September 12: Mexican Prints at the Vangard at The Met

This exhibition explores the rich tradition of printmaking in Mexico—from the 18th to the mid-20th century—through works drawn from the Museum’s collection. Featuring over 130 works, including woodcuts, lithographs, and screen prints, by artists such as Posada, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, Elizabeth Catlett, and Leopoldo Méndez, the exhibition explores how prints were central to artistic identity and practice in Mexico and highlights their effectiveness in addressing social and political issues, a role of the graphic arts that continues today. 

Among the exhibition’s featured works are prints that survive in unique impressions and have not been published, offering a singular glimpse into the breadth of printmaking in Mexico. These include a group of posters from the late 1920s that address public health, workers’ rights, and education. The collection demonstrates The Met’s early interest in Mexican art and culture at a time when there was growing international interest in the subject.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Info

September 14, 2024 | 3 - 6 pm: Socrates Sculpture Park Annual 2024

This exhibition marks the culmination of the 2024 Socrates Annual Fellowship awarded to nine artists selected through an open call. Since 2001, the fellowship program has supported early career artists who receive financial and technical support to realize ambitious public artworks that are included in a park-wide exhibition.

The second group of artists, Jill Cohen-Nuñez, Utsa Hazarika, Juan Manuel-Pinzon, Petra Szilagyi, and Nala C. Turner, are currently fabricating site-specific sculptures in the open-air studio. Utilizing a wide range of materials–mud, clamshells, metal, clay, stone, and found wood–these five projects delve into notions of diaspora, displacement, containment and assimilation, linking human adaptability with that of other living species. 

Socrates Sculpture Park, 32-01 Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City, NY Info

September 18: Africa’s Fashion Diaspora at FIT

Africa's Fashion Diaspora  explores fashion's role in shaping international Black diasporic cultures. This exhibition is the first to examine fashion as a mode of cross-diasporic cultural production. Sixty ensembles and accessories by Black designers from Africa, Europe, North and South America, and the Caribbean are placed in dialogue with each other, showing how these designers take complex inspirations from their own cultures and others across the diaspora.

The concept that Black peoples build and share common cultural networks—despite differences in geography, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, language, and religion—is an enduring idea that scholars and leaders such as W.E.B. DuBois, Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, and Paul Gilroy have hypothesized over the 19th and 20th centuries. Self-identified Black peoples within the diverse nations of Africa and throughout the Black Diaspora have expressed this connectivity as Pan-Africanism, Black Consciousness, and Afrocentricity, among many other movements.

While Black Diasporic connections have been explored in music, literature, art, and philosophy, this exhibition is the first to investigate how 20th- and 21st-century fashion designers contribute to these conversations with creative practices that focus on visual storytelling to explore how Black identity operates in the contemporary world.

The Museum at FIT, 227 West 27th Street, New York, NY Info

September 20: No Bodies: Clothing as Disruptor at Hudson River Museum

Clothing conveys impressions of social background, economic status, and ethnicity. Much like physical features, it serves as a powerful tool for self-expression and understanding others. Our inclination to categorize people based on their attire also shapes our reactions to them. How often do we subconsciously assign meanings to clothing that may not truly represent the wearer?

The altered and uninhabited clothing in No Bodies disrupts our automatic responses by challenging perceptions of materiality, cultural identity, relationships, political beliefs, and portraiture itself. Free from physicality, these works compel us to confront our assumptions, as well as the ever-growing societal tendency to compartmentalize people, behavior, and social media that increasingly rules our thinking. What does it mean to deconstruct a garment by unraveling it, burning it, or transforming it into another material? What does clothing symbolize when there never was, or will be, a body inside?

Hudson River Museum, 511 Warburton Avenue, Yonkers, NY Info

September 25: Edges of Ailey at the Whitney

The first large-scale museum exhibition to celebrate the life, dances, influences, and enduring legacy of visionary artist and choreographer Alvin Ailey, this dynamic interdisciplinary showcase looks at the full range of Ailey’s personal and creative life. Bringing  together visual art, live performance, music, a range of archival materials, plus a multi-screen video installation drawn from recordings of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater repertory, the exhibition features the work of over 80 artists, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Romare Bearden, Faith Ringgold, Alma Thomas, Jacob Lawrence, Rashid Johnson, Kevin Beasley, Kara Walker, and many others.

Edges of Ailey also includes a live dance program with performances, talks, and workshops weekly in the museum’s theater. This includes the AILEY organization in residence at the Whitney for one week each month, for a total of five weeks, and over 90 performances.

Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY Info

October 1: Make Way for Berthe Weill of the Parisian Avant-Garde at The Grey

The second exhibition at NYU’s new Grey Museum features works by modern artists championed by a dealer who remains relatively unknown. Weill (pronounced “vay”) was the first dealer to purchase works by Pablo Picasso in 1901, and she promoted Henri Matisse and Amedeo Modigliani, among many others. Yet her role in early 20th century modernism has been omitted from most historical accounts. This landmark exhibition sets the record straight.

More than 120 paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture by modern giants such as Picasso, Matisse, Aristide Maillol, Fernand Léger, and Raoul Dufy are featured alongside works by less well-known artists. Together they create a compelling portrait of Weill (1865–1951), who operated her gallery for four decades in four different Parisian locations and was the first to promote work created exclusively by emerging artists. The exhibition highlights Weill’s influence and examines the sexism, antisemitism, and economic struggles she faced as she advocated for cutting-edge contemporary art in a competitive Parisian art market.

Grey Art Museum, 18 Cooper Square, New York, NY Info

October 4: Acky Bright | Studio Infinity at Japan Society

Conceived as Acky Bright’s design studio, this exhibition offers visitors an opportunity to meet the artist, witness his freestyle “live drawing,” and participate in making a series of manga-style murals. Performative and interactive, the exhibition will evolve as Acky Bright makes intermittent appearances in the gallery celebratingthe rising star’s unique kawakakkoii (cute and cool) style of illustration and product design. 

The exhibition will feature two new painting series by Acky Bright that each draw inspiration from traditional Japanese art and theater. Underscoring the impressive range of his contemporary art practice, the show will also highlight Acky Bright’s promotional campaigns designed for major companies, including his multimedia designs for the nationwide “WcDonald’s” campaign, YOASOBI x Vaundy’s FRIES BEAT 2024 music video, and Squid Game coloring book illustrated for Netflix.

Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, New York, NY Info

October 4: The Brooklyn Artists Exhibition at Brooklyn Museum

This exhibition presents more than two hundred artists on the occasion of the Museum’s 200th anniversary. This extensive group show highlights the remarkable creativity and diversity of Brooklyn’s artistic communities. Reflecting on a rich history of fostering creativity and championing artists of all backgrounds, the Museum’s bicentennial is an opportunity to honor the borough’s artistic heritage while looking ahead to its bright and creative future. Above: Rodney Ewing, Bad Blood, 2023

The artworks selected for the exhibition reflect Brooklyn’s vibrant and dynamic art scene, spanning a wide range of artistic disciplines including drawing, painting, collage and assemblage, video, multimedia, installation, and sculpture. Throughout the exhibition’s run, a series of public programs will highlight selected artists whose practice involves performance

Together, these works paint a rich portrait of what makes Brooklyn uniquely “Brooklyn”: a borough teeming with a vast diversity of people, vibrant and pulsing with energy and activity. The exhibition celebrates the inventiveness and innovation of Brooklyn’s artists, connected by mutual love and respect as collaborators, neighbors, friends, and family.

Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY Info

Note: Stay tuned for info about the upcoming Salon des Refusés, Brooklyn artistsin response to being left out of this bicentennial