The holidays are busy, but everyone needs a break, and what better way to recharge your mind and spirit than by seeing some art? Below are a few shows you can see if you can slip away from all the chaos and take a moment, or longer, to enjoy the gifts of art. Whether it’s the subtle humor of Thomas Schütte, the embodied emotion of Ralph Lemon, the aesthetic splendor of Alexandra Exter, or anything else on our list, you’ll be glad you took the time. —Natalie Haddad, reviews editor
Deshaun Price
15 Orientation72 Walker Street, 3rd Floor, Tribeca, Manhattan
Until January 4, 2025
Deshaun Price’s pensive portraits of people and landscapes exhale softly in the beautiful new Tribeca location of 15 Orient, formerly an apartment gallery in Brooklyn. Both the gallery space and the art on the walls appear unfinished, but that is exactly what makes the exhibition so complete. Half there and not there, Price’s figures invite us into their world, where proximity and distance, loneliness and togetherness are constantly negotiated. They can leave you with necessary, new questions about your place in the world. —Hakim Bishara
Thomas Schuette
Museum of Modern Art11 West 53rd Street, Midtown, Manhattan
Until January 18, 2025
Schütte’s sculptures are often imbued with a dry humor that helps humanize forms that sometimes feel staid or academic, and that clash of sensibilities makes the results endearing. His curiosity, for example Lonely series from 1986 combines the terms ‘melon’ and ‘lonely’ and at the same time evokes the term melancholy. He’s turned watermelon wedges into strange shapes that suggest some kind of meaning that eludes us as viewers, even if we sometimes feel like we’re on the verge of understanding it. A big retrospective with many threads for the viewer to pull on. —Hrag Vartanian
Alexandra Exter: The stage is a world
The Ukrainian Museum222 East 6th Street, East Village, Manhattan
Until January 19, 2025
If you haven’t heard of Alexandra Exter, you can add her to the list of underrated female artists. Fortunately, the Ukrainian Museum does. The stage is a world includes more than 30 works by the versatile artist, a figure in avant-garde European art circles at the turn of the 20th century, who alternated with ease between painting, drawing, filmmaking, traditional crafts, theater design and fashion. By interweaving different artistic styles and eras, Exter conjured up a striking aesthetic world that used color and pattern as formal and affective elements. A series of costume designs, rendered in a constructivist style, provoke the drama of the movement. Paintings such as the spectacular ‘Masked Figures by the Banks of a Venetian Canal’ and ‘Carnival Procession’ (both ca. 1927-1929) are based on cubism and futurism because of their architectural backgrounds, while harlequins and masked figures in the foreground create a creepy atmosphere. , as if two worlds collide. A film in her own spacious cinema room, accompanied by a mannequin in one of Exter’s designs, brings her visual imagination to life. —NH
Vital functions: artists and the body
Museum of Modern Art11 West 53rd Street, Midtown, Manhattan
Until February 22, 2025
I placed this exhibition on my best of the year because it refuses to be carnivalesque – which can easily happen when it comes to the human body – and instead offers a more cerebral view of physical reality. From Rosemary Mayer’s ethereal ‘Galla Placidia’ (1973), celebrating a marginalized fifth-century Roman empress, to Ted Joan’s 132-artist-long exquisite corpse that sits at the center of one of the main galleries, and features contributions from Ishmael Reed, Ray Johnson, Dorothea Tanning, Barbara Chase-Riboud and so many others, the works challenge us to think not only about the human body, but also about how we are connected (or not). —HV
Ceremonies from the air: Ralph Lemon
MoMA PS122–25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
Until March 24, 2025
The renowned choreographer is increasingly immersed in contemporary art and this major celebration of his primarily visual and performing arts career includes not only an impressive four-channel video and sound installation that he performed together with artist Kevin Beasley, but also a wide range of dense drawings and meme-y sculptures, and a series of special music and dance performances that seem to capture the emotions hidden in our bodies.
“Tell it Anyway” was the first of a series of six performances and was an exciting experiment in visual and aural storytelling that drew the audience into Lemon’s mind. There’s a lot to see and experience here, so take your time and immerse yourself in this celebration of movement and form from someone with a clear desire to innovate. —HV
Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection
Museum of the City of New York1220 Fifth Avenue, East Harlem, Manhattan
Until August 10, 2025
It is a real pleasure to see the collection of Martin Wong, who was not only a very talented contemporary artist, but also a pioneer in collecting graffiti from the creators themselves. This is a rare take on a genre that continues to captivate all types of audiences with its raw and playful energy. Unlike other collectors in the field, Wong collected these works with a true artist’s eye, and the results are less decorative and more aesthetically challenging than other graffiti collections of the era. Rammellzee, Lee Quiñones, Lady Pink, Futura 2000 and many others are represented, along with additional examples of a movement that changed the world. —HV
