Below Grand

Downtown ingenuity plays out in this artist-run space with two locations a block apart: a 24/7 window gallery on Orchard Street and a storefront on Allen Street.

Shows are scrappy, a little wild, and full of feeling. A different artist from the collective curates each show, so each exhibition has its own distinct obsession and aesthetic.

The window displays on Orchard Street lean into retail aesthetics: dramatic and staged, meant to stop you on the street. At the storefront, the work gets weirder and more intimate, swinging between camp and conceptual rigor.

The whole thing feels like an experimental sea of ideas, with artists making room for each other's visions. It’s rare and bold. It’s so New York.

Artist-writer Andrew Paul Woolbright started this space in 2017 as Super Dutchess. He renamed it Below Grand in 2020, and it has since grown into a 20+-member artist-run collective. There are no gatekeepers, just a shifting constellation of people building something bigger than the sum of its parts.