The best galleries in New York? Artists choose their favorites

New York City’s art museums are among the most popular in the world – the Metropolitan Museum of Art (known as the Met) and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) attracted 5.4 million and 2.8 million visitors, respectively, in 2023, according to The Art Newspaper.

CNBC asked artists to name their best New York galleries, from the well-known to the underground.

London-based screen-print artist Diego Arellano likes the Chelsea galleries in Manhattan for their large spaces and high ceilings. “Places like C24, Hauser & Wirth and Dia feel like small contemporary museums — just without the tourist lines (and free!),” he told CNBC via email. These galleries sometimes have “bolder” exhibitions than larger organizations, Arellano said.

C24 Gallery features paintings as well as artists working in sculpture, ceramics and photography, while Dia Chelsea is hosting an exhibition by filmmaker Steve McQueen starting September 20. Hauser & Wirth owns two galleries in Chelsea and both are currently showing work by Hungarian-born US artist Rita Ackermann.

Brooklyn-based artist Zhuo Xiong also prefers galleries in Chelsea. Gladstone Gallery — with two locations in Chelsea — is one of his favorites. “The artists they select and the shows they curate are top-notch,” he told CNBC via email, and he likes the current exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery, which is showing works by more than 60 of its collaborators at its 519 and 525 West 19th Street locations.

Xiong also chose Tribeca gallery P·P·O·W, founded over 40 years ago by dealers Wendy Olsoff and Penny Pilkington, which is currently showing “Airhead,” a group exhibition based on the concept of teaching.

Artist and actor Edward Akrout is a fan of the area’s Mriya Gallery, which opened last September and claims to be the “first Ukrainian art gallery in NYC.”

Akrout runs the nonprofit Art Shield, which supports artists threatened by conflict or censorship. He said he is looking forward to the release of “Saints,” a book by photographer Sasha Maslov documenting the war in Ukraine, to be published by Mriya in the fall. “Saints” features “portraits of ordinary Ukrainians who acted courageously and elevated themselves to sainthood,” Akrout said in an email to CNBC.

Arellano likes New York City because of the proximity of its famous galleries to one another. “You can practically visit the Whitney, the MoMA and the Guggenheim all in one day,” he said. The Whitney Museum of American Art is in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, while the MoMA is in Midtown and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is further north on the Upper East Side.

For British artist Kate Lewis, MoMA is “special” because she first visited the museum when she was 17. “That’s where I ‘met’ Matisse, Hopper (and) Degas,” she told CNBC via email, referring to French artists Henri Matisse and Edgar Degas and American realist painter Edward Hopper.

Lewis, who creates botanical-style collages from newspaper articles, also recommended the Whitney for its “unmissable” Biennial exhibitions. The current exhibition, “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” features the work of 71 artists and collectives “tackling many of the most pressing issues of our time,” according to the gallery’s website, including how AI affects our understanding of reality.

Xiong said the Met gallery had the greatest influence on his career as a painter. “The Met’s collection is incredibly diverse, including everything from Egyptian mummies to Chinese porcelain, ancient Chinese bronzes, Chinese calligraphy and painting, and European medieval works,” he said.

Xiong, who is from Inner Mongolia, said that “The Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual,” a Qing Dynasty painting manual that is part of the Met’s collection, influenced his upcoming London exhibition. “Gone with the Wind” is on display until August 15 at London’s Maison Pan gallery – housed in the vaults that once formed the archives of Britain’s National Gallery.

Akrout likes a “secret” gallery under the Manhattan Bridge, located above the East Broadway Mall in Chinatown. “It’s a very important underground gallery for contemporary art,” he said.

Arellano called the Swiss Institute, an experimental art museum in the East Village, a hidden gem and said he liked the Printed Matter bookstore there, which also hosts trade shows and product launches.

Also in the East Village, artist and costume designer Machine Dazzle (born Matthew Flower) recommended La MaMa Galleria, which is affiliated with the theater La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. “It supports artists who are pushing the boundaries of their medium,” he told CNBC via email.

Not far away is OSMOS, a space run by Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, a former artistic director of Art Basel and “art world insider,” according to the gallery’s website. Dazzle described her as “an art world genius” and said the gallery’s eponymous print magazine is “top-notch.”

If you don’t feel like going to a gallery, you can admire many creative works on the city’s streets, says Arellano. “Walking around New York for hours, listening to conversations and music, seeing millions of stickers, placards and posters and what they write and paint on their walls has given me more material and inspiration than any other place I’ve ever been,” he says.