Arts & Entertainment

Galleries Fight to Stay Open

By Samantha Alzate

Staff Writer

Sitting at a work bench in his West 10th Street art gallery, sandwiched between an alley and a hair salon, Numan Jalallari takes in the view of the people passing by. He waits for someone to come inside.

“I don’t see what I used to see,” said Jalallari, owner of NuFrame Gallery. “Art was so important to my customers, and the neighborhood has changed a lot.”

That change has meant fewer people viewing and buying art from his gallery, which opened in 1997 and has previously operated from several different locations throughout New York City.

Once a hub for art and art-lovers alike, Greenwich Village, NuFrame’s home, today attracts a younger crowd that seems less interested in art, Jalallari said. And when they do seem interested, he added, they want pieces that look good in frames resembling what one can purchase at Ikea.

“The tourists, the people who come by, are not the ones who spend money. They are coming here for sightseeing,” he said. “ … It is very rare to get a phone call from a customer in New York City.”

Instead, more and more of his customers call from places like Connecticut.

Nationwide, there’s been a steady decline in the number of Americans visiting art exhibitions, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. Also, globally, arts sales have fluctuated. They were down 5 percent, year over year, according to The Art Market 2017 but up 6 percent according to The Art Market 2019. The New York Times, among others, have reported on art galleries opening one year but closing the next in Manhattan.

Despite that and related trends, more than 200 people attended Stone Sparrow NYC’s opening in late June 2019, owners Marina Eliasi and Udi Eliasi said.

They’re exhibiting the work of such contemporary artists as Jesse Stern and Susannah Zucker. The current show, “A Taste of Sparrow,” and future shows will focus “on up-and-coming contemporary artists versus the galleries that were here were carrying older artists like Basquiat,” said curator Marina Eliasi, a jewelry-maker who also will sell her creations at Stone Sparrow. She’s hoping that approach with help the business grow.

She and her husband also hope to expand the business in the next five years. They know that that’s an uphill effort, given the increasing purchases of art online and at large art fairs. She added: “The rents are extremely high overhead. If you can’t make your rent, you can’t stay in business.”

“I would like art to come back but, in order to do that, we need cheaper rent,” NuFrame’s Jalallari said. “The West Village,” as it once was known, “is dead.”