Wednesday, August 12-Sunday, August 16: Puppet Fringe Festival at The Clemente

The 4th International Puppet Fringe Festival hits Manhattan with a sprawling, five-day low-tech takeover that defies the dusty constraints of traditional performance, leaning heavily into tactile storytelling, cardboard surrealism, and a timely showcase dedicated this year to Women in Puppetry. This multi-disciplinary gathering of 100+ international makers captures the creative energy that defines off the grid gatherings—so Click for the complete lineup. Approximately half the programming is free! 

The Clemente, 107 Suffolk St., New York, NY In

Thursday, August 13, 6-8pm: ASL 2026 Juried Selection Exhibition at Fridman

This exhibition features juror-selected works from the nearly 100 Student Salons, Art Students League showcases that were held at the League’s Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery between January and May 2026. Displaying a myriad of techniques and styles across mediums, these works are a testament to the caliber of League artists past and present. Above: Dorothy Stuehmke, What September Remembers [detail]

Student Salons are open to any League student who chooses to display their work. Juried by invited guests — prominent artists, curators, or scholars within the art world —the Juried Selection Exhibition presents, the best of the best brought together in this show.

Fridman Gallery, 169 Bowery, New York, NY Info 

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Last Chance, August 14: Midsummer at McBride/Dillman

Taking its title from the spirit of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this show brings together artists whose work moves between reality and imagination, intimacy and myth, instability and transformation: thestrange, fertile energy of the season itself: a brief period when the world feels suspended between what is and what might be.

Across painting and sculpture, the artists engage states of flux, ambiguity, and reinvention. Attuned as much to the dream logic of Shakespeare’s midsummer world as to the mood of New York right now—overheated, overcommitted, and unexpectedly optimistic—the exhibition lingers in a space where ordinary structures loosen and other possibilities come into view.

McBride/Dillman, 195 Henry Street, New York, NY Info

Sunday, August 16, 4-6pm: Gabriel Orozco | Public Nature Photowalk with Public Art Fund

As the August calendar triggers that familiar, back-to-school state of mind, NYC's streets are offering up their own studies in close observation. This Sunday, the Public Art Fund is heading to the East Village for a photo walk inspired by Gabriel Orozco’s city-wide bus shelter photogrphs. For anyone intrigued by how organic life and urban infrastructure collide—think vines tightly wrapped around pipes or roots claiming concrete—Orozco’s 12 new photographic works, currently installed on 300 JCDecaux bus shelters across the city, serve as the perfect catalyst to slow down and reconsider our urban experience. Hosted alongside Embodied Earth and FotoFoto—who will be handing out complimentary reusable film cameras while they last—the event is a beautiful reminder that there is always poetry to be accessed in the accidental juxtapositions of our shared environments.

Meet at the NE corner of 14th Street and 1st Avenue, Manhattan. Click for free RSVP [required]. 

Looking ahead

August 19: Dreams of This Future at Studio Museum

Dreams of This Future brings together a selection of works from a historic gift to the Studio Museum in Harlem by Peggy Cooper Cafritz (1947–2018) to celebrate her legacy as an advocate for the arts. Voracious in her interests, Cafritz collected across mediums but with a firm commitment to championing artists from the earliest stages of their careers. Work by Nina Chanel Abney, John Bankston, Sanford Biggers, Diedrick Brackens, Nick Cave, Elizabeth Colomba, Noah Davis, Emory Douglas, Derek Fordjour, Hassan Hajjaj, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Titus Kaphar, Deana Lawson, Simone Leigh, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Jackie Nickerson, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Kambui Olujimi, Jennifer Packer, Deborah Roberts, Tschabalala Self, Devin Troy Strother, William Villalongo, and Saya Woolfalkis included.

Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 West 125^th Street, New York, NY Info