Wet Paint tours New York as autumn gallery season restarts

New York's autumn gallery rush is back, with packed rooms from Tribeca to Times Square.

The September 25 edition of Wet Paint, Artnet News' roundup of openings and after-parties, runs through the first big week of the season. Artnet News describes Wet Paint as a weekly gossip column of original scoops. Tips now go to Gabi Vidal-Irizarry, who has taken over the column.

Vidal-Irizarry follows Annie Armstrong, who wrote 198 editions of Wet Paint before leaving art writing for food writing with Caper Media. Artnet said Vidal-Irizarry picked up the mantle after Armstrong. An earlier writer of the column was Nate Freeman.

This week's museum news centres on two big names uptown and one downtown. The column points readers to Krasner and Pollock at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It also reports that artist Alex Da Corte is co-curating a Lichtenstein retrospective, meaning a career-spanning survey, for the Whitney Museum in New York. That show opens on October 11.

Galleries get most of the space. George Rouy is showing at Hauser & Wirth in New York, according to the column. Karma is showing aerial paintings from the 1970s by the late Yvonne Jacquette, known for views seen from above. The roundup also lists Herman Cherry at Sebastian Gladstone, and notes that Maxwell Graham has opened its new Tribeca space with a Michael E. Smith show.

Two late-night stops give the piece its flavour. One photograph, credited to Vidal-Irizarry, was taken in Times Square on the night of the "Live Sex Acts" opening at Times Square Arts, the public art programme for the district. Another photograph shows Jenny Borland, Tenko Nakajima and filmmaker John Waters, credited courtesy of Borland. The column also drops in at No Inc., a modelling agency on the Bowery, where a five-and-a-half-foot bottle of poppers sits tipped over inside.

What makes this stand out for regular gallery-goers is the market note tucked between the parties. Auction sales grew last year for the first time since 2021, the column states, thanks to a big November in New York. That is the sales calendar, the evening sales in May and November, that tends to set the tone for the wider trade.

For fans, this means plenty to see without needing an invitation. Most of the shows listed are public and free, once you find the address.