The Hidden Gems of Paris
A Parisian’s guide to the best hotels, restaurants, and out-of-the-way shopping spots that the city has to offer.
THOUGH I LEFT New York City for Los Angeles a decade ago, as an art critic, I still look forward to every visit back. I know no other city as densely packed with art — both what the late critic Manny Farber would describe as the white elephant kind (the gleaming, lauded masterpiece) and the termite kind (the scrappy, subversive revelation). In both public and private, art is constantly being made, discussed, bought, and sold. If it reportedly takes four days to see every work of art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the rest of New York City might take forever.
Once or twice a year, I make a point to visit the big museums such as The Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim, The Met, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, plus some of the powerhouse commercial galleries in Chelsea such as David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, and Marian Goodman Gallery. After that, I wander the city, peeking into unexpected galleries and enjoying work I’ve never seen before. The list below is split between the classic and the contemporary, along with some of my favorite destinations to grab a bite to eat or a drink along the way. I couldn’t include everything that I love (and I’m waiting for The Kitchen and The Studio Museum in Harlem to wrap up renovations), so I suggest using the recommendations below as a jumping-off point to avail yourself of each location’s surroundings.
Classic Places to Explore
The New York Botanical Garden
Where art meets nature
The 250-acre Bronx estate, complete with its forests, ponds, and a palatial Victorian greenhouse, is also a surreal venue for modern and contemporary exhibitions. To get there, start at Grand Central Station and take the Metro north toward...
The 250-acre Bronx estate, complete with its forests, ponds, and a palatial Victorian greenhouse, is also a surreal venue for modern and contemporary exhibitions. To get there, start at Grand Central Station and take the Metro north toward White Plains. You’ll be at the Botanical Gardens stop in 20 minutes. I loved the last show I saw here — hundreds of life-sized vultures by artist Ebony G. Patterson, sculpted from foam and painted in black glitter, installed in and around the garden’s historic library and conservatory. The vultures were congregating on the emerald-green lawn and peeking from lush tropical flora in a way that felt simultaneously magical, sinister, and sparkly.
The Morgan Library & Museum
An intimate version of The Met
The late J.P. Morgan, the financier and Gilded Age powerbroker, avidly collected treasures of all kinds — rare and historic manuscripts, Mesopotamian printing tools, and drawings by Rembrandt, Raphael, and Jean-Honoré Fragonard among them....
The late J.P. Morgan, the financier and Gilded Age powerbroker, avidly collected treasures of all kinds — rare and historic manuscripts, Mesopotamian printing tools, and drawings by Rembrandt, Raphael, and Jean-Honoré Fragonard among them. Since 1924, his collection has been open to the public, and it feels a bit like The Met on an intimate scale. The museum’s multibuilding Murray Hill complex includes the remarkable, mystical, formerly private neoclassical library Morgan had built in 1906. Between the Byzantine-style ceilings and sixteenth-century Netherlandish tapestries, his library and study maintain all their Gilded Age splendor. Truly I have never seen such beautiful bookshelves.
The Met Cloisters
Medieval art and artifacts
The Cloisters’ approximation of a medieval European monastery is so transportive and convincing, that at one time, I truly did believe it belonged to some religious order. In reality, The Cloisters was built in the 1930s as John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s...
The Cloisters’ approximation of a medieval European monastery is so transportive and convincing, that at one time, I truly did believe it belonged to some religious order. In reality, The Cloisters was built in the 1930s as John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s gift to The Met to house the collection that he bought from George Grey Barnard, a distant heir to a Pennsylvania iron dynasty. The museum brims with the medieval art and artifacts Barnard purchased but could not afford to keep: religious paintings, narwhal tusks, and the actual walls and columns of abbeys he had shipped from Europe. Barnard had terrible spending habits but extraordinary taste. The Cloisters and its divine gardens sit at the top of a hill overlooking Washington Heights in Manhattan, and during the ascent up the woodland trail, the sounds of the city melt away. By the time you reach the top, you’ll be convinced you’re in medieval Europe.
“The New York Earth Room”
The spirit of the original SoHo
In 1977, the late artist Walter De Maria filled the Heiner Friedrich Gallery in SoHo with 280,000 pounds of dark, rich, peaty soil. The gallery has since closed, but the soil remains. Cynics among us might call this a waste of coveted real...
In 1977, the late artist Walter De Maria filled the Heiner Friedrich Gallery in SoHo with 280,000 pounds of dark, rich, peaty soil. The gallery has since closed, but the soil remains. Cynics among us might call this a waste of coveted real estate, and that is exactly what I love about it. Many decades and new nearby Starbucks locations later, De Maria’s work has managed to survive the commercialization of SoHo, and there’s still no charge to get in. De Maria was a land artist — part of a movement to make poetic but impractical, unsalable, often enormous earth-based works specifically to resist the encroaching commercialization of art. “The New York Earth Room” presents a small sliver of an era when SoHo belonged to artists, insulated from the noise and market pressures outside.
Dia Chelsea
Rotating collections, lectures, and readings
“The Earth Room” survived thanks to the stewardship of the Dia Art Foundation, a nonprofit founded in 1974 by a trio of art enthusiasts, one of them being Heiner Friedrich. Their goal was to realize and maintain the ambitions of a few legendary ’60s and ’70s...
“The Earth Room” survived thanks to the stewardship of the Dia Art Foundation, a nonprofit founded in 1974 by a trio of art enthusiasts, one of them being Heiner Friedrich. Their goal was to realize and maintain the ambitions of a few legendary ’60s and ’70s artists; today they still care for projects like Robert Smithson’s epic “Spiral Jetty” in Utah, as well as various gems hidden throughout New York City. When I hear the name Dia, the first thing that comes to mind is the foundation’s incredible collection in Beacon, New York, but they also keep a space in Chelsea devoted to new commissions by contemporary artists, often on a monumental scale.
Café Sabarsky
A Viennese-style cafe with decadent desserts
Toward the south end of Museum Mile, the Neue Galerie specializes in early twentieth-century German and Austrian art — works by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Wassily Kandinsky among them — and its Café Sabarsky is fine-tuned to the sumptuousness of that...
Toward the south end of Museum Mile, the Neue Galerie specializes in early twentieth-century German and Austrian art — works by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Wassily Kandinsky among them — and its Café Sabarsky is fine-tuned to the sumptuousness of that era’s Viennese cafe society. The walls are ornate, the banquettes are upholstered with an Otto Wagner fabric, and the menu is extensive. Michelin-starred Executive Chef Christopher Engel offers a range of savory sandwiches and salads, but you’re really here for the opulent selection of desserts: strudel, crepes, and at least 10 different types of cake.
Contemporary Collections
O’Flaherty’s
An artist-run avant-garde gallery
While galleries do the work of growing and supporting an artist’s career, they’re also commercial ventures whose ultimate goal is to sell paintings. But while commercially reliable work is generally familiar, tasteful, or relatively anodyne, this artist-run,...
While galleries do the work of growing and supporting an artist’s career, they’re also commercial ventures whose ultimate goal is to sell paintings. But while commercially reliable work is generally familiar, tasteful, or relatively anodyne, this artist-run, East Village gallery is pointedly uninterested in making any money at all. Its shows are notably chaotic and often offensive, and never, ever boring. I’d describe O’Flaherty’s collection as unserious-looking work by very serious artists. Imagine a live performance of Austrian artists slathering their bodies in Vaseline and entombing themselves in plaster of Paris, or a sculpture of a porcelain toddler poised on a crib that’s crashed a hole into the drywall. O’Flaherty’s doesn’t adhere to a regular exhibition schedule, and the gallery lost it's last space when the rent was doubled — but this is the price of marching to the beat of your own drum.
52 Walker
Thought-provoking conceptual collections
To look at contemporary art and feel like you don’t “get it” is a major deterrent for many. But for me, that feeling is my favorite part. I love work that doesn’t hand its meaning over on a silver platter. The shows at 52 Walker tend to lean toward the...
To look at contemporary art and feel like you don’t “get it” is a major deterrent for many. But for me, that feeling is my favorite part. I love work that doesn’t hand its meaning over on a silver platter. The shows at 52 Walker tend to lean toward the conceptual, the mysterious, even the beguiling. It’s where very smart artists (my past favorites include Kandis Williams, Nikita Gale, and Pope.L) are allowed to experiment with heady ideas on a large scale. I recently saw a show there by German photographer Heji Shin that I’m still processing: close-up portraits of little piglets with uncannily human eyes. I have no idea what she meant by it, but to still be thinking about it days later strikes me as the mark of good art. In fact, I’d like to go back and see it again.
OCDChinatown
A queer gallery for interdisciplinary works
In Chinatown, there’s an unglamorous mall under the Manhattan Bridge that captures the eternally high-fashion, low-rent ethos of downtown Manhattan. The first floor belongs to longtime vendors of Chinese medicines and electronics, while the second floor is...
In Chinatown, there’s an unglamorous mall under the Manhattan Bridge that captures the eternally high-fashion, low-rent ethos of downtown Manhattan. The first floor belongs to longtime vendors of Chinese medicines and electronics, while the second floor is home to fashion label Eckhaus Latta, designer vintage purveyor James Veloria, and the OCDChinatown gallery. Billing itself as “a queer space for sound, image, object, movement, and thought,” OCDChinatown enthusiastically embraces the interdisciplinary: Think live readings by critics like Gary Indiana, performances by the puppeteer Enormous Face or the collective Young Boy Dancing Group, and other work by artists who might work outside the mainstream art world’s definitions of art. The space embodies unapproachable downtown cool to a T.
The Hotel Chelsea
Cocktails in a historic hotel
The Hotel Chelsea’s history is borderline unbelievable. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the hotel housed some of the greatest artists of that era: Diego Rivera, Willem de Kooning, Patti Smith, and Niki de Saint Phalle. It’s where Madonna...
The Hotel Chelsea’s history is borderline unbelievable. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the hotel housed some of the greatest artists of that era: Diego Rivera, Willem de Kooning, Patti Smith, and Niki de Saint Phalle. It’s where Madonna shot her 1992 book, “Sex,” Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin had their affair, and Arthur C. Clarke co-wrote the screenplay for “2001: A Space Odyssey.” After a decade of lying dormant, a recent overhaul transformed this formerly shabby bohemian paradise into a gorgeous five-star hotel. Located in perfect proximity to Chelsea’s galleries, the new-ish Lobby Bar serves cocktails named after celebrities such as Edie Sedgwick and Charles Bukowski in what feels like a beautifully appointed Victorian salon. At the Cafe Chelsea restaurant, order the strawberry sorbet with Champagne, and prepare to be astounded.
New Museum
An unmatched artistic experience
The New Museum has been in operation since 1977, but the name still rings true. Its specialty is the art of the present, made (for the most part) by living artists in categories that span young and emerging, critically acclaimed, and previously overlooked....
The New Museum has been in operation since 1977, but the name still rings true. Its specialty is the art of the present, made (for the most part) by living artists in categories that span young and emerging, critically acclaimed, and previously overlooked. Artistic director Massimiliano Gioni is kind of a genius; he curated the brilliant 2018 Sarah Lucas survey, the 2011 Carsten Höller show where visitors dropped through a 102-foot-long slide, and a Theaster Gates exhibition so profoundly moving that it made me cry. Check out the totally empty seventh floor with gorgeous floor-to-ceiling views. It opens to a wrap-around balcony that I’ve noticed New Yorkers like to walk along in pairs, almost like they were taking a stroll through the park.
The Library at 11 Howard
Under-the-radar coffee and cocktails
If you’ve been gallery-hopping in Tribeca and simply want a comfortable, quiet place for a drink, The Library at the 11 Howard hotel is a low-key gem. Take the spiral staircase between the two Damien Hirsts up toward the Dan Attoe neon sculpture...
If you’ve been gallery-hopping in Tribeca and simply want a comfortable, quiet place for a drink, The Library at the 11 Howard hotel is a low-key gem. Take the spiral staircase between the two Damien Hirsts up toward the Dan Attoe neon sculpture on the ceiling, and you’ll find a plush, beautifully decorated second-floor lounge with Hiroshi Sugimoto photographs hanging on the walls. It’s a good spot for daytime coffee or an evening cocktail, but if you’re coming late, just go directly to The Blond, the nightclub next door.
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Janelle Zara Writer
Janelle Zara is a Los Angeles-based journalist and critic. You can find her work in a variety of publications beginning with "art" (Artnet, Artforum, ARTnews, and the Art Newspaper), as well as The Guardian, T Magazine, and many others.
