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

Experience the vibrant energy of the New Jersey Spiked Shoe Holiday Festival on Monday at the Nike Track & Field Center in New York. This exciting event, scheduled for December 16, 2024, promises a thrilling showcase of talent and sportsmanship. Join fellow enthusiasts and athletes as they compete in various track and field events, all against the backdrop of the bustling city. Tickets for this must-attend festival range from $27.03 to $37.58, offering affordable access to a day filled with excitement and competition. Don't miss out on this unique opportunity to witness top athletes in action and celebrate the spirit of sports at the New Jersey Spiked Shoe Holiday Festival - Monday.

SoHarmoniums Women's Choir: Brightest and BestJoin us for a magical evening of music with the SoHarmoniums Women's Choir. On Monday, December 16, 2024 at 8:00 PM, immerse yourself in enchanting melodies that will warm your heart on a winter's night. Our choir, representing three generations of women, will serenade you with captivating repertoire, ranging from classical to contemporary to holiday favorites. Bring your friends and family along to experience the magic of the SoHarmoniums Women's Choir. Information Source: SoHarmoniums | eventbrite

Go far beyond our own blue planet and marvel at the latest discoveries about our cosmic neighbors. Immersive visualizations of distant worlds. Groundbreaking space missions. Breathtaking scenes depicting the evolution of our solar system.

An exhibition that reveals the mysterious world of the 5th Duke of Portland. The 5th Duke was an unusual figure in Victorian high society, and many myths and legends have grown around his memory. These include always wearing 3 pairs of socks, only eating roast chicken, and communicating exclusively by letter through his bedroom door. The actual truth behind the stories is uncertain but it seems that the famously private 5th Duke was not a conventional Victorian aristocrat. He is best known for his building projects, which include one of the world’s largest riding schools, 2¾ miles of tunnels, a subterranean ballroom and an underground donkey stable. The 5th Duke of Portland was a keen art collector, and The Portland Collection remains home to many pieces that he chose. He bought more than 50 paintings, including works by Reynolds and Mytens, over 70 miniatures and an extraordinary array of ceramics. This exhibition includes the architectural models for some of the Duke’s building projects, portraits of his lost love – the opera singer Adelaide Kemble, the Duke’s death mask, and his iconic double-letterbox bedroom door.

Lovingly ripped from the film classic, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Spamalot has everything that makes a great knight at the theatre, from flying cows to killer rabbits, British royalty to French taunters, dancing girls, rubbery shrubbery, and of course, the lady of the lake. Spamalot features well-known song titles such as “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” “The Song That Goes Like This,” “Find Your Grail” and more that have become beloved classics in the musical theatre canon.

From the MINDS that brought The Play That Goes Wrong and Peter Pan Goes Wrong to Broadway comes the hilarious new comedy by Mischief!

Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s landmark musical tells the tale of a resourceful pie shop owner and a vengeful barber out for blood. After he’s sent away by a corrupt judge, Sweeney returns to London years later seeking his long-lost family, and forms an unlikely partnership with Mrs. Lovett, who serves up pies underneath his former shop. Together, they wreak havoc on Fleet Street and serve up the hottest – and most unsettling – pies in London.

Hadestown intertwines two mythic tales—that of young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and that of King Hades and his wife Persephone—as it invites you on a hell-raising journey to the underworld and back. Mitchell’s beguiling melodies and Chavkin’s poetic imagination pit industry against nature, doubt against faith, and fear against love. Performed by a vibrant ensemble of actors, dancers and singers, Hadestown is a haunting and hopeful theatrical experience that grabs you and never lets go.

The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation presents Milton Resnick: 811 Broadway, 1959-1961. Three large paintings from his short lived time at a studio on Broadway. Geoffrey Dorfman, Resnick's biographer, sets the stage for these large works in his essay on the paintings, the time, and the artist: The three huge paintings featured in this exhibition, Botany, Curtain for Tomorrow, and Octave, mark a pivot point in the career and indeed the life, of Milton Resnick. The year was 1960, and one might say that the Abstract Expressionist phenomenon had attained the very summit of its acceptance, captivating the imagination of the art public, the magazine writers, and finally the newly burgeoning marketplace for contemporary American painting. Ironically, at this victorious moment the collapse of the Abstract Expressionist movement was on the immediate horizon.

One of the most prominent features of art from the late eighteenth century onwards, particularly after World War II, is artists’ tendency to evolve traditional artmaking methods outside the studio’s boundaries. This exhibition will examine the ways in which contemporary artists enacted new ideas formed by the social and historical contexts of their time and pushed the boundaries of artmaking and materials as a result. By Way Of offers a suite of works from the museum’s permanent collection inspired by the D.Daskalopoulos Collection Gift. Major artists from the Arte Povera movement of the 1960s and 1970s, like Jannis Kounellis and Mario Merz will share the galleries with artists working today, such as Rashid Johnson, Mona Hatoum, and Senga Nengudi.

Public Art Fund presents Huma Bhabha: Before The End, an exhibition featuring a series of four new large-scale bronze sculptures set against the verdant backdrop of Brooklyn Bridge Park. Drawing inspiration from a diverse array of influences, Bhabha’s works blend aesthetic, cultural, and psychological elements, probing the intersections of art, science fiction, horror, and mythology.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

To mark the 2024 centenary of its life as a public institution, the Morgan Library & Museum presents a major exhibition devoted to the life and career of its inaugural director, Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950). Widely recognized as an authority on illuminated manuscripts and deeply respected as a cultural heritage executive, Greene was one of the most prominent librarians in American history. She was the daughter of Genevieve Ida Fleet Greener (1849–1941) and Richard T. Greener (1844–1922), the first Black graduate of Harvard College, and was at birth known by a different name: Belle Marion Greener. After her parents separated in the 1890s, her mother changed the family surname to Greene, Belle and her brother adopted variations of the middle name da Costa, and the family began to pass as white in a racist and segregated America.

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.”

What belongs in a museum, and who decides? How can we be more democratic in defining value? As a leading arbiter of taste, style, and form, The Museum of Modern Art played an instrumental role in shaping the history of modern design. Norman Teague invites us to reimagine the past by moving beyond "good modern design" as defined by institutions like MoMA. Drawing inspiration from artists and designers traditionally excluded from museums, and assisted by generative AI, he offers a reinterpretation of design history. These reimaginings—posters and full-scale prototypes shown alongside objects from MoMA’s collection—foreground makers of color and embody the cooperative, inventive spirit that guides Norman Teague Design Studios. Teague balances reverence for design innovation with an acknowledgment of the power dynamics that shaped it. With the rise of AI forcing a wholesale reevaluation of human creativity, he reminds us of the creative potential of inviting a diversity of voices into the chorus. As in a musical jam session, collaboration, respect, and improvisation bring us back to the question that sparks every act of imagination—the what if—inviting us to contemplate both the past and the future as realms of boundless possibility.

‘Annie Leibovitz: Stream of Consciousness’ presents a group of works - landscapes, still lifes and portraits - made by the distinguished American artist over the last two decades. Forgoing a linear timeline and conventional thematic constraints, the exhibition reveals Leibovitz’s associative thought processes and the fluid visual dialogue created among photographs that call attention to significant cultural markers of our time.

This exhibition is a solo exhibition held to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Ha Jong-Hyun’s acclaimed “Conjunction” series. The artist rose to fame in the early 1970s with the “Conjunction” series, and these early experiments helped him develop his signature style, which involves applying paint thickly to the back of linen and then pressing it to the front to penetrate the texture of the cloth. The exhibition also highlights and explores Ha Jong-Hyun’s enduring exploration of the possibilities of painting materials.

David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition by Francis Alÿs at the gallery’s 519 and 525 West 19th Street locations in New York. Featuring the artist’s acclaimed series The Gibraltar Projects: Don’t Cross the Bridge Before You Get to the River—an expansive group of works made from 2005 onward that derive from his yearslong efforts to create the illusion of a bridge spanning the Strait of Gibraltar—it is Alÿs’s first show in New York in more than ten years. This presentation marks the New York debut of this foundational body of work, which has previously been exhibited at museums across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, North America, and South America.

Featuring over 90 artworks to be presented in the museum’s iconic rotunda, this major exhibition will examine the vibrant abstract art of Orphism. It will explore the transnational movement’s developments in Paris, addressing the impact dance, music, and poetry had on the art, among other themes. Orphism emerged in the early 1910s, when the innovations brought about by modern life were radically altering conceptions of time and space. Artists connected to Orphism engaged with ideas of simultaneity in kaleidoscopic compositions, investigating the transformative possibilities of color, form, and motion. Selected works by artists including Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Marcel Duchamp, Mainie Jellett, František Kupka, Francis Picabia, and Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, and by the Synchromists Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell, will be on view.