By Kim Velsey 11/28/12 5:03pm

THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD

The Sperone Westwater Gallery is not a fan of the proposed development.

NIMBY Battle Heats Up on the LES, but Whose Backyard Is It?

The Bowery now has a Freitag boutique and a Whole Foods. Galleries and trendy restaurants rub shoulders with wholesale kitchen equipment suppliers (at least it’s convenient for the restaurants). The question of gentrification is not if or when but how fast. This should not be news to anyone who lives or works below 14th Street, particularly not an art gallery that opened on the Bowery last year.

And yet, one of the more bitter battles currently being fought over neighborhood change and development has pitted the year-old Sperone Westwater gallery against a proposed 25-story hotel and tower next door, according to The Wall Street Journal. The twist is that although the art gallery has won some local residents to its cause, the tower has garnered the support (via rent guarantees) of an affordable housing development that borders the planned project. Read More

By Paul Laster 1:22am

Red-Hot Steel? Sperone Westwater Gallery Scrapes the Bowery Sky

Once the site of flophouses, pawnshops and dive bars, the Bowery is fast becoming a headquarters for contemporary art and architecture. The New Museum’s critically acclaimed opening there three years ago ushered in what its director, Lisa Phillips, rightfully dubs a “Bowery Renaissance.” The area takes another step up with the Sept. 22 Read More