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

Sargent is one of the greatest painters of the early 20th century, on par with Whistler. This exhibition, co-hosted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Musee d'Orsay, brings together more than 90 works by Sargent, focusing on his time in France. In 1874, the 18-year-old Sargent arrived in Paris as a student. In the mid-1880s, his portrait "Madame X" was a great success at the Paris Salon. This was the peak of Sargent's creation in Paris and also the highlight of the exhibition.

Lisson presents Leiko Ikemura’s first exhibition with the gallery, featuring many of the themes present in her work over the past 30 years, including a wide range of media from paintings in tempera to bronze figures and glass forms.

Almine Rech New York presents 'Pablo Picasso: Still Life,' in collaboration with Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso. While universal fascination with Pablo Picasso’s personal life and relationships has generated enormous interest in his portrayals of family, friends, and lovers, some of the painter’s most important innovations and powerful statements were made in the area of still life art. According to his biographer John Richardson, “still life is the genre that Picasso would eventually explore more exhaustively and develop more imaginatively than any other artist in history.” 'Picasso: Still Life' is one of the few exhibitions ever organized to focus on his dynamic depiction of everyday objects in various mediums throughout his career.

For Rosa Barba, cinema “allows time and space to vibrate, collapse, overlap, and extend.” Barba’s conceptual explorations of film probe historical records, personal narratives, and the sensory experience of celluloid, often by documenting natural landscapes and human-made changes to the environment. This installation spans 15 years of Barba’s work, featuring film, kinetic sculpture, and sound. A newly commissioned work, Charge, forms the core of the installation and examines light as a source of ecological change and scientific innovation. Accompanying these works is a series of performances conceived by Barba as an “exploded poem.” In each event, the sonic frequencies of percussionist Chad Taylor, vocalist Alicia Hall Moran, and artist Rosa Barba will activate a symphony of images throughout the installation.

For Dyson’s first major installation with sound in New York City, the artist experiments with “breath as geography.” Inside a large sculptural pavilion, Dyson introduces a multichannel soundscape comprising the artist’s recordings of a range of spoken sounds. In what Dyson envisions as a kind of spatial drawing of field recordings, she explores the idea that the sound in between the words we speak can carry memories of places and spaces. As audiences move through the installation, the sonic textures and compositions change. Surrounded by grand waterways and architectural landmarks, the work encourages audiences to reflect upon the ways that our experience is grounded in the landscape beneath and encircling us.

Gagosian presents JAPONISME → Cognitive Revolution: Learning from Hiroshige, an exhibition of new and recent works by Takashi Murakami. Extending Murakami’s interest in the copy—a theme he also explored in Mononoke Kyoto at the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art and Japanese Art History à la Takashi Murakami at Gagosian London (both 2024)—the exhibition juxtaposes the artist’s reworkings of prints by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) with those of paintings by artists identified with the nineteenth-century tendency known as Japonisme.

Explore Woman on a Bridge #1 of 5: Tar Beach (1988), one of the most important works by Faith Ringgold, a renowned artist, writer, and activist. This monumental quilt, the first in a series of five, tells the story of a young girl who dreams of flying from her Harlem rooftop to celebrate her own freedom and self-possession. This exhibition dives into Ringgold’s artistic influences and the lasting impact she has had on later generations of artists. Alongside Tar Beach, visitors will see works from the Guggenheim New York collection by European modernists such as Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso, who inspired Ringgold, and contemporary American artists such as Tschabalala Self and Sanford Biggers, whose work reflects her legacy.

In the century since its founding as a public institution, the Morgan’s collections have grown dramatically, deepening the core assembled by J. Pierpont Morgan and his librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, who became the first Director of the institution. This growth is made possible through the support of members and donors who expand and enrich the historical, artistic, and literary contexts of the Morgan’s holdings, and this exhibition commemorates a notable selection of purchases, gifts, and promised gifts made in honor of the Morgan’s Centennial. Ranging from the Middle Ages to the present, the Centennial acquisition highlights include two manuscripts related to the publication of Leonardo da Vinci’s Treatise on Painting; Renaissance and modern bookbindings of exceptional craftsmanship; an extraordinary group of manuscripts related to Queen Elizabeth I, Marie de’ Medici, Edgar Allan Poe, and John Coltrane; groups of photographs by Emmet Gowin and Frederick Sommer; and drawings by Parmigianino, Annibale Carracci, Cy Twombly, Helen Frankenthaler, Giuseppe Penone, and Bridget Riley.

In the spring and summer of 1919 and 1920, during a period of intense engagement with nature, artist Hilma af Klint drew flowers almost every day. “I will try,” she wrote, “to grasp the flowers of the earth.” This exhibition focuses on a recently discovered portfolio of drawings—jewel-toned watercolors made by a keen-eyed naturalist, attuned to the rhythms and bounty of the blooming season. Breaking with traditional botanical art, af Klint juxtaposed her exquisitely rendered blossoms with precisely drawn diagrams: a blooming sunflower is echoed by nested circles; a marsh marigold is accompanied by mirrored spirals; a cluster of budding branches is set against checkerboards of dots and strokes. With this profusion of forms—an expansion of the abstract language for which she is best known—af Klint visualizes “what stands behind the flowers,” demonstrating her belief that careful observation of her surroundings reveals ineffable aspects of the human condition.

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.

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.

Oh, Mary! is a dark comedy starring Cole Escola as a miserable, suffocated Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading up to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Unrequited yearning, alcoholism and suppressed desires abound in this one act play that finally examines the forgotten life and dreams of Mrs. Lincoln through the lens of an idiot (Cole Escola).

Discover a whole new world at Aladdin , the hit Broadway musical. From the producer of The Lion King comes the timeless story of Aladdin , a thrilling new production filled with unforgettable beauty, magic, comedy and breathtaking spectacle. It's an extraordinary theatrical event where one lamp and three wishes make the possibilities infinite. Directed and choreographed by Tony Award winner Casey Nicholaw ( The Book of Mormon , Something Rotten! ), this "fabulous" and "extravagant" ( The New York Times ) new musical boasts an incomparable design team, with sets, costumes and lighting from Tony Award winners Bob Crowley ( Mary Poppins ), Gregg Barnes ( Kinky Boots ), and Natasha Katz ( An American in Paris ). See why audiences and critics agree, Aladdin is "Exactly what you wished for!"

How do we make sense, or poetry, out of the system of images we face today? This is one of the questions taken up by CAMP, a collaborative artists’ studio in Mumbai, India, that draws on widely available technologies, including CCTV and cell phone cameras as well as the internet, “to think and to build what is possible, what is equitable, and what is interesting, for the future.” The group’s projects rethink our relationship with the technologies that constantly capture us. Founded in 2007 by Shaina Anand, Ashok Sukumaran, and Sanjay Bhangar, this shapeshifting group runs a rooftop cinema, cohosts online video archives, and uses moving images, radio broadcasts, lecture performances, and interventions in public spaces to examine the political and socioeconomic conditions of contemporary life. This exhibition includes three works that trace the arc of CAMP’s output over nearly two decades. Each redefines relationships between video’s producers, distributors, and spectators: a participatory television network in a dense New Delhi neighborhood; a film made from cell phone footage and music in collaboration with sailors navigating trade routes across the Indian Ocean; and a dramatic, multi-channel video panorama of Mumbai filmed by pushing a single surveillance camera to its limits. CAMP’s practice reorients communication devices, transport infrastructures, and surveillance equipment to transform entrenched systems into new opportunities for hope, longing, desire, and collective action.

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.

It’s the summer of 1987, and Ana García dreamsof flying away from East Los Angeles.But when her family’s garment business receives a make-or-break order for 200 dresses, Ana finds herself juggling her own ambitions, her mother’s expectations, and a community of women all trying to make it work against the odds. Based on the play by Josefina López that inspired the iconic hit film, the show features songs by Grammy Award–winning songwriter Joy Huerta (Jesse & Joy) and Benjamin Velez (Kiss My Aztec), a book by Lisa Loomer (Girl, Interrupted) with Nell Benjamin (Mean Girls), music supervision by Nadia DiGiallonardo (Waitress), and choreography and direction by Tony® winner Sergio Trujillo (Ain’t Too Proud).

“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.