August is a sleepy time for art galleries, but behind the scenes, gallerists are busy at work preparing for the season ahead. Some galleries are now starting to lift the curtain of silence about their upcoming debuts, including some surprising developments in the uptown scene that promise fresh faces and new spaces.

Jack Tilton Gallery was one of the first to announce its 2007–08 lineup, which they did in style, hosting a garden party season kickoff. The event, held in the multi-floor gallery space on 76th Street last week, featured work by each of the 12 upcoming artists, four of whom were in attendance.

Tilton’s first show of the season will feature German artist Andreas Diefenbach, and will introduce Kianja Strobert in the downstairs space. This will be Ms. Strobert’s first solo show with the gallery, although the Brooklyn- born artist was included in “School Days” in 2006 as she was graduating from Yale. The 27-year-old has been working to distance herself from the parameters of school — experimenting with new materials and techniques. “The public will have to understand that they are intersecting me at a point in my career where I am still figuring things out,” she said, looking completely at ease. Art that comes from this risky, but exciting position is in line with the gallery’s mission.

Painter Ashley Hope, a Hunter College graduate who was also culled from “School Days,” has been working on her exhibition for the past two years. Her large-scale and immaculately detailed oil paintings of violently slain women take up to six months apiece to complete — she expects to have six fresh victims by the October opening date.

Kanishka Raja also has a lot of work ahead of him; the artist will be launching a two-part show simultaneously at Jack Tilton and Envoy Gallery in the Lower East Side. He plans for the joint exhibition to reinforce the ideas of mirroring already at work in his architectural paintings and drawings. The Indian-born artist will be focusing on a specific event in cultural history — the destruction of the Babri Mosque — as a thematic jumping-off point, and incorporating ideas of migration between the separate spaces.

This fall will find a number of galleries making the transition from the Upper East Side to the Lower. By September, Salon 94 will open a new space on Freeman Alley in addition to it current 94th Street location. Sculptor Huma Bhabha is slated for the inaugural exhibition; her second show in the uptown location opens only four days later. Luxe Gallery, formerly on 57th Street, is making the move to nearby Stanton Street. They bring along gallery artists Heather Bennett, Amelie Chabannes, Ellen Harvey, Pedro Lasch, Dominik Lejman, Pia Lindman, and Trine Lise Nedreaas with the group show “All the Way.”

Barry Friedman, whose gallery has been on 67th Street for years, is making a more permanent move by selling his apartment, packing up shop, and relocating to Chelsea. On September 19, Barry Friedman Ltd. will open its doors on 26th Street with an exhibition of large-scale paintings by Norwegian artist Anne-Karin Furunes. The show, a culmination of five years’ work, will present portraits of men and women whose images have been rescued from a photographic archive put together by the Swedish government that categorized people by “race, ethnicity, and mental capacity.” Into these historically loaded but anonymous images, Ms. Furunes cuts hundreds of holes by hand, perforating the image and further breaking down its original context.

For those inclined to stay in the Upper East Side, there is still much to look forward to this fall. Zwirner & Wirth opens with an exhibition of the under-recognized but highly respected American sculptor H.C. Westermann. Long considered an “artist’s artist,” Mr. Westermann’s posthumous retrospective was recently organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, where his finely crafted assemblages and sculptures retain their contemporaneity, despite the passage of time.

Also in September, Michael Werner will present “A.R. Penck: Paintings from the ’60s,” while Knoedler’s season opens with new work from veteran painter Michael Goldberg, with an accompanying catalog by John Yau. Following an exhibition of Sylvia Plimack Mangold’s sublime landscapes, Michael Buthe, who died in 1994, will be remembered with an October show at Alexander and Bonin. Meanwhile, Sol LeWitt’s “Scribble Wall Drawings” will be on view at Pace Wildenstein for much of the season, until the Bridget Riley show opens in November.

Just down the street from the Whitney, James Graham & Sons will begin their season with works from figurative painter Duncan Hannah. This September will mark the artist’s fourth solo show at the space — proving that in a season characterized by fresh starts and new beginnings, it can be still be reassuring to see a familiar face in the crowd.