To find the art hangers recommended on this list, we spoke to more than 50 savvy New Yorkers in the art world — including artists, art advisers, interior designers, and gallerists — who told us about local businesses that hang artwork with creativity, vigilance, and precision at a fair price. We found installers who are artists in their own right, who work with the city’s biggest galleries but also service modest collectors, and who are unfazed by extraordinarily high ceilings and comically narrow doorways.
For Immaculate Gallery Walls
ILevel, 37 E. 7th St.; 212-477-4319; ilevel.biz
When you’re putting up a gallery wall, one errant nail can ruin the entire thing. For more than 30 years, David Kassel has been sparing New Yorkers from this agonizing mistake. Kassel worked as an installer to help pay his way through art school, then joined the Guggenheim’s installation crew while earning his B.F.A. These days, he’s popular with high-end interior designers, including Alexandra Pappas, Richard Mishaan, and Young Huh. His company, ILevel, focuses solely on art arrangement and installation — no transport and no storage — and hangs about 56,000 paintings, prints, photographs, mirrors, sconces, and family-photo collections each year. “I have a pretty strong sense of how I’d like things installed, but they are really great to collaborate with,” says interior designer Alan Tanksley, who has relied on ILevel’s precise work for everything from hanging professional artwork to creating vast gallery walls of family photos. Recently, he says, he had a collection of paintings to be hung salon style, and the ILevel team created a layout that balanced the varying sizes of the pieces and the diverse subject matter depicted. “They’re very efficient — a nail is done once — and they’re very, very personable,” he says. David Kaihoi of the interior-design firm Redd Kaihoi worked for ILevel at the start of his career and has remained loyal, noting how quickly its team works. “We had a salon wall
of 45 things to hang,” Kaihoi says of one recent job. The ILevel team got everything up in one afternoon before a party that same night. (From $325 for the first two hours.)
For Small Projects on a Budget
Handy Andy, Prospect Heights; instagram.com/handyandy.nyc
Many clients of Handy Andy, whose real name is Andrew Bias-Drakeford, find him on Instagram, where the self-taught handyman has developed a modest following (of about 4,000 people) for his time-lapse Reels. In one, he methodically installs a gallery wall of paintings over a staircase. In another, he effortlessly mounts a white-bone-inlay mirror over an entry table. Interior designer Tobi Wright first hired Bias-Drakeford to install tambour-wood paneling, a TV, and some lighting in her living room. His patience and efficiency impressed her, and she has since brought him on for dozens of client projects, including hanging 19 unevenly sized prints alongside a steep stairwell leading to a terrace. “Andy had the asymmetrical ladder, and it was all totally precarious,” Wright recalls. But he stayed unfazed through the whole process. “He just figures out how to do it,” she adds. Like when Bias-Drakeford meticulously hung a multi-panel piece of photographer Katherine Slingluff’s work in one of her friends’ homes. “He’s very mindful of the client’s space,” says Slingluff. ($150 for the first hour, then $100 an hour.)
For Oversize Wall Hangings
Fisk Fine Art Services, 573 11th St., Park Slope; 13 Grattan St., Bushwick; 718-788-6777; fiskfas.com
The husband-and-wife team behind Fisk Fine Art Services specializes in transporting, shipping, and installing art for galleries (clients include Pace and Matthew Marks), artists (Jim Hodges and Tunji Adeniyi-Jones), and private collectors who want a great install in their own homes. Noah Fisk founded the company with just one employee in 2012 and today manages ten art hangers. Curator and art adviser Lolita Cros first heard about Fisk Fine Art Services through an artist in 2017. She hired the group to install a large Alex Prager photograph that didn’t fit into her client’s elevator. “We had to take the fire-emergency steps. They had to do five floors with that massive piece,” she says. “They did an incredible job and were really sweet about the whole thing.” Artstagram’s Nina Blumberg brought a similarly challenging conundrum to Fisk. “I had to hire a crane to get an artwork through the window of a high-rise because it wouldn’t fit in through the door or elevator,” Blumberg remembers. She brought in the Fisk team to oversee the project, which it handled professionally, she says, “while still making the moment enjoyable.” (Prices upon request.)
For Complicated and Tedious Tasks
SAT: Safe Art Storage and Transport, 19-40 Hazen St., East Elmhurst; 718-392-8910; safeart.com
Established in 1993 by lead hanger Werner Lederer, SAT is a full-service art-installation company offering shipping, crating, and storage. The team has worked with legendary artists (Roy Lichtenstein, Julian Schnabel), but SAT welcomes calls from anyone who collects art. Curator and art adviser Yvonne Force Villareal has been a devotee for decades. “Werner did two of the most difficult installations I’ve ever done in a domestic setting,” she says. One was a Matisse Jazz cutout series for her Broadway-producer client Jeffrey Seller that had been mistakenly framed with different lengths of wire on each piece. “We weren’t going to ship them back,” Force Villareal recalls, “so Werner hung them by measuring to the millimeter, and it is the most beautiful installation of the prints.” Another time, she says, he climbed a ladder to hang a 20-piece Samson Kambalu flag series in a perfect grid on a very tall wall in Seller’s townhouse. “I love that the actual lead installer is also a stakeholder,” she says. “And the employees stay a very long time, so you develop a relationship. It feels like a family.” (From $230.)
For Tight Spaces
David Kennedy Cutler, East Williamsburg; davidkennedycutler.com
Owner David Kennedy Cutler and his employees are all exhibiting artists who hang art as a way to support their own studio work. Art adviser Ivy Shapiro says his team makes even highly complex installations feel relaxed. Recently, she says, the crew had to partially remove a large painting from its stretcher (the wooden framework that a canvas is attached to) so it could fit through a prewar home’s labyrinthine corridors. This process was complicated by the fact that the buyer wanted the piece installed before the oil paint had fully dried, so the painting couldn’t be rolled and re-stretched once it arrived. Kennedy Cutler handled the situation with aplomb, altering the stretcher so that the painting could drape around it and be cradled on its way in, then reassembled in the apartment. Shapiro also says that Kennedy Cutler never leaves room for error. For large projects, the team typically pre-measures and makes mock-ups before hanging. (From $1,000 a day.)
For Long-Distance Installations
Dietl International, 207 W. 25th St.; 212-400-9555; dietl.com
Fritz Dietl got his start in the art-logistics trade as an apprentice in Vienna in the 1980s working for museums, galleries, and private collectors; he opened Dietl International in 1991. Today, it’s one of the biggest fine-art import, export, handling, and installation businesses in New York and has offices in ten other cities, including Miami and Los Angeles. Art adviser and Art Career podcast host Emily McElwreath says she appreciates the company’s commitment to using sustainable packaging and shipping procedures as well as the down-to-earth personalities and high level of talent she has found with Dietl employees. She specifically called out freelancer Kevin Kennedy for his conservation work and artist’s eye. When McElwreath needed an enormous Martha Jungwirth piece installed for a client in the midst of hectic Art Basel in Miami, “they made sure to put two of their best guys on it,” she said. “We headed to West Palm to my client’s house to spend a shit ton of time at this penthouse to install this massive piece. They’re my go-to.” (Price upon request.)
For Creative Collaboration
Fritz Ewins, 20 Bay St., Red Hook; 718-237-2442; fritzst.com
The team of installers at Fritz Ewins is largely made up of artists: painters, photographers, sculptors, and musicians. They offer a full range of art-logistics services, including climate-controlled storage, local transportation, crating, international shipping, and, of course, installation. When interior designer David Cafiero needed to mount 45 18th-century hand-colored animal prints in a perfect grid, he called Fritz Ewins to get it done correctly; the hangers used a laser and hooks to set each work precisely in place. “I’m very capable of hanging my own artwork but not 45 pieces in a grid within an eighth of an inch,” says Cafiero, whose design clients include Chloë Sevigny and Ryan Murphy. He also appreciates that the Fritz Ewins team arrives with interesting ideas, particularly on a challenging hang. Art adviser Joe Sheftel used to own a gallery on the Lower East Side and says the personable Fritz Ewins team was always easy to reach and was never overwhelmed by surprises. Sheftel has seen them move hundreds of pounds of marble sculptures into a gallery client’s West Village townhouse and watched them deftly work with building superintendents who tell them they don’t have the right forms when they get to the door. “They just take it all in stride,” Sheftel says. (From $350.)
