Blake Gopnik tours through waterlogged Chelsea, where gallery owners are cleaning up after the superstorm.

Hazmat: The New Chelsea Fashion

New York art dealer Derek Eller, emerging from a gallery that suffered extensive flood damage.

Five days after Hurricane Sandy, dealers were picking up the pieces in Manhattan’s flooded Chelsea neighborhood, which houses the largest concentration of art galleries ever seen on the planet. They’d made a huge amount of progress, but no one was quite sure what the future would hold—except a lot of time spent with conservators and insurance adjusters. “I’ve never filed a claim in 15 years,” said Eller. “And now I have to run a gallery and be a full-time insurance-claims person.”

When the Basement’s Your Archive as Well

James Jenkin, director of the Chelsea nonprofit Printed Matter, which specializes in artists’ books. He’s surveying a now-empty cellar that once housed the history of his institution and much of its current stock—until Sandy turned all that into flotsam. “You know what was amazing? How many people came by to help us,” he said.

This Time, It Didn’t Take 40 Days

byBlake Gopnik

This sludge was all that remained in the once-full basement storage space at Printed Matter in Chelsea.

Wet Books

byBlake Gopnik

The upstairs bookstore at Printed Matter was back open for business five days after the flood—but inventory was still drying

Waterlogged

byBlake Gopnik

A view of one space in the suite of them that make up the David Zwirner gallery in Chelsea. The line of new drywall indicates the height floodwaters reached in the space. out in many corners.

Damage Control

byBlake Gopnik

One strip of smaller galleries lies west of Eleventh Avenue in Chelsea, on 27th Street, and was badly hurt by Sandy and the rising waters of the nearby Hudson. Five days after the disaster, staff and volunteers were still sorting through the wreckage.

Jetsam

byBlake Gopnik

All around Chelsea, Dumpsters stood filled with the trappings of the business of art, made sodden by Sandy. “Galleries have tons and tons of cardboard and furniture and crates—it takes a lot of stuff to sell a work of art,” said dealer Edward Winkleman, whose basement flooded in the storm.