The Art Students League of New York, a venerable organization founded in the 1870s that has welcomed dozens of well-known instructors and students over the years, is practically next door to our hotel, and before we head to Meisel we stop to take a peek inside. Their window display turns out to exemplify the distinctions Kevin is talking about, as four or five works hanging there neatly demonstrate for us the journey from purely realistic work to more expressionistic painting. “This is exactly what the realist show will be about,” says Kevin.

The realist theme has struck a chord with Sarasota audiences; Kevin tells me one of his top three best-attended shows ever was REAList Women (the others were the Helen Frankenthaler solo exhibition and a group show featuring glass works by well-known artists gleaned from local collectors).

It’s already late morning, so we take a cab to SoHo and enjoy lunch at Fanelli’s, a SoHo institution (it says so right on their menus). Fanelli’s has been around since 1847, serving pasta, soups, salads and more on traditional red-checked tablecloths at the corner of Prince and Mercer for most of that time. Then it’s on to Meisel.

“I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the willingness of most galleries to work with us,” Kevin says on the way. “After all, we’re not a major museum or a profit-making enterprise. Some of the galleries have heard of the Ringling College, some haven’t. Since we’re a gallery that deals with education, in choosing work, I think about how I’m going to talk about it in the context of the show, so that’s part of my agenda.”

At the Meisel Gallery, we look at photorealist works by such luminaries of the genre as Richard Estes, Tom Blackwell and Don Eddy, among others. Louis is happy to show Kevin some works by new artists he hasn’t shown at Selby before as well. One young female artist in particular has Meisel excited. Her name is Raphaella Spence, and she does enormously detailed photorealist paintings, many of them cityscapes or vistas of the countryside in Italy, where she lives.

“Because of the improvements in camera equipment and computers, she can blow up the photos hugely without losing clarity,” Meisel explains. Then Spence spends months painstakingly replicating every detail in oil. Soon Meisel and Kevin are hatching a plan to have Raphaella come to Sarasota, go up in a helicopter, shoot photos of our coastline, and then, over time, paint a picture of Sarasota that will hang in the realist show at Selby.

After parting with Meisel, it’s across the street to the Nancy Hoffman Gallery. Hoffman is another dealer with whom Kevin has worked before; in fact, one of her artists, Viola Frey, had a memorable, huge, seated ceramic man in a Selby show I remember well. There’s another Frey piece on display as we enter the Hoffman gallery here.

Nancy leads us back to her office and starts clicking away on her computer as she shows Kevin works by her artists she thinks he might like for the 2009 show. “That one could work as an installation in the entry of the gallery,” says Kevin, pointing to an underwater scene. “It’s especially appropriate for Florida.” Artists from China, Russia and a myriad of other nations are represented here, and one young Eastern European female artist has a video piece running in a loop Kevin is thinking he might also use in the realist exhibition.

After a quick stop at nearby Girls Props to secure a souvenir gift (read: bribe) for our teen daughter, we’re back to the Hoffman Gallery to meet up with our friend Heinz, a photographer who divides his time between his homes in Brooklyn Heights and Sarasota. Kevin always connects with Heinz on his trips to New York, because Heinz keeps up to date on the latest hot shows and has good suggestions on where to go and what to see.

Heinz guides us to Chelsea, where, perhaps because it’s now later in the day, perhaps because of the greater concentration of gallery spaces, especially along 24th Street near 10th and 11th Avenues, more people are looking in the gallery windows or just strolling from one to another than in SoHo. Here there’s also less automobile traffic, along with fewer boutiques and shops than in SoHo; the atmosphere is more seriously arty. For me it soon becomes a dizzying experience of one gallery after another displaying the latest in paintings, videos and installations from New York artists. It’s an interesting example of how starving artists gentrify a neighborhood, since Chelsea used to be known more for its industry and warehouses (think of the movie On the Waterfront) than for its art or eateries. Soon, one figures, Chelsea will become too expensive for aspiring artists and they will move on elsewhere.