Saturday, October 3: Art of Manga at Brooklyn Museum

When an art form born of mass circulation is suddenly stripped from its newsprint and pinned to a gallery wall, something almost personal happens. In Art of Manga at the Brooklyn Museum, a dizzying shift from the pocket-sized, disposable book to the physical, hand-drawn original becomes a study in visual momentum. 

To look closely at these 600 original drawings—stretching from the foundational, mid-century kineticism of Chiba Tetsuya to the baroque, life-sized environmental panels of Hirohiko Araki—is close to witnessing the artist’s hand at work. Here, the surface reveals what the printing press deletes: the white-out corrections, the tiny blue pencil guidelines, the varying weights of ink, and the sheer calligraphic embodiment of isolation and action. 

In Eiichiro Oda’s storyboards or Rumiko Takahashi’s masterfully timed narrative sequences, you realize that manga is not merely pop culture iconography; it is a system of absolute draftsmanship where the artist acts as director, and the viewer’s eye orchestrates the pace of the unfolding frames.

Through January 31, 2027 at Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY Info

 Friday, October 2, 5-8pm: Tightrope | The Midterm Itch by WhiteBoxPortable@MTA

This compact show will turn a Times Square transit corridor into a garishly lighted theater of political reckoning. Under Juan Puntes’s sharp curatorial direction, TIGHTROPE: THE MIDTERM ITCH doesn’t merely hang on the walls; it intercepts the unmitigated energy of the city commute.

By mixing vetted veterans like Rirkrit Tiravanija and Gregory Sholette with fresh voices pulled from a sprawling global call, the exhibition uses satire, heavy irony, and dark humor as vital instruments for dissecting the persistent anxieties of a frayed American democracy.

This is a 24/7 presentation built for the collective rush hour, to give our own rush hour an extra jolt. You have to wonder: Will Rirkrit be cooking tomorrow night?

WhiteBox Portable is located inside the Times Square–42 St subway complex, 8th Avenue Corridor, Unit #). Map Click for a list of participating artists 

Saturday, October 3, 4-7 pm: Drawing Party at CANADA

On the occasion of Scott Reeder's 'Ideas (cont.)' (@professor.oops) and Tyson Reeder's (@tyson_reeder) Slurpee Machine, CANADA invites you to a funky little party. In his second solo show with the gallery, Scott Reeder (@professor.oops) continues to push the boundaries of logic, good taste, and artistic conventions. His work is deeply conceptual, witty, and self-aware, constantly asking what can become acceptable or absurd in art. Above: Scott Reeder, Not Here (Stoned Horse 2), 2026

Staged in CANADA's project room, Tyson Reeder’s exhibition is a vibrant, candy-colored immersion into a relentless, voracious drawing practice. Drinks and snacks provided. True to his reputation as a multimedia daredevil, Tyson incorporates an idiosyncratic mix of mediums, including Flashe, acrylic, colored pencil, nail polish, magic markers, glitter, and cardboard textures

Show continues through October 17 at CANADA, 60 Lispenard, New York, NY Info

Continuing: Doll Dressing at FIT

In Doll Dressing, senior FIT museum curator Dr. Colleen Hill masterfully demonstrates that childhood play is often just a dress rehearsal for future structural mastery. Bypassing the obvious temptation to rely solely on pink plastic nostalgia, this presentation juxtaposes an immaculate 18th-century wooden doll from Colonial Williamsburg with the boundary-pushing, logic of Maison Martin Margiela’s 1994 enlarged doll-wardrobe collection. Seeing Mary Quant’s tiny, impeccably tailored red jacket for the 1970s Daisy doll resting a few paces from full-scale, sweeping miniature couture ensembles by Balenciaga and Comme des Garçons prompts a keen  re-evaluation of scale. While the Barbie movie may be old news at this point, FIT shows us that dolls are forever

Through January 3 at The Museum at FIT, 227 W 27th Street, New York, NY Info  

Continuing: Goddesses in the Machine: Fashion in American Silent Film at Bard

Before the studio system solidified its grip on early Hollywood and institutionalized the role of the "costume designer," film stars largely styled themselves, relying on their own wardrobes, local dressmakers, or high-end department stores. In Goddesses in the Machine: Fashion in American Silent Film, cocurators Michelle Tolini Finamore and Emma Cormack meticulously trace this nearly vanished era of cinematic innovation and entrepreneurship. Above: Photo by George Hoyningen-Huene

Installed across the gallery’s intimate Upper West Side townhome, the exhibition brings together an extraordinary assembly of rare surviving garments, vibrant posters, detailed sketches, and film stills that reveal how actors and design pioneers—many of them women—wove complex visual narratives entirely through the interplay of fabric, movement, and light. From an exquisitely beaded Henri Bendel evening dress worn by Lillian Gish in Way Down East to a captivating look at "The Workshop" where graduate students today actively reconstruct lost 1920s gowns, the show offers a deeply texture-rich, archival dive that is an absolute must-see for design history enthusiasts and film buffs alike

Through January 3, 2027 at Bard Graduate Center, 18 West 86th Street, New York, NY Info