Monday 12th February 2018

Seeking Art while Traveling

While it’s common to see the Met when visiting New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, or the Getty in Los Angeles, travelers often miss out on what’s happening in local contemporary art scenes purely because they don’t know where to look! Every time I travel to a new city, I try to find a gallery opening, open studio events, or a performance happening locally, and I won’t lie it can be tough or impossible without a network of art-consuming friends in the area. Here are some great resources I’ve come across to help.

New York City

The summer after my sophomore year of college I was lucky enough to split my time between internships at Gagosian and Metro Pictures galleries. I lived on 24^th Street, worked on 24^th Street, and also had my fair share of free Two Buck Chuck at gallery openings between 10^th and 11^th Avenues after work at gallery openings.

Chelsea is a hotspot in Manhattan for galleries, and Thursday nights are often jam packed with new shows opening. Around 4pm on a Thursday, I’d find myself visiting artcards.cc and creating a calendar of exhibitions I wanted to see during the 6-8pm openings, often learning about emerging artists at one venue before seeing a blockbuster, museum-quality exhibition at the next. Artcards.cc is not limited to Chelsea, of course, and lists art events by date and neighborhood. It encouraged me to traverse the city from the Upper West Side, through the Lower East Side, and into Bushwick on the hunt for fun, interesting shows. The site itself is very basic but it serves an excellent resource to get the dirt on what’s showing around town.

Los Angeles

Personally, I love The Culture Trip for art updates in LA. They've got tons of content on art, fashion, film and other subjects worldwide and the site is very easily searchable. As someone who has only worked on the East Coast, visiting galleries in California is like visiting Mars to me. Everything feels so foreign: laid back, tons of square footage, everyone is so much happier (and possibly high?). I've found that asking for advice on shows to see is more well received in California than New York, too, so get personal and ask for recommendations!

Philadelphia

From late 2012 until mid 2017, I lived in and fell in love with Philly. Because Philadelphia is a more affordable place to live, many artists from New York and surrounding cities have flocked there to set up shop and the city has an incredible artistic vibe. There are a ton of amazing artist collectives like Space 1026, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Vox Populi & Grizzly Grizzly. Get on their mailing lists ASAP. You’ll thank me.

Philadelphia also has a tourism organization called the GPTMC and they run visitphilly.com and uwishunu.com. The latter is a great resource for art events around the city, and their bloggers definitely have boots on the ground all around town.

Chicago

When EXPO Chicago art fair had its inaugural fair in 2012, Chicago seemed to have a resurgence on the contemporary art radar. While the Art Institute of Chicago is a must-see, there are many awesome commercial galleries to visit too. Chicago Gallery News, originally a printed pamphlet started in the early 80s, is a good tool for finding gallery openings and events around town. They break down different gallery guides based on neighborhoods which can be helpful if you’re getting around town via Uber and on foot!

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