ABSTRACT
Chelsea, onManhattan’s FarWest Side, haswith stunning speed become the center of Contemporary Art in New York City and the United States. Between 1998 and February 2008, the number of commercial galleries in Chelsea grew from 71 to at least 268, dwarfing other art districts in the United States and supplanting SoHo, once the most dynamic gallery neighborhood in New York City. The number of SoHo galleries has now fallen to 44 from its 1990 peak of 262. (See Figures 1 and 2.)1
This mega-concentration of commercial galleries in Chelsea represents an opportunity to engage the long debate over the impact of the rise of the market and the decline of patronage as the major way that art is produced. Our five-year study suggests that the current situation is pluralistic and far more interesting than allowed by perspectives that just stress the dominance of commercialism in a onedimensional way, or conversely by approaches that simply ignore the market’s role. “Economics,” in the language of the editors of this volume, is important but definitely not “everywhere” in Chelsea.2
