New York contemporary art trail

The artist and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, who did not pack the trees, have just planned a long walk marked by thousands of doors in a bright orange. The event makes you want to make the jump (Le Monde, 15 February). Especially as "modern Desk IS again." In any case, what could be read on the back of one of these indispensable guides small exhibition at the reopening of the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA.

This way of speaking of advertising has its bottom right. Without access to prestigious art collections in the XX^th century New York museum, but the temporary exhibitions organized temporarily a bit far, at PS1 in Queens, Manhattan, the modern city par excellence, had lost some of its soul. But not its energy, though.

This energy, we can measure the amount of construction that began to flourish since September 11, 2001, not only around Ground Zero. It can be measured yet, but in a less immediately obvious, the ability of art galleries to move according to the economic crisis and house prices.

In less than ten years in Soho, which was a hotbed of avant-garde galleries, has just cleared the 300 or 400 galleries, Ala late 1980, were located between Broadway and West Broadway, Houston and Grand. The area became a stronghold of stylists and designers. It is chic, is lively and pleasant to visit, but otherwise. Cafes and restaurants are increasingly expensive.

Vestige of the past: on the gable wall of a building at West Broadway, No. 420 is not erased. Lacquer was two great merchants, Leo Castelli and Ileana Sonnabend one floor to another, had their gallery. Today is a clothing store. Same thing at the corner of Broadway and Prince where there is not too long ago, the Guggenheim has opened an annex at great expense for its exhibitions of contemporary art. Since 2001, the museum had to cut back its ambitions for expansion in Manhattan, also giving up his plan to build a museum grand, like that of Bilbao, on a "pier" (float) of the East River.

Chelsea is now that everything happens within a perimeter extending between the 19th and 26th Street, the X and XI^th Avenue. The galleries that had the reputation of SoHo have moved their activities. Others come join them, including those who have always been installed uptown, to Madison Avenue. For example, PaceWildenstein, this has also opened a space on the 25^th. Others are created. The phenomenon is amazing.

No shops, no restaurants mostly confined to the X^th Avenue: Chelsea is sorting. We're only going to contemporary art.

There's nothing else to do in this area once occupied by warehouses and garages that have never had the architectural quality of industrial buildings of Soho. Now, the galleries are lined on both sides of streets or flush curb. Glass surfaces and metal panels have replaced the sliding doors of the old workshops.

This skin hints at large interiors renovated into a hard style and pure. The inescapable Gagosian Gallery will have a particularly large space, which allows him to museum exhibits, which are also guarded by more guards than there are in museums.

Many galleries were designed by famous architects. Lehmann Maupin, which opened its Chelsea space in 2010, has offered Rem Koolhaas., A great institution, the Dia Art Foundation, has long had its base on the 22^th Street. She is currently under construction. But you do not lose on exchange by going to the Dia Beacon. Andy Warhol

Richard Serra, Walter de Maria, Dan Flavin, Joseph Beuys, Hanne Darboven, Louise Bourgeois in the attic, Bruce Nauman in the cellar, Agnes Martin, who just died ... major works by great artists of the 1960s and today there are beautifully deployed.

This opened the new museum in 2003 in a former printing, including the building of iron, concrete and glass of the 1920s has been met. Its development is due to the architectural firm Open Office, in collaboration with artist Robert Irwin to the edge: the garden and the parking lot surrounded by fruit trees.

It's a bit far on the east bank of the Hudson, but in upstate New York, and the road (rail, from Grand Central Station) which leads to a little over a hour is worth a look: it runs along the river and its wooded hills almost all the time. The artists began to settle there.

With the great transformation of SoHo, with rising rents throughout Manhattan since the late 1990s, artists unconfirmed young newly arrived could not have workshops in traditional neighborhoods. They are then folded into new space in Brooklyn. In particular, in the very provincial district of Williamsburg, near the East River. Behind the factories that line the water, a few streets with small shops and houses not exceeding two stories are pleasant browse. At the same time that artists, galleries experimental spaces associations, music boxes were installed in the area.

They say the neighborhood of Williamsburg connected. But it is not obvious in the week. It is best to check it out Saturday and enjoy going to snoop, with gloves in the drawer of the gallery Pierogi. It was installed five years ago in a former factory closures, and holds the road better than most of those are open at the same time it may be because of the originality of his formula: a drawer to another, and from A to Z, around 750 artists who are represented by small works on paper paintings, drawings... when the walls are proposed exhibitions of artists who sometimes begin to make themselves known here.