Summer in the city is an Italian ice from a cart, lounging in the park with a book and a tallboy, taking the scenic route (I’m partial to the ferry) because you’ve got nowhere to be and, damn, it’s nice out. It’s also an invitation to get out of your borough (looking at you, Manhattan and Brooklyn) — and what better way to do so than by following our list of 20 shows across all five?
These are long-running exhibitions at museums and other non-commercial spaces. Some of them are distinctly rooted: a group show dedicated to community building in and around the South Bronx; two shows at the Queens Museum riffing on its history, as well as aesthetics distinctive to the borough, such as phone repair shops in Jackson Heights. Others offer a chance to examine the lesser-known practices of well-known artists, such as the paintings of Lorna Simpson, the drawings of painter Beauford Delaney, the botanical illustrations of abstract artist Hilma af Klint, or the 10 years American artist John Singer Sargent spent in Paris.
We’ve got shows marking anniversaries — the Art Students League turns 150, Jane Austen turns 250 — and celebrating beginnings, such as abstract painter Fanny Sanín’s first solo in the city she’s lived in for 54 years. And we’ve got surveys galore, centering lauded artists at the height of their careers, like portraitist Amy Sherald; those we’ve recently lost, such as the late painter Jack Whitten; and those we’ve recently recovered from history, like photographer Consuelo Kanaga. Smell the flowers, slow it down — and see some art. —Lisa Yin Zhang, Associate Editor
Shaping American Art: A Celebration of the Art Students League of New York at 150
Art Students League, 215 West 57th Street, Suite 1, Midtown, Manhattan
Through August 17
The Art Students League is looking good for 150. Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacob Lawrence, Mark Rothko, and hundreds of thousands more artists, both renowned and obscure, passed through its halls. It celebrates its anniversary and ongoing legacy via an exhibition that features scores of alumni. Don’t miss a sister exhibition at the New York Historical, which also showcases works by those affiliated with the league.
Anonymous Was a Woman: The First 25 Years
Grey Art Museum, 18 Cooper Square, Noho, Manhattan
Through July 19
Carrie Mae Weems, Marie Watt, Chitra Ganesh, An-My Lê, and Sonya Clark are just a few of the 41 individuals featured in this sprawling exhibition celebrating the first 25 years of Anonymous Was A Woman, a grant program for mid-career women artists based in the United States.
Geumhyung Jeong: Toys, Selected
Canal Projects, 351 Canal Street, Soho, Manhattan
Through July 26; September 19–November 21
Take a dip into the uncanny valley this summer at nonprofit art space Canal Projects — marionette limbs screwed into hoverboards and draping limply off tables make up just some of the cyborg visions of South Korean artist Geumhyung Jeong. Her solo show explores the increasingly pressing tension between humanity and technology, probing themes not just of surveillance but of desire.
Fanny Sanín: Geometric Equations
Americas Society, 680 Park Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Through July 26
Large-scale paintings, smaller compositions, pencil studies, and collages come together in this exhibition of Colombian-born artist Fanny Sanín, whose six-decade career has largely been dedicated to geometric abstraction. It is the artist’s first institutional survey in New York City, where she has lived and worked for the past 54 years.
Jack Whitten: The Messenger
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, Midtown, Manhattan
Through August 2
This career-spanning exhibition ranges from Jack Whitten’s early ghostly experiments in the mid-’60s to the iconic floor-bound sweeping technique he pioneered in the ’70s and his intricate mosaics of the ’90s, as well as other lesser-known experimental forays. From a work of swirling sorbet oranges to a sewn black surface with a hole punched through it, these paintings invite you to get up close.
Consuelo Kanaga: Catch the Spirit
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Crown Heights, Brooklyn
Through August 3
Nearly 200 films, photographs, and pieces of ephemera comprise this six-decade retrospective of American photojournalist Consuelo Kanaga (1894–1978). A trailblazing yet undersung artist, she used her camera to document pressing social justice issues, including racial terror and oppression, urban poverty, and workers’ rights.
Read our full review here.
Sargent & Paris
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Through August 3
It is a wonder to see Sargent’s “Madame X” — among the 19th century’s greatest portraits — in person. Sargent & Paris is that and so much more, following the artist through his first decade in Paris, as a student, a Salon darling, and finally, the notorious artist behind that scandalous portrait. Don’t miss this one.
Read our full review here.
Amy Sherald: American Sublime
Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, Meatpacking District, Manhattan
Through August 10
Grisaille-style portraits of former First Lady Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor, a Black woman murdered by police who became a rallying symbol in the Black Lives Matter movement, are standouts in this traveling survey of over 40 paintings. The largest exhibition of the Georgia-born artist’s career so far, it features new and rarely seen works, particularly those that explore everyday Black American life by centering subjects who have been historically left out of frame.
Read our full review here.
Working Knowledge: Shared Imaginings, New Futures
Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1040 Grand Concourse, Concourse Village, The Bronx
Through August 17
Think of this exhibition as an incubator: 11 social practice artists and collectives create interactive tools that help foster community building around the South Bronx and beyond. Coding, gardening, listening, dancing, and contributing to a “quantum time capsule” are just some of the more unorthodox activities you might engage in.
Read our full review here.
Saya Woolfalk: Empathic Universe
Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle, Columbus Circle, Manhattan
Through September 7
For her first retrospective, Saya Woolfalk has transformed the fifth floor of the museum into a utopia for “Empathics,” an invented race of women with intricate systems of dress, storytelling, and social organization, drawn from a variety of real-world cultures. The show’s astronomical arrangements, psychedelic color schemes, and, of course, the Empathics themselves — with plush heads and painted faces, tugging strollers and holding hands — will make stepping out into Columbus Circle an even more dizzying experience than usual.
In the Medium of Life: The Drawings of Beauford Delaney
The Drawing Center, 35 Wooster Street, Soho, Manhattan
Through September 14
Though better known for paintings of the Harlem Renaissance, figurative portraits of friends like James Baldwin, and, later, abstract expressionist works made in Paris, Beauford Delaney always loved drawing. This exhibition spotlights that particular passion through 90 works on paper spanning his career, alongside paintings and various pieces of archival ephemera.
A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250
The Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, Murray Hill, Manhattan
Through September 14
Coinciding with the 250th anniversary of celebrated English author Jane Austen’s birth, this show gathers a plethora of personal items including letters, manuscripts, books, and artworks. Taken together, it opens up new outlooks on the trajectory of her career and legacy.
Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, Midtown, Manhattan
Through September 27
Museum-goers who fell in love with Hilma af Klint’s giant, colorful paintings at the Guggenheim a few years ago get to see a different side of the artist with this exhibition. The small botanical and abstract paintings that comprise this show offer insight into af Klint’s beginnings with all the beauty of her monumental later art.
Breakdown: The Promise of Decay
Staten Island Museum, 1000 Richmond Terrace, Building A, Staten Island
Through September 28
Decay gets a bad rap — without its nourishment, we wouldn’t survive. This fascinating show transforms the scientific subject into a drama with actors like heroic mycelium and dangerous microplastics. Through artworks and museum objects, it reminds us that this unseen ecosystem is integral to our lives.
Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection
Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue, East Harlem, Manhattan
Through October 5
Consisting of works collected and donated by the late painter Martin Wong, this exhibition traces the evolution of New York City graffiti from its underground roots to center stage of the art world. Highlights include works by Rammellzee, Lee Quiñones, Lady Pink, and Futura 2000.
Listen to the Hyperallergic Podcast related to the exhibition here.
The Gatherers
MoMA PS1, 22–25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
Through October 6
Fourteen international artists come together to create sculptures that are hauntingly familiar yet unlike anything you’ve ever quite seen. These artists, who include Ser Serpas, Samuel Hindolo, and Nick Relph, deal in garbage and surplus, waste and excess, drawing attention to a rising aesthetics of civil construction, deconstruction, and the palimpsests left by the too-quick cycling between the two.
Read our full review here.
Lorna Simpson: Source Notes
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Through November 2
Like her photography, for which she is better known, Lorna Simpson’s painting practice is more easily experienced than described: It’s apparitional and abraded, coolly distant with an undertow of emotion, and figuration almost always dissolves into abstraction. Good thing The Met’s putting on the first survey of Simpson’s paintings, with 30 works drawn from the last 10 years. These pieces revolve around big themes — race, gender, history — to gesture at that question central to visual art: How do images create meaning?
Abang-guard: Makibaka
Queens Museum, Flushing Meadows, Corona Park, Queens
Through January 18, 2026
The Queens Museum’s building served as the New York City Pavilion at the 1964–65 World’s Fair. Sixty years later, Abang-guard, a Filipino artist duo consisting of Maureen Catbagan and Jevijoe Vitug, revisit the fair by reshaping the architecture of the Philippines and New York pavilions. Through paintings, performances, sculptures, and videos, they meditate on sites of Filipino-American remembrance, such as the Filipino Community Cultural Center in Delano, California.
Umber Majeed: J😊Y TECH
Queens Museum, Flushing Meadows, Corona Park, Queens
Through January 18, 2026
Umber Majeed is another artist who riffs on the history of a 1964–65 World Fair pavilion — if building a counter-narrative through drawings, installations, ceramics, and even an augmented reality experience counts as “riffing.” It’s another chapter in her ongoing exploration of the South Asian diaspora via avenues as diverse as a defunct tourist agency operated by her uncle and the aesthetics of Jackson Heights phone repair shops.
Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers
Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Through January 18, 2026
The exhibition’s central installation, which transforms the Guggenheim’s rotunda into a stunning display of books and plants, is reason enough to see this exhibition. But Johnson’s multimedia art exploring Black identity is some of the most thoughtful work you’ll see this summer. It is by turns funny and poignant, and always powerful.
Read our full review here.
