Artmuse Selects' Fall Museum Guide

Fall NYC Museum Guide

Artmuse Selects presents this season’s must-see museum shows in New York!

1. Making the Met: 1870-2020 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Art lovers rejoice! Celebrating the Met’s milestone 150th birthday, Making the Met: 1870 - 2020 tells the history of one of the world’s greatest institutions and highlights its most storied objects. In addition to archival photographs and narratives detailing the Met’s history, the exhibition features 250 major works from the Met’s collection of 1.5 million objects, a selection that encompass nearly all types of genres and periods and includes some of the most well-known works within the Met’s collection as well as fragile works that are rarely displayed.

Through January 3 

1000 Fifth Avenue

Pictured: Edgar Degas, The Dance Class, 1874 (above); Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana at the Hermitage of Bharadvaja: Illustrated folio from a dispersed Ramayana series, c. 1870 (below)

2. Jordan Casteel: Within Reach at New Museum

Jordan Casteel’s vivid, large-scale portraits depict her subjects in intimate spaces, surrounded by objects or in settings that reveal brilliant tapestries of personality and history. These epic paintings teem with her subject’s aura. Casteel’s first solo museum exhibition, Within Reach brings together forty works that span Casteel’s career, from her early series to recent portraits of her students at Rutgers University.

Through January 3

235 Bowery

Pictured: Serwaa and Amoakohene, 2019

3. #ICPConcerned: Global Images for Global Crisis at ICP

On March 20, International Center of Photography (ICP) made an open call for photographers to document the experience of the “new normal”—life re-contextualized by Covid-19—through the hashtag #ICPConcerned. By the end of May, after a nationwide protest movement calling for racial justice unfolded, #ICPConcerned soon accumulated thousands of images documenting a struggle for racial justice. #ICPConcerned: Global Images for Global Crisis exhibits a powerful selection of works that respond to the global pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and more, portraying an evolving world and laying bare the feelings of pain and hope that underlie 2020

October 1 - December 31

79 Essex Street

Pictured: Adam Schlesinger, Protesters March Down Madison Ave, NYC, 5/30/20

4. Cooper & Gorfer: Between These Folded Walls, Utopia at Fotografiska

An artistic duo who have been collaborating since 2006, Sarah Cooper and Nina Gorfer posit the idea of Utopia through their rich portraits of women of various diasporas. In so doing, Cooper and Gorfer’s subjects are staged as goddesses, draped in rich clothing and set by phantasmagoric backgrounds. These portraits are vivid and beautiful as they imagine new possibilities and a better world.

Through February 28

281 Park Avenue South

Pictured: Segal and the Tiger, 2020

5. Judd at MoMA

The first major U.S. retrospective in three decades dedicated entirely to the artist Donald Judd, Judd explores the vision, process, and work of a history-making artist (whose oeuvre continues to inspire across genres and fields). The exhibition brings together a remarkable group of sculpture, paintings, and drawings from various private and public collections worldwide and distills how Judd evolved throughout the years, remarking upon viewers just how visionary the artist was.

Through January 9

11 West 53rd Street

Pictured: Installation view

6. Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist at the Whitney Museum of American Art

The euphoric paintings of Agnes Pelton evoke a spiritual world through a Pelton’s unique symbolic vocabulary, washes of shimmering light, and swathes of warm color. Deemed a ‘mystical painter’ by art historians, Pelton depicted a spiritual reality the artist personally encountered through meditation. These works are like portals to another realm. Born in Germany in 1881, the artist passed away in California in 1961 and was relatively unknown during her lifetime. This exhibition seeks to introduce the world to Agnes Pelton and her vision of transcendence.

Through November 1

99 Gansevoort Street

Pictured: Ahmi in Egypt, 1971

7. Countryside, The Future at the Guggenheim

Countryside, The Future is an expansive, eye-opening exhibition that addresses urgent environmental crises and their political implications. Organized by the famed urbanist Rem Koolhaas and Samir Bantal, Director of AMO, the think tank of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA, this engaging exhibition tracks the radical shifts that politics and society have triggered in countrysides around the globe. Composed of various fascinating presentations, Countryside, The Future explores how shifts in landscapes around the globe effect the human condition.

October 3 - February 14

1071 Fifth Avenue

Pictured: Installation view

8. Studio 54: Night Magic at Brooklyn Museum

Studio 54: Night Magic entices you to travel back in time and have a little fun at Studio 54! Exploring the iconic history and influence of one of the most famous (and important) nightclub of all time, Studio 54: Night Magic traces the club’s place in various social movements, such as Civil Rights and LGBTQ+ rights, through fashion, photography, drawing, and film.

Through November 8

200 Eastern Parkway

Pictured: Bianca Jagger Celebrating Her Birthday, Studio 54, 1977

Written by Samantha Kohl, Editor.