Fill out your autumn cultural calendar with our pick of this month's best New York art exhibitions. From the New Museum’s group exhibition, which features works by American visual artist June Leaf, to Julie Curtiss’ paintings with obscured human faces and expressive animals at Gagosian – don't miss a thing with our monthly updated guide to what’s on in and around NYC.
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The best New York art exhibitions: what to see this month
Julie Curtiss: ‘Unreal’
Gagosian from 10 November until 19 December 2026
Artist Julie Curtiss presents her debut New York gallery exhibition. Here, she showcases paintings set across cityscapes. The compositions feel tightly cropped and feature obscured human faces, paired with expressive-looking animals. Through this, the artist explores identity, gender, and aging. There is sly humour in her works, which offer an urban ‘unreality’.
Gareth Cadwallader: ‘Goodnight moon’
GRIMM New York from 6 November 2026 until 9 January 2027
Moving between death, birth, and parenthood, artist Gareth Cadwallader presents a nine-panel sequence which charts an autobiographical shift from son to father. The solo exhibition features small-format watercolours, which tenderly examine fatherhood, grief, and exhaustion. Cadwallader portrays domestic life and nocturnal care as a shared, deeply interconnected human experience.
Eunnam Hong: 成長物
Mendes Wood DM from 6 November until 19 December 2026
Born in South Korea and based in New York, artist Eunnam Hong creates cinematic oil paintings on linen that merge self-representation and domestic spaces. Her new exhibition titled 成長物 means "Growth", "Grown Things", or "Growing Entity / Matter". It ties directly into her themes of biological and personal metamorphosis—reflecting how bodies, alter egos, clones, and psychological states evolve, expand, and take form within domestic and staged environments. Her work usually consists of wigged versions of herself staged in doorways or stairways, hinting at a relationship between freedom and control,
Pau takes the form of a mortal bitch
SITUATIONS until 21 November 2026
‘Pau takes the form of a mortal bitch’ is the artist Pau S. Pescador’s debut gallery exhibition. The showcase examines trans feminine identity amid anti-trans legislation; the show features playful Polaroid self-portraits exploring Latine trans life, and video.
The Bowery: Devil's Mile'
New Museum until 31 January 2027
The group exhibition features works by artist June Leaf, including her sculpture The Head, which was originally intended to be a ten-foot walking figure before factory production halted at just the head. Wallpaper* reflects on the life of an extraordinary artist and her Bleeker Street studio; read more here.
Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous
The Met, from 4 October to 31 January 2027
Jackson Pollock met Lee Krasner in New York in 1941. The emerging artists married in 1945, and remained together until Pollock died in 1956. Here, both their art is displayed in tandem, reevaluating Pollock’s work with Krasners, and how they are intertwined, tracing parallel lives and practices
Michael Richards: Free F’All
Brooklyn Museum from September 11, 2026–June 6, 2027
The Brooklyn Museum presents a poignant exhibition by artist Michael Richards (American, 1963–2001). The sculpture showcases a pilot with his eyes closed. His body is pierced with dozens of nails. Richards designed the sculpture to commemorate the Tuskegee Airmen, the US Air Force’s first Black unit which was formed in 1941. Richards lost his life on September 11, 2001, while working at his studio in the World Trade Center’s North Tower.
'Zoya Cherkassky: American Cooking'
Fort Gansevoort September 16, 2026 - November 7, 2026
The Ukrainian-born artist Zoya Cherkassky presents a new series of paintings and drawings that explores ordinary moments, like cooking, through the lens of someone living in a place that feels familiar yet different. Her paintings are vibrant, full of colour, and littered with dry humour throughout. Cherkassky moved to Israel after the collapse of the Soviet Union. She also left Israel in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks in 2023. Now residing in Long Island, New York, her work mirrors her adjustment to living in the United States.
- Read our interview with Zoya Cherkassky
Groomed: Bea Scaccia
Gagosian 22 September until 23 December, 2026
For artist Bea Scaccia, painting scenes almost overflow with nods to feminine style and varying textures. In a warm, earthy palette, Scaccia captures wigs, costume jewellery, shoes, zippers, belts, hair clips, bows, tassels, and faux fur. Together, the assortment of things creates human-like figures which feel disturbing at first, but as each detail is unlocked, the scenario has a sort of humour to it. Depicted at night, each scene is illuminated with a warm glow from fringe lamps.
Jeannette Montgomery Barron ‘Table Top’
Neverstill Wines until 31 December 2026
This exhibition is a fun one just outside of the city. Enjoy a glass of wine (or two) and admire the photography by Jeannette Montgomery Barron. Her ‘Table Top’ series looks at various tables around Europe in an assortment of layouts and colours. The photographer is best known for her 1980s New York portraits. This shift marks a simple and relatable dialogue in the aftermath of shared meals and drinks.
Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses
Brooklyn Museum until 6 December 2026
The work by Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen is explored in this visually tactile exhibition. It invites the viewer to discover the body’s relationship with clothing and how it is adapting to a changing world. Alongside her work are contemporary pieces by various artists, natural history such as fossils and corals, all of which have shaped her creative process.
‘Keith Haring: A World in Motion’
60 White, ongoing
Recreated in 60 White’s multistorey space is San Francisco nightclub DV8, a hedonistic playground of the 1980s-90s that featured murals painted by Haring. This kind of community element is central to Haring’s work, and is also epitomised in his chalk drawings on black paper, which became familiar sights on the New York subway, and the Sister Cities – For Tokyo painting that he created in 1985, marking the friendship between New York and Tokyo, a bold and brilliant tribute to two cities he loved. Born in New York, it was an energy that spread around the world, taking shape in an instantly recognisable shared visual language, a fluidity celebrated now with an exhibition,
Writer Hannah Silver
Pierre Huyghe: UUmwelt
Museum of Modern Art until 29 November 2026
Pierre Huyghe’s UUmwelt uses machine learning to explore what it might look like if nonhuman entities could reconstruct our thoughts. Huyghe explores what it means to see a world that is no longer centred on the human mind through otherworldly pieces. The exhibition helps to engage in conversation, which redefines technology, human consciousness, and the natural environment.
The Life Force: Intimate Portraits from the Amparo y Manuel Collection
Museum of Sex until November 2026
At the Museum of Sex, 45 works from the Amparo y Manuel Collection dive into the relationship between portraiture and eroticism. Spanning painting, sculpture, drawing and photography by artists including Amoako Boafo, Tracey Emin and Bert Stern, the showcase features large-scale figurative portraits that show vulnerability and intimacy.
‘In 'The Life Force,' the body becomes a space where Eros and Thanatos exist in constant tension,' says Tam Gryn, curator and managing director at the Museum of Sex Miami, in a statement. ‘The artworks hold that complexity, between presence and disappearance, pleasure and instability–and reveal how intimacy can function as a form of resistance against decay. Within that fragility, the human impulse to love, feel, connect and remain alive becomes incredibly powerful.’
Gerhard Richter: Landschaften
David Zwirner New York: 20th Street from 7 May 2026
Gerhard Richter is known for his photorealist landscape paintings. Here, his work spans from the 1960s to the 2000s. Having begun looking at landscape as a subject for painting around six decades ago, he swiftly created atmospheric and calming compositions. His technique, and end result, nods to classics rooted in art history, and effortlessly captures the movement and tone of his travels. The exhibition is displayed in chronological order, each room dedicated to a period within the artist’s career.
Helen Frankenthaler & Anthony Caro: SIMILITUDES: Color, Form, Friendship
Yares Art from 11 April 2026
‘SIMILITUDES: Color, Form, Friendship' is an exhibition exploring the friendship between American painter Helen Frankenthaler and British sculptor Anthony Caro, who first became acquainted in New York in 1959. The exhibition looks at the similarities between both their work, and positions their friendship as a place for creative expression. Expect to see over 30 works including paintings, sculptures, and archival materials that illuminate their shared appreciation and use of colour, form, material and space. Alongside this, a selection of letters exchanged between them which spanned over five decades.
Jack Whitten: Prime Mover
Dia Beacon, long term view
The sculptor and artist Jack Whitten moved to New York in 1960. After a trip to Greece in 1969 he began to make sculptures and experimental drawings, which then accompanied his painting practice of more than five decades. Dia Beacon now presents a group of recently acquired works on paper which Whitten made during the 1970s using dry and wet black pigments. His work is abstract and explores new tools, materials, and methods of his own design to generate images
Shining a light on The Subway Sun
New York Transit Museum, ongoing
Historically on the New York subway, posters advised and informed users, encouraging correct etiquette and manners. For 'Shining a light on The Subway Sun', posters designed by illustrators Fred G Cooper and Amelia Opdyke Jones are celebrated, with the exhibition showcasing more than 40 examples from the museum's collection of approximately 120 original poster artworks and more than 100 vintage posters, most produced between 1936 and 1965.
Songs of New York
Museum of the City of New York, ongoing
LL Cool J with Cut Creator, E-Love, and B-Rock, Janette Beckman (1950-), 1986, Museum of the City of New York, 2016
Featuring music from 100 artists, ‘Songs of New York’ explores a full range of genres that have influenced the city from the 1920s through to the present day. Different genres explore different locations, from subways to apartments, nightclubs to neighbourhoods in this immersive, interactive exhibition.
mcny.org
'In the Shadow of the American Dream: David Wojnarowicz'
The Museum of Modern Art, ongoing
Wojnarowicz's work has been recontextualised by MoMA, which has presented it alongside that of the artist's contemporaries from the 1980s 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