August can feel like a hazy month, when those who have remained in the city for the summer can enjoy a (slightly) slower pace of life. Take time out to discover Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen’s tactile designs and how they interact with the body at the Brooklyn Museum, or perhaps discover the joyful and characterful presence of sculptural lighting at Carpenter’s Workshop Gallery. Do you really want to feel relaxed this summer? Head to Armory Park to see Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s ‘Clinamen’, a series of pools with floating ceramics which give the same impression as soothing wind chimes. Meanwhile, in 'Bases Loaded', Jordan Eagles blends his love of the Mets with the politics of blood donation. Don't miss a thing with our monthly updated guide to the best exhibitions to see in and around NYC.
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The best New York art exhibitions: what to see this month
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.
Material Intent: Color and Form
Carpenter’s Workshop Gallery until 18 October 2026
This exhibition showcases objects and furniture that play with light and space. The selected pieces showcase both contemporary and historic works, with a focus on lighting sculptures. The unusual shapes give the designs a characterful presence. Colour adds brightness to the showcase, creating a joyful experience viewing the interplay between object and space.
The cataclysm of binary star systems
Nunu Fine Art until 29 August
Presented by 603 Arts Foundation and located at Nunu Fine Art, an exhibition unites emerging artists from Asia, Latin America and the diaspora to create a welcoming platform to establish themselves in the US. Entitled ‘The cataclysm of binary star systems’, the exhibition focuses on celestial mythology, asking the artists to explore this theme, which resulted in a series of pieces that nod towards identity, migration and memory.
Clinamen
Park Avenue Armory until 9 August 2026
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s ‘Clinamen’ installation first appeared in June 2025 for the Saint Laurent show set. Since then, it has been transplanted from city to city before landing in New York. The installation merges sound with art to create an installation that feels alive. The floating ceramics are soothing and gentle, with each viewer's experience differing from the next
'Jordan Eagles: Bases Loaded'
Pioneer Works until 9 August 2026
In 'Bases Loaded,' Jordan Eagles blends his love of the Mets with the politics of blood donation. While the artist has been creating works with real animal blood since the 1990s, Eagles himself cannot be a blood donor, owing to being on PrEP, the medication that drastically reduces the risk of contracting HIV. The irony was not lost on the artist, and is the focus of a powerful ongoing exhibition.
Writer Osman Can Yerebakan
‘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
Dream of Vanishing
Pace Gallery until 14 August 2026
If you haven’t had enough of Paul Thek’s work at Galerie Buchholz, where we saw newspaper paintings, canvas pieces, and drawings created later in his career, along with a sculptural installation and a quilted flag, a major new show at Pace Gallery offers an exploration of his rarely seen works. Discover Thek’s raw ways of embodying emotionality.
pacegallery.com
Made in America: The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum until 27 September 2026
Peeps Marshmallow Chicks cooling on a conveyor belt before packaging, 2023. Photographed by Christopher Payne (American, born 1968). Just Born Quality Confections (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania).
‘Made in America: The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne’ is an exhibition featuring Payne’s intricately detailed photography of America’s factories. The exhibition brings together more than 70 large-format photographs captured by Payne over a decade-long photographic journey to learn more about the craft of both industrial and artisanal making in the United States.
cooperhewitt.org
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.
Certainly an Act: Works on Paper by Pope.L
The Drawing Center until 27 September 2026
Known primarily for his performance, installation, and text-based art, Pope.L transformed drawing into a space of humorous critique, challenging audiences to see and think differently about how we interpret the world around us. Certainly an Act showcases more than two-hundred works—many never before publicly exhibited—ranging from the early 1980s to the artist’s final years. Here we see the core of his practice: a testing ground for ideas and a site for play and contradiction.
drawingcenter.org
Alex Prager: Pacific Noise
Lehmann Maupin until 14 August 2026
Los Angeles is the muse in Alex Prager’s solo exhibition. The showcase unites four large photographs that examine the city’s allure, while looking at distorted memory. Prager was influenced by artists such as Ed Ruscha and Joan Didion, creating pieces which makes the viewer question how people’s perception of reality may shape how the future is.
Guimi You: When the Sun Shines Again
Lehmann Maupin until 14 August, 2026
South Korean artist Guimi You pays tribute to women who have returned to creating after time away. ‘When the Sun Shines Again’ turns to the art of beginning again, which is captured through a recurring image of sunlight. The artist looks towards east Asian painterly traditions including a sort of transparency in each piece, coupled with movements such as romanticism and surrealism.
Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley
Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) until 16 August 2026
‘Uncanny Valley’ invites visitors into the minds of the Los Angeles-based duo, best known as the Haas Brothers. Since starting their practice 15 years ago, the twins have created a genre-blurring world that spans art, furniture, craft and technology through hybrid creatures and kooky forms. The show, organized with the Cranbrook Art Museum in Detroit, displays 85 of their works against a backdrop of surreal algorithmically-generated landscapes
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.’
Summer of Moomin
The New York Botanical Garden until 13 September 2026
After the Moomins' debut US exhibition last year at the Brooklyn Public Library, Tove Jansson’s mystical characters are back, this time taking over The New York Botanical Garden. It is a fun, interactive installation which encourages people to get outdoors. The takeover features a clue-based quest, nature crafts, and large-scale character moments.
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.
Julian Schnabel: Italy Through Its Trees
Pace Gallery until 14 August 2026
Transport to Italy with Julian Schnabel’s new textured paintings. Schnabel first went to Italy in his twenties, and recently reminisced about the country’s landscape and architecture, which has now inspired this latest series. While living near the Villa Borghese in Rome during the filming of his forthcoming feature film, In the Hand of Dante, Schnabel began to think about particular Italian trees. Exploring this as the subject matter comprises the new exhibition at Pace.
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.
Marcel Duchamp
MoMa until 22 August 2026
Featuring 300 artworks, this exhibition marks the first retrospective of the artist’s work in the United States since 1973. Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) had a career spanning six decades, and worked across varying mediums and played a key part in modern art movements without adhering to one in particular. His work was defined by continuous reinvention and experimentation, having once said, ‘I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.’
Carol Bove
Guggenheim until 2 August 2026
Located in the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed rotunda, Carol Bove’s work is showcased in a first museum survey. It is a retrospective of her career, spanning more than 25 years, and looks at her interest in how her work sits within its surroundings. Discover towering steel sculptures, and paper collages, which explore scale, space, surface and colour. Throughout the exhibition she includes areas for rest and interaction, including comfortable seating built into the architecture, a library in which materials from the artist’s studio may be handled directly, and her own chess tables which encourage people to get involved and play.
Whitney Biennial
Whitney Museum of American Art until 23 August, 2026
Still from the Whitney Biennial 2026 | Historical Trailer
The longest-running survey of contemporary art in the United States is back as the Whitney museum prepares for its 82nd edition. The biennial will showcase 56 artists and collectives that present work which spans across themes of family relations, geopolitics, mythologies and more.
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