Autumn in New York is ideal for gallery-hopping: cool air, fall color, and compact routes from Museum Mile to downtown. Here are the standout shows currently on view around the city, with highlights and dates to help you plan.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
– Man Ray: When Objects Dream places about 60 camera-less rayographs alongside roughly 100 paintings, prints, and photographs, including Le violon d’Ingres, situating the rayographs within Man Ray’s broader practice. Other rotating and special presentations include the Baseball Cards from the Collection of Jefferson R. Burdick (30,000 trading cards through January 20, 2026), Casa Susanna (photography and publications documenting a cross-dressing community), and Allegory and Abstraction: Selections from the Department of Drawings and Prints (rotating selections through December 9, 2025).
New-York Historical Society
– The Gay Harlem Renaissance traces the contributions of queer Black artists and writers such as Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, and Bessie Smith through photographs, documents, and music, highlighting early-20th-century Harlem culture (on view through March 8, 2026).
– The New York Sari explores South Asian women’s fashion and its influence on New York culture from the Gilded Age onward (on view through April 26, 2026).
Brooklyn Museum
– Breaking the Mold: Brooklyn Museum at 200 surveys two centuries of the museum and the borough, the Beaux-Arts building, and Brooklyn’s artistic legacy (through February 22, 2026).
– Monet and Venice pairs 19 Venetian paintings by Claude Monet with works by John Singer Sargent, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and others (October 11, 2025–February 1, 2026).
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
– Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective presents about 300 works spanning bronze casts, wire sculptures, and more (through February 7, 2026).
– Wifredo Lam: When I Don’t Sleep, I Dream offers roughly 130 paintings and large-scale works (through April 11, 2026).
– Helen Frankenthaler: A Grand Sweep opens November 18 and examines the artist’s experimental techniques (on view through February 8, 2026).
Sotheby’s at the Breuer
– Sotheby’s has taken the Breuer building (the former Whitney) and opened an exhibition space showing works that the auction house sells, with a selection of van Goghs currently on public view and available for purchase.
Neue Galerie
– German Masterworks from the Neue Galerie surveys art circa 1890–1940, including works linked to the Brücke and Blaue Reiter groups—expect Kandinsky, August Macke, and nearly 40 student-period works by Erich Heckel (on view through May 4, 2026).
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
– Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers fills the rotunda with about 90 works—black-soap paintings, large-scale sculptures, and film installations (through January 18, 2026).
– Ongoing programmatic rotations include Collection in Focus: Modern European Currents and a Robert Rauschenberg centennial presentation, while Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World opens November 7 with 50 paintings and 19 photographs.
The Jewish Museum
– Anish Kapoor: Early Works presents 55 early sculptures and drawings, including pigment sculptures that read as geometric models dusted with powdered color (through February 1, 2026).
The Studio Museum in Harlem
– Reopening November 15 after a seven-year, $160 million rebuild, the new building on West 125th Street debuts with a major exhibition of Tom Lloyd, surveying his 20-year career and revisiting the museum’s 1968 show that first presented his programmed light sculptures (through March 31, 2026).
International Center of Photography (ICP)
– Graciela Iturbide: Serious Play is the photographer’s first New York retrospective, with over 200 images documenting life across Mexico—indigenous communities, rituals, deserts, and relationships between people and nature (through January 12, 2026).
Whitney Museum of American Art
– Sixties Surreal traces surrealist practices in the U.S. from 1958 to 1972, reconsidering that moment beyond pop art and featuring artists such as Diane Arbus and Yayoi Kusama (through January 19, 2026).
Museum of the Moving Image
– Mission: Impossible—Story and Spectacle examines the filmmaking craft behind the franchise—costumes, stunt breakdowns, and production design—while Lu Yang: The Great Adventure of the Material World offers an avant-garde experience presented as both projected film and interactive gameplay (on view through December 14, 2025).
Practical tips
– Check museum hours, ticketing windows, and reservation requirements before you go; many shows have timed-entry or limited runs.
– Combine nearby sites—Museum Mile and several uptown institutions are walkable—and allow extra time for special exhibitions.
These exhibitions offer a broad cross-section of contemporary, modern, and historical approaches to art across New York City this season. Whether you prefer photography, painting, sculpture, or immersive installations, there’s plenty worth seeing.