened in 1990 by namesake dealer Emmanuel Perrotin—who, among other things, gave YBA bad boy Damien Hirst his first-ever solo show in 1991. Perrotin originally opened a space on the Upper East Side in 2013, which he ran with Dominique Lévy until 2016, when their partnership dissolved and he decamped to an expansive new space on the Lower East Side. Since moving there, he's shown notable names such as Takashi Murakami and internationally renowned street artist, JR. In addtion to New York, Perrotin has galleries in Paris, Shanghai, Seoul and Tokyo.

Since the early 1990s, Mitchell Algus has occupied a unique niche in New York's art world as a gallerist dedicated to reviving the careers of overlooked or semiforgotten artists from the 1960s, '70s and '80s, some of whom—Betty Tompkins, Lee Lozano, Judith Berstein—have gone on to recieve exposure at major museums and big-name galleries. Remarkably, Algus supported his operation by teaching science at a Queens public high school until 2014, when he retired from teaching to pursue his passion for art full time. Since then, he's continued his mission of mainstreaming artists whose practices are underrecognized.

A former oncologist who co-founded of The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill, NY along with his wife, Livia, Marc Straus opened this contemporary art gallery on the Lower East Side in 2011 after spending 40 years as an art collector.

This contemproary art gallery—started by Italian art dealer Gian Enzo Sperone, Angela Westwater and German art dealer Konrad Fischer—is as old-school as it gets, having opened in 1975 in Soho, back when artists actually lived there. The gallery shortened its name to Sperone Westwater in 1982, and in 2002 moved to West 13th Street in the Meatpacking District. Eight years later, the gallery moved to its current home, an eight-storey, purpose-built showcase designed by starchitects Foster + Partners. One innovative feature of the place: a moving exhibiton hall—actually a 12-by-20-by-13-foot elevator that can be connected to any one of the floors to extend the viewing space.

Kathy Grayson and Meghan Coleman, both former directors at Deitch Gallery, decided to open their own space in June 2010. Expect installation antics of the Deitch variety, as well as full-on blast of Dearraindrop aesthetics.

Since 2001, this non-profit organiziation has been mounting envelope-pushing exhibitions, first on Rivington Street and now on Elizabeth. Site-specific installations, as well as video and film screenings, are all part of the program for this essential contemporary art space.