The Best Art Exhibits to See in New York City This October
Autumn makes its welcome return to New York City, cooling the air with a delicious crispness that is exponentially more conducive to museum-hopping than the enervating summer that preceded it. Don your jackets and light sweaters and queue up outside any one of the Big Apple's myriad museums and cultural institutions—because there's something for everyone. Perhaps the most “New York” of them all is a great, big birthday party going on this month at Downtown Brooklyn's New York Transit Museum that celebrates 120 years of the subway (there's a chance to ride in a vintage subway car on the table here.) Mainstays like the Met and the Whitney have plenty to offer as well, as do curveballs like the Museum of Sex with an Andy Warhol extravaganza. Read on for the best NYC art exhibits to check out this month.
Read our complete New York City travel guide here. This article has been updated with new information since its original publish date.
Rolling Dining Chair, Designed 1968
Temple Street Parking Garage, New Haven, Connecticut 1962
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
On September 12, South Korean artist Lee Bul's facade commission Long Tail Halo arrived 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 opened on the same day with over 130 woodcuts, lithographs, and screen prints exploring the strong printmaking tradition across the country. Mandalas: Mapping the Buddhist Art of Tibet opened a week later with an impressive assortment of Himalayan Buddhist painting, sculpture, and more. Architecture lovers will rejoice over Materialized Space: The Architecture of Paul Rudolph that presents 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.
Long Tail Halo on view through May 27, 2025; Abetare on view through October 27, 2024
New York Historical Society
With the September27 opening of Real Clothes, Real Lives, New Yorkers are being treated to the most extensive repertoire of women’s clothing to be housed under one roof—two centuries’ worth, in fact. Originally the title of a book by artist Kiki Smith—who helped curate this exhibition—it is aimed at celebrating the kind of everyday clothing that rarely finds museum attention: the hardworking house dresses, Girls Scout uniforms, and the tailored suits of urban office-goers. But it isn’t just a celebration of form and function. It is a sociological scrutiny of how women’s role have shifted in society, and how race and class have played a role in these changes. Each piece holds colorful stories about the woman who wore it, as well as those who made it, and their context in place and time.
On view through June 22, 2025
International Center of Photography
We Are Here: Scenes From the Streets took over ICP's galleries on 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.
On view through January 6, 2025
The Jewish Museum
Ilit Azoulay: Mere Things, the first stateside solo exhibition of the Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist's large scale photomontages, is the next coming of Azoulay's solo exhibition at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. Originally trained as a photographer, Azoulay has focused on that medium's ability to preserve knowledge.
On view through January 5, 2025
Whitney Museum of American Art
The 2024 biennial is over and gone is its controversial AI painting, making it is safe to return to the Whitney. Happily, incoming is the first large-scale museum exhibition celebrating the life and work of choreographer Alvin Ailey, Edge of Ailey is on through February 9 with a fabulously bonkers immersive showcase of the ubiquitous artist's works across the 18,000-square-foot fifth floor galleries. Works from more than eighty artists—Basquiat, Romare Bearden, and more—who inspired and were inspired by Ailey in some combination are interspersed throughout archival material, including a looped cinematic montage of Ailey's life on an 18-channel video installation. To see Ailey's dances as they were performed, head to the third-floor theater that is playing video footage of performances by both his repertory companies—one of which will take up physical residence in that space for performances for a week out of every month of the exhibition.
On view through February 9, 2025
1c. Ice Cold: An Exhibition of Hip-Hop Jewelry
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.
On view through January 5, 2025
MoMA
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. As of September 15, there are 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.
Projects: Tadáskía on view through October 14, 2024; Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue on view through January 11, 2025
Film at Lincoln Center
Between September 27 and October 14, Film at Lincoln Center buzzes louder 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 62nd New York Film Festival closes October 14 with Steve McQueen's Blitz
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.
No close date announced
Brooklyn Museum
Liza Lou: Trailer is exactly what it sounds like. Filling the insides of a 1949 Spartan Royal Mansion mobile trailer, this vivid tableau and 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.
Elizabeth Catlett on view through January 19, 2025
New York Transit Museum
Whether they love it or hold it in contempt, the New York subway is an essential part of a New Yorker's daily life. If you're visiting the city, you should take it at least once to understand how the people that live here get around—it's what makes the city so accessible. And why not take that subway to Brooklyn's New York Transit Museum, located conveniently off the 4 and 5 trains at Borough Hall and A, C, and F trains at Jay Street-MetroTech, for The Subway Is… in celebration of our metro's 120th birthday. It does this with several artifacts, photographs, and multimedia installations that highlight the subway's long life since its opening October 27, 1904. In conjunction, there will be four Nostalgia Rides starting on October 27 wherein visitors to the museum can ride in a vintage 1917 Lo-V subway car from the decommissioned Old South Ferry up the 1/2/3 line to the Bronx, back down Lexington Avenue to the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall Station in downtown Manhattan.
No close date announced
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. On September 7 Recording the Ride: The Rise of Street-Style Skate Videos joined Auriea with tons of VHS footage depicting skaters and their tricks in the ‘80s and ’90s.
Auriea Harvey on view through December 1, 2024; Recording the Ride on view through Januar 26, 2025
Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler
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