Hyperallergic Fall 2026 New York Art Guide
From Brancusi’s modernism to Krasner and Pollock’s midcentury stylings to Arthur Jafa’s contemporary lens, there’s something for everyone this season.
School’s back in session in the art world, too — this fall, exhibitions on textbook artists like Abstract Expressionists Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, and modernist Constantin Brancusi are landing at The Met, the Whitney, and MoMA, respectively. Then there’s the shows writing the textbooks of tomorrow: surveys of artist-filmmaker Arthur Jafa, who remixes and shapes Black visual culture; photographer Taryn Simon, who plumbs American myths and institutions; and conceptual artist (and pathologist!) Teresa Margolles, who takes on death, that cruelest of subjects.
Still, it’s not just blockbuster exhibitions this season. There’s something for everyone. For the girlies, a show at the American Folk Art Museum asks what art history can reveal about girlhood, a fraught and euphoric stage of life. Doll fanatic? Hopi Kachina dolls embodying fertility and rain spirits arrive at the Brooklyn Museum, while doll fashion at the Museum at FIT proves that creativity is all about the little things. Are you a telenovela fan? Boy, do we have a show for you.
These exhibitions will take you to school, to church (or at least a Gothic chapel), to the streets. And listen, New York’s dedication to putting on shows about itself isn’t vain if it’s simply the best place on earth. See: a love letter to the Bowery at the New Museum, Masao Gozu’s half-century commitment to photographing fellow New Yorkers at MoMA PS1, an exhibition about the art of graffiti at the New York Historical, and more.
Plus, artists from Stephanie Dinkins to Arakawa and Madeline Gins meditate on the posthuman, the transhuman, the biohacked human — but don’t worry, there are more than enough artists this season who are still caught up in what it means to be, simply, human. —Lisa Yin Zhang, associate editor
