Wake up, New York — it’s that time of year again! Fall is almost here, that sweet spot between the summer slump and holiday slowdown, and with it rears the full force of the art world. Complain all we might about the weather getting colder and everything speeding up and the students packing the morning commute — there’s something enchanting about fall, something motivating about the rush. This season, the art world’s back with what feels like the strongest slate of shows in a minute (and not a New York one). We’ve recommended more than 80 exhibitions across all five boroughs for your fall art schedule.
First, some big museum re-openings: The Studio Museum in Harlem returns after a seven-year makeover, and the new New Museum debuts on the Bowery. It’s also the autumn of Rauschenberg: On the 100th anniversary of his birth, both the Guggenheim and the Museum of the City of New York are opening exhibitions. And in a bizarre coincidence, Mika Rottenberg and Lady Pink are both displaying public artworks depicting feet on the High Line and on the facade of MoMA PS1, respectively.
Why ever leave New York? Everyone swings by eventually. Case in point: Monet’s coming to the Brooklyn Museum, Renoir to the Morgan, and Ruth Asawa and Wifredo Lam to MoMA, just to name a few. Elsewhere, you can encounter architectural interventions by Duane Linklater at Dia Chelsea and Jeffrey Gibson at The Met’s facade. Throwbacks abound, from Sixties Surreal at the Whitney to centuries-old luxury liturgical objects at the Morgan. And, of course, there are the shows about New York itself. The Leslie-Lohman Museum is exhibiting photographs of David Wojnarowicz-as-Rimbaud’s peregrinations around the Lower East Side and other corners of the city in the ’70s, for one, while the New York Historical is celebrating the spirited queer performers of the Harlem Renaissance. We’ve even got a whole section on public art to see outdoors during that lovely mild autumn weather.
But that’s enough of a preview. Check out our full guide to the fall season below and keep coming back. We hope it will serve as a resource you can return to again and again, hunting for just the right thing. Trust me: You’ll find it. —Lisa Yin Zhang, Associate Editor
David Wojnarowicz: Arthur Rimbaud in New York
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, 26 Wooster Street, Soho, Manhattan
Oct. 1–Jan. 18, 2026
There’s simply no way a show combining 20th-century American artist David Wojnarowicz with 19th-century French poet Arthur Rimbaud can be a dud. The two are deeply related — Rimbaud was an inspiration to Wojnarowicz, and they were both runaway teens dreaming of an artistic life amid volatile times. This show features photographs from the latter’s Arthur Rimbaud in New York series (1978–79), in which he posed around the city in a cut-out mask of the poet’s face.