In 2021, the contemporary art gallery Salon 94 moved into a 17,500 sq. ft building close to New York’s Museum Mile. The location, the space and the building play into its favour when it comes to footfall. “When we first opened, we would have around 400 people a day coming to visit,” says Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, Salon 94’s founder—a good number considering it is a commercial space launched at the tail end of the pandemic.
Since early this year, visitor numbers have been rising. “On a Saturday now we see around 1,500 people,” says Greenberg Rohatyn. Why? Because Katie Romero, a New York-based content creator, posted about the gallery on TikTok in a video about free things to do in the city. Romero has more than 273,000 followers and 11.7 million likes on the social media app. She posted the 22-second video in March describing Salon 94 as “one of the most beautiful free places you can visit in New York City”. The fact that there is so much art on view for free is a big selling point in New York, where most of the museums have high ticket prices and long queues. The video has more than 154,000 likes and has been shared 20,000 times.
Romero has continued to post about the gallery, as in a video in May about how to spend the perfect solo day in New York City, and now more influencers are joining in. “Sometimes we have to put up signs on a Saturday to say that there’s no changing of clothes allowed because some of the influencers come in with a whole wardrobe,” laughs Greenberg Rohatyn. “We really do want it to be a place for art, so sometimes we have to put a bit of a kibosh on that.”
So what is bringing these people en masse into the gallery? “We have peppered the building with design because we also have a design programme, so we’re getting a design community as well as an art community,” says Greenberg Rohatyn. The gallery has an all-blue-tiled bathroom designed by Max Lamb that is a popular selfie spot. The shows at Salon 94 are also very interactive, Greenberg Rohatyn says. For example, the space opened in 2021 with a show of works by the artist Niki de Saint Phalle that included two giant lion sculptures. The gallery put down rubber mats and invited children to climb and play on the pieces. “It was amazing and very joyous,” says Greenberg Rohatyn. “People heard of it by word of mouth ... and we started getting a huge audience.”
The crazy part is, Salon 94 doesn’t even have an active TikTok account. “I think we absolutely should be on TikTok, but we’re a very small team and we’re busy all the time,” says Greenberg Rohatyn. “There’s no question that TikTok brings in an audience, and it’s an immediate one—somebody sees something on TikTok, they get on the subway, and they come over. I think Instagram is a little more passive.” The gallery has 71,000 followers on Instagram for its art account, and 37,000 for its design account.
Greenberg Rohatyn says that the TikTok audiences that come through the door don’t convert into sales. “I think it gives energy,” she argues. “I also think that it builds a future collector or a future artist or a future writer.”