Left: Sweeping the water out of Gagosian Gallery, West Twenty-first Street, where a Henry Moore sculpture show was partially installed before Sandy. Right: Soaked and oxidizing Carl Andre plates drying on the sidewalk in front of Paula Cooper Gallery. (All photos: Linda Yablonsky)

THE NEW YORK art business has been a speeding train for so long that it began to seem as if nothing could stop it, or even slow it down. Then came Hurricane Sandy.  Sandy did it. Knocked out all the power in Lower Manhattan, where most galleries are concentrated. Those in Chelsea took the biggest hit. They didn’t just lose power. Some dealers may lose their galleries as well.  It started on the night of Monday, October 29. At the peak of the storm, the Hudson River breached its banks and surged through Chelsea Piers, sending an extraordinarily powerful, twelve-foot flume of water down every street between West Nineteenth and West Twenty-seventh. Nearly every gallery in the flood zone between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues took on water—even those that had taken every precaution to prevent that from happening. Suddenly the coveted spaces were no longer those with street-level access but the ones hidden on floors well above it. Yet even galleries with exhibition spaces several steps up got wet. As one dealer told me, “Nothing could have stopped that water.” Read this item.