Art exhibits worth seeing in New York City are a dime a dozen. While that is an immense privilege, having to whittle it down to which one to actually take in when you have a spare second can prove challenging. In September, shows to consider include a new facade commission at the Met, the International Center for Photography's deep dive on contemporary street photography, and a spate of new movies screenings at Film at Lincoln Center as part of this year's New York Film Festival. Outside of Manhattan, the offerings are just as strong with the return of The Noguchi Museum's original second-floor collection in celebration of the museum's 40th anniversary, grainy street-style skateboarding videos at the Museum of the Moving Image, and an intimate installation from Liza Lou at the Brooklyn Museum. Also, the Museum of Sex has Warhol! Read on for a full rundown.
Read our complete New York City travel guide here. This article has been updated with new information since its original publish date.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
On September 12, South Korean artist Lee Bul's facade commission Long Tail Halo will arrive on the Met's storied steps for all to enjoy—it'll be worth walking by even if you don't plan on going in just to see how she's played with the space. If you do want to cross the threshold, Mexican Prints at the Vanguard opens on the same day with over 130 woodcuts, lithographs, and screen prints exploring the strong printmaking tradition across the country. A week later, on September 19, comes Mandalas: Mapping the Buddhist Art of Tibet with an impressive assortment of Himalayan Buddhist painting, sculpture, and more. Architecture aficionados should hold out on their next visit till September 30, when Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolph opens presenting a smattering of artifacts from the second-generation Modernist's life and work.
Until October 20, you can also make your way to Collecting Inspiration: Edward C. Moore at Tiffany & Co. and spend time with some 180 artifacts from the silversmith's personal collection—Greek and Roman glassware, Islamic metalwork, and Japanese baskets. Juxtaposed against his inspirations are silver objects created at Tiffany & Co. under his direction. You have until October 20 so head over soon. Closing on the same date is the fourth—and final—rotation of Lineages: Korean Art at the Met, with thirty objects from the Met's collection made by Korean artists spanning twelfth-century prints to contemporary works of sculpture. Upstairs through October 27 is the spidery Abetare, the latest rooftop commission from Kosovar artist Petrit Halilaj.
Neue Galerie
Starting June 6, this small-but-mighty museum across the street and a few blocks up from the Met launches PAULA MODERSOHN-BECKER: ICH BIN ICH / I AM ME with paintings and drawings from the significant German Expressionist going up on the mansion's third floor. Modersohn-Becker has never before been the subject of a museum retrospective stateside, and is often overlooked due to the brevity of her career (she died at 31.) Give her her due this summer.
Guggenheim
Jenny Holzer is up to her old tricks, quite literally, with Light Line. The epic reimagining of her 1989 exhibition in the same space sees excerpts from her decades-spanning oeuvre crawl up all six ramps of that iconic, Frank Lloyd Wright-designed spiral. While there, swing by By Way Of: Material and Motion in the Guggenheim Collection for an exploration of in-house works that step outside of traditional art making methods.
MoMA
Through September 28, the 10-screen video installation Lessons of the Hour (2019) that immerses viewers in a portrait of abolitionist Frederick Douglass plays on a loop alongside silver print portraits of and works by Douglass himself. Projects: Tadáskía, a display of the titular artist's playful and unbound book of freeform drawings and poetic musings, which also features a massive wall drawing created in the gallery, runs through October 14. Come September 15, there will be two exhibitions of witnesser of American strife, Robert Frank's art: Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue and Robert Frank's Scrapbook Footage with over 200 works by Frank including footage that was only uncovered after his death in 2019.
International Center of Photography
We Are Here: Scenes From the Streets takes over ICP's galleries September 26 with work from more than 30 photographers from around the world who spent time documenting their city's streets. Through the eyes of these artists, who span generations, races, genders, and locations, become acquainted with the people and places both far-flung and in our own backyards.
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The Jewish Museum
Things remain colorful at The Jewish Museum through September 15 with Overflow, Afterglow: New Work in Chromatic Figuration, featuring works in painting, sculpture, and installation by seven up-and-coming artists. The concern here is the figure, and in particular its pliancy and ever-changing nature. No two bodies look alike, as these multiethnic and multiracial artists can attest. It's weird and quite fun. Coming September 13 is Ilit Azoulay: Mere Things, the first stateside solo exhibition of the Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist's large scale digital photo collages as well as archival objects.
Fotografiska
Sometimes, you have to take life seriously. At others, it's good to have fun. Concurrent photography exhibitions at Fotografiska showcase the positives of such a contrast quite nicely. First, there's Vivian Maier: Unseen Work offering a retrospective of the titular New Yorker's work documenting the city around her. Make no mistake, there is plenty of playfulness on display here—in the glint of a subject's eye, or how she frames her reflection for a self-portrait, for example. But things go full-blown zany at Bruce Gilden: Why These? with a colorful survey of Gilden's street photography and large-scale portraits.
New York Historical Society Museum & Library
This city changes relentlessly—Brooklyn is barely recognizable today as the playground for Girls just over a decade ago. To give us a glimpse of New York's churning eras, the New York Historical Society has Lost New York through September 29 highlighting various losses and gains the Big Apple has enjoyed since its establishment. There are historical artifacts and immersive sensory experiences, but the most important tool here is your imagination.
Brooklyn Museum
Liza Lou: Trailer, a vivid little tableau opening September 13, is exactly what it sounds like. Filling the insides of a 1949 Spartan Royal Mansion mobile trailer, this new addition to the Brooklyn Museum's collection aims to evoke the nebulous, glamorous pleasures of Hollywood noir. Everything on this set is rendered in glass beads, from the furniture, to the guitar, and shots of whiskey. On the same day, Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies (an amazing name) arrives to give the under-celebrated feminist sculptor and printmaker her due.
The Morgan Library & Museum
Wonder and whimsy are alive and well in New York thanks to The Morgan's Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature, where the museum's collection of her picture letters pairs nicely with artworks, books, and manuscripts gathered from leading institutions in the United Kingdom. Potter grew up ensconced in English nature, and from a young age sketched the flora and fauna that surrounded her and created fairy tales to match—the exhibitions take you from this inception point through her study of natural sciences and end in a recreation of her Lake District country home complete with a pair of her clogs.
American Museum of Natural History
As New York City continues celebrating 50 years of hip-hop's mainstream breakthrough, the American Museum of Natural History enters the conversation with an unexpected contribution. Ice Cold: An Exhibition of Hip-Hop Jewelry, located in the glorious new Allison and Roberto Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals, displays the metals and gems of everyone from Notorious B.I.G., Slick Rick, and Jay-Z to Nicki Minaj, Erykah Badu, and A$AP Rocky. There's even an accompanying playlist for listening while viewing.
The Noguchi Museum
Ahead of The Noguchi Museum's 40th anniversary in 2025, works from the museum's original second-floor installation return to display through September 14, 2025 in Against Time. Isamu Noguchi's catalogue for the museum, written one year before his death in 1987, reveals that he considered many of these particular sculptures to be breakthrough works from his six-decade practice.
Museum of the Moving Image
It's odd to consider that the internet has been around for long enough that one of its pioneer artists is now of age for a career retrospective. Auriea Harvey: My Veins Are the Wires, My Body Is Your Keyboard is a wonderfully nebulous, searching survey of the net-artist and sculptor's strange and prescient work. Installed here are interactive, “net-based” interactive pieces alongside video games and augmented-reality sculptures that challenge the viewer to ponder digital media's ability to bring people together while keeping them physically apart. Very far out, and on view through December. Joining Auriea on September 7 is Recording the Ride: The Rise of Street-Style Skate Videos with copious VHS footage depicting skaters and their tricks in the ‘80s and ’90s.
Film at Lincoln Center
Between September 27 and October 14, Film at Lincoln Center will be buzzier than usual as the 62nd New York Film Festival gets up and running across its three-theater campus. Get a pass or buy your tickets à la carte and enjoy not just a brand new movie on the cutting edge but also a fabulously reactive audience (God bless New York City) and, often, Q&As with cast and crew afterwards. This year, they've got flicks from international greats like Steve McQueen, Pedro Almodóvar, Mike Leigh, David Cronenberg, Hong Sangsoo (whose film, A Traveler's Needs, stars Isabelle Huppert), and Mati Diop to name a few.
The Museum of Sex
The Museum of Sex makes the list for the first time with Looking at Andy Looking, presented in collaboration with Pittsburgh's The Andy Warhol Museum as well as MoMA—these two institutions together digitized the original film material presented in this exhibition. The theme here is desire, particularly homosexual desire, with the centerpiece being the 5-hour 21-minute Sleep (1963) depicting Warhol's then-lover John Giorno lost in the titular act. There are 16 films in total, half of which have never before been screened before, so it's worth popping in.
