In the 20th century, New York cemented itself as the home of Abstract Expressionism and subversive Pop Art. These days, the city is a canvas for a new school of artists pushing the boundaries of media and holding social justice as their primary message.
World-renowned institutions such as MoMA, The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, and the Guggenheim continue to draw tourists and art aficionados in equal measure, and leading commercial galleries such as Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace, Perrotin and David Zwirner all occupy vast square footage, some with multiple locations.
With Manhattan’s art fairs, New York is proving that it remains a powerhouse of creativity, originality, commerce, and connection. Here are the best art exhibitions to see around the city now. Visiting? See the Wallpaper* edit of New York's best design hotels.
The best New York art exhibitions: what to see this month
Wayne Thiebaud: Summer Days
Acquavella Galleries, until 14 June 2024
'Summer Days' traces the artist's career through the decades, from his candy-coloured beach scenes to his capturing of the quotidian, in his trademark nostalgic style.
Anthony Gormley: ‘Aerial’
White Cube New York, until 30 June 2024
New York City itself is an inspiration behind the work that lends its name to Antony Gormley’s ‘Aerial’ at White Cube. The lattice of light but solid aluminium bars invites the viewer in. ‘New York remains, for me, this extraordinary place which has a very clear grid system, but it acknowledges early First Nation pathways that run through it and contradict the absolute grid system, down the cross streets and along the avenues. You feel the wind, you smell the sea view. The light in New York is extraordinary. There's a crispness and clarity,’ Gormley told Wallpaper* arts editor Hannah Silver in an interview ahead of the show’s opening. Upstairs, there’s a chance to see Gormley’s cast-iron Big Double Blockworks (all 2023), connecting stacks of blocks that consider interdependency, the need for human relationships.
Peter Hujar: Rialto
The Ukrainian Museum, New York, until 1 September 2024
Born to an immigrant Ukrainian family in New York, Peter Hujar became one of the major American photographers of the late 20th Century. This exhibition, focusing on the first fifteen years of his career, showcases three important photo series, which paved the way for the artist he would become.
Three bodies of work created in the 1950s and 1960s are the focus of Peter Hujar: Rialto, with many photographs from Southbury (1957), Florence (1958), and the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo (1963) previously unseen. Also on view are Hujar’s black and white portraits of the characters who frequented bohemian downtown New York, including Iggy Pop and Janis Joplin.
'In the Shadow of the American Dream: David Wojnarowicz'
Museum of Modern Art, ongoing
Wojnarowicz's work has been recontextualised by MoMA, who have presented it alongside his contemporaries from the eighties New York downtown scene including filmmaker Marion Scemama, Donald Moffett, Agosto Machado and painter Martin Wong. Important works here include Wojnarowicz's's 1987 Fire, while Machado’s Shrine is a moving time capsule of ephemera. It includes a ‘Justice for Marsha’ sign, referring to questions around the suspicious death of trans activist Marsha P Johnson in 1992, as well as club flyers and memorial service cards.
Writer: Lauren Cochrane
Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory
El Museo del Barrio until August 11 2024
‘Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory’ marks a significant milestone as the first retrospective dedicated to the pioneering Chicanx installation artist, curator and theorist Amalia Mesa-Bains. Organised by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and hosted at El Museo del Barrio in New York, the exhibition provides a rare and long-overdue opportunity to delve into three decades of the artist’s genre-defying artworks, including her emblematic large-scale altar installations, prints, books and codices – many seen together for the first time. Writer: Sofia De La Cruz.
‘The Real Thing: Unpacking Product Photography’
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Until 4 August 2024
Comprised of more than 60 works from the first century of photo advertising (beginning in the 1850s), the images in ‘The Real Thing: Unpacking Product Photography’ were pulled solely from the Met’s own collection in New York – a constraint that helped set parameters says curator Virginia McBride, noting that it is not a complete history of commercial photography – and most of the pieces have rarely been publicly exhibited. The curator was keen to rectify this, she says, and moreover she was curious to unpack their role in shaping the visual language of modernism, as the show endeavours to do.
Writer: Zoe Whitfield
Light Line: Jenny Holzer
The Guggenheim, until September 29
Former Wallpaper* Guest Editor, Jenny Holzer, transforms The Guggenheim's Frank Lloyd-Wright designed rotunda with a spiralling display of LED panels, broadcasting phrases from her series of essays. A reimagination of her 1989 exhibition at Guggenheim, Light Line highlights the incisive use of the written word across time and media in Holzer’s practice. In addition to the LED sign, the exhibition features a selection of Holzer’s works from the 1970s to the present day, including paintings, works on paper, and stone pieces. Between May 16-20, the building's exterior will also be used to project a selection of poems and observations which speak on the need for peace.
Writer: Charlotte Gunn
Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys
The Brooklyn Museum, until July 7 2024
Alongside their combined sixteen GRAMMY awards, New York power couple Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys are avid art collectors and fierce supporters of Black creatives. Here, for the first time, work from the pair's impressive and sizeable personal collection is on display at the Brooklyn Museum, celebrating Black diasporic artists: nearly forty “giants” of the art world, including Nina Chanel Abney, Derrick Adams, Jordan Casteel, Barkley L. Hendricks, Esther Mahlangu, Gordon Parks, Amy Sherald, Lorna Simpson, and Kehinde Wiley, among others.
Writer: Charlotte Gunn
Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion
The Met until September 2 2024
The Met’s latest Costume Institute exhibition, ‘Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’ is a multi-sensory journey of sight, smell and touch.
‘Fashion is a living art form that requires most of our senses for its fullest appreciation and the greatest understanding,' said curator, Andrew Bolton. As a result, visitors are encouraged to smell, hear and touch the fabrics of the garments. With a collection of 200 pieces from the likes of Dior, Lanvin, Loewe and Phillip Treacy, the exhibition is impressive in scope and scale, with garments ranging from the 1600s to today.
Read our first-look review of 'Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion'.
