Featured Events in New York in June 2025 (July Updated)

Between Latitude and Longitude constitutes the inaugural exhibition in the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing’s in-focus gallery, part of the complete major reenvisioning of The Met collection of African art. In celebration of the initiative, an artistic landmark work by Senegalese Modernist Iba Ndiaye (1928–2008), Tabaski, a gift to The Met, is being ushered into the collection. Since the 1982 opening of the Rockefeller Wing, a canon of African Modernist painting has taken shape, and Ndiaye emerges consistently as a foundational figure of international importance, yet his contributions remain largely unknown outside Senegal.

Nguyen Tan Mei is a Vietnamese-American artist. Her interdisciplinary practice explores the intersections between geopolitics, ecology, and history, using narrative to weave together different themes in the process of artistic creation. Her paintings, prints, drawings, and lacquer paintings all have a strong Southeast Asian style.

A Lively Mind immerses viewers in the inspiring story of Jane Austen’s authorship and her gradual rise to international fame. Iconic artifacts from Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, England join manuscripts, books, and artworks from the Morgan, as well as from a dozen institutional and private collections, to present compelling new perspectives on Austen’s literary achievement, her personal style, and her global legacy. Beginning as a teenager, Austen cultivated her imaginative powers and her ambition to publish. Encouraged by her family, especially her father and her sister Cassandra, she persevered through years of uncertainty. Her creativity found expression in a range of artistic pursuits, from music-making to a delight in fashion. The story of how Americans first encountered and responded to Austen’s novels, unbeknownst to her, emerges from four surviving copies of an unauthorized edition of Emma published during her lifetime. Following Austen’s death, family members preserved their memories of her, while carefully guarding what was publicly revealed. Austen’s audience continued to grow as those who loved her novels helped new generations of readers to appreciate them. In addition to celebrating Austen, A Lively Mind commemorates the landmark gift of Austen manuscripts to the Morgan in 1975 by Alberta H. Burke and draws extensively on the extraordinary collection she bequeathed to Goucher College in Baltimore.

Mary Sipp Green’s evocative landscapes transcend the boundaries of realism, inviting the viewer into a world shaped by memory, light, and atmosphere. Her signature skies — layered with subtle, radiant hues — do not merely depict a scene; they reveal its emotional and spiritual resonance.

Nara Roesler New York presents On Blindness, a group exhibition curated by Mateus Nunes, that explores the phenomenon of blindness as a poetic catalyst. The exhibition’s concept arises from the intersection between literature and the biography of Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), the Argentine writer who lived the last three decades of his life in blindness. Featuring a wide range of artists from different generations and backgrounds working across various media—including painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, and video—the works explore the possibilities of artistic and poetic experience beyond vision: through obscure, excessive, metaphysical, tactile, and minimal sight.

Ceramic artists in Europe at the turn of the century sought to break from the past by developing new, distinctive modes of making. With a renewed interest in the natural world as a source of artistic inspiration, they experimented with decoration, forms, and ideas to make their art modern. Making It Modern: European Ceramics from the Martin Eidelberg Collection celebrates Dr. Martin Eidelberg’s gift to The Met of approximately 80 ceramic works dating from the 1880s to 1910s. Although the years in which the Eidelberg ceramics were produced coincided with the emergence of the popular Art Nouveau movement in which artists brought abstracted forms from nature into their work, few of these pieces align closely with the common conception of that style. Instead, these ceramics reflect the desire for individual artistic expression and the enormous creativity that make this period such a rich chapter in European ceramic history.

Take a trip through the history of travel and the innovative ways ocean liners, trains, and airplanes catered to passengers’ appetites and expectations during the first half of the 20th century. French chefs were hired, signature meals introduced, and multi-course holiday meals served high in the sky. An array of distinctive objects—from souvenir menus to promotional recipe books, employee handbooks, and collectible tableware—illustrate how transportation companies focused on memorable culinary experiences to attract and retain customers. The exhibition also explores the racialized hiring practices of the Pullman Company that recruited formerly enslaved Black men to be railroad cooks and waiters and the exacting physical requirements used by airlines in their hiring of women.

A large art project called Day's End now stands in the Hudson River near Pier 52. Created by David Hammond, it's made of slender steel pipes and pays tribute to artist Gordon Matta-Clark, who transformed an abandoned shed on the same pier in 1975. The sculpture changes with the light, connecting to the history of the waterfront as a shipping hub and a gathering place for the gay community. It took seven years to complete the installation, and it's now open to the public for free. The Whitney Museum collaborated with the Hudson River Park Trust on this project, and they will work together on a maintenance plan. To celebrate its completion, the Whitney offers free admission on May 16, and there will be family workshops throughout the day. You can find Day's End at Hudson River Park, across from the Whitney Museum, on the southern edge of the new Gansevoort Peninsula, where it will remain permanently.

Edra Soto (b. 1971, Puerto Rico) explores the relationship between our private, interior lives and shared public history and culture. Graft is the latest in an ongoing series of installations based on rejas, wrought iron screens frequently seen outside homes in Puerto Rico. Rejas often feature repeating geometric motifs that can be traced to West Africa’s Yoruba symbol systems, in contrast to the Spanish architecture celebrated in official Puerto Rican tourism. Graft investigates how Puerto Rican cultural memory often masks the Black heritage of the island as folklore.

From a young age, acclaimed Pop artist David Hockney (British, b. 1937) cemented his reputation as one of the most innovative and experimental artists of his generation. Hockney/Origins: Early Works from the Roy B. and Edith J. Simpson Collection examines the early period of Hockney’s career in depth, from his time as a student at the Royal College of Art in London during the early 1960s to his formative years in the 1970s.

New York’s age of graffiti began on the city streets in the early 1970s. This new movement, often consciously artistic despite its unsanctioned origins, came of age over the next 20 years. Above Ground centers on the many artists who transitioned from illegally writing on subway cars to creating paintings on canvas and exhibiting in galleries and museums. Their works embody an important transitional moment for the movement’s evolution, as it permeated into broader consciousness and significantly influenced global culture. The exhibition provides a window into a vibrant subculture of young creators and highlights previously unseen treasures from the Museum’s major collection of graffiti-based art. The collection, which was donated by the artist Martin Wong 30 years ago, comprises more than 300 canvases and works on paper. Among the highlights on view in this exhibition are works in aerosol, ink, and other mediums by seminal figures in the street art movement, including Rammellzee, Lee Quiñones, Lady Pink, and Futura 2000. Together, they capture the passions and ambitions of artists transitioning from the street to the walls of prominent galleries in New York and around the world.

Design is a fundamental element of life, an enzyme necessary to our evolution. It helps us cope with change and permeates our personal and social lives, embodying both our strengths and weaknesses. Many designers are intent on creating new behaviors, focusing on habits and circumstances most in need of change. Pirouette: Turning Points in Design features objects—from Post-Its to Spanx—that embodied experiments with new materials, technologies, and concepts; offered unconventional solutions to conventional problems; and had a deep impact both on design and the world at large.

Design is a fundamental element of life, an enzyme necessary to our evolution. It helps us cope with change and permeates our personal and social lives, embodying both our strengths and weaknesses. Many designers are intent on creating new behaviors, focusing on habits and circumstances most in need of change. Pirouette: Turning Points in Design features objects—from Post-Its to Spanx—that embodied experiments with new materials, technologies, and concepts; offered unconventional solutions to conventional problems; and had a deep impact both on design and the world at large.

The traditional East Asian lunar calendar consists of a repeating twelve-year cycle, with each year corresponding to one of the twelve animals in the Chinese zodiac. The association of these creatures with the Chinese calendar began in the third century BCE and became firmly established by the first century CE. The twelve animals are, in sequence: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, ram, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. Each is believed to embody certain traits that are manifested in the personalities of people born in that year. January 29, 2025, marks the beginning of the Year of the Snake, a creature characterized as alert, calm, and smart.

In works full of sharp wit and incisive commentary, Christine Sun Kim (b. 1980, Orange County, California) engages sound and the complexities of communication in its various modes. Using musical notation, infographics, and language—both in her native American Sign Language (ASL) and written English—she has produced drawings, videos, sculptures, and installations that often explore non-auditory, political dimensions of sound. In many works, Kim draws directly on the spatial dynamism of ASL, translating it into graphic form. By emphasizing images, the body, and physical space, she upends the societal assumption that spoken languages are superior to those that are signed. This exhibition surveys Kim’s entire artistic output to date and features works ranging from early 2010s performance documentation to her recent site-responsive mural, Ghost(ed) Notes (2024), re-created across multiple walls on the eighth floor. Inspired by similarly named works made throughout her career, the exhibition’s title, All Day All Night, points to the vitality Kim brings to her artmaking; she is relentlessly experimental, productive, and dedicated to sharing her Deaf lived experiences with others. This exhibition is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. The organizing curators are Jennie Goldstein, Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator of the Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art; Pavel Pyś, Curator of Visual Arts and Collections Strategy, Walker Art Center; and Tom Finkelpearl, independent curator; with Rose Pallone, Curatorial Assistant, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Brandon Eng, Curatorial Assistant, Walker Art Center.

Two days before the outbreak of World War II, a scientific paper was published explaining the theoretical process of nuclear fission in which the controlled splitting of an atomic nucleus releases a vast amount of energy. Over the next decade, scientists around the world would perfect the process of harnessing that energy, developing two of the most impactful inventions of the modern era: the nuclear bomb and the nuclear power station. This exhibition chronicles the global development of the nuclear industry, for peaceful and offensive means, examining posters that both promoted and protested its use throughout the second half of the 20th century. It features the entire General Dynamics series, long heralded as one of the finest examples of corporate propaganda ever created, as well as over 60 other posters criticizing the proliferation of nuclear technology. Tim Medland is an independent curator who focuses on the history of visual and material culture. He holds an MA in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester, with a concentration in socially engaged practice. His research interests include environmental activism and sustainability, and the histories of transport, propaganda, colonialism, and migration.

This artwork is featured on the building facade on Gansevoort Street across from the Whitney and the High Line. Four Ways of Being is a newly commissioned work by Amy Sherald (b. 1973, Columbus, Georgia; lives and works in the New York City area). The artwork is comprised of four portraits by the artist—some never before seen in New York—and explores the intersection of past, present, and future. Each painting captures a distinct way of existing in the world. Here, she reimagines her subjects from diverse backgrounds and generations coexisting in a shared moment, inviting the viewer to contemplate the fluidity of time and the complex ways our histories shape our understanding of ourselves.

This spring, MoMA PS1 presents a retrospective of artist, activist, and musician Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki, b. 1932), one of Canada’s most renowned filmmakers. Opening March 27, the exhibition spans six decades of her multidisciplinary practice, bringing together a selection of films, sculptures, and sound, as well as rarely seen ephemera that sheds light on their production. Tracing her lasting contributions to social change, The Children Have to Hear Another Story brings Obomsawin’s innovative model of Indigenous cinema into focus.

The first US solo museum exhibition of New York City-based artist Julien Ceccaldi (French/Canadian, b. 1987) features a newly commissioned large-scale painting that transforms the first-floor MoMA PS1 galleries at an architectural scale, casting visitors into a distorted episode drawn from the experience of everyday digital subjugation and hyperconsumerism. Ceccaldi exploits techniques common to both the animation studio and the Italian Renaissance, including trompe l’oeil, overlay, and freeze frame.

Smorgasburg, called the "Woodstock of food" by The New York Times, is the largest weekly open-air food market in the United States, welcoming more than two million visitors annually to markets in New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami. Past Smorgasburg expansions have included season-long markets in Jersey City, New Jersey; Toronto, Ontario; Kingston, New York; and Washington, D.C.; frequent pop-up locations in Osaka, Japan, and Sao Paulo, Brazil; and more. In New York, Smorgasburg hosts the popular Celebrate Brooklyn! live performance series in Prospect Park each season, and partners with numerous other cultural institutions and brands to activate its unique food festival experience.

“The full-of-riches new musical brings the classic record to life.” – The New York Times Step into the heart of Cuba, beyond the glitz of the Tropicana, to a place where blazing trumpets and sizzling guitars set the dance floor on fire. Here, the real sound of Havana is born—and one woman discovers the music that will change her life forever. Inspired by true events, the new Broadway musical Buena Vista Social Club ™ brings the Grammy® Award-winning album to thrilling life—and tells the story of the legends who lived it. A world-class Afro-Cuban band joins a sensational cast of musicians, actors, and dancers from around the world for an authentic experience unlike any you’ve seen or heard before. Don’t miss this unforgettable tale of big dreams, second chances, and the power of art to help us survive. “Give yourself over to Buena Vista Social Club .”

A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical is a stage show celebrating the life and music of the legendary singer-songwriter Neil Diamond. The musical takes the audience on a journey through Diamond's life, from his early days as a struggling songwriter to his rise to fame in the 1960s and beyond. Along the way, the show explores the stories behind some of Diamond's most beloved songs and the moments that inspired them.

Mary Heilmann (b. 1940; San Francisco) once said that "museums are places to hang out," and this exhibition embodies that spirit, inviting social connection and engagement with the Whitney's architecture, the Hudson River, and the surrounding cityscape. The immersive environment includes a hand-painted enlargement of Heilmann's 2020 painting Long Line, as well as a variety of sculptural chairs related to furniture she has displayed in galleries and homes. The influence of 1960s counterculture and geometric Minimalism are reflected in Heilmann's decades-long approach to abstraction, one centered on exuberant color and unorthodox form. Long Line was influenced by the artist's experience watching waves off the coasts of Long Island and California—here it creates a visual rhyme with the Hudson River

"I see New York City as a great big sculpture," Louise Nevelson once remarked. Born in Pereiaslav, Ukraine, Nevelson (1899–1988) lived and worked in Manhattan from the 1920s through the 1980s. Known for her bold monochrome assemblages of stacked and composed found objects, Nevelson was captivated by the city's ever-changing skyline and saw creative potential in discarded materials that she scavenged throughout its streets at night. By painting these sculptures a single color (black), she cloaked the specific, identifying details of disparate objects such as duck decoys, lettuce crates, and pieces of rebar, transforming them into abstract shapes. Collection View: Louise Nevelson reimagines the relationship between Nevelson's work and New York, highlighting the dynamic interplay she sought to suggest in her work between motion and stillness, light and shadow, dawn and dusk.

A dazzling showcase of more than 60 jewelry creations that celebrates our enduring fascination with the cosmos. For millennia, people have been moved by the grandeur of space to explore the workings of our universe—and to create captivating works of art. From the early astronomical observations of Galileo to iconic space missions such as Apollo 11, along with new findings made possible by cutting-edge tools like the James Webb Space Telescope, discoveries about the universe have influenced and inspired artistic expression. A stunning assemblage of astronomically inspired jewelry is the focus of the new exhibition Cosmic Splendor: Jewelry from the Collections of Van Cleef & Arpels.

Este quarto parece uma República! [This Bedroom Looks Like a Republic!] marks the first museum exhibition of interdisciplinary artist Sandra Poulson (Angolan, b. 1995). Featuring an installation of new assemblage works, the exhibition includes sculptures made from furniture and garments, reflecting on the abstraction of nation-building within the domestic sphere. Poulson’s practice takes an archaeological approach to Angolan symbols, codes, and cultural objects to untangle histories, oral traditions, and geopolitics. Seen together, her works shed new light on the transnational circulation of images and material culture in the wake of the Angolan Civil War.

Anita Shapolsky Gallery, renowned for its dedication to Abstract Expressionism, presents “A Dialogue Between Ernest Briggs and Peter Bonner.” This exhibition brings together two generations of abstraction, juxtaposing the bold, gestural work of Ernest Briggs with the introspective, process-driven paintings of Peter Bonner. A key figure in the second generation of Abstract Expressionism, Briggs embodied the movement’s raw energy and spontaneity, using vigorous brushwork to express emotion and the rugged intensity of human nature. In contrast, Bonner explores perception, identity, and memory through layered compositions that invite contemplation beyond the surface.

As our lives become increasingly shaped by the glut of garbage and information, The Gatherers brings into focus current artistic practices grappling with global waste and excess. Featuring fourteen international artists—many showing for the first time in a US museum—the exhibition includes sculptural installation, assemblage, painting, video, and performance. While artists have rummaged for centuries, the exhibition underscores how retooling detritus has new meaning for a generation contending with the impacts of recent world orders, such as the ongoing fallouts and failures of globalization and neoliberalism. Artists in The Gatherers render politics as spatialized in the built environment, drawing attention to how histories reverberate into the future.

The Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) opened New York City’s original underground subway line in October 1904. While the city was one of the most diverse in the country, before the introduction of the subway, most New Yorkers were not in regular contact with people outside their own neighborhoods. Initially extending from the Bronx to Lower Manhattan (with service to Brooklyn beginning in 1908) and forming part of the wider transit system, the convenient and affordable IRT encouraged riders to travel beyond their communities for both work and leisure. In order to entice people to regularly use the subway, the IRT printed two in-car poster campaigns, The Elevated Express and The Subway Sun, that highlighted each borough’s unique attractions. Of these, The Subway Sun was especially successful.

Carpenters Workshop Gallery New York presents a display of works by Aki+Arnaud Cooren, the multidisciplinary design studio known for serene, dreamy, creations that evoke poignant and harmonious confluences with the natural world. The exhibition features new pieces that add to the duo’s acclaimed Ishigaki Lamp series, which won a Créateurs Design Award in 2025 and is inspired by freediving experiences off the coast of Ishigaki island, southern Japan.