The art world has changed forever.
But New York galleries still rule.
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They always sold contemporary art, but now theyre doing it more than ever.
Heady curators travel the world discovering unknown artists everywhere, while ignoring the artists in their own backyards.
Yet all this is bringing something fantastic and necessary to the mix.
It is now impossible to imagine a big biennial or museum group show of all white male artists.
Of course, a percent of this work will be mediocre.
But no greater percent will be bad than was true when mainly white men were sold and lionized.
In time, the good will win out and the rest will be forgotten, as it always is.
They stayed flexible, charismatic, and fun.
To lifers like me, galleries didnt seem as crowded.
All this made the art world feel smaller, not bigger.
Over the buzz of the market, we may immerse ourselves once again.
10.Adieu and Godspeed, Metro Pictures Gallery
10.
One of the ground zeros of the gigantic explosion that was the 1980s art worldclosed this month.
It stands among the greatest of the past century.
9.Be Your Wonderful Self: The Portraits of Beauford Delaney,Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
9.
The next morning, he walked to Harlem.
For a while, art history all but forgot him.
Welcome home, prodigal gallery.
7.From the Archives: White Columns & 112 Greene Street 19702021,White Columns
7.
It may not be possible to overstate how consistently excellent White Columns has been since its inception in 1970.
Its unpredictable and ahead of the curve.
Anyone may submit work here and might be chosen.
That is radical openness.
It was a magnificent testament to an institution that has never lost the thread.
6.Winfred Rembert: 19452021,Fort Gansevoort
6.
What a nightmare this country has been for Black Americans.
5.Jennifer Packer, The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing,Whitney Museum
5.
Some of this art is great.
Most of it is a new, forgettable -ism.
The spatial bottom drops out; we feel as if were floating.
Her recent huge, unstretched paintings, on view at the Whitney, show Packer really spreading her wings.
4.Polina Barskaya, Still,Monya Rowe Gallery
4.
Their craft is focused but not fussy, always on the edge of being out of control.
Her paintings sensuous surfaces rise above whatever the image is.
3.Reverend Joyce McDonald,Gordon Robichaux
3.
Her work hits us with humility, a reverence for life, and deep secrets of survival.
A concentration of energy that almost becomes healing.
This artist creates photographs that captivate with their retinal witchcraft and intellectual alchemy.
Gill joins her countrywoman Dayanita Singh as one of the greatest photographers in the world today.
1.Alice Neel: People Come First,Metropolitan Museum of Art
1.
She lived at the edges into her 70s.
People lined up in spite of the pandemic to see work by this Balzac of the American human comedy.
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