What began as a makeshift meeting of artists in a London basement is about to get a New York outpost. Museum 52, a four-year-old London gallery, will open a 2,200-square-foot, split-level space Friday at the corner of Rivington and Ludlow streets, in the hotbed of the city’s newest commercial gallery scene. And it will be run by three directors, all under the age of 30, whose pedigrees include the London gallery White Cube and the pioneering Chelsea gallery D’Amelio Terras.

The gallery’s London beginnings, however, were not so glossy. In 2003, musician Christopher Taylor, an American transplant living in London, decided to use the lower-level storage room of his home to display the artwork of a handful of his friends. Mr. Taylor had become acquainted with a number of artists through his band, Menlo Park, which was known for theatrical performances that attracted a cult following of artists and musicians.

Mr. Taylor’s cobbled-together show was more successful than he had anticipated. Not only were a number of artists involved picked up by established London galleries, but Mr. Taylor’s third show received a visit from Contemporary art’s kingmaker, Charles Saatchi, who subsequently purchased several pieces from the show.

Mr. Saatchi’s approval “made Chris realize it could be a viable gallery,” Mr. Taylor’s collaborator in London, Matthew Dipple, said. Mr. Taylor converted his home into a permanent gallery space, naming it after his house number, and almost immediately began looking to set up shop in America. He asked Mr. Dipple, who had been studio manager for photographer Sam Taylor-Wood, and had worked at White Cube and in Sotheby’s Contemporary department, to spearhead a New York offshoot.

“We began looking for a space on the west side, by Hudson and Varick,” Mr. Dipple, 29, explained as handymen polished the New York gallery’s glass façade. “But we preferred the energy here. It felt like a slightly nicer version of where we are in London.”

Museum 52 is the latest addition to a rapidly expanding commercial art scene around the Bowery. In the past year, nearly a dozen galleries — including Salon 94 Freemans, Eleven Rivington, Envoy, Lehmann Maupin, and Smith-Stewart — have opened in the area. Driving the growth downtown is the construction of the relocated New Museum, which is slated to open December 1 on the Bowery.

Mr. Dipple and director Rachel Uffner will curate and oversee Museum 52’s New York branch, while Mr. Taylor will remain the primary director in London.

“All three of us are going to come to consensus on the spaces,” Ms. Uffner explained.

The gallery plans to show emerging and mid-career artists, including some of those who have previously shown at the London branch. “They will be partner galleries, but what we don’t want to do is a Xerox copy of that program,” Mr. Dipple said of the relationship between the London and New York branches. “We’d like to bring our knowledge of European artists to coincide with the New York shows.”

The inaugural exhibition will focus on the idea of display, presenting artists such as Sara Greenberger Rafferty, who had a solo exhibition at P.S. 1 in 2006, Sean Raspet, whose work is in the Whitney Museum of American Art, and two artists poached from Museum 52 London, Philip Hausmeier and John Isaacs.

Mr. Dipple pointed proudly to a self-portrait by Mr. Isaacs in the gallery’s storage room, nearly as pleased with the artwork as he was with the room itself.

“Our main storeroom in London is our bathroom,” Mr. Dipple said. “It’s nice to a have a bathroom without books in it, isn’t it?”

For further coverage, please see “The Art Scene on the Lower East Side,” a New York Sun video, at http://www.nysun.com/video.