NEW YORK— Armory Week has arrived, and New York has been flooded with art fairs, art dealers, and (hopefully) art collectors prepared to spend some money. All around the city, though, local galleries are staying busy in their own spaces. For those seeking a break from the tumult of the fairs, gallery-visiting options range from a late-evening stroll through SoHo — a solid stop after the nearby Pulse fair — to a limited-time performance all the way up in Harlem, a short subway ride north of the Scope fair.

Thursday

Walter De Maria, “The New York Earth Room,” 141 Wooster Street, and “The Broken Kilometer,” 393 West Broadway, on view 6–9 p.m as part of “SoHo Night.”

In the battle for control of SoHo’s development, 1977 was a defining year, marking the opening of gourmet grocery store Dean & Deluca’s first market, on Prince Street, and the installation of Walter De Maria’s New York Earth Room, which lined the floor of a second-story loft on Wooster Street with 22 inches of fresh dirt. Of course, the luxury stores won most of the neighborhood’s real estate, but a few bastions of art remain, like De Maria’s indoor earthwork. SoHo’s non-profit spaces — the Drawing Center, Harvestworks, the Swiss Institute, Artists Space, and apexart (which is just across the border, in TriBeCa) — stay open late tonight, meaning that De Maria’s dirt room, a few yards from Houston, could be a convenient starting space.

Friday

“Self-Fulfilling Prophecies,” at Leo Koenig Inc., 545 West 23rd Street, and Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte, 541 West 23rd Street, on view through April 10, opening Friday, March 5, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

German dealer Leo Koenig is celebrating Armory Week in style, filling both of his Chelsea gallery spaces with art that evokes “swaggerless, off-handed confidence,” according to the show’s press materials. Expect sterling, mostly mid-career names, like Adam McEwen, Zoe Leonard, and Jessica Stockholder, to be represented by their signature work. A Banks Violette aluminum box, all black and metal, is graced with a shattered bottle, while Anselm Reyle’s trademark fluorescent pink is visible only at the edges of a massive, 7-foot-tall canvas: he’s coated the rest with black acrylic. There’s also a Tracey Emin neon — every art fair's guilty pleasure — that shares a private fantasy: “Sleeping with you.”

“Joseph Beuys: Make the Secrets Productive,” at PaceWildenstein, 534 West 25th Street, on view through April 10, opening Friday, March 5, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Joseph Beuys is having a moment. The Museum of Modern Art devoted a gallery to him for the past 18 months, and earlier this year Mary Boone staged a formidable retrospective, curated by Pamela Kort, that won over some of even the most devout Beuys skeptics, this writer included. Now PaceWildenstein enters the game, mounting an ambitious show of 12 sculptures, 90 documentary photographs by Ute Klophaus, and four performance videos in collaboration with the artist’s estate. The art-market recession, we have been told, is over. Pricey, shiny baubles could return any moment. Enjoy Beuys’s enduringly enigmatic work while you can.

“Billy Childish,” at White Columns, 320 West 13th Street, enter on Horatio Street, between Hudson and 8th Avenue, on view through April 17, opening Friday, March 5, 7–10 p.m.

“Your paintings are stuck, you are stuck! – Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!” British artist Tracey Emin once told her then-lover Billy Childish. Not long after, Childish and Charles Thomson formed Stuckism, an art movement that favors figurative art over the conceptual work championed by the Turner Prize and the YBAs. It’d be wrong to peg Childish as a conservative, though. He’s been responsible for some of the best rock and roll produced over the past 30 years, having been involved with bands like the Thee Mighty Caesars, Thee Heatcoats, and The Musicians of the British Empire, not to mention the estimable all-female pop group, Thee Headcoatees, for whom he penned songs. In conjunction with a retrospective of Childish’s brushy, rough-hewn art at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, White Columns presents a selection of his work, spanning three decades.