Both on view through August 31.
Neue Galerie
Next up at the Neue? German Masterworks from the Neue Galerie, which will pull from the museum’s vast stores of German art from the period 1890 to 1940. As Austria enjoyed the Expressionist movement, Germany during this time saw major developments in color and form from the Brücke (Bridge) and Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) groups. Expect unexpected colors from Vasily Kandinsky, August Macke, and more. There’s also Sacred Spring: Modern Viennese Graphics, 1897-1918 with 75 pieces of ephemera from that period on view through September 22.
German Masterworks from the Neue Galerie on view through May 4, 2026.
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Guggenheim
Filling this wondrous museum’s rotunda through January of next year are 90 works by Rashid Johnson. A Poem for Deep Thinkers brings the contemporary artist’s black-soap paintings, large-scale sculptures, film installations, and more to the Upper East Side, continuing the museum’s 2025 trend toward vibrant and colorfully optimistic artwork. It’s more than welcome. Also on display through March of next year is Collection in Focus: Modern European Currents with works from the collection in vivid color by the likes of Franz Marc and Natalia Goncharova.
On view through January 18, 2026.
The Jewish Museum
Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity is a retrospective on the titular social-realist artist and activist’s work in paintings, mural, printmaking, and photography. The title comes from Shahn’s conviction that nonconformity is “an indispensable precondition for both significant artistic production and all great societal change. This philosophy is centered in the exhibition as the foundational thread that runs through the artist’s oeuvre.” An exhibit for the times, to be sure.
On view through October 26.
New York Historical Society
In what’s surely the most Traveler-appropriate exhibit on view right now in New York City, the New York Historical Society has Dining in Transit on view through October 19 with an eye for how planes, trains, and ocean liners fed their passengers during the first half of the 20th century. We’re talking souvenir menus, employee handbooks, and novel recipe books. While you’re there to check that out, linger over to Blacklisted: An American Story, a look at the Red Scare by way of photographs and other documents (if you’re objecting on the basis of relevance, the exhibit looks beyond Hollywood and DC and into how the culture war impacted Broadway and New York’s theatre scene.) New York, New York: The Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld Collection with its 50 works of New York-centric art, opens September 5.
On view through October 19.
Museum of Modern Art
Midtown’s Museum of Modern Art is looking at design’s fundamental impact on our daily lives in Pirouette: Turning Points of Design. From Spanx and Post-it notes to symbols like the Accessible icon and the I ♥️ NY logo, you’ll learn what it takes to create an object that changes the world in ways large and small. Altogether, this is a celebration of designers and their power to transform society through their creativity and inventiveness. There’s also the cinematic Rosa Barba: The Ocean of One’s Pause installation, which melds Barba’s film and sound design with a series of performances, which Barba describes as “explosive poems”—keep an eye on that schedule. In an on-the-nose (wonderfully so) piece of springtime programming, Hilma af Klimt: What Stands Behind the Flowers opens May 11 with Klimt’s massive portfolio of drawings depicting Sweden’s flora. There’s not just beautiful blossoms here but also precise diagrams. Whimsy meets workmanship.