34 Orchard Street. (Courtesy Harris Lieberman)

Orchard Street has sprouted another gallery. This weekend, Chelsea's Harris Lieberman is opening a second space on the already well-populated block between Canal and Hester.

Jessie Washburne-Harris, co-founder of Harris Lieberman, told The Observer that she heard about the space, at 34 Orchard Street, from art dealer Kerry Schuss, whose gallery is next door. With renovations starting in July on the gallery's main space at 508 West 26th Street, Ms. Washburne-Harris said she jumped at the opportunity. "We’ve always been interested in what’s happening down there."

A cozy space—around 700 square feet—34 Orchard, which is between Mr. Schuss's gallery and that of Miguel Abreu, has for the past four decades been a hosiery store. Harris Lieberman will inaugurate it on Sunday, May 5, with a two-week exhibition of a video by artist Matt Saunders that was created for an exhibition at Tate Liverpool. The space will serve as a base of operations during the Chelsea renovations, and will thereafter serve as a second space.

Harris Lieberman, which was established in 2005 by Ms. Washburne-Harris and her husband, Michael Lieberman, represents Karl Haendel, Julian Hoeber, Lisa Oppenheim, Thomas Zipp, among other artists. The gallery was located in the far West Village until two years ago, when it relocated to Chelsea.

By the time Mr. O'Brien issued his harshly worded admonition it was, of course, too late. Yoko Ono and MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach had already spoken, together, to the crowd of revelers. And though, yes, it was loud, they seem to have gotten their message across. Mr. Biesenbach attested to reading Ms. Ono's Twitter feed "religiously," and said her tweets were more interesting than those of The New York Times. He recounted the time she came to East Berlin before the wall came down, and then Ms. Ono recounted the time she came to East Berlin. "When I went to Berlin [people said to me], 'Don’t go to East Berlin--you don’t want to do anything dangerous.' So I thought, 'Oh, then I will go.'"

The spirit of Ms. Ono's East Berlin trip is, let it be said, entirely in keeping with the word that is perhaps most associated with her: Yes. One of her most famous conceptual artworks, from 1966--the one that was on display in a gallery when she met John Lennon--required the viewer to climb a ladder and use a magnifying glass to read the word "Yes," which she'd scribbled on the ceiling. A traveling museum exhibition of her work in 2001 was called "Yes Yoko Ono." (The much-hyped Urs Fischer gala at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, which took place a few days after Art Production Fund's, was entitled "YESSSSS!" and probably owes at least a little something to Ms. Ono.)

In any event, here--to make up for those bad acoustics and all those clinking glasses and chatter during Mr. Biesenbach and Ms. Ono's onstage dialogue--is an all-Yoko Ono slide show from the gala.

Ms. Michelson was speaking Monday night at the 50th anniversary gala of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA), the organization Jasper Johns and others founded in the early 1960s on the model of artists supporting one another's creative efforts. It started as visual artists supporting performing artists, but since 1993 artists working in just about any medium have been eligible for a grant. The $25,000 grants come out of the blue, and there are no strings attached. You can use it, as Whitney Museum curator Scott Rothkopf said at Monday's event, "to pay rent, to hire a fabricator, to buy paint, whatever. Buy a suit—all of these things have happened, none is more deserving than another." In the 50 years the organization has been around, it's given out 2,100 grants totaling over $10 million. Nearly 1,000 artists have donated work.

It is, as Ms. Michelson described, a sign from a group of artist peers, one "that says, 'You. Keep going, you.'"

Held in the Long Island City studios of artist couple Joel Shapiro and Ellen Phelan, this was, surprisingly, the first  gala in the FCA's history. Chez Shapiro/Phelan is a full four floors of studios. Room to room guests meandered—some 120 artists were on hand, as well as curators, writers, collectors and, it must be mentioned, Meryl Streep, along with her husband, sculptor Don Gummer—taking in artworks but also art materials, tables lined with tubes of paint, a collection of vintage dolls (Ms. Phelan's, presumably). With so many artists present in such grand-scale studios (this is New York, where most studios are shoeboxes) certain kinds of conversations were perhaps inevitable:

One artist to another, jokingly: "Can you murder by envy?"
Artist 2: "I don't think so."
Artist 1: [to New York magazine art critic and onetime artist Jerry Saltz]: "Can you murder by envy?"
Jerry Saltz: [ruminatively] "At 50, I got over envy. Envy will eat you alive."

Mr. Saltz was fresh off an act of heroism. On a lower floor of the studios, one half of a prominent art world couple (let us not say who) brushed against a Joel Shapiro maquette, which nearly toppled, but no sooner had she brushed it than none other than Mr. Saltz himself swept in to catch it and right it.

Artist 1, Artist 2, Mr. Saltz, and pretty much everyone else on hand eventually made their way to the rooftop, which boasts extraordinary views of the skylines of Queens and Manhattan, made all the more dramatic by the fact that it was a clear eveni—not so fast. Suddenly, plumes of smoke began to rise from the sidewalk, accompanied by an increasingly noxious odor.

Reactions ranged from 'What's that?' and 'Who knows!' to 'Maybe it's just a Queens thing.' Someone said it looked like it was happening somewhere distant—along the water? Artist Walton Ford jested otherwise. "I think it's our dinner. We'll be eating rubber tires."

It's to the credit of FCA that, no sooner had everyone made their way back downstairs and taken their seats in the tent installed in the backyard, than executive director Stacy Stark opened her opening remarks by declaring "If you noticed some smoke before, that was our generator. Blowing up. Which is why we have no heat in the tent."

The no heat in the tent thing was wrong, of course. The FCA's gala was among the warmest this reporter has attended. Ms. Stark spoke of how Trisha Brown got her first FCA grant in 1971—$360 to cover the cost of a performance and six months of rent. (Oohs, ahhs, laughs, applause and general incredulity, probably from the audience's younger generation, in response to that rent bit.)

Then master of ceremonies Scott Rothkopf recounted the FCA's origin story: In fall of 1962, Merce Cunningham wanted to do something on Broadway with his dance company. It would cost $30,000 of which ticket sales would cover half, if that. His friends Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg offered to donate a painting each to sell on Cunningham's behalf. John Cage pitched in, too, and the value of their contributions ended up exceeding the amount Cunningham needed. Mr. Johns asked Cunningham what he thought should be done with the difference, and Cunningham said, "Help others, because we're all in the same boat." The foundation was born as an organization for visual artists to aid performers, on the premise, Mr. Rothkopf said, "that artists who make things could help support artists who don't."

A kickoff event—"the best way to get artists involved was the same way we do it today: throw a party and give them drinks"—led to a March 1963 benefit exhibition at Allan Stone Gallery that included pieces by what we would now think of as a who's who of the era: Claes Oldenburg and Frank Stella (both of whom were on hand for the gala), Rothko, Warhol, Ellsworth Kelly, Lee Bontecou, Marcel Duchamp, Ad Reinhardt, Roy Lichtenstein, Barnett Newman, and Jim Rosenquist, whose large painting was still wet when it arrived on the day of the opening.

It was the first-ever benefit sale of artworks. "This may be a fundraising genie that some artists would like to put back in the bottle," Mr. Rothkopf said, "but I know they are much happier to get donations from one another than they are from the likes of me." He then threatened to sell the large Joel Shapiro sculpture serving as a centerpiece in the tent, to benefit the organization.

Then 1999 grantee Martin Kersels took the stage. "When I was awarded this," he said, "it was basically the first message heaven had sent me —besides winning a corsage at an orchids show when I was 11. Which"—the corsage—"was a luck thing. I don't think the FCA award was a luck thing—I hope it wasn't. Unlike the corsage, which I pressed and put in this envelope years ago—"he appeared to have the envelope with him—"1971 it says, I've had it nearly 40 years, the award I got from the FCA went toward making work." That's a bit of an understatement. He rented a bigger studio and made his biggest piece to date, the famous Tumble Room, a little girl's room that rotated on a giant axis, the room's contents tumbling around as though in a clothes dryer and, over the course of its exhibition (Deitch Projects showed it in 2001) disintegrating to the point where they were no more than a pile of rubble.

One of the newest FCA board members, Glenn Ligon, had the evening's last words, introducing the current board (which includes T.J. Wilcox, Robert Gober and others) and sharing his reasons for joining. One was FCA board member, Agnes Gund the longtime arts supporter and MoMA trustee. "Aggie asked me to," Mr. Ligon said, "and I love me some Aggie."

Organized by five co-chairs—Anne Griffin, Marie-Josée Kravis, Emily Rales, Matthew Marks and Anne H. Bass.—the evening raised $2.3 million. Not bad for a first gala.

And then everyone shuffled out into the chilly night air, now clear of smoke, clutching bags that each contained a Jasper Johns lithograph (he'd donated 10 lithographs depicting the numerals one through nine, each in an edition of 40), probably liking galas a bit more than they had in the past.

Reached the following day, Mr. Saltz (who, incidentally, is not exactly a regular at such affairs) had this to say over email: "It is an incredible thing to see this extraordinarily generous foundation run by-artists-for-artists looking as if it is going to successfully make the difficult transition to being run by a new generation or two of artists—all of whom appear to have the same unparalleled commitment to providing much-needed help to artists at critical turning points in their careers. This is what a life lived in art looks and feels like. I love the art world when it acts like this."

Oliver Barker, Quizmaster. (Photo by Lucy Ward)

Kenny Schachter is a London-based art dealer, curator and writer. His writing has appeared in books on architect Zaha Hadid, and artists Vito Acconci and Paul Thek, and he is a contributor to the British edition of GQ and Swiss money manager Marc Faber’s Gloom Boom & Doom Report. The opinions expressed here are his own.

It was time for Oliver Barker of Sotheby’s to perform, but he wasn’t conducting an auction. “Which artist directed the video for David Bowie’s recent single ‘Where are we now?’” he asked with characteristic panache.  DING DING DING! went a bell somewhere in the nightclub in the basement of London’s Dover Street Arts Club, and someone called out “Tony Oursler!” “Which famous rock star’s wardrobe is currently being exhibited at the V&A?” Mr. Barker asked. DING DING DING! David Bowie. Which artist will represent Britain in the British Pavilion in Venice this summer? DING DING DING! Jeremy Deller. Contemporary art collector Abdullah Al Turki charged around the room, occasionally shouting out in Arabic, attempting to determine whose bell rang first.

Welcome to the third annual Art Quiz. “Reputations at stake,” the announcement card for the April 8 event had promised, and, more importantly, “prizes to be won.” The brainchild of three art worlders—Sharifa Al-Sudairi, of Pace Gallery, Alia Al-Senussi, Middle East relations for the Basel Art Fair, and Mr. Al Turki—Art Quiz is the art world’s take on a typical pub quiz night but at an upscale, members-only club, rather than a ratty bar, the usual venue for these occasions. The Quizmasters, the ringleaders charged with crafting the questions and serving as masters of ceremony, were Mr. Barker, Mary Robert of the Royal College of Art and Richmond University and me. Eight teams of six participants engage in a race to slam a tabletop bell for a first shot at answering a series of questions about art, both old and new; if answered incorrectly, the next in line of ringing would follow-up. (That was the concept anyway—the more chaotic things would get, the less it was adhered to.) Contestants got a light meal and Champagne came as part of the £65.00-a-head cover charge —squeezing such a wad from a roomful of art workers is, it’s worth mentioning, no easy feat—and the prize for winning (drum roll, please) was another meal at the Arts Club, this one free.

I’d made my way to the Club straight off an overnight flight, on which I’d gotten little to no sleep—I wondered if I could answer my own questions. It didn’t help matters that I was intimidated by my fellow Quizmasters. Olly Barker is among the world’s foremost auctioneers—in 2004, he cooked up the initial auction of Damien Hirst’s "Pharmacy" works, without which Mr. Hirst’s second one-artist sale, the $200 million one in 2008, would never have happened. Mary Robert is an esteemed art historian, now chair of the Department of Arts & Sciences and Professor of Lens Media at Richmond University after a long stint at the Royal College. Mary had stepped in at the last minute for artist Keith Tyson, who'd decided, perhaps wisely, not to cut his vacation short. I myself had some incredulous reactions from friends and family when I announced I’d be leaving an idyllic island getaway to take part in an art quiz in which neither charity nor fundraising were involved, and which didn't even have a significant prize. One person called my decision “stupid.” And yet, I found it appealing that passionate people would spend their own money to participate in a superfluous test involving the very subject on which they toil, often frustratedly, every day.

There were teams headed by Christie's, and the galleries Pace, Thomas Dane, and Hauser & Wirth, a table comprised of artists, and a random table with stuffy members of the private club who knew nothing about art and who later made themselves known by nature of their vociferous complaints about the room's general behavior. The gallery teams were made up of staff and invited writers and curators, including Gregor Muir, director of the ICA and Chris Dercon, director of Tate Modern. There were artists Shezad Dawood and Idris Khan; Martine d'Anglejean Chatillon, a partner at Thomas Dane Gallery; Victoria Siddall, director of the fair Frieze Masters; Adrian Searle, art critic for The Guardian; Robert Bound, culture editor of Monocle; Georgina Adam, columnist for the Financial Times; and Ed Tang (collector David’s son) of Christie's. A formidable group—all that was missing was Hans Ulrich Obrist.

It was a scenario ripe for a rumble: underpaid journalists, frustrated worker-bees from galleries and auction houses (also poorly remunerated) and a few artists thrown in for good measure. Fuel them all with some angst and some alcohol, and you have a recipe for disaster, or at the very least unruliness. Nothing could have prepared me for this seemingly cordial art world gathering morphing into a scorpion pit.

The first round of questions, Oliver’s, were a little too easy for this hungry crowd, and a cacophony of bleating bells went off simultaneously, sounding like an abstract composition by Philip Glass.

Jet-lagged and exhausted and wondering how to follow up Mr. Barker, with his television actor’s flair for performing (imagine the breakfast table with his kids, and his launching into a full-throttled auction rant: “Will it be Frosted Flakes! Coco Puffs! Pancakes! Do I have any takers for orange juice!”), I launched into my questions. I’d been asked to give them a contemporary focus, and, being American, I mainly stuck with American artists—you can’t teach an old dog new anything, especially this motley mutt. Some examples: Q: This artist of the same generation as Alex Katz is unfortunately only seen in context of American art. A: Fairfield Porter. Q: Her work can resemble the love child of Franz West and Paul McCarthy. A: Rachel Harrison. Q: His TV show is vicious and his paintings made by Hollywood set makers. A: Alex Israel.

These weren’t by any means the most erudite questions, but surely they didn’t call for bullying. And yet, that is precisely what ensued. Esteemed critic Adrian Searle jumped from his seat and heckled me with a rude outburst, the content of which I swiftly repressed for the purpose of self-preservation.

Next up was the scholarly and demure Mary Robert, who seemed ill prepared for the impending onslaught. A sampling of her questions: Q: Alan Measles appears in this artist's work. Who is the artist and who is Alan Measles? A: Grayson Perry, and his teddy bear from childhood. (Ugh!) Q: Who stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911?  A: Vicenzo Peruggia. Q: Donatello produced his revolutionary relief sculpture, The Feast of Herod, a k a The Dance of Salome (c. 1427) for the Baptistery of Siena Cathedral, but he only got the commission because the artist originally commissioned was too slow. Who was that artist? A: Jacopo della Quercia.

The degree of difficulty only served to further stir the crowd’s aggression, the crashing of the bells growing more intense with each stumper of a question.

When did the art world turn into a cult and the Arts Club into some kind of Masonic temple? As the commotion grew, I wondered, was I Piggy, the hapless character in Lord of the Flies, and similarly doomed? Martine, the impossibly skinny gallerista from Thomas Dane, was seeming increasingly like the menacing Jack Merridew. And here we were in a room filled with Jack-like antagonists.

With Mary's questions complete, Art Quiz should have been over, but it wasn’t. Exactly who’d racked up the most points was hotly contested by just about all of the eight teams, except for the Arts Club members' table who seemed annoyed, and possibly a little frightened, by the whole thing. Martine, in a move reminiscent of Kanye West seizing the mike from Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards, leapt from her chair, bounded on stage, grabbed the mike and began trying to determine the outcome herself.

This was not just a peek into the dark side of art, but of human nature itself. I shouted to the crowd, “Does it really matter who wins? We’ve all won just by showing up and participating!" That sentiment met with a loud chorus of shrieking boos, and I had the queasy impression of being surrounded by a hundred Charlie Sheens hell-bent on winning at any cost.  Indeed, it was unclear who ultimately won this contest, and I never bothered to find out—I'd bet it was Thomas Dane by dint of sheer force.

With the quiz over, the less haughty made their way to the top-floor lounge for more drinks, like a reverse Dante’s Inferno. Somehow, the booze-fueled bacchanalian hate-fest ended up being one of the highlights of my art career. There was a whiff of Wall Street in this wild and woolly art world group that readily sacrificed any sense of civility. This is to say nothing of the debauchery of the after party. Leave it at that Allan McCollum piece—a piece made up of a collection of the near-identical objects Mr. McCollum refers to as “surrogates”—smashed at the hands of over zealous club patrons. I can imagine the conversation at the time of acquisition: “Mr. McCollum, this is not a bar, it’s a members-only private arts club, your Surrogates will be safe with us.” Sure they will.

Schimmel. (PMC)

Gallerist has learned from several independent sources that Paul Schimmel, former chief curator of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, is in late negotiations to join Hauser & Wirth gallery, which, according to sources, plans to open a branch in Los Angeles.

The gallery did not respond to a request for comment, and Mr. Schimmel has not yet returned a request for comment.

Paul Schimmel and the museum parted ways last summer. His departure brought wide criticism of the already embattled museum, which has been led by director Jeffrey Deitch since June 2010, and occasioned the departure of all four artist trustees. Since Mr. Schimmel left the museum, rumors have circulated in the art world as to where he would go, and there has been talk that several top-level galleries were interested in hiring him. Sources close to Mr. Schimmel have said that he preferred to stay in L.A. He has since been working as a co-director of the Mike Kelley Foundation.

Hauser & Wirth, which is based in Zurich, also runs galleries in London and New York where, two months ago, they opened a brand new, 23,000-square-foot space in the Chelsea art district. Earlier this month, Hauser & Wirth’s London branch opened the gallery’s first exhibition with popular L.A. artist Sterling Ruby. On March 19, in conjunction with the exhibition, the gallery hosted a conversation between Mr. Ruby and Mr. Schimmel at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London.

Mr. Schimmel would not be the first high-profile museum professional to join the commercial side of the art world. In 2007 Lisa Dennison, then deputy director at the Guggenheim Museum, took a job with Sotheby’s. More recently, John Elderfield, curator emeritus at the Museum of Modern Art, took on a consulting role with Gagosian Gallery.

For its part, Hauser & Wirth would stand to gain a well-respected name in the international art world. At MoCA, Mr. Schimmel was responsible for critically lauded exhibitions like 1992’s “Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 90s” and, more recently, “Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981” which took place last year under the banner of the Pacific Standard Time exhibition series. He curated the exhibition "Robert Rauschenberg: Combines," which appeared at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2006.

Dan Duray, Michael H. Miller and Andrew Russeth contributed reporting.

The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art saw a drop in attendance in 2012.

The Art Newspaper has released its closely read annual worldwide museum attendance figures for 2012 and while there is good news for New York, there is some rather bad news for Los Angeles's embattled Museum of Contemporary Art.

The most popular exhibition globally in 2012 was one of Dutch Old Masters that opened in Japan, something the paper points to as evidence that while new art may steal the spotlight, old art still draws crowds. In the major cities, however, modern and contemporary art stayed on top.

In terms of the most popular exhibitions worldwide, a U.S. museum, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., came fourth, behind institutions in Tokyo, Brasil and Russia, with the exhibition "Colorful Realm: Ito Jakuchu," which saw 7,611 visitors per day. The next U.S. museum on that list is MoMA, at 13th, with its Willem de Kooning retrospective, which saw 6,218 per day, for a total of a whopping 696,362. (MoMA's number is more impressive than the National Gallery's when you factor in that the National Gallery is free of charge, and MoMA charges over $20 admission.) In last year's survey, which measured attendance in 2011, a New York institution, the Met, made fourth place, with its blockbuster exhibition of the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen, which saw 8,025 per day.

But in terms of overall museum attendance, the Met remained in its number two spot worldwide, behind the Louvre, with 6.1 million visitors (versus the Louvre's 9.7 million). The National Gallery came in fifth, at a total of 5.2 million. The Met saw a slight boost in 2012 (6.11 million, up from 6.004 million in 2011) from its newly refurbished Islamic and American art galleries.

As for the top 10 most popular exhibitions in New York, perhaps not surprisingly, MoMA occupies a full seven of those slots, and grabbed the top five, with De Kooning (6,218), Cindy Sherman (5,660),  "Print/Out: Multiplied Art in the Information Era," (5,454), Sanja Ivekovic (5,045) and "Century of the Child: Growing by Design" (4,624). In sixth place is the Guggenheim with its Maurizio Cattelan retrospective (4,415).

For those keeping score, solo shows of women artists did well in 2012. The survey points to MoMA's exhibition of Cindy Sherman, which saw 5,700 visitors a day. A less famous artist showing at MoMA, Sanja Ivekovic, did almost as well at 5,045 per day. Meanwhile, up at the Guggenheim, the retrospective of late photographer Francesca Woodman drew 3,501 per day.

The paper’s 2012 attendance survey is especially interesting where Los Angeles institutions are concerned. MoCA’s troubles in 2012, including the widely criticized parting of ways with longtime chief curator Paul Schimmel (resulting in the loss of all four artist trustees) were accompanied by a dip in attendance. Overall attendance was 248,615, down almost half from the previous year, and the best-attended exhibition—according to the Art Newspaper’s methodology, which ranks exhibitions by average daily attendance—was the two week long “Transmission LA:AV Club,” a festival-type event that featured a curator, Mike D., from the band the Beastie Boys. (Due to its short run, “Transmission LA:AV Club” had a high daily average of 2,055. Its total attendance was 30,239. "MOCA Permanent Collection Masterworks 1945-1975,” which ran for 174 days, and “Cai Guo-Qiang: Sky Ladder,” which ran from April to September, both saw far higher total visitors, with the latter show bringing in a total of 65,000, and its opening, the Cai Guo-Qiang Mystery Circle event, drawing 4,500 visitors in one day, the most visitors to a single event at the museum in 2012. Because those exhibitions’ average visitor numbers were lower—459 and 609, respectively—they did not make the paper’s list of most popular exhibitions worldwide, which, for reasons of limited space, cuts off at a daily average of 633.) 2011 saw 402,255 total visitors for the museum, a figure that was greatly helped along by director Jeffrey Deitch’s popular “Art in the Streets” exhibition. MoCA is now closer to its 2010 figure of 236,104. Happily it is not quite back to the dismal year of 2009, when the museum was in the midst of a financial crisis and saw just 148,616 visitors.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), meanwhile, is seeing a general upward trend in its visitor numbers. In 2012, total attendance was just under 1.17 million. In 2010, the museum saw just 914,356 visitors, and in 2009 it had only 695,545. The surprising thing for LACMA in 2012, however, is that the museum was down slightly from last year's figure of 1.28 million—surprising because the museum had its Pacific Standard Time exhibitions and a monumental Michael Heizer piece that was installed on the premises, accompanied by much attention in the press. "We were a bit surprised by that," said Javier Pes, deputy editor of The Art Newspaper. "That was Pacific Standard Time and Michael Heizer combined."

Another overall attendance success story in L.A. is the Hammer Museum, which saw 214,500 visitors in 2012, up from 203,000 in 2011. In 2008, 150,000 people came through the doors. Its upward trajectory, Mr. Pes pointed out, is as impressive as LACMA's.

Clarification: March 29, 2013: The following parenthetical clarification has been added regarding attendance of specific exhibitions at MoCA Los Angeles: (Due to its short run, “Transmission LA:AV Club” had a high daily average of 2,055. Its total attendance was 30,239. "MOCA Permanent Collection Masterworks 1945-1975,” which ran for 174 days, and “Cai Guo-Qiang: Sky Ladder,” which ran from April to September, both saw far higher total visitors, with the latter show bringing in a total of 65,000, and its opening, the Cai Guo-Qiang Mystery Circle event, drawing 4,500 visitors in one day, the most visitors to a single event at the museum in 2012. Because those exhibitions’ average visitor numbers were lower—459 and 609, respectively—they did not make the paper’s list of most popular exhibitions worldwide, which, for reasons of limited space, cuts off at a daily average of 633.)

Basketball City at Pier 36. (Courtesy BC)

In January, news broke that the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) would move its New York fair from the former Dia Art Foundation building on West 22nd Street in Chelsea, where it held its inaugural edition last year, to Pier 36 at Basketball City, at 299 South Street along the East River, below Grand Street on the Lower East Side. Now, The Observer can reveal the exhibitors in its second edition, which runs May 10–12.

NADA New York, which once again runs concurrently with Frieze New York on Randall's Island, will feature 70 exhibitors, up from 60 last year. And, as with last year, New York leads the geographical breakdown, with more than a third of the exhibitors hailing from the five boroughs. Sixteen galleries are coming from Europe and the U.K., and the full roster is decidedly international with galleries from places like Puerto Rico and Estonia.

"It gives us a lot more room to breathe," NADA's director, Heather Hubbs, told The Observer, when asked about the fair's new venue. "It's a space we'll grow into." The hall has been home to a handful of events and concerts in recent months, like the All Tomorrow's Parties music festival. NADA will be the first fair to alight there.

Another benefit of the new location: "It gives a straight shot up to Randall's Island, which is nice," Ms. Hubbs said. "It's right by the entrance to the FDR." It's also just a very short walk from the Lower East Side gallery district, a stone's throw from some of the galleries that make up the southern edge of that area, like Abrons Arts Center, Bureau, Ramiken Crucible and Reena Spaulings.

The complete list of exhibitors follows below:

247365, Brooklyn
Alden Projects, New York
American Contemporary, New York
Art F City, Brooklyn
Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York
Bischoff Projects, Frankfurt, Germany
BLACKSTON, New York
Thomas Brambilla Gallery, Bergamo, Italy
Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
Brennan & Griffin, New York
Callicoon Fine Arts, New York
COLE, London
Lisa Cooley, New York
COOPER COLE, Toronto
COPE PROJECTS, New York
CHRISTOPHER CRESCENT, London
Churner and Churner, New York
Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago
DUVE Berlin, Berlin
Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles
Eleven Rivington, New York
Derek Eller Gallery, New York
Et Al., Oakland, Calif.
Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto
Feature Inc., New York
Fitzroy Gallery, New York
Gavlak Gallery, Palm Beach, Flor.
The Green Gallery, Milwaukee
Green on Red Gallery, Dublin
Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, N.Y.
Independent Curators International (ICI), New York
Interstate Projects, Brooklyn
Invisible-Exports, New York
Louis B. James, New York
Parisa Kind, Frankfurt, Germany
Know More Games, Brooklyn
Elaine Levy Project, Brussels
Patricia Low Contemporary Gstaad/St. Moritz, Gstaad, Switzerland
LOYAL, Malmö, Sweden
ltd los angeles, Los Angeles
KANSAS, New York
Nathalie Karg/Cumulus Studios, New York
Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York
Macaulay Fine Art, Vancouver, Canada
Marlborough Chelsea, New York
Martos Gallery, New York
M+B, Los Angeles
New Galerie, Paris
Newman Popiashvili Gallery, New York
Night Gallery, Los Angeles
On Stellar Rays, New York
David Petersen Gallery, Minneapolis
Eli Ping, New York
Queen’s Nails, San Francisco
Rawson Projects, Brooklyn
Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles
REGINA REX, Queens, N.Y.
ribordy contemporary, Geneva
Petra Rinck Galerie, Düsseldorf, Germany
ROBERTO PARADISE, San Juan, Puerto Rico
SCHMIDT & HANDRUP, Cologne, Germany
Kerry Schuss, New York
SculptureCenter, Long Island City, N.Y.
SEVENTEEN, New York
Joe Sheftel Gallery, New York
Jacky Strenz, Frankfurt, Germany
Temnikova & Kasela, Tallinn, Estonia
Rachel Uffner, New York
Kate Werble Gallery, New York

Private Life (Grace Jones) by Jim Lambie, who will DJ the Artists Dinner.

Since 1999, American Patrons of the Tate, a charity founded in 1987 to rally support in the Americas for London's Tate Gallery, has raised over $100 million in cash and art donations. Now, in an effort to reflect its broad membership, it is changing its name to Tate Americas Foundation, and adding a live auction and lively benefit committee including Sarah Jessica Parker to its third "Artists Dinner" in May.

"The name 'American Patrons of the Tate' didn’t fully encapsulate what we are doing," the charity's longtime New York-based director, Richard Hamilton, told The Observer in an interview. "It seemed a bit limiting. We are dealing with all of the Americas including Canada and Latin America."

The group started a 40-member Latin American acquisition committee in 2002 under the leadership of collector Tiqui Atencio Demirdjian. "That helped as a springboard for Tate's developing relationships with art collectors, curators and dealers in Latin America," Mr. Hamilton said. And that group funds an adjunct curator position in Latin American art at the Tate, currently occupied by the Columbian Jose Roca.

The charity's strongest contribution to the Tate is in acquisitions. Recent acquisitions made through it include Christian Marclay's 2010 The Clock (a joint purchase with Paris's Centre Pompidou and the Israel Museum), as well as pieces by Gordon Matta-Clark, Christopher Wool, James Turrell, Joan Jonas and Lynda Benglis. The charity has helped the museum make significant inroads into African-American artists, like Barkley Hendricks and Latin American art, like Helio Oiticica and Francis Alÿs. The first piece by Felix Gonzales-Torres to enter the Tate's collection, a joint purchase with the Albright-Knox museum in Buffalo, N.Y., came through the group, as did the Tate's first acquisition of a piece by Ana Mendieta. And then there are gifts to the Tate from members, like an important piece by Agnes Martin.

It's a growing organization. While the Latin American membership has held steady, North America has grown from 15 members to 40 in the past four years, partly due, Mr. Hamilton said, to outreach in cities like Los Angeles and Dallas.

And they are pulling out all the stops for their Artists Dinner, which takes place every three years, and this year is on May 8 at Skylight at Moynihan Station. The event will for the first time include a live auction featuring things like a four-day sailing trip through the Greek islands on Guilty, mega-collector Dakis Joannou's Jeff Koons-decorated yacht; a visit to the art world in Havana, Cuba, with another megacollector, Ella Fontanals Cisneros; and shopping and lunch in New York with Sarah Jessica Parker, including a spin through Dior, one of the evening's underwriters. Bidding will go on to the DJing of artist Jim Lambie, who used to be in the band Teenage Fanclub. Then everyone will head to an after party to celebrate Frieze New York, which opens that week. "It will feel like Studio 54 type stuff," Mr. Hamilton promised.

So, what makes supporting a U.K. museum attractive to people in the Americas? Most people in the group have some connection to London, whether a home there, or through business or just through the art world, attending events like the Frieze art fair. But that doesn't quite account for the appeal. "The leadership of the people at the Tate," Mr. Hamilton said. "People admire [Tate Director] Nick Serota and want to support his vision, and the curatorial team. They are the people collectors want to get to know and learn from."

Charles Lutz, Babel (Brillo Stockholm Type), 2013 at the Armory Show.

It was like Black Friday at Macy's over by artist Charles Lutz's massive stack of cardboard Brillo boxes, a special project that riffs on Warhol and invites fairgoers to take one. Up and down the aisles, from the beginning of the VIP preview at noon today, people were to be seen walking with their Brillo boxes. Collectors like Phil and Shelley Aarons gamely grabbed a couple. Journalist Stefan Kobel was spotted walking around with two of them under his arm, broken down to make them more easily totable. It's a terrific project, but let's just say we don't envy the folks at the coat check...