This was a week for galleries to celebrate not just new shows but also new branches. Haunch of Venison opened its brand new New York space at Rockefeller Center on September 9, adding one more to its list of outposts in London, Zurich, and Berlin. Haunch is inaugurating the Steven Learner–designed gallery with a show titled "Abstract Expressionism: A World Elsewhere," which runs through November 12, and they celebrated the opening of both the show and the gallery with a party that brought out artists, gallerists, and other art world folk – including Jeanne-Claude and Christo, New Museum director Lisa Phillips, and Studio Museum in Harlem director Thelma Golden. (To read more about Haunch's launch, click here.)

Halfway across the globe, James Cohan Gallery celebrated the opening of the second exhibition in its new Shanghai space: Yinka Shonibare's "MBE." The show kicked off on September 11 amid the contemporary art fervor currently sweeping China's most populous city, as the Shanghai Biennale (September 9 – November 16) and ShContemporary art fair (September 10–13) take over town. In attendance at the James Cohan event were American dealers Max Protetch and Marc Glimcher as well as Korean gallerists Won Jae Park and Patrick Lee, among others.

Also, the Drawing Center in New York opened "Demonstration Drawings" last night, a show of Rirkrit Tiravanija's ongoing project of the same name; the more than 200 works on paper are on view through November 6. And last week London's La Galleria Pall Mall opened "Balance" by Thomas Ostenberg. That show runs through September 26.

Click out the photo gallery to the left to see photos from these three openings.