'Gallery Girls': The Reviews Are In!
Bravo's new art world reality show "really packs a wallop."
You've already been taken inside the worlds of Housewives, million dollar real estate agents, high-end stylists and hairdressers, award-winning chefs and more -- but tonight Bravo goes where no other network has taken you: Deep into the heart of New York City's thriving (and drama-filled) art world with Gallery Girls. And, just in case that isn't enough intrigue for you, it turns out that the critics think it's way chic.
The show, which features seven young and hungry Big Apple art professionals (think gallery curators, not actual artists) who will do anything to climb their way up the social ladder and make their name known in the industry. Watch a preview, and then check out what some of the critics are saying -- and tune in tonight at 10/9 Central!
New York Times: "Pretensions to high culture notwithstanding, the New York art scene is a plenty valid setting for the internecine warfare that is reality television’s gasoline. ... But who are the mean girls? The fizzy Gallery Girls doesn’t take a moral stand, rightly pitting strivers of all sorts in the same ring and letting the bodies fall where they may."
USA Today: "This cast can be voluble, melodramatic or depressed, or hilariously snooty (Liz Margulies, the daughter of a wealthy art collector, sneers at the red-lipsticked girls who live in Brooklyn). Sometimes they're sophisticated, worldly and sexually forward (Angela Pham, a photographer from a conservative Vietnamese family in Orange County, Calif., has no trouble posing nude for anyone's camera) but also naive and vulnerable about how the real world works."
Miami Herald: "Too bad the title Mean Girls was already taken. The cast of Bravo’s newest reality series, Gallery Girls, really packs a wallop. The show follows seven young woman trying to make it in Manhattan’s art world. and if this is the kind of behavior that goes on over there, our advice would be to stick to Wynwood."
Slate: "So far Gallery Girls has failed to penetrate the New York art world, but it’s doing a fantastic job at showcasing the lives of young women who have the ambition to make it in New York but lack the guile to ascend off-screen. The inaccuracies of Gallery Girls might appear glaring to those in the know, but to everyone else they will seem negligible. With its symmetrical faces, schadenfreude, and establishing shots of Manhattan, the show does manage to deliver pleasure, if not an authentic portrait of the world it ostensibly sets out to document. Next week, according to a teaser, Chantal will tell Claudia that she needs “to like get off the Adderall or something,” and I, for one, will be watching."
New York Daily News: "Bravo’s latest docu-series follows seven twentysomethings around New York as they try to find their place in the city’s art scene — and they can be as catty as the “Real Housewives ... While sometimes superficial, the women on the show all hustle towards whatever artistic goals they’re pursuing. Many work for free to gain experience and contacts, and have overcome obstacles to get there."
