We’ve Got Company

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A map of galleries and other arty venues on and around the Bowery

With the opening of The New Museum of Contemporary Art weeks away, we’ve seen lots and lots of new galleries springing up near Jen Bekman. When we opened in 2003 there wasn’t a lot of art in the area - CANADA arrived before us in 2002, a photo gallery called Sterile Mind closed just as we opened, and while there were always LES galleries nearby, there wasn’t much between us and then. I was super excited when Rivington Arms chose a location on 2nd St just off Bowery as their new (and gorgeous) location. But still, there wasn’t a lot going on between us and them, aside from the unstopping construction of luxury condos. That’s all changing very quickly now, and it’s great to have all this new art energy in the area; I love being able to direct gallery visitors to lots of interesting art destinations that are just around the corner, or up the block or across the street.

What I don’t enjoy is scrambling for a scrap of paper or finding a pen that I can use to write on a postcard, the latter being an exercise in futility because of the card’s glossy surface. And of course, I often overlook stuff when trying to come up with this kind of information off the cuff. I’ve had a mind to get all this info together in one place for a while now, and being the nerd that I am, I looked to the interwebs to help make it easy.

A few weeks ago, with the help of Alice Wells, I put together a map of the Bowery Arts District. It plots all the locations in the vicinity, and the pop up windows include contact info and gallery hours. We’re also working on a companion document that we’ll keep in the gallery and also have available online, at… boweryartsdistrict.com. Right now it just redirects to the map link, but soon there will be more. Gallery assistant Niki Kriese is taking the lead on gathering up all the details, and Sarah Foley will use that info to create a pretty and easy to read document that will be downloadable as a .pdf.

We haven’t gotten so ambitious as to add exhibition info - ArtCal has that covered! Also, right now we’re focusing on trying to get the unchanging details down pat. Towards that end, if you notice errors or omissions on the map, please send an email to info AT jenbekman DOT com and we’ll get it fixed.