Featured Events in New York in November 2024 (May Updated)

See stunning jewelry pieces that trace the history of hip-hop from the 1980s to today. Ice Cold: An Exhibition of Hip-Hop Jewelry celebrates hip-hop’s cultural influence through exquisite jewelry worn by some of its iconic stars. Highlights include Slick Rick’s dazzling crown, Notorious BIG’s legendary gold “Jesus piece,” a diamond-encrusted Roc-A-Fella medallion from the record label co-founded by Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj’s sparkling “Barbie” pendant, and pieces from Erykah Badu, A$AP Rocky, Joey Bada$$, FERG and Tyler, the Creator, among others. Building on New York City’s celebration of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary as a global phenomenon, Ice Cold will highlight the evolution of hip-hop jewelry over the past fifty years, starting with the oversized gold chains adopted by rap pioneers in the 1980s, all the way to the 1990s, when emcees turned business moguls wore record label pendants sparkling with diamonds and platinum.

In 9999, Cameron A. Granger uses the framework of video games and magic to imagine an alternative method of liberation for Black communities from the compounding effects of racist urban planning. In early role playing video games, due to low computer processing capacity, 9,999 was the numerical damage limit done to a character that could be registered on screen. Yet sometimes, additional damage continued to accrue off-screen – incapacitating, yet unseen. Granger takes this concept of the concealed yet relentless harm, and applies it to the cumulative corrosion of segregative design, environmental racism, and gentrification. To make sense of the convoluted legacies of systemic injustice, Granger visualizes the wounds left by structural violence through “black holes” that rip the city’s fabric. His films, prints, and sculptures create a video game-like narrative that provides puzzles, tips, and charms that aid in deciphering these black holes. In diagnosing the root cause of the issue, Granger proposes that the black holes are the result of a spell cast by nefarious, hidden forces. To break the curse, he speculates what might be possible if the black holes could be used as portals to share knowledge. Seeking answers, Granger turns to stage magicians, root workers, and conjurers. His work references Black magicians such as Henry “Box” Brown (1815-1897) whose performances alluded to his 1849 self-emancipation via mail, and Benjamin Rucker aka Black Herman (1892-1934) whose magic acts and conjuring remedies built a massive following in the 1920s among Black communities. Granger also draws on the practice of conjuring, invoking remedies for locating harm’s source, protecting, and healing. Additionally, he calls upon the Haitian folklore of zombies, originally mythologized as the spirits of enslaved laborers trapped to haunt plantations in their afterlife. Granger reconceptualizes their spirits as a unified force reemerging from the grave to aid in liberation. Sourcing wisdom from Black forebears whose knowledge helped their communities self-emancipate, heal, and thrive, Granger offers a collective vision of empowered futurity. In a dimly lit gallery that mimics the digital landscape of a video game, Granger creates a narrative where memories of and knowledge from Black ancestors provide clues, methods, and tools that once pieced together, may reveal the key to break free. Cameron A. Granger: 9999 is curated by Sarah Cho, Assistant Curator.

Follow Australian Green Sea Turtle Bunji as she embarks on her first solo journey across the high seas and the incredible animals she encounters along the way. In A Turtle Odyssey, narrated by Academy Award winner Russell Crowe, explore the amazing life of a sea turtle from hatchling to adult, and the great migrations undertaken by generations before her. As Bunji leaves her Great Barrier Reef habitat and swims hundreds of miles, she encounters many marine animals—including humpback whales, parrot fish, and even a great white shark—as well as threats to her survival, like plastic waste.

A mandala is a diagram of the universe—a map of true reality that in Tibet is used to conceptualize a rapid path to enlightenment. This exhibition explores the imagery of the Himalayan Buddhist devotional art through over 100 paintings, sculptures, textiles, instruments, and an array of ritual objects, mostly dating between the 12th and 15th centuries. This dazzling visual experience provides a roadmap for understanding Himalayan Buddhist worship through early masterworks, juxtaposed with a newly commissioned contemporary installation by Tibetan artist Tenzing Rigdol.

This exhibition—part of the American Wing’s 100th anniversary year programming—highlights select additions to the department’s works-on-paper holdings over the past decade. These distinctive drawings and prints, dating from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, have been selected from more than 175 that have recently joined the collection. As a group, they reveal the American Wing’s renewed commitment to strengthening and expanding our collecting of works on paper by both well-known and historically understudied figures, including women and artists of color, from diverse communities and across a broad geographic range. Most of the featured artists worked in various media and are also represented in the Museum by paintings, sculptures, or decorative objects, such as Fidelia Bridges, William Glackens, Laura Coombs Hills, Charles Ethan Porter, and John Singer Sargent.

Fleiss-Vallois presents a survey of works by Francis Picabia curated by the artist Harold Ancart. As per the title “7 Paintings and 1 Painting” the exhibition features 7 paintings by Picabia from the key periods of his output along with one painting by Ancart that draws a line between the work of the two artists.

Fleiss-Vallois presents a survey of works by Francis Picabia curated by the artist Harold Ancart. As per the title “7 Paintings and 1 Painting” the exhibition features 7 paintings by Picabia from the key periods of his output along with one painting by Ancart that draws a line between the work of the two artists.

The rich tradition of Mexican printmaking—ranging from the 18th to the mid-20th century—is explored in this exhibition of works drawn primarily from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among the early works on display are those by Mexico’s most famous printmaker, José Guadalupe Posada, whose depictions of skeletons engaged in different activities helped Mexican art establish a global identity. After the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), printmaking proved to be an ideal medium for artists who wanted to address social and political issues and express resistance to the rise of fascism around the world. Artists also turned to printmaking to reproduce Mexican murals from the 1920s and to produce exhibition posters, prints for mass media, and portfolios celebrating Mexican costumes and customs.

A defining Black woman artist of the twentieth century, Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012) has not received the mainstream art-world attention afforded many of her peers. The Brooklyn Museum, in partnership with the National Gallery of Art, closes this gap with Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies, an exhibition of over 200 works that gives this revolutionary artist and radical activist her due. A deft sculptor and printmaker, devout feminist, and lifelong social justice advocate, Catlett was uniquely committed to both her creative process and political convictions. Growing up during the Great Depression, she witnessed class inequality, racial violence, and U.S. imperialism firsthand, all while pursuing an artistic education grounded in the tenets of modernism. Catlett would protest injustices for nearly a century, via both soaring artworks and on-the-ground activism. Born in Washington, DC, Catlett settled permanently in Mexico in 1946 and for the rest of her life she worked to amplify the experiences of Black and Mexican women. Inspired by sources ranging from African sculpture to works by Barbara Hepworth and Käthe Kollwitz, Catlett never lost sight of the Black liberation struggle in the United States. Characterized by bold lines and voluptuous forms, her powerful work continues to speak directly to all those united in the fight against poverty, racism, and imperialism.

From September 20 to November 2, the presentation at the gallery’s 540 West 25th Street flagship in New York will focus on Takamatsu’s Shadow and Perspective concepts—throughout his entire oeuvre, Takamatsu used the term “concept” to denote certain ideas or phenomena. Bringing together a selection of his paintings, drawings, and sculptural objects dating from 1966 to 1997, this exhibition will showcase his inventive, deeply philosophical practice and his important role in the development of Conceptual Art. A prolific artist who produced thousands of works over the course of his 40-year career, Takamatsu worked across painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, and performance, exploring questions about perception, space, existence, and absence. Early in his practice, during the 1960s, he staged performative interventions in public spaces around Tokyo as part of the artist collective Hi Red Center, liberating art from its traditional context and shaking the foundations of the Japanese art world at the time. Presenting politically minded actions in public spaces throughout postwar Tokyo, Hi Red Center sought to dissolve boundaries between art and life—producing what the group called a “descent into the everyday”—through experimental and unorthodox approaches to making. It was also during this decade, in 1968, that Takamatsu represented Japan at the 34th Venice Biennale, cementing his status as a key figure within the international avant-gard.

Schütte considers his subjects and selects his materials while contextualizing them in a time and place: Germany at the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st. Since his student days at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Schütte has approached art with a critical eye. Exploring, then rejecting, Minimal and Conceptual art, his work “brought the story in again.” These stories encompass the personal and the historical. Schütte’s work challenges established artistic norms by revitalizing genres rooted in past traditions and making them relevant in the present and for the future.

The posters in this display represent a snapshot within Bućan’s expansive career, focusing on the monumental works he created for his first season with the Croatian National Theatre in Split, who hired him between 1982 and 1986. While he had previously produced a few large-format posters for other organizations or events, these images made up of six separate sheets of paper became his best-known designs, transforming exterior walls into urban canvases for his artistic explorations. Each image references numerous moments in art history and yet remains extremely modern, so much so that many of the posters from the first and second seasons of his tenure at the theater were given their own exhibition the following year. In 1984, the posters were seen as so particularly Yugoslavian that they were chosen to represent the country at the 41st Venice Biennale, revealing his work to a global audience and solidifying him as one of the most exciting and innovative poster designers in the world.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has launched its first-ever major museum exhibition to examine the career of influential 20th-century architect Paul Rudolph, a second-generation Modernist architect who came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s alongside peers such as Eero Saarinen and I.M. Pei. Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolphexhibits the full breadth of Rudolph’s important contributions to architecture—from his early experimental houses in Florida to his civic commissions rendered in concrete, from his utopian visions of urban megastructures and mixed-use skyscrapers to his extraordinary immersive New York interiors. The exhibition offers visitors the opportunity to experience the evolution and diversity of Rudolph’s legacy and to better understand how his work continues to inspire ideas for urban renewal and reconstruction around the world. The exhibition features more than 80 artifacts of varying scales, ranging from small objects collected throughout his life to a wide range of materials produced in his office, including drawings, models, furniture, material samples, and photographs.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has launched its first-ever major museum exhibition to examine the career of influential 20th-century architect Paul Rudolph, a second-generation Modernist architect who came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s alongside peers such as Eero Saarinen and I.M. Pei. Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolphexhibits the full breadth of Rudolph’s important contributions to architecture—from his early experimental houses in Florida to his civic commissions rendered in concrete, from his utopian visions of urban megastructures and mixed-use skyscrapers to his extraordinary immersive New York interiors. The exhibition offers visitors the opportunity to experience the evolution and diversity of Rudolph’s legacy and to better understand how his work continues to inspire ideas for urban renewal and reconstruction around the world. The exhibition features more than 80 artifacts of varying scales, ranging from small objects collected throughout his life to a wide range of materials produced in his office, including drawings, models, furniture, material samples, and photographs.

52 Walker is pleased to announce its thirteenth exhibition, Baby Blue Benzo, which features work by Canadian-born, New York–based artist Sara Cwynar. This presentation focuses on a new film—for which the show is titled—shot on both digital video and 16mm and projected at monumental scale. To complement Baby Blue Benzo, a series of related photographs will be installed throughout the gallery space.

Sanxingdui is one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of mankind in the 20th century. The Sanxingdui site is a Bronze Age civilization of about 3,600 years ago. It was accidentally discovered by a farmer in Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, China in 1927 and is a treasure trove of cultural relics. With large-scale excavations in 1986 and 2021, more than 30,000 pieces of gold, jade, ivory, stone, pottery, and the most unique bronze objects have been unearthed so far. These mysteriously patterned bronze objects, including the 2.62-meter-high "Bronze Standing Man", the 1.38-meter-wide "Bronze Mask" and the 3.95-meter-high "Bronze Sacred Tree", are unprecedented and sublime masterpieces. "Sanxingdui Encounter: A 12K National Treasure Micro-Viewing Global Journey" is an immersive digital exhibition, the first of its kind produced in collaboration between the Sanxingdui Museum and the Memor Museum, which will open in October 2024 on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, New York. This exhibition, which has been shown in Beijing, Shenzhen, Paris and Doha, is now on display in New York for the first time, using one-to-one replicas of the Sanxingdui Museum's collections and ultra-high-definition technology to showcase precious artifacts unearthed from the Sanxingdui site. For the first time, through the immersive 12k digital hall, VR and AI interactive activities, you can experience Sanxingdui up close digitally and appreciate the mysterious ancient Shu civilization.

Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350 examines an exceptional moment at the dawn of the Italian Renaissance and the pivotal role of Sienese artists—including Duccio, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini—in defining Western painting. In the decades leading up to the catastrophic onset of the plague around 1350, Siena was the site of phenomenal artistic innovation and activity. While Florence is often positioned as the center of the Renaissance, this presentation offers a fresh perspective on the importance of Siena, from Duccio’s profound influence on a new generation of painters to the development of narrative altarpieces and the dissemination of artistic styles beyond Italy.

On October 17, Hollis Taggart will open Turbulent Space, Shifting Colors, Abstract Expressionist artist Charles Cajori’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Known for blending bold abstraction with figural experimentation, Cajori’s canvases display a mastery of color and dynamism. Charles Cajori: Turbulent Space, Shifting Colors is the first exhibition of the artist’s work in NYC in nearly in a decade, and will function as a “mini-retrospective,” featuring works from the early 1950s to the late 1970s. The exhibition will be on view from October 17 through November 16, 2024, and will be celebrated with an opening reception on Saturday, October 19, from 2-5PM, with a discussion with the art historian John Seed starting at 2PM.

Barbie®: A Cultural Icon charts the 65-year history of Barbie and the doll’s global impact on fashion and popular culture through an expansive display of more than 250 vintage dolls, life-size fashion designs, advertisements, and other ephemera, along with exclusive video interviews with the doll's designers. Visitors to the exhibition will trace the evolution of Barbie from a child’s toy to a global icon, exploring the style trends, careers, and identities that Barbie has embodied and popularized since her debut in 1959.

Barbie®: A Cultural Icon charts the 65-year history of Barbie and the doll’s global impact on fashion and popular culture through an expansive display of more than 250 vintage dolls, life-size fashion designs, advertisements, and other ephemera, along with exclusive video interviews with the doll's designers. Visitors to the exhibition will trace the evolution of Barbie from a child’s toy to a global icon, exploring the style trends, careers, and identities that Barbie has embodied and popularized since her debut in 1959.

Cecily Brown's figurative and abstract painting language, fusion of classical narratives, oversized works, and bold female perspective have given her a firm foothold in contemporary art history.

Susan Sheehan Gallery presents Sunshine on a Cloudy Day: California Prints 1960 – 1990, a group exhibition that brings together artworks printed and published at some of the most influential printmaking workshops in California. Borrowing from the lyrics of the 1964 song My Girl by The Temptations, the title of the exhibition references the weather on the West Coast, arguably one reason why so many artists established on the East Coast would often retreat to these workshops for extended periods of time and create some of their most significant bodies of work.

Pets and the City explores the visual history of New Yorkers and their animal companions over the last two and a half centuries, tracing the ever-evolving relationship between Gotham’s people and its animals as the city grew increasingly urbanized and industrialized. Through a broad spectrum of works of art, objects, documents, memorabilia, and clips from film and television, the exhibition surveys the evolution of pets—from their presence among the Lenape and Haudenosaunee and the hunting culture of settlers through their insinuation into the urban family and onto the pampered pets of today, which enjoy their own public rights.

Pets and the City explores the visual history of New Yorkers and their animal companions over the last two and a half centuries, tracing the ever-evolving relationship between Gotham’s people and its animals as the city grew increasingly urbanized and industrialized. Through a broad spectrum of works of art, objects, documents, memorabilia, and clips from film and television, the exhibition surveys the evolution of pets—from their presence among the Lenape and Haudenosaunee and the hunting culture of settlers through their insinuation into the urban family and onto the pampered pets of today, which enjoy their own public rights.

Lévy Gorvy Dayan presents Francesco Clemente: Summer Love in the Fall, marking the venerated artist’s first exhibition at the gallery’s Beaux-Arts townhouse at 19 East 64th Street. Here, across multiple floors, Clemente debuts recent large-scale paintings in oil, watercolors, and frescoes, demonstrating his engagement with form and material—and melding artistic influences from India, West Africa, Egypt, and Italy to classical Greece and Rome. The subject of his new work is grounded in introspection and personal connection, echoing the expression penned by William Blake, “Love, the human form divine.”

Lévy Gorvy Dayan presents Francesco Clemente: Summer Love in the Fall, marking the venerated artist’s first exhibition at the gallery’s Beaux-Arts townhouse at 19 East 64th Street. Here, across multiple floors, Clemente debuts recent large-scale paintings in oil, watercolors, and frescoes, demonstrating his engagement with form and material—and melding artistic influences from India, West Africa, Egypt, and Italy to classical Greece and Rome. The subject of his new work is grounded in introspection and personal connection, echoing the expression penned by William Blake, “Love, the human form divine.”

Lisson Gallery is proud to mount an ambitious exhibition exploring one of Sean Scully’s breakthrough bodies of work, incorporating loans of historic pieces from the early 1980s. They include a legendary, 11-panel work entitled Backs and Fronts, which was last exhibited in New York at MoMA PS1 in 1982, a year after it was made. This monumental composition was extended from an earlier work, known as Four Musicians (painted after Picasso’s Three Musicians of 1921), which Scully combined using reclaimed wooden struts, in the loft space of an old textile warehouse on Duane Street, in the then unfashionable and run-down neighborhood of Tribeca. Seven such constructions from this period, all made at the Duane Street studio, are included in this show, marking a significant break from Scully’s earlier, tighter striped canvases, as well as from the strictures of mainstream, hard-edged Minimalist painting of the 1970s. A tripartite work, Araby (1981), named after a short story by James Joyce, represents a midway point between his use of masking-taped lines and the removal of such aids in favor of more fluid gestures, leading Scully to describe this piece as being “in a fight with itself.” This move, towards a freer, rougher and more architectural series, enabled him, as the artist has said himself, to slice and cut through the staid field of abstract art and allowed these works to literally “stand up for themselves”.

“Behind this mask, another mask; I will never be done with removing all these faces,” wrote artist and poet Claude Cahun in 1930. Throughout the 20th century, artists have imagined the body and ideas of the self as fluid and open to ongoing transformations. Vital Signs includes over 100 works by artists who question what it means to be an individual within a larger society—and how socially sustained categories such as gender, race, and sexual identity are rooted in abstraction. Much of the work in Vital Signs was made by women or gender-expansive artists. The exhibition suggests fresh perspectives on celebrated works from MoMA’s collection by artists such as Frida Kahlo, Ana Mendieta, Louise Bourgeois, and Senga Nengudi, as well as works on view at the Museum for the first time by artists including Belkis Ayón, Ted Joans, and Rosemary Mayer. Some artists explore how we project, distort, and create identities through acts of play, empathy, or control. Others focus on the body’s interior—both real and imagined—or look to the world outside, forming newly imagined combinations of the human and the non-human. Full of life, Vital Signs illuminates some of the ways that artists reflect on abstraction in its broadest social senses while expanding ideas around what it means to be alive and to connect with others.