“In the 1950s, you could do the whole art world in an afternoon,” Irving Sandler, the renowned art historian and critic once told me about gallery hopping in New York. Not anymore. In the fifties, art galleries were clustered around 57th Street in Manhattan. Today, over 700 galleries sprawl across Chelsea, Tribeca, Chinatown, the Upper East Side and pockets of Brooklyn and Queens. The handwritten lists people once made to chart a gallery crawl have given way to smartphone apps.

For a decade, See Saw has reigned as the app for art world denizens, but the last year has seen the arrival of new apps and influencers — curator types, reviewers and spirit guides whose mission is to get you to discover art shows, exhibitions and events in New York, even internationally. These include Showrunner, Artwrld, ArtRabbit and Exhibits in New York. Why so many? The art world has expanded exponentially, but artificial intelligence has also made the app workload easier. They’re all free — so which one should you use?

In January 2014, the brother and sister team of Ellen and Patrick Swieskowski founded See Saw, now the art industry standard for New York gallery-goers. Ellen has an art history background from New York University; she curates the galleries on the app. Patrick programs See Saw while also running a software management company. The app focuses mostly on gallery exhibitions and openings — and, since August, a few museums — with listings in clean, neat form. The goal remains “simplicity,” Ellen said. She and an assistant choose the exhibitions listed and readers can mark galleries that appear on a map and navigate the gallery-scape.

The app has grown to approximately 120,000 users and covers New York, Berlin, Paris, London and Los Angeles, but it still remains “artisanal.” Every listing is fact-checked and aimed at accessibility: “Anyone who is curious about seeing art,” Ellen said, when asked who is the target audience.

After running the app for a few years while working for the archives of the artist Lawrence Weiner and the gallerist Virginia Dwan, Ellen said she now supports herself by charging galleries a quarterly fee, which she would not disclose. They have several hundred member galleries worldwide.

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