ART SMART'S TOP TEN LIST OF POWERHOUSE GALLERIES IN CHELSEA

1. David Zwirner
519, 525, and 533 W 19th St. (212-727-2070), www.davidzwirner.com
Zwirner gallery in many ways defines the place of the contemporary art market. Originally, Zwirner opened his doors in 1993 in Soho and, as with the reputations of his artists, he has grown larger while successfully following the trends of the art market. Zwirner is now at home in an expansive, skylit Chelsea gallery with the capacity for three full-scale, independent shows. The galleries provide ample room for installations of the well-established, trend-setting, contemporary art figures that fill his roster.

2. Paula Cooper Gallery
534 W 21st St; 521 W 21st St.; 465 W 23rd St. (212-255-1105) www.paulacoopergallery.com
Paula Cooper represents the godmother of New York's contemporary art gallery scene. Her space opened in 1968, the first gallery to open in New York's SoHo district with an exhibition of works by Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, and Robert Ryman, among others, as well as Sol LeWitt's first wall drawing. Leading the move to Chelsea in the nineties, the gallery continues with an agenda focused on, though not limited to, conceptual and minimal art.

3. Friedrich Petzel Gallery
537 W 22nd St between Tenth and Eleventh Aves (212-680-9467) www.petzel.com
Two side-by-side locations feature an international stable of artists. Petzel Gallery exhibitions reflect the taste and trends in international art biennales such as Documenta, The Carnegie International, and the Sao Paulo Biennial.

4. Gagosian
555 W 24th ; 522 W 21st St. (212 741-1717) www.gagosian.com
Gagosian is the powerhouse of the art market; the Steven Spielberg of gallery directors, working only with the biggest-name artists and the richest collectors. His exhibitions today will be setting auction house records tomorrow.

5. Luhring Augustine
531 W 24th St. (212-206-9100) www.luhringaugustine.com
Count on Luhring Augustine Gallery for high-quality exhibitions of established contemporary artists who swim upstream. The roster of artists represents accessible, yet conceptually sophisticated artists.

6. Barbara Gladstone
515 W 24th St.; 530 W 21st St., (212 206-9300), www.gladstonegallery.com
Gladstone Gallery is home to a stable of prominent contemporary artists working across media. Gladstone is noted for its continued sponsorship of artist's film projects including Matthew Barney's Cremaster cycle and Shirin Neshat's many films.

7. Cheim and Read
547 W 25th St, (212-242-7727) www.cheimread.com
Cheim and Read represents many well-known artists of the last thirty years such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Louise Bourgeois and Jenny Holzer.

8. Pace Gallery on 22nd and 25th
534 W 25th St between Tenth and Eleventh Aves (212-929-7000) www.thepacegallery.com
Pace Gallery is a gallery empire that began with one small gallery in 1960 in Boston. Today, the gallery has two spots in Chelsea, one uptown and another affiliate dedicated to art of past centuries. The galleries host exhibitions of some of the biggest names of the last forty years, such as Maya Lin, David Hockney and Elizabeth Murray.

9. Peter Blum
526 W 29th St between Tenth and Eleventh Aves (212-244-6055) www.peterblumgallery.com
Holding its own up on 29th Street, the gallery boasts a lot of the hottest young names in contemporary art. This Chelsea Gallery features exhibitions of the young upstarts on Blum's roster.

10. Matthew Marks Gallery
523 W 24th St. (212 243-0200) www.matthewmarks.com
Innovative new works by contemporary artists fill this gallery, with a notable presence of some of the biggest names in mainstream art photography, such as Andreas Gursky and Thomas Demand as well as others.