Annabel Downes speaks to Ellie Rines to get her take on how to do New York Art Week like a pro.
Ellie Rines opened her first gallery in 2013, at just 25 years old. An elevator shaft of a building, 55 Gansevoort in New York’s Meatpacking District was just large enough to show a single work at a time. By night, it doubled up as a refuge for any young New Yorker whose job as Larry Gagosian’s second assistant hadn’t yet earned them a seat at the gallery dinner. ‘It was just us, drinking whisky out of those paper pill cups,’ says Rines. ‘It was rugged.’
A decade on, Rines is a central player in New York’s scene. Relocating to Henry Street in Chinatown, Rines’ gallery, 56 Henry, represents artists Al Freeman, Jo Messer, and Nikita Gale, and has hosted exhibitions with Laurie Simmons and Sadie Laska. She also gave Anna Weyant her first show at 24. Rines sits on the board of NADA New York, and is regularly called up to organise one of the city’s most exclusive art-world gatherings: the Lesbian and Bisexual Backgammon League (L.B.B.L+), a by-invitation event which counts artists Jennifer Packer and Jenna Gribbon as regulars, as well as the prominent New York art dealer Stefania Bortolami, now regarded as one of the league’s most formidable players.
As New York Art Week kicks off—with Frieze, TEFAF, Independent, and NADA, plus dozens of exhibitions opening citywide—Annabel Downes sits down with the Rines to get her take on what to see, where to eat and drink, and which Wall Street spa to talk business in.
Before we start, Rines suggests downloading See Saw, the gallery show directory covering Chelsea, SoHo, TriBeCa, the Upper East Side, and Brooklyn—founded, fittingly, by L.B.B.L+’s co-founder Ellen Swieskwoki.
ART
Those who’ve followed 56 Henry’s programme closely will know that Rines has predominantly built her roster around artists making work out of New York. But once a year, she looks beyond the Hudson River, bringing something international to the gallery. This year, that spotlight falls on Zimbabwean artists Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude and Troy Makaza—introduced to Rines by First Floor Gallery Harare, where she quickly fell in love with their work. Nyaude paints portraits of diminutive, humanoid figures, mining the vitality of young Zimbabwean men. Makaza, meanwhile, has conjured an entirely new medium: combining silicone and pigment to create a semi-transparent plastic woven into wonderful taffy-colour tapestries. Presented in collaboration with the Zimbabwean gallery, both exhibitions run until 15 June.
Stepping beyond 56 Henry, Rines is finding solace in abstraction these days, and she’s found three exhibitions in TriBeCa that show us how it’s done. Bortolami can be thanked for introducing New York audiences to Marina Rheingantz, whose intensely-hued, semi-abstract paintings offer dystopian visions of the wilderness and freedom of the Brazilian landscape she grew up in. Some are mammoth, others can be tiny, and all are simply beautiful. Iris runs 6 May–31 May 2025. A block away, CANADA hosts Couch Paintings, a group show of over 30 artists—Pam Glick, Trevor Shimizu, and Jack Hanley among them—all primarily rectangular in format, and all best viewed from the comfort of couches installed throughout the gallery (18 April–24 May 2025). A series of concerts will run throughout the duration of the show, no doubt thanks to its co-curator, Sadie Laska—the visual artist and musician perhaps best known as one half of the New York’s sound duo I.U.D. The full programme can be found here. Last stop is Broadway Gallery for Caitlin Lonegan’s solo exhibition Gems and Roses (24 April–25 May 2025), shimmering abstract works where metallic pigments brush up against matte pastel hues. ‘I’m looking forward to getting into the surface,’ says Rines. ‘Also, Broadway always has very good snacks.’ An exception to Rines’s homage to abstraction is Michael E. Smith’s latest exhibition TANKS at Andrew Kreps Gallery (11 April–10 May 2025). After seeing his work at White Pipeline in Detroit last summer, Rines swears that she’d change a flight to catch a show by the Detroit-born artist.
As for museum shows, Sargent and Paris at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is well worth the trip uptown; a survey of the American painter’s early career, tracing his move to Paris in 1874 as an 18-year-old art student through to the mid-1880s, when he shocked the Paris Salon with his provocative portrait Madame X (1884). Before heading back downtown, Rines recommends a stop at Café Sabarsky, the Viennese café hidden in the ground floor or Neue Galerie, a jewel-box museum of early 20th century German and Austrian art housed in a grand Beaux-Arts mansion at Fifth Avenue and 86th Street. ‘The pies are the stuff of dreams,’ she insists, reeling off its offerings of Linzer torte (a latticed nut-based torte with jam filling), Sachertorte (chocolate cake with an apricot jam layer), and Feuilletine (a chocolate mousse cake), all served with a fist-sized dollop of aerosol cream.
BUSINESS
‘There are so many parties and events in the art world—we all dread them but have to do them,’ Bortolami told The New York Times. ‘L.B.B.L is a way in which people can socialise and there is zero pressure.’ At the backgammon table, the art handler working at a blue-chip gallery in Chelsea may find themselves battling it out against a prominent artist who’s show they’ve just hung. It’s a rare leveling—one that the Finns have mastered, pimping out their embassies with saunas where world diplomats are invited to strip down, sweat out, and engage in what has come to be known as ‘naked sauna diplomacy.’ One may wince, but in a state of semi-nakedness, the idea is that roles and titles are left in the changing room. And as Rines reminds us, a spa is one of the few places you can’t wear a wire. As such, there’s no better place to iron out the delicate terms of breaking a non-resale agreement than Spa 88: an underground Russian sanitarium tucked beside a pawn shop on Fulton Street, a few blocks north of Wall Street. Inside, pine-lined rooms offer saunas, ice plunges, a lap pool, a cigar room, a jacuzzi, and the option of getting a platza, an exfoliating and rejuvenating flogging with oak tree leaves.
FOOD
The ritual of hot rocks to cold plunges to light thrashings induce an exhaustion and hunger which can be remedied in Spa 88’s salt-of-the-earth fare: hearty goluptsi (stuffed cabbage with ground chicken meat), Moscow-style pelmeni (fried dumplings with mushrooms and cheese), and ukha (clear fish soup). Still, if the idea of dining in the Financial District with damp lingerie fermenting in your tote doesn’t thrill you, we can always take the evening elsewhere: so to TriBeCa we head.
‘Everyone flocks to Frenchette, but I’m a Petrarca loyalist,’ says Rines. The neighbourhood Italian food and wine bar serves all the pollo, pesce and pasta you could want from Veneto: the gnocchi alla padovana, Rines assures us, is really very good. Sure, Frenchette’s gnocchi Parisienne is hard to beat, but sometimes food tastes better when you haven’t booked 2 months in advance. Saying that, it may be worth making a reservation at Petrarca on a Friday night…
As Keith McNally showed New Yorkers the art of cool, casual dining through his string of Parisian bistro-inspired restaurants, Sichuan-born chef Yu Fa Tang, or ‘Short Tang’, introduced the city to cold sesame noodles and the art of Taiwanese home cooking. Since Hwa Yuan Szechuan first opened its doors on 42 East Broadway in Chinatown in 1968, kitchens across New York have tried to replicate Tang’s signature ice-cold, lightly spiced noodles. Yet, according to Rines, nothing beats the original unexpurgated bowl. The supporting cast more than holds its own, too: Rines recommends the spicy pork wontons and the crispy beef, while the mapo tofu is a must for the vegetable-inclined.
DANCE
Rines’ next stop comes with a slight caveat: it requires membership. But Chez Margaux, the newly opened private club in the Meatpacking District, makes martinis so good she’d bathe in one if they’d let her. It seems Taylor Swift’s a fan too; a quick Google sends you down a Vogue, Daily Mail, Page Six rabbit hole, documenting the mega popstar regularly rocking up for dinners with boyfriend Travis Kelce, and ‘a long catch-up session that reportedly lasted eight hours’ with longtime pal Zoë Kravitz. The Jean-Geroges restaurant serves truffle pizza and the nightclub, Gaux Gaux, opens at 11 p.m. Application attached. For a welcomed alternative, you can thank Will Welch—the global editorial director of GQ and Pitchfork—who’s throwing a party at Nublu in the East Village on Thursday, 8 May. He’s got Brian DeGrew (Gang Gang Dance) and Mo Yasin lined up to play.
Words by Annabel Downes
