We got the Met, the Whitney, the Guggenheim. It could be a mic drop from there. But those big names are just the tip of the iceberg in New York City’s art scene. This fall, we’re looking at some of the other exhibition spaces that are presenting the best art experiences in NYC.
David Zwirner
David Zwirner is one of the biggest galleries, not just in New York, but in the entire world. They have locations all over the globe but it’s at their Chelsea location where some of the best art’s shown. This fall the gallery is presenting an exhibition of 113 photographs by the artist Diane Arbus. Titled, Cataclysm: The 1972 Diane Arbus Retrospective Revisited, the show commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of her retrospective at MoMA. This show at MoMA in 1972 made her famous, although she was little known at the time of her death just a year earlier. Now she is world renown artist, recognized for her haunting photographs of people in the throes of experience.
Maria Goodman Gallery
Located in Midtown, Maria Goodman Gallery is presenting a series of works by the artist Christian Boltanski. The show titled, Départ – Arivée, will open on September 13th. It will feature a series of recent sculptures and video installations that have never been shown in the United States. In addition, these pieces will be juxtaposed with some of his work from the 1980s. Most of the art in the show was made recently by Boltanski, who died in the summer of 2021. This exhibition will be an homage to the artist. It explores the themes of time, fragility, and metaphysics, all of which Boltanski investigated throughout his career.
MoMA P.S.1
You have obviously heard of MoMA. But have you been to MoMA P.S.1? MoMA P.S.1 is MoMA’s outpost in Queens just a short subway ride across the river. It is a school that has been converted into a museum with ongoing exhibitions, events, and programming. Although this exhibition opened earlier this summer, it is a must see for anyone interested in cities and how artists engage with them. Titled, Life Between Buildings, this show thinks about community gardens and other subliminal spaces and how they can be transformed through artistic intervention. The art begins in the period of the 1970s when New York was in a financial crisis. For instance, there were many abandoned buildings and vacant lots. The show examines the history of these spaces and how communities revitalized and reclaimed these spaces through art.
Pace Gallery
Pace Gallery is another one of those mega galleries with spaces around the world. With their main gallery in Chelsea spanning multiple floors in the building, Pace is always presenting new work. On September 8th they will be showing three large scale installations by the artists Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. What’s particularly exciting is that this will be Lozano-Hemmer’s first solo show with Pace since joining the gallery. Lozano-Hemmer makes expansive installations at the intersection of architecture and performance. He utilizes new technologies like AI, computer surveillance, topological projections and more that invite viewers to participate in the work. This presentation will focus on the ephemerality of being human and how that affects the way we live.
New York Public Library
You may have popped into the New York Public Library before and marveled at the beautiful architecture and shelves filled with books. But, the New York Public Library also puts on carefully considered exhibitions that often go deep into an artist’s life. Currently, there is an exhibition on the musician and poet Lou Reed, titled, Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Star. Lou Reed is best known as the frontman for the band The Velvet Underground, but also for his solo career. This serves as the first large scale exhibition of Reed’s archive. In addition it will feature unseen and unheard of work by the much loved artist and rock star.
The Noguchi Museum
Sometimes the craziness of New York City can be too much. It’s times like these that you need a calm, quiet place to re-energize and find new inspirations. The Noguchi Museum, located in Astoria, Queens is just that. Founded by and dedicated to the work of Japanese sculptor, Isamu Noguchi, the museum is filled with large stone compositions, rooms filled with marble, and a great garden to relax in. The museum has both a permanent collection of the artist’s work and a set of rotating exhibitions. Noguchi Subscapes, is a recent survey taking place on the second floor of the museum with almost forty pieces that examine the unseen and invisible. In addition, Veronika Spierenburg, has two films on the ground floor in her presentation titled, Aus-Höhlen, or “from caves.” These films respond to Noguchi’s questioning of spaces and their relationship to our bodies.
