Summer time within the metropolis is an Italian ice from a cart, lounging within the park with a ebook and a tallboy, taking the scenic route (I’m a fan of the ferry) since you’ve bought nowhere to be and, rattling, it’s good out. It’s additionally an invite to get out of your borough (taking a look at you, Manhattan and Brooklyn) — and what higher manner to take action than by following our checklist of 20 exhibits throughout all 5?
These are long-running exhibitions at museums and different non-commercial areas. A few of them are distinctly rooted: a bunch present devoted to group constructing in and across the South Bronx; two exhibits on the Queens Museum riffing on its historical past, in addition to aesthetics distinctive to the borough, resembling telephone restore outlets in Jackson Heights. Others provide an opportunity to look at the lesser-known practices of well-known artists, such because the work of Lorna Simpson, the drawings of painter Beauford Delaney, the botanical illustrations of summary artist Hilma af Klint, or the ten years American artist John Singer Sargent spent in Paris.
We’ve bought exhibits marking anniversaries — the Artwork College students League turns 150, Jane Austen turns 250 — and celebrating beginnings, resembling summary painter Fanny Sanín’s first solo within the metropolis she’s lived in for 54 years. And we’ve bought surveys galore, centering lauded artists on the top of their careers, like portraitist Amy Sherald; these we’ve not too long ago misplaced, such because the late painter Jack Whitten; and people we’ve not too long ago recovered from historical past, like photographer Consuelo Kanaga. Scent the flowers, gradual it down — and see some artwork. —Lisa Yin Zhang, Affiliate Editor
Shaping American Artwork: A Celebration of the Artwork College students League of New York at 150
Artwork College students League, 215 West 57th Avenue, Suite 1, Midtown, Manhattan
By August 17
The Artwork College students League is wanting good for 150. Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacob Lawrence, Mark Rothko, and a whole lot of 1000’s extra artists, each famend and obscure, handed via its halls. It celebrates its anniversary and ongoing legacy through an exhibition that options scores of alumni. Don’t miss a sister exhibition on the New York Historic, which additionally showcases works by these affiliated with the league.
Nameless Was a Girl: The First 25 Years
Gray Artwork Museum, 18 Cooper Sq., Noho, Manhattan
By July 19
Carrie Mae Weems, Marie Watt, Chitra Ganesh, An-My Lê, and Sonya Clark are only a few of the 41 people featured on this sprawling exhibition celebrating the primary 25 years of Nameless Was A Girl, a grant program for mid-career girls artists primarily based in the USA.
Geumhyung Jeong: Toys, Chosen
Canal Tasks, 351 Canal Avenue, Soho, Manhattan
By July 26; September 19–November 21
Take a dip into the uncanny valley this summer time at nonprofit artwork area Canal Tasks — marionette limbs screwed into hoverboards and draping limply off tables make up simply among the cyborg visions of South Korean artist Geumhyung Jeong. Her solo present explores the more and more urgent stress between humanity and know-how, probing themes not simply of surveillance however of want.
Fanny Sanín: Geometric Equations
Americas Society, 680 Park Avenue, Higher East Facet, Manhattan
By July 26
Massive-scale work, smaller compositions, pencil research, and collages come collectively on this exhibition of Colombian-born artist Fanny Sanín, whose six-decade profession has largely been devoted to geometric abstraction. It’s the artist’s first institutional survey in New York Metropolis, the place she has lived and labored for the previous 54 years.
Jack Whitten: The Messenger
Museum of Trendy Artwork, 11 West 53rd Avenue, Midtown, Manhattan
By August 2
This career-spanning exhibition ranges from Jack Whitten’s early ghostly experiments within the mid-’60s to the enduring floor-bound sweeping approach he pioneered within the ’70s and his intricate mosaics of the ’90s, in addition to different lesser-known experimental forays. From a piece of swirling sorbet oranges to a sewn black floor with a gap punched via it, these work invite you to rise up shut.
Consuelo Kanaga: Catch the Spirit
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Japanese Parkway, Crown Heights, Brooklyn
By August 3
Practically 200 movies, pictures, and items of ephemera comprise this six-decade retrospective of American photojournalist Consuelo Kanaga (1894–1978). A trailblazing but undersung artist, she used her digital camera to doc urgent social justice points, together with racial terror and oppression, city poverty, and staff’ rights.
Learn our full evaluation right here.
Sargent & Paris
Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Higher East Facet, Manhattan
By August 3
It’s a surprise to see Sargent’s “Madame X” — among the many nineteenth century’s biggest portraits — in particular person. Sargent & Paris is that and a lot extra, following the artist via his first decade in Paris, as a pupil, a Salon darling, and at last, the infamous artist behind that scandalous portrait. Don’t miss this one.
Learn our full evaluation right here.
Amy Sherald: American Chic
Whitney Museum of American Artwork, 99 Gansevoort Avenue, Meatpacking District, Manhattan
By August 10
Grisaille-style portraits of former First Woman Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor, a Black girl murdered by police who turned a rallying image within the Black Lives Matter motion, are standouts on this touring survey of over 40 work. The biggest exhibition of the Georgia-born artist’s profession up to now, it options new and infrequently seen works, notably those who discover on a regular basis Black American life by centering topics who’ve been traditionally ignored of body.
Learn our full evaluation right here.
Working Information: Shared Imaginings, New Futures
Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1040 Grand Concourse, Concourse Village, The Bronx
By August 17
Consider this exhibition as an incubator: 11 social apply artists and collectives create interactive instruments that assist foster group constructing across the South Bronx and past. Coding, gardening, listening, dancing, and contributing to a “quantum time capsule” are simply among the extra unorthodox actions you would possibly interact in.
Learn our full evaluation right here.
Saya Woolfalk: Empathic Universe
Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle, Columbus Circle, Manhattan
By September 7
For her first retrospective, Saya Woolfalk has remodeled the fifth ground of the museum right into a utopia for “Empathics,” an invented race of ladies with intricate programs of gown, storytelling, and social group, drawn from quite a lot of real-world cultures. The present’s astronomical preparations, psychedelic colour schemes, and, in fact, the Empathics themselves — with plush heads and painted faces, tugging strollers and holding fingers — will make stepping out into Columbus Circle an much more dizzying expertise than ordinary.
Within the Medium of Life: The Drawings of Beauford Delaney
The Drawing Middle, 35 Wooster Avenue, Soho, Manhattan
By September 14
Although higher recognized for work of the Harlem Renaissance, figurative portraits of mates like James Baldwin, and, later, summary expressionist works made in Paris, Beauford Delaney all the time cherished drawing. This exhibition spotlights that exact ardour via 90 works on paper spanning his profession, alongside work and numerous items of archival ephemera.
A Vigorous Thoughts: Jane Austen at 250
The Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, Murray Hill, Manhattan
By September 14
Coinciding with the 250th anniversary of celebrated English creator Jane Austen’s beginning, this present gathers a plethora of non-public objects together with letters, manuscripts, books, and artworks. Taken collectively, it opens up new outlooks on the trajectory of her profession and legacy.
Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers
Museum of Trendy Artwork, 11 West 53rd Avenue, Midtown, Manhattan
By September 27
Museum-goers who fell in love with Hilma af Klint’s big, colourful work on the Guggenheim just a few years in the past get to see a special facet of the artist with this exhibition. The small botanical and summary work that comprise this present provide perception into af Klint’s beginnings with all the fantastic thing about her monumental later artwork.
Breakdown: The Promise of Decay
Staten Island Museum, 1000 Richmond Terrace, Constructing A, Staten Island
By September 28
Decay will get a nasty rap — with out its nourishment, we wouldn’t survive. This fascinating present transforms the scientific topic right into a drama with actors like heroic mycelium and harmful microplastics. By artworks and museum objects, it reminds us that this unseen ecosystem is integral to our lives.
Above Floor: Artwork from the Martin Wong Graffiti Assortment
Museum of the Metropolis of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue, East Harlem, Manhattan
By October 5
Consisting of works collected and donated by the late painter Martin Wong, this exhibition traces the evolution of New York Metropolis graffiti from its underground roots to middle stage of the artwork world. Highlights embody works by Rammellzee, Lee Quiñones, Woman Pink, and Futura 2000.
Hearken to the Hyperallergic Podcast associated to the exhibition right here.
The Gatherers
MoMA PS1, 22–25 Jackson Avenue, Lengthy Island Metropolis, Queens
By October 6
Fourteen worldwide artists come collectively to create sculptures which can be hauntingly acquainted but not like something you’ve ever fairly seen. These artists, who embody Ser Serpas, Samuel Hindolo, and Nick Relph, deal in rubbish and surplus, waste and extra, drawing consideration to a rising aesthetics of civil building, deconstruction, and the palimpsests left by the too-quick biking between the 2.
Learn our full evaluation right here.
Lorna Simpson: Supply Notes
Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Higher East Facet, Manhattan
By November 2
Like her images, for which she is best recognized, Lorna Simpson’s portray apply is extra simply skilled than described: It’s apparitional and abraded, coolly distant with an undertow of emotion, and figuration nearly all the time dissolves into abstraction. Good factor The Met’s placing on the primary survey of Simpson’s work, with 30 works drawn from the final 10 years. These items revolve round huge themes — race, gender, historical past — to gesture at that query central to visible artwork: How do photos create which means?
Abang-guard: Makibaka
Queens Museum, Flushing Meadows, Corona Park, Queens
By January 18, 2026
The Queens Museum’s constructing served because the New York Metropolis Pavilion on the 1964–65 World’s Honest. Sixty years later, Abang-guard, a Filipino artist duo consisting of Maureen Catbagan and Jevijoe Vitug, revisit the truthful by reshaping the structure of the Philippines and New York pavilions. By work, performances, sculptures, and movies, they meditate on websites of Filipino-American remembrance, such because the Filipino Group Cultural Middle in Delano, California.
Umber Majeed: J😊Y TECH
Queens Museum, Flushing Meadows, Corona Park, Queens
By January 18, 2026
Umber Majeed is one other artist who riffs on the historical past of a 1964–65 World Honest pavilion — if constructing a counter-narrative via drawings, installations, ceramics, and even an augmented actuality expertise counts as “riffing.” It’s one other chapter in her ongoing exploration of the South Asian diaspora through avenues as various as a defunct vacationer company operated by her uncle and the aesthetics of Jackson Heights telephone restore outlets.
Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers
Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, Higher East Facet, Manhattan
By January 18, 2026
The exhibition’s central set up, which transforms the Guggenheim’s rotunda into a shocking show of books and crops, is cause sufficient to see this exhibition. However Johnson’s multimedia artwork exploring Black id is among the most considerate work you’ll see this summer time. It’s by turns humorous and poignant, and all the time highly effective.
Learn our full evaluation right here.
