Alternative SpaceLower East Side
601Artspace
Young curators get free rein at this Eldridge Street nonprofit to make shows about social justice, memory, and whose stories get told.
Photo by Anastasia Simone for Beholdr
Walk in With Us
We like gifts, and we’d consider this gallery a gift for all of us. 601Artspace has a clear mission: foster freedom of expression, give curators opportunities to create research-heavy, politically engaged shows that ask you to think hard about who gets written out of history and why.
Recent shows have explored sensory experience as resistance, the sound of war in Ukraine, and hair as political identity. You might stand in front of a sculpture made from salvaged wood from the Stonewall Inn's original dance floor, photographic documents of lynching sites in California, or video reenactments of slave rebellions.
These are exhibitions with soul and depth that ask the big questions. Leave your coffee for after the show. You’re going to want to sit with what you just saw.
About the Alternative Space
David Howe, an artist, collector, entrepreneur, filmmaker, and philanthropist, started 601Artspace in 2006 to show art he’d collected that was too big for his apartment. In 2012, he brought artist and curator Sarah Shaoul on board as director, and what began as a storage problem became something much bigger: a place where global and homegrown artists and curators can present serious, thoughtful shows, and where questions matter more than answers.
Featured In
Routes and collections this place belongs to
In The Area
GalleryLower East Side
Miguel Abreu Gallery
When we want to see and think differently, this is where we come. Exhibitions unfold across an enfilade of sunlit rooms, cinematic in pacing, structurally precise. The artists are obsessed with how images make meaning. By the time we leave, we are, too.
BarLower East Side
Beverly's
Come for the exhibitions or zine fair at this artist-built nightlife institution, stay for the DJs. Evenings dissolve into dancing under its purplish-pink light, and somehow it's four hours later.
GalleryLower East Side
Below Grand
Artist-curators stretch the rules in this LES storefront gallery.
RestaurantLower East Side
Eldridge Street Store
A tea shop serving up boba by day and Fujian-style peanut noodles into the wee hours run by downtown kids with connections to the skate community.
