Chelsea’s blocks of galleries become a ghost town in August. And on weekends, even the ghosts flee to the Hamptons.
But there are enough galleries open elsewhere in the city to fill a Saturday, many of them a few subway stops away in the adjoining neighborhoods of SoHo and the Lower East Side. They range from the one-guy-in-a-tiny-room-tending-to-works-of-emerging-artists kind to the elegantly appointed, lusciously air-conditioned places where both the prices and the ceilings can be astonishingly high. Some are even open on, gasp, Sunday.
Westwood Gallery on Broadway is a fifth-floor space that combines a coolly professional look with a pleasantly friendly staff. The exhibition, Color Alert, has paintings and monotypes inspired by the post-9/11 color-coded government terror alert levels. Also ask about the warhol screen-prints-on-newsprint in the back.