Inside People’s, the Phone-Free Downtown Art Space Everyone's Talking About

On any given Friday night in Manhattan, the urge to document usually triumphs over the art itself. At People’s, an independent space in Greenwich Village, the digital feed is dead on arrival.

Under a strict phone-free policy, the entire atmosphere undergoes a fundamental shift. You quickly realize you can’t content-farm the room you’re standing in, so you drop the performance. Instead, guests linger with the work, stay longer, and talk more. This deliberate blackout sits at the center of a philosophy that feels elevated—but untouched by the algorithm. By stripping away the feed, People’s forces us to confront what happens to contemporary art when its digital currency disappears—and what kind of rare, physical exclusivity emerges in its place.

The venue is not inventing a new subcultural rebellion; it is resurrecting a century-old ghost. A hundred years ago, this very space operated as a gallery helmed by a pioneering female dealer who helped shape the early collections of MoMA and the Guggenheim.

When owners Emmet McDermott and Margot Hauer-King first brought curator Anne Parke into the raw, hollowed-out space, she remembers walking across skeletal planks while McDermott pointed out where the artists’ booth would go. They were determined to honor that history, reviving a forgotten era of patronage and social exchange.

As Hauer-King reflects, the contemporary art world eventually became a victim of its own success; as galleries grew more institutional, their social dimension began to fade. In the original era, however, the gallery was inseparable from the party—bringing together collectors, artists, and those who simply came for a drink. It was that strange, productive collision, Hauer-King argues, that generated the space’s particular energy.

To recapture that spirit, Parke curates the venue as a series of distinct rooms rather than a sterile white box. The layout dictates how bodies move through the space and interact with the work. The front room houses domestic-scale pieces designed for close, unhurried viewing, while the back gallery features works hung higher for easier sightlines across a crowd. Within these structural decisions, one rule remains non-negotiable: the art must be figurative. As Parke explains, it is important “to play off the people in the room,” allowing the painted figures on the walls to become participants in the party itself—the experience part voyeuristic, part communal.

This physical approach extends to subtle acts of storytelling. For the current exhibition, Parke individually measured and suspended exactly thirteen works from wires attached to the fabric ceiling—a nod to the gallery’s West 13th Street address. In the inaugural show, she quietly placed a painting of broken glass near the exit after frequently hearing Hauer-King quote the Annie Lennox lyric “walking on broken glass,” turning the final visual moment into a private joke shared through curation.

Operating a space this alive requires what Hauer-King calls “managed chaos.” Working with living artists in real time means navigating constant unpredictability. Parke recalls a frantic episode involving an eighty-by-eighty-inch painting that had to be skylifted out of a window in Canada; at three in the morning, she realized they had measured the door but forgotten to account for the stairwell’s turning radius.

Yet that unpredictability has created a deep internal lore among regulars, who already speak of the sixteen-month-old space in distinct eras. In doing so, they draw a direct line back to the building’s radical past, from Edith Halpert’s 1930s Daylight Gallery expansion to her pioneering folk art salon upstairs. Artists are equally drawn to the venue’s residential energy; the domestic setting transforms the gallery from a sterile white cube into a living canvas where the boundaries between art, home, and community blur.

Ultimately, People’s is not an attack on the traditional gallery but an antidote to its modern isolation. Hauer-King believes in a “non-monolithic approach to filling a room”—when a crowd spans generations, industries, and social circles, the high-school-dance anxiety evaporates and “everyone just relaxes.” In the process, People’s expands the aperture for who gets to participate in contemporary culture, serving as a timely reminder that art is meant to confront us in real life—pulling us out of digital fatigue and back into the fabric of the city.

Step out of the algorithm and experience the space for yourself by visiting People’s at 113 West 13th Street. Make a reservation by emailing reservations@peoplesny.com, or find them online and on Instagram—just remember to leave your phone at the door.