EXHIBITS
There's always something exciting opening (& closing) in NYC. Don't miss these must-see temporary museum exhibits & pop-ups!
Also see our guides to NYC museums (which have spectacular permanent collections and host fun family programs), all the public art and gallery shows.
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Closing Soon
World of AI·magination – Last Weeknd
ArtechouseCloses Mar 17
Generative algorithms combine with human creativity to create a large-scale experiential digital artwork. Enter in a whimsical, dreamlike universe brought to life by technology.
Loud with lots of bright flashy lights on the floor and ceiling; may cause motion sickness in sensitive sorts. The experience repeats in a continuous loop. Presented by Artechouse.
Pick up a Kids Guide to learn more, create art, and connect with the exhibition.
Inside Chelsea Market, also home to many delicious food options.
🎟 New York & New Jersey residents save $5 Mon-Fri (proof of residency required)
Marvels of My Own Inventiveness + Unnamed Figures: Black Presence and Absence in the Early American North
American Folk Art MuseumCloses Mar 24
See a variety of portraits, places and more in two exhibits featuring Black American artists in an intimate museum.
Marvels of My Own Inventiveness, an immersive viewing of approximately 22 paintings by five contemporary Black artists in the American Folk Art Museum collection explores the artistic self-expression of Black makers working in and around abstraction.
Experience experiential encounters of close looking and contemplation. The show will feature paintings on view for the first time at AFAM, and include both large-scale and smaller works on paper, canvas, wood, and metal.
Unnamed Figures: Black Presence and Absence in the Early American North offers a new window onto Black representation in a region that is often overlooked in narratives of early African American history. Through 125 remarkable works including paintings, needlework, and photographs, this exhibition invites visitors to focus on figures who appear in—or are omitted from—early American images and will challenge conventional narratives that have minimized early Black histories in the North, revealing the complexities and contradictions of the region’s history between the late 1600s and early 1800s.
Taylor Swift: Storyteller
Museum of Arts and Design (MAD)Closes Mar 24
Take a career-spanning look at the artistic reinventions of the 14-time GRAMMY Award–winning artist who is one of the most prolific songwriters in history. Highlights include the cheerleader and ballerina ensembles from the award-winning music video for “Shake It Off”; the red wedding dress and bellhop uniform from “I Bet You Think About Me (Taylor’s Version),” and the sparkling ensemble from “Bejeweled.”
See dazzling concert attire by couture fashion houses along with props, jewelry, ephemera, and projections of music videos.
Entrance is on the hour and there are a limited number of tickets available each hour.
Includes general admission to the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD).
🎟️ Groups of 10 or more can book discounted admissions of $20 per person in advance.
⭐️ See more Taylor Swift events in NY.
Marta Minujín: Arte! Arte! Arte!
The Jewish MuseumCloses Mar 31
See nearly 100 works created over six decades by Argentinean multi-genre artist Marta Minujín, a defining force of Latin American art. Her bold experiments on view include pioneering, mattress-based soft sculptures; fluorescent large-scale paintings; psychedelic drawings and performances; and vintage film footage. The artist’s ephemeral works – happenings, participatory installations, and monumental public art – will be presented through rarely-seen photographs, video, and other documentation.
MORE MUST-SEES
Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility
GuggenheimCloses Apr 7
Works of art that feature partially obscured or hidden figures take over the iconic rotunda. Different ways of hiding include shadowing, rotating the body BS postproduction tools that blur or brighten. Most recent works draw upon digital technology, such as the chroma-key green (or blue) screen. More than 100 works by a group of 28…
Pipilotti Rist: Prickling Goosebumps & a Humming Horizon
Hauser & WirthCloses Apr 13
Experience new and recent sculptural works and projections by self-described ‘wild and friendly’ Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist in a major two- part exhibition opening in Chelsea. The exhibition, which will take place simultaneously at Hauser & Wirth’s 22nd Street location and Luhring Augustine’s 24th Street location, has been conceived by the artist as a multisensory…
Seaport Discovery: Exploring our Waters with Eric Carle
South Street Seaport MuseumCloses Apr 14
Visit a discovery room of maritime-themed art by the late Eric Carle, beloved creator of picture books for young children, at The South Street Seaport Museum. Huge immersive murals bring families into Carle’s book, A House for Hermit Crab, and the cargo-ship adventures of 10 Little Rubber Ducks. Activities include meeting a live hermit crab, driving ferries…
The Orchid Show: Florals in Fashion
New York Botanical GardenCloses Apr 21
The Orchid Show brings the catwalk to the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory in a fashion-inspired celebration of all things orchids. Catch the bold new designs of New York’s rising stars of the stitch with work by Collina Strada by Hillary Taymour, Dauphinette by Olivia Cheng, and FLWR PSTL by Kristen Alpaugh, fashionistas sure to create…
On the Lower East Side: Twenty-Eight Remarkable Women…and One Scoundrel
Museum at Eldridge StreetCloses May 5
Celebrate women who lived or worked in this vibrant immigrant neighborhood at the turn of the twentieth century. The figures depicted in the exhibit were responsible for groundbreaking developments in law, the arts, politics, social work, business, and education which we take for granted today, such as the eight-hour workday, child labor regulations, and women’s…
Artland: An Installation by Do Ho Suh and Children
Brooklyn MuseumCloses May 5
Enter an enchanting world of color and clay, Spocky Trees and Slimes in a fantastical ecosystem dreamed up in 2016 by artist Do Ho Suh and his two young daughters. This ever-growing and evolving series of islands is inhabited by characters and landscapes sculpted from nontoxic clay. There is no government or monarchy (though Slimes…
Opposites Abstract: A Mo Willems Exhibit
Brooklyn Children’s MuseumCloses May 12
Investigate opposites through hands-on experiences, art-making, and performances in an exhibit inspired by the eye-popping, emotive, and highly accessible words and images in Mo Willems’ bestselling children’s book of the same name.
Carolina Caycedo: Spiral for Shared Dreams
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)Closes May 19
11 handmade atarrayas, or fishing nets, created by four fishing communities in Mexico that face different environmental challenges, hang dramatically in MoMA’s second floor atrium. Look for atural and mythological figures appear on some of the nets: a shrimp; an eye representing Chalchiuhtlicue, an Aztec goddess associated with fresh water, childbirth, and sensuality; and the…
Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature
The Morgan Library & MuseumCloses Jun 9
Meet unforgettable animal characters like Peter Rabbit, Mr. Jeremy Fisher, and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle in an exhibit of artwork, picture letters books, manuscripts, and artifacts by beloved children’s book author and illustrator Beatrix Potter. Childhood summers spent in Scotland and the English Lake District nourished Potter’s love of nature, while her famous menagerie of pets inspired…
Life Cycles: The Materials of Contemporary Design
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)Closes Jul 7
Explores the regenerative power of design as it shifts its focus towards a more collaborative rapport with the natural world. See examples of design that is thoughful of materials’ life cycle. Cow manure collected from the streets of Indonesia is transformed into casings for loudspeakers and lamps. Bricks made from crop waste and fungi mycelium…
Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys
Brooklyn MuseumCloses Jul 7
A focused selection from the world-class collection of musical and cultural icons Swizz Beatz (Kasseem Dean) and Alicia Keys spotlights works by Black diasporic artists. Expansive in their collecting habits, the Deans, both born and raised in New York, champion a philosophy of “artists supporting artists.” Admire works by Gordon Parks, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lorna Simpson,…
This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture
Museum of the City of New YorkCloses Jul 21
Explore the many ways NYC has inspired storytelling across art forms. See both famous and lesser-known depictions of New York in film and television, visual and performing arts, music, poetry and literature, and even fashion. The full-floor exhibition is organized around the types of urban spaces where the stories of New York are told. “Tempo…
The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism
Metropolitan Museum Of ArtCloses Jul 28
Through some 160 works of painting, sculpture, photography, film, and ephemera, explore the comprehensive and far-reaching ways in which Black artists portrayed everyday modern life in the new Black cities that took shape in the 1920s–40s in New York City’s Harlem and nationwide in the early decades of the Great Migration when millions of African…
An Atlas of Es Devlin
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design MuseumCloses Aug 11
See over 300 sketches, paintings, illuminated paper cuts, and projection-mapped rotating miniature sculptures that form the seeds of some of the most iconic, cultural congregations of music, poetry, art, and activism in recent times in a survey of genre-defying British contemporary artist and designer Es Devlin. Globally renowned for her large-scale, illuminated installations and sculptures…
The Secret World of Elephants
American Museum of Natural HistoryCloses Aug 31
How do elephants “hear” with their feet? Use the 40,000 muscles in their trunks? Or reshape the forests and savannas they live in, creating an environment upon which many other species rely? Learn new science about both ancient and modern elephants, including elephants’ extraordinary minds and senses, why they’re essential to the health of their…
Courage to Act: Rescue in Denmark
Museum of Jewish HeritageCloses Dec 31
Learn about remarkable story of the rescue of the Danish Jews during the Holocaust. Together, Jewish and non-Jewish neighbors of all ages mobilized to create one of the most effective—and exceptional—examples of mass resistance and escape in modern history. Despite the enormous risk, ordinary citizens united against Nazism to save nearly 95% of Denmark’s Jewish…
The New York Public Library’s Treasures
New York Public LibraryCloses Dec 31
See some of the most extraordinary items from the 56 million in the New York Public Library’s collections of the last 125+ years. Encounter manuscripts, artworks, letters, still and moving images, recordings, and more that bring vividly to life voices of the past. Highlight’s include the stuffed inspiration for Winnie-the-Pooh and Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten copy…
Byzantine Bembé: New York by Manny Vega
Museum of the City of New YorkCloses Jul 4
Explore Manny Vega’s visual storytelling as it interweaves community stories with themes that range from African deities to urban mythologies, spanning the personal and the collective. His style has been dubbed “Byzantine Hip-Hop” for his uncompromising technical command that encompasses ancient Mediterranean mosaic-making and the electrifying lines of hyper-detailed Sharpie pen-and-ink drawings. Deeply rooted in…