“I had been thinking of opening a gallery for a while,” says Steven Stewart, whose Kansas Gallery debuted last week at 59 Franklin. “I thought about the Lower East Side and Chelsea, and at the end of the day, I was prepared to sacrifice a bit of location for extra square feet.” He now finds himself part of Tribeca’s up-and-coming gallery row, along with Space B and Frontrunner.

“The area has a Gotham quality about it,” he says. There was also a bit of what Stewart calls serendipity: His first interview in New York City was at Ross Bleckner’s studio just up Cortlandt Alley, and one of his best friends from Kansas was behind Billy’s Bakery, which has an outpost nearby.

Stewart had been a private art dealer and ran the Sue Scott Gallery on Rivington. Kansas will feature mostly emerging artists, but Stewart is not prepared to limit the types of art he’ll be showing. “I have a weakness for two-dimensional art, painting specifically,” he allows. “But it’s more about quality.”

The inaugural show is “Free Play,” with works by Melissa Brown, Brendan Cass, Max Galyon, Jesse A Greenberg, Sylvan Lionni, Matthew Northridge, Shannon Plumb, Zach Rockhill, and Tamara Zahaykevich; it’s up through July 30.

Kansas Gallery is at 59 Franklin (between Broadway and Lafayette), 646-599-1423; kansasgallery.com.

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