Chapter NY Will Move to Larger Space on East Houston Street

The gallery real-estate action just never seems to stop down on Manhattan’s Lower East Side! The latest news is that Chapter NY, the gallery run by Nicole Russo out of a modestly sized space on Henry Street is moving to a considerably larger location on the parlor floor of a brownstone at 249 East Houston Street, between Norfolk and Suffolk Streets.

The new address, which has previously been home to a single-family residence and a doctor’s office, puts Chapter on the same street as Participant Inc and just around the corner from Bureau, Rachel Uffner Gallery, and JTT. Very fine company! (Its next-door neighbor is Gaia Italian Café, which has something of a cult following.)

Chapter will now have about three times as much space for exhibitions, though “it’s still intimate,” Russo said in an interview, adding, “It allows the artists I’ve been showing to have their second solo shows with more space to work with.” Since opening on Henry Street three years ago, Chapter has done shows with Sam Anderson, Paul Heyer, Milano Chow, and Mira Dancy, who are all on its roster.

The new space will open in September with a solo outing by Heyer, followed by a one-person show by Anderson, who inaugurated Chapter’s Henry Street home in October 2013. Dancy will have an exhibition in the spring.

Though some Manhattan dealers have decamped from traditional gallery neighborhoods for Harlem and elsewhere over the past year, Russo said she’s committed to the area. “It took me about a year to find this space,” she said. “I’ve looked at so many different spaces, so many different types.” A fellow dealer tipped her off to the new address, and it felt right. “I’ve started creating a community here,” she continued. “I like being down here. I like being around these galleries.”

What will happen to Chapter’s soon-to-be-former home at 127 Henry Street remains to be seen. Measuring about 250 square feet, it has housed not only Chapter, but also Bureau and Dispatch, and has also served as an artist studio at various points. During Chapter’s run there, artists transformed it into a frightening cave (Adam Gordon), a gift-wrapping store (Cara Benedetto and Aura Rosenberg), and a podcast-recording studio (Anicka Yi). “It’s been a really nice run of people taking the space and just doing something crazy with it,” Russo said.

Might another dealer alight there? “Nothing is definitive,” she said. “A few people have asked me. I hope somebody else takes it. I think it has such good karma.”