In times of change, art has the power to move us to see, reconsider, and reinvent, and New York City is fertile ground for some of the best art in the world and for the most creative among us to grow. This guide is designed to help you navigate the city’s vibrant art communities, and we hope you enjoy the recommendations from our team of experts, who have been covering the arts in our great city daily for 15 years.
From museum shows and gallery exhibitions to nonprofit and community events, our comprehensive fall guide encourages exploration. Perhaps you’ll venture into a quirky performance and gain insight into an artist’s behind-the-scenes practice, or discover an exhibition giving new life to overlooked historical artworks. Also be sure to check out our recommendations for a few excursions to see the fall foliage while enjoying the growing art communities that encircle the city, and don’t forget to peruse our run-down of this fall’s art fairs. The options are truly endless, and we hope our guide will empower you to make informed decisions about what to see and do. Hyperallergic is proud to be based in New York, and we can’t wait for you to discover why.
—Hrag Vartanian, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief
The Armory Show celebrates its 30th anniversary this September with over 235 exhibiting galleries hailing from 35 countries, a fitting testament to the behemoth fair’s role as a bedrock of New York’s fall fair scene. A wealth of satellite fairs around the city offer a range of experiences beyond mainstream bulwarks, from the zany The Other Art Fair to newcomer La Feria: Print Media Fair and everything in between.
View the full list in our handy guide to navigating the fall fairs.
Scenes of New York City: Selections from the Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld Collection
New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, Upper West Side, Manhattan
Through Oct. 27
Keith Haring, Normal Rockwell, and Mark Rothko are just a few of the renowned artists featured in this exhibition showcasing art depicting New York City. Paintings, drawings, and other works on view, all culled from the Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld collection, highlight landmarks like Washington Square Park and the Bowery, paying homage to the kaleidoscopic city and its communities.
Other of Pearl
Fort Jay (Governors Island Arts and Natural Resources Defense Council), 10 South Street, Governors Island
Through Oct. 31
Artist and environmental activist Jenny Kendler centers humanity’s relationships with oysters and whales in this exhibition, which includes an interactive hand-blown glass instrument and pearl sculptures grown inside oysters. Proceeds raised from an auction of the pearl sculptures at the end of the show’s run will be put toward an initiative to create a new oyster reef.
Auriea Harvey: My Veins Are the Wires, My Body Is Your Keyboard
Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35th Avenue, Astoria, Queens
Through December 1
Interactive net-based works, video games, and computer-generated sculptures are among 40 works presented in this first major survey of the artist’s work. Chronicling nearly four decades, the exhibition assesses Harvey’s career in the context of the late-20th-century digital revolution, highlighting her pioneering practice at the intersection of the computerized and the corporeal.
Byzantine Bembé
Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Through Dec. 8
Interlacing community stories from the Bronx, East Harlem (also known as El Barrio), and the Brazilian state of Bahia, artist Manny Vega’s exhibition delves into the diasporic histories behind his vibrant mosaics and elaborate murals that have come to define the neighborhood that the Museum of the City of New York calls home.
Wanda Gág’s World
Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, Meatpacking District, Manhattan
Through Dec.
If the children’s book Millions of Cats (1928) taught us anything, it’s that this is Wanda Gág’s world and we’re just lucky to be living in it. Derived entirely from the Whitney’s collections, this exhibition takes us through the beloved illustrator’s life and career up until a year before her untimely death at age 53, with various prints depicting still lives, interiors, and landscapes accompanied by supporting texts from Gág’s diary entries and letters.
Survival Piece #5: Portable Orchard
Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, Meatpacking District, Manhattan
Through Jan. 1, 2025
The Whitney reaches into the past for answers to our future in this eighth-floor presentation of collaborators Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison’s indoor citrus grove. Designed by the environmental artists in 1972 as one of seven connected projects built to create a sustainable food source in the face of ecological obsolescence, Survival Piece #5: Portable Orchard consists of 18 self-sustaining citrus trees with individual lighting units.
Enchanting Imagination: The Objets d’Art of André Chervin and Carvin French Jewelers
New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, Upper West Side, Manhattan
Through Jan. 5, 2025
Opulence and craft coexist in this selection of miniature objects, accessories, and decorative figurines from André Chervin’s iconic jewelry house Carvin French. Fashioned out of precious gems and metals, Chervin’s priceless works shirk the constraints of commercial interest in favor of an unbound imagination.
I’m a thousand different people—Every one is real
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, 26 Wooster Street, Soho, Manhattan
Through Jan. 5, 2025
The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art presents a selection of recently acquired works by a diverse swath of LGBTQ+ artists with an emphasis on accessibility, authenticity, and self-determination.
By Way Of: Material and Motion in the Guggenheim Collection
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Through Jan. 12, 2025
Examining the tendency to push material boundaries beyond the studio following World War II, this exhibition juxtaposes works by major players of Italy’s Arte Povera movement in the Guggenheim’s collection, such as Jannis Kounellis and Mario Merz, with more recent output by artists like Rashid Johnson and Senga Nengudi.
Cameron A. Granger 9999
Queens Museum, Grand Central Parkway and Van Wyck Expressway, Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, Queens
Through Jan. 19, 2025
Queens Museum artist fellow Cameron A. Granger draws on role-playing video games, 19th-century magicians, and Haitian folklore in this exhibition spanning print, sculpture, and film. Envisioning the remnants of structural violence via mystical “black holes” digitally incorporated into the city’s landscape, the multidisciplinary artist charts liberation from systemic racism for Black communities.
Catalina Schliebener Muñoz: Buenos Vecinos
Queens Museum, Grand Central Parkway and Van Wyck Expressway, Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, Queens
Through Jan. 19, 2025
Catalina Schliebener Muñoz interrogates the legacy of United States interventionism in South and Central America by confronting the history of two Disney animated films, Saludos Amigos (1942) and Los Tres Caballeros (1944), which both resulted from the early-20th century “Good Neighbor” policy.
Changing the Face of Democracy: Shirley Chisholm at 100
Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Through July 20, 2025
A collaborative effort with Brooklyn College’s Shirley Chisholm Project brings forth the first major museum show on the first Black woman elected to Congress and the first African-American person to seek the presidential nomination from a major party. Featuring historical artifacts, archival media, and interactive elements, this exhibition explores the life and legacy of the trailblazing politician aptly known as “Fighting Shirley” on the centennial of her birthday.
Yto Barrada: Le Grand Soir
MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
Ongoing
This interactive installation of stacked blocks is more than what meets the eye. Barrada’s multicolored concrete sculptures evoke traditional Moroccan acrobat troupes’ human pyramid formations and nod toward Brutalism in the country, exploring strength, durability, and experimentation through a postcolonial lens.
Jeffrey Veregge: Of Gods and Heroes
National Museum of the American Indian, 1 Bowling Green, Financial District, Manhattan
Ongoing
Traditional Coast Salish artistry and comic book superheroes join forces in Jeffrey Veregge’s unique “Salish Geek” style. The artist’s two enormous storytelling murals are part of the Smithsonian Institution’s collections.
What It Becomes
Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, Meatpacking District, Manhattan
Aug. 24–Jan. 12, 2025
Comprising new and rarely displayed works by 11 artists featured in the museum’s collections, What It Becomes expands on contemporary artist Toyin Ojih Odutola’s remarks on the transformation of source material through the act of drawing. From works on paper to photography and video, creations from the likes of Catherine Opie, Wendy Red Star, and Ana Mendieta examine the technical and conceptual processes of drawing through a focus on alteration and touch.
Against Time: The Noguchi Museum 40th Anniversary Reinstallation
Noguchi Museum, 9-01 33rd Road, Astoria, Queens
Aug. 28–Sept. 14, 2025
This exhibition turns back the clock, restoring the second-floor gallery to its original configuration with works that Isamu Noguchi considered milestones in his practice. Against Time swaps wall labels for texts penned by the artist, too, drawn from a catalog published the year before his death. In celebration of the museum’s 40th anniversary, immerse yourself in the sculptor’s idiomatic vision in the space that was once his studio.
Dario Mohr: Seeds of Kenya
Glyndor Gallery at Wave Hill, 675 West 249th Street, Riverdale, The Bronx
Aug. 31–Dec. 1, 2024
A monument consisting of an interlocking ladder with sculpted acacia seeds honors Kenya’s 42 ethnic communities. The site-specific installation, which debuts Wave Hill’s recently restored Glyndor Terrace Garden, is paired with programming including a planting of African daisies in honor of deceased ancestors.
Encyclopedia: The Late Collages of Dorothea Tanning
Kasmin Gallery, 297 Tenth Avenue, Chelsea, Manhattan
Sept. 4–Oct. 24
The second solo presentation of Tanning’s works at Kasmin is devoted to the late Surrealist’s collages spanning the 1980s to ’90s. Building on her notion of “art as a metaphor for language,” the show illuminates how Tanning channeled her proclivity for the written word and artistic sensibilities into torn paper and cut-outs collaged and mounted on Masonite board. The show also boasts the titular work, “Encyclopedia” (1990–95), a mural-scale collage over five panels that will be exhibited to the public in its entirety for the first time.
The Appearance: Art of the Asian Diaspora in Latin America & the Caribbean
Americas Society, 680 Park Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Sept. 4–Dec. 14
Illuminating the often-overlooked Asian diaspora in Latin America and the Caribbean, 27 artists across 14 countries address notions of visibility and invisibility, spirituality, and archiving across various media. Named after a 1975 work by Japanese-Brazilian artist Lydia Okumura, The Appearance primarily focuses on artwork created from 1940 onwards.
Jazz Greats | Classic Photographs from the Bank of America Collection
National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, Gramercy Park, Manhattan
Sept. 5–Nov. 27
You can almost hear this exhibition. Images shot by luminary photographers such as Gordon Parks capture the giants of jazz, including Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong. In one photo taken by William Gottlieb in 1947, Ella Fitzgerald sings into a microphone, her eyes closed in rapture, while trumpet-player and composer Dizzy Gillespie looks on adoringly.
Gold from Dragon City: Masterpieces of Three Yan from Liaoning, 337-436
China Institute, 100 Washington Street, Second Floor, Financial District, Manhattan
Sept. 5–Jan. 5, 2025
It’s the fifth century in northern China, and the last of three kings has fallen. The splendor of the short-lived but culturally rich Yan state is on view in this exhibition, from bronze items to glassware to mural paintings. One highlight in particular is the buyao, an ornamental hairpin with dangling adornments whose name fittingly translates as “step and sway.”
¿Quien no ha intentado convertir una piedra en un recuerdo?
Pioneer Works, 159 Pioneer Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn
Sept. 6–Dec. 15
What if a forgotten civilization left behind a wealth of archaeological artifacts? Alejandro García Contreras’s intricate sculptures, which draw from pop culture and art history, the erotic and the occult, imagine just that. Translated from Spanish as “Who hasn’t tried to turn a stone into a memory?,” this exhibition features sculptures and videos that draw from personal memory and religion, the writings of Aldous Huxley, the philosophies of Sailor Moon, and more.
Monument Eternal
Pioneer Works, 159 Pioneer Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn
Sept. 6–Dec. 15
Half an hour outside of Atlanta lies the most popular attraction in the state of Georgia: Stone Mountain Park’s massive relief carving of Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. Artist and poet Le’Andra LeSeur, who grew up visiting the park, searches for a more intentional form of interaction with the violent site, activating it rather than dissociating from it in hopes of finding new forms of reconciliation and healing. A video in this exhibition, for instance, captures the artist herself falling repeatedly yet softly on the mountain’s peak.
FUTURA 2000: BREAKING OUT
Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1040 Grand Concourse, Concourse, The Bronx
Sept. 8–March 30, 2025
Before Futura 2000 painted futuristic abstractions on canvas, he graffitied NYC subway cars. This retrospective pays homage to the artist’s half-century-long career, encompassing archival materials, drawings, prints, sculptures, and even site-specific installations.
Socrates Annual
Socrates Sculpture Park, 32-01 Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City, Queens
Sept. 14–April 6, 2025
The term “invasive species,” the theme of this year’s Socrates Annual, calls to mind all sorts of associations, from the spotted lanternflies that recently reached New York to the brutal nationalist rhetoric that dominates our news cycles. Through works produced on-site, the nine artists selected for the sculpture park’s fall exhibition take on the sociopolitical implications of settlement; entanglements between plants, land, and people; and myths of displacement.
Mexican Prints at the Vanguard
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Sept. 12–Jan. 5, 2025
Through over 130 works drawn primarily from its collection, The Met presents printmaking as a critical element of Mexican artistic traditions, cultural identity, and social practice between the 18th and 20th centuries. From José Guadalupe Posada’s lithographs to works by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and Leopoldo Méndez, this exhibition emphasizes the importance of the graphic arts from the Mexican Revolution through today.
The Facade Commission: Lee Bul, Long Tail Halo
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Sept. 12–May 27, 2025
Blending figurative forms and abstract elements, South Korean artist Lee Bul creates four new sculptures for The Met’s Fifth Avenue facade, marking the artist’s first major project in the United States in more than two decades.
Ilit Azoulay: Mere Things
Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Sept. 13–Jan. 5, 2025
This exhibition comprises a selection of works by Ilit Azoulay dating from 2011 to today, including photomontage, sound elements, and sculpture informed by the interdisciplinary artist’s research-based practice.
Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
Sept. 13–Jan. 19, 2025
The Black feminist sculptor, printmaker, and activist Elizabeth Catlett gets her long-overdue accolades in a survey exploring her artistic career and commitment to collective liberation. Dramatic contrasts, incisive mark-making, and voluptuous wood carvings influenced by the likes of Käthe Kollwitz, Barbara Hepworth, and pan-African artistry define this exhibition of over 150 works from different moments of Catlett’s life.
Anything But Simple: Gift Drawings and the Shaker Aesthetic
American Folk Art Museum, 2 Lincoln Square, Upper West Side, Manhattan
Sept. 13–Jan. 26, 2025
Coinciding with the 250th anniversary of Shakerism in the United States, this show explores the tradition of gift drawings made by women in the 19th century. Believed to be divine dispatches, the detailed, vibrant works diverge from the characteristically understated “Shaker aesthetic,” a topic the American Folk Art Museum explores while simultaneously delving into the lives of the women who created the drawings.
Lubaina Himid: Make Do and Mend
Flag Art Foundation, 545 West 25th Street, 9th Floor, Chelsea, Manhattan
Sept. 13–Feb. 8, 2025
In British artist Lubaina Himid’s new Strategy Paintings series, Black people sit at tables bearing seemingly random assortments of objects — a twig, dandelion, and budding blossom, for example — appearing to solve a puzzle of sorts. The surreal images are paired with a 2023 series titled The Aunties, comprising 64 plank paintings honoring the memory of women who influenced the artist’s upbringing.
Evan Paul English: SCRAP BOOK
Alice Austen House, 2 Hylan Boulevard, Shore Acres, Staten Island
Sept. 14–Feb. 2025
Artist Evan Paul English heads to Staten Island to redecorate the dining room of the Alice Austen House, once the home of the eponymous photographer known for capturing Victorian women’s everyday lives. A painting exhibition and accompanying permanent wallpaper designed for the space are grounded in Austen’s scrapbooks held by the House and Historic Richmond Town.
Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, Midtown, Manhattan
Sept. 15–Jan. 11, 2025
Named after Robert Frank’s 1980 film dedicated to his late daughter Andrea and close friend Danny Seymour, Life Dances On delves into the documentarian’s lifelong artistic experimentation and creative collaboration. Around 200 works spanning photography, film, and books made over six decades before Frank passed in 2019 are on view.
Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala
Asia Society and Museum, 725 Park Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Sept. 17–Jan. 5, 2025
The Yolŋu people of Northern Australia began painting ancestral sacred designs called miny’tji on eucalyptus bark in the early 1900s, exploring a new canvas for the millennia-old practice. This long overdue exhibition celebrates the Indigenous art form while drawing comparisons between miny’tji and other abstract traditions.
to hold a we
BRIC, 647 Fulton Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
Sept. 19–Dec. 22
Featuring work from 14 emerging artists and art collectives with disabilities in the BRIClab residency program, this multidisciplinary show illuminates a web of memory and grief, intimacy and tenderness, and collaborative solidarity that informs cross-disability activism in the arts. Refuting societal isolation, violence, and exploitation, the “we” upends erasure and neglect in its cultivation of collectivity and kinship.
In Practice: Bastien Gachet
SculptureCenter, 44–19 Purves Street, Long Island City, Queens
Sept. 19–Oct. 21
Swiss artist Bastien Gachet often centers humor in his sculptures, from a partial mask donning facial hair to a urinal affixed at an impossible height. But in his exhibition at SculptureCenter, the artist departs from his plays on the comical and instead employs both found and crafted objects to consider the division between the real and the synthetic.
Abraham Lincoln: His Life in Print
Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Sept. 25–Dec. 28
Almost 160 years after his assassination, Abraham Lincoln continues to loom large in historical literature. This exhibition of more than 150 objects including original book prints, ephemera, and printed editions of his speeches explores the life of the 16th United States president from his upbringing in the American West and rise to the White House to his untimely death at age 56.
Edges of Ailey
Whitney Museum, 99 Gansevoort Street, Meatpacking District, Manhattan
Sept. 25–Feb. 9, 2025
Coinciding with a program of events and live performances, this large-scale multimedia exhibition considers the life and lasting impact of the late New York choreographer and activist Alvin Ailey. The social and creative dimensions of his work come into focus through archival materials, sculpture, painting, film, and more, illuminating his multitude of artistic collaborations along the way.
Seeing Sound
Pratt Manhattan Gallery, 144 West 14th Street, West Village, Manhattan
Sept. 27–Dec. 20
Seeing Sound may explore the sonic practices of 10 artists, but there are no headphones in this show. Visitors will instead hear sounds emanating from projects including audio-video installations, moving sculptures, and works that respond to the viewers themselves, ultimately immersing us in a series of layered sonic experiences.
We Are Here: Scenes from the Streets
International Center of Photography, 79 Essex Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Sept. 27–Jan. 6, 2025
Contemporary street photography is at the center of this exhibition, framed through the lenses of over 30 international practitioners making public spaces their canvas. Featured artists include Devin Allen, Romuald Hazoumè, Josué Rivas, Randa Shaath, Alexey Titarenko, and Nontsikelelo Veleko.
Miatta Kawinzi: Numma Yah
Smack Mellon, 92 Plymouth Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn
Sept. 28–Nov. 17
In Liberian English, “kolokwa” is used to offer comfort and connection. In this exhibition, artist Miatta Kawinzi draws upon her cultural heritage in an exploration of literal and metaphorical roots via all-enveloping sculptural, sound, and video installations.
Madjeen Isaac: Come as You Are, This Is Our Battle Too
Smack Mellon, 92 Plymouth Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn
Sept. 28–Nov. 17
After an unexpected health episode last fall, first-generation Haitian-American artist Madjeen Isaac embarked on a series of works tackling her struggles and frustrations intertwined with solidarity and support from her community. Infusing Caribbean flora and fauna into the brick facades and wrought iron gates of New York City, the artist depicts Black communing and joy outside the confines of reality.
Thomas Schütte
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, Midtown, Manhattan
Sept. 29–Jan. 18, 2025
The most comprehensive show of Thomas Schütte’s oeuvre to date encompasses everything from watercolors and architectural drawings to figurative sculptures. The German artist has never adhered to a single medium, and here, the connections between his varied bodies of work take center stage.
The Brooklyn Artists Exhibition
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
Oct. 4–Jan. 26, 2025
Organized by artists Jeffrey Gibson, Vik Muniz, Mickalene Thomas, and Fred Tomaselli, this group exhibition spotlights Brooklyn’s ample contemporary creativity by showcasing works by artists living or working in the New York City borough in the last five years.
Acky Bright: Studio Infinity
Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, Turtle Bay, Manhattan
Oct. 4, 2024–Jan. 29, 2025
Japanese artist Acky Bright crafts manga characters that embody his kawakakkoii style, meaning “cute” and “cool” at the same time. Manga fans can see the artist in action during live drawing sessions and participate in creating murals while viewing his paintings, commercial design work, and coloring book based on the Netflix show Squid Games.
Shifting Shorelines: Art, Industry, and Ecology along the Hudson River
Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University, 615 West 129th Street, Sixth Floor, Harlem, Manhattan
Oct. 5–Jan. 12, 2025
The Hudson River School only captured one facet of that waterway’s story. This exhibition at the Wallach Art Gallery draws upon environmental science, visual culture, and both historical and contemporary art to explore the Hudson’s ecology, industry, and culture. Leaving the show, you’ll look upon the river — mere steps from the gallery — with a new perspective.
Abuela’s Kitchen
Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Snug Harbor, Building G, 1st Floor, 1000 Richmond Terrace, Staten Island
Oct. 12–Jan. 12, 2025
If the walls of a home could talk, they might look something like Abuela’s Kitchen. This exhibition creates a portrait of intergenerational struggles and dreams for social justice in communities of color in New York City, rooted in the symbolism of grandmothers and the lessons they impart. Artists include curator Kelly Vilar; peer artists and activists Shani Mitchell, Lucia Daniel, and Tracy Daniel; and youth members of Staten Island Urban Center, Parsons School of Design, and Columbia University.
Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Oct. 13–Jan. 26, 2025
The Met travels back in time to the birth of the Italian Renaissance in this exhibition, which examines the role of the city of Siena in the artistic movement’s rise and the evolution of Western painting at large. The show features over 100 pieces ranging from metalworks and sculptures to textiles. While all of the artists died in the plague of 1350, The Rise of Painting honors the creative gems they left behind.
Stephanie Beck: Bough
Glyndor Gallery at Wave Hill, 675 West 249th Street, Riverdale, The Bronx
Oct. 19–Dec. 1
Created using wood, branches, and dried plants collected at Wave Hill’s 28-acre estate, Stephanie Beck’s site-specific project “Bough” (2024) consists of a series of abstract sculptural “drawings,” accompanied by an installation of local migratory bird songs.
Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy
The Morgan Library and Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, Murray Hill, Manhattan
Oct. 25–May 4, 2025
The Morgan Library, which marks its 100th anniversary this year, celebrates its first director Belle da Costa Greene with a show exploring her life and work. Raised in a Black community in Washington, DC, Greene would pass as White throughout her adult life, an act that afforded her opportunities in the racist environment of early-20th-century America. A Librarian’s Legacy features intimate archival objects including portraits, rare books, and manuscripts, of which Greene was a preeminent scholar.
Nour Mobarak: Dafne Phono
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, Midtown, Manhattan
Oct. 26–Jan. 12, 2025
Lebanese-American artist Nour Mobarek is putting on an opera for her first New York City museum show. Mobarek reimagines the myth of the Greek god Apollo and the nymph Daphne portrayed in La Dafne, staged in 1598 and widely considered to be the first opera, with 15 singing sculptures that narrate the tale in a cacophony of languages.
In Practice: Tony Chrenka
SculptureCenter, 44–19 Purves Street, Long Island City, Queens
Oct. 31–Dec. 22
Through photography, drawing, and installation, Tony Chrenka confronts questions around work and individual conceptions of the passage of time. In this series of carved wood relief sculptures alongside a wall treatment, the artist considers the impact of sculpture on presence and absence in space.
Making Home–Smithsonian Design Triennial
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2 East 91st Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Nov. 2–Summer 2025
For the seventh iteration of the Smithsonian Design Triennial, three curators from Cooper Hewitt and the National Museum of African American History collaborated to organize a show centered on the prismatic notion of “home.” Works on view explore this concept through themes of climate change, domestic labor, and colonialism across states, tribal nations, and US territories, among others.
Goddess Tales
apexart, 291 Church Street, Tribeca, Manhattan
Nov. 8–Dec. 21, 2024
A throughline of the diasporic condition is a sense of distance from the “homeland.” The artists in Goddess Tales take on that distance — not to bridge it, necessarily, but rather to claim it as their own in various ways that range from exploring Indigenous Filipinx ritual headhunting to incorporating Buddhism into tarot readings.
Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910-1930
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Nov. 8–March 9, 2025
On view in the museum’s main rotunda, a selection of around 100 artworks by the likes of Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, František Kupka, Marcel Duchamp, and Mainie Jellett investigate the vibrant kaleidoscopic art of the early 20th-century Orphism movement.
Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston
The Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Nov. 8–March 30, 2025
Amid the roar of the Black Lives Matter protests four years ago, a traveling retrospective of 20th-century painter Philip Guston, perhaps best known for his cartoonish depictions of Klansmen, was postponed. Now, Trenton Doyle Hancock, a contemporary Black artist who also employs the vernacular of comics to explore race relations and White supremacy, interrogates Guston’s legacy.
Ceremonies Out of the Air: Ralph Lemon
MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
Nov. 14–March 24, 2025
Dance, drawings, photographs, sculpture, paintings, and video comprise this sprawling survey of celebrated visual artist, choreographer, and dancer Ralph Lemon. Running alongside a program of live performances, this exhibition is centered on a multichannel video and sound installation based on the live performance work “Rant” (2019–ongoing).
Tong Yang-Tze: Dialogue
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Nov. 21–April 8, 2025
As part of The Met’s 2024 Great Hall commission series, Taiwanese artist Tong Yang-Tze will create two large-scale calligraphy works featuring oversized Chinese characters that raise questions about the art form’s impact on Chinese cultural identity, as well as its broader visual, emotional, and social resonances beyond written language.
Franz Kafka
The Morgan Library and Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, Murray Hill, Manhattan
Nov. 22–April 13, 2025
An exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum explores the afterlife of Franz Kafka, an author whose influence runs so deep that he has his own adjective — Kafkaesque — with an expansive archive that includes manuscripts, letters, diary entries, photographs, and more. Related to his relatively small body of work, these items travel from the Bodleian Library to the United States for the very first time.
Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection
Museum of the City of New York, 1120 Fifth Avenue, East Harlem, Manhattan
Nov. 22–Aug. 10, 2025
Culled from a collection donated by the late artist Martin Wong, this show captures a pivotal moment in New York graffiti by its pioneers, from Lee Quiñones to Futura 2000. Over 300 paintings and drawings trace street art’s trajectory as some of its leading practitioners negotiated the transition into mainstream art spaces while sustaining the form’s irreverent spirit.
Natural Attractions: A Plant-Pollinator Love Story
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 990 Washington Avenue, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
Through Oct. 20
Through this exhibition and accompanying programming, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden explores a relationship older than recorded time itself: that of plants and pollinating insects. The garden-wide show boasts student-built environments designed for insect habitation alongside all sorts of educational activities.
Wonderland: Curious Nature
New York Botanical Garden, 2900 Southern Boulevard, Bronx Park, The Bronx
Through Oct. 27
Fall headfirst down the rabbit hole and into Alice’s Wonderland at the New York Botanical Garden. From tea parties surrounded by sumptuous Victorian blossoms to perspective-twisting art installations and experiences at every turn, immerse yourself in the swirling imagination of Lewis Carroll and learn about the real-life elements that informed his iconic novel.
Cannupa Hanska Luger: Attrition
City Hall Park (Public Art Fund), Broadway and Chambers Street, Financial District, Manhattan
Through Nov. 17
Adrienne Elise Tarver: She who sits
Newsstands and bus stops
Through Nov. 24
Huma Bhabha: Before The End
Brooklyn Bridge Park (Public Art Fund), Dumbo, Brooklyn
Through March 9, 2025
Edra Soto: Graft
Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park, 60th Street and Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Sept. 5–Aug. 24, 2025
Next time you find yourself waiting at a bus stop or wandering through a park, Public Art Fund’s outdoor art installations might offer you a chance to transform your relationship to the city. Adrienne Elise Tarver’s paintings of Black women in repose will provide moments of stillness amid your commute, while Huba Bhabha’s patinated bronze sculptures along the Brooklyn Bridge Park waterfront feel both strange and familiar. Meanwhile, Cannupa Hanska Luger pays homage to bison populations with a poignant steel skeleton in City Hall Park, and Edra Soto adorns the southeast entrance to Central Park with a participatory installation rooted in rejas, or wrought-iron screen doors common in Puerto Rican architecture.
Nicole Eisenman: Fixed Crane for Madison Square Park
Madison Square Park Conservancy, Madison Square Park, Flatiron, Manhattan
Oct. 24–March 9, 2025
Simultaneously enticing and estranging, Nicole Eisenman’s practice arrives in Midtown through her new sculpture, “Fixed Crane for Madison Square Park.” For this installation, the artist affixed small figures to a 1969 Link-Belt construction crane, which lies sprawled out on the green as a fallen monument to dubious ideals of human progress and technological development.
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