As the New York art world prepares for another busy art fair week, here’s our list of Frieze must-see shows at museums to galleries across the city. Whether you like emerging artists, rediscovered figures, or famous names from art history, we have you covered. See how many of these you can squeeze into your fair week agenda, and over the coming weeks.
“Kennedy Yanko: Retro Future” at Salon 94 and “Kennedy Yanko: Epithets” at James Cohan
April 5–May 17 and April 5–May 10, 2025
“Kennedy Yanko: Retro Future” at Salon 94. Photo: courtesy of Salon 94, New York.
This duo of shows features Kennedy Yanko’s delightfully contorted abstract sculptures, made from salvaged scraps of metal combined with folded sheets of dried layers of paint. The artist has taken over all three floors of Salon 94’s Upper East Side mansion for her largest show to date—with a bonus group exhibition Kennedy has curated, “Metal and Memory,” featuring abstract works by the likes of John Chamberlain, Leonardo Drew, and Frank Stella. Downtown at James Cohan, Yanko has adopted a more somber palette for wall-mounted works with smaller, intricate details that she has described as inspired by “the dark place within me.”
“Salman Toor: Wish Maker” at Luhring Augustine
May 2–June 21, 2025
Salman Toor, (2025). Courtesy of Luhring Augustine, New York.
After months of lockdown, one of the first new shows at the Whitney in 2020 was a star-making turn for Salman Toor, the Pakistani artist known for his green-tinted paintings exploring the imagined lives of queer South Asian men living in diaspora. This two-part exhibition—paintings in Chelsea, and drawings down in Tribeca—is Toor’s first solo show in the city since that break out, following an appearance at the 2024 Venice Biennale. Often celebrating private and intimate moments, these are artworks that capture a powerful viewpoint, informed by Toor’s own experiences living in New York City.
“Picasso: Tête-à-tête” at Gagosian and “Pablo Picasso: Still Life” at Almine Rech
April 18–July 3, 2025 and May 1–July 18, 2025
Pablo Picasso, , 1937. Photo: by Sandra Pointet, courtesy Gagosian ©2025 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Pablo Picasso’s estate provided many of the works in this career-spanning show, with over fifty rarely seen paintings, sculptures, and drawings for this swan song for Gagosian’s Madison Avenue location. And just a block away, Almine Rech has brought together over 40 of Picasso’s still life paintings, an important part of his career that has often taken a backseat to figurative works that illustrate his complicated and increasingly controversial love life. Both shows have a family connection to Picasso. Gagosian’s is presented in partnership with the artist’s daughter Paloma Picasso, while the Almine Rech show is a collaboration with the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, run by the dealer and her husband, Picasso’s grandson Bernard Ruiz-Picasso.
“Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers” at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
April 18, 2025–January 18, 2026
Rashid Johnson, Antoine’s Organ (detail) (2016). Photo: Stefan Altenburger, courtesy of the artist.
Palm trees and other plants are suspended from the ceiling of the Guggenheim, transforming Frank Lloyd Wright’s rotunda into a verdant greenhouse for Rashid Johnson‘s thought-provoking survey. There are also his ceramic mosaics, works made from African black soap and melted wax, and an installation with more plants and a piano that will be activated for musical performances.
“Mary Heilmann: Long Line” at the Whitney Museum of American Art
April 9, 2025–January 19, 2026
Installation view of “Mary Heilmann: Long Line” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, On wall: (2025). On floor: (2015). Photo: by Tiffany Sage/BFA.com. ©BFA 2025.
The Whitney Museum is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its Meatpacking flagship with a tribute to perhaps the most memorable show from its opening, “Mary Heilmann: Sunset.” The exhibition’s functional installation of Heilmann’s signature brightly colored chairs on the fifth floor terrace provided the perfect place for visitors to take in the institution’s new downtown digs. This time around, she’s created a new indoor site-specific installation overlooking the Hudson River that again offers a welcoming opportunity for rest and relaxation.
“Hiba Schahbaz: Magical Creatures” at Adler Beatty
April 24–June 20, 2025
Hiba Schahbaz, (2025). Photo: courtesy of Adler Beatty, New York.
Hiba Schahbaz has brought her delicate watercolors, informed by her training Indo-Persian miniature painting, to Adler Beatty, with a large site-specific wall installation of life-size cut-out paper works of dreamy mermaids and colorful vegetation. But the show also pairs historic European illuminated manuscripts from the 14th to 19th centuries, on loan from private collections and New York’s Les Enluminures, with Schahbaz’s own delicately hand-painted books featuring her feminine take on mythological creatures.
“Saya Woolfalk: Empathic Universe” at the Museum of Art and Design
April 12–September 7, 2025
Saya Woolfalk, (2004) installed in “Saya Woolfalk: Empathic Universe” at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. Photo: by Jenna Bascom, courtesy the Museum of Arts and Design, New York.
It’s the first retrospective for 45-year-old Saya Woolfalk, whose career isn’t just about making beautiful, meaningful artwork. She’s also a masterful world-builder, crafting a dense scientific universe about a hybrid plant people called Empathics who live in sisterhood with the earth. Woolfalk has transformed the museum’s fifth floor into the Empathics’ world, with a dense and colorful installation of animated videos, paper collages, and life-size figurative sculptures wearing her textile works—which also serve as costumes. (If you don’t make it during Frieze Week, save the date September 7 for a live performance from the Alvin Ailey-Fordham dance program featuring the garments.)
“The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt” at the Jewish Museum
March 7–August 10, 2025
Rembrandt van Rijn, (1632–1633). Collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario.
A trio of paintings and six etchings by Rembrandt van Rijn star in this collection of paintings, prints, drawings, and decorative arts all inspired by the Jewish heroine Esther. The queen, whose story is told in the bible’s Book of Esther, is perhaps a surprising source of inspiration for the people of 17th-century Netherlands (although there are also artworks and devotional objects created by and for Amsterdam’s Jewish minority). The exhibition argues that the Dutch people saw a parallel between their fight for independence from Spain and how Esther saved the Jews of Persia by revealing her hidden faith to her husband, the king.
“Toyin Ojih Odutola: Ilé Oriaku” at Jack Shainman
May 6–July 18, 2025
Toyin Ojih Odutola, . Courtesy of Jack Shainman, New York.
Toyin Ojih Odutola, who was included in the Nigerian Pavilion at last year’s Venice Biennale, has created a series of paintings honoring her late grandmother and uncle. The works are set inside an imagined Mbari house, a traditional sacred space for the Owerri Igbo people of Nigeria used to celebrate both deities and members of the community. Ojih Odutola, who first became known for her series of portraits of a fictional aristocratic Nigerian family, is here telling a more personal story about processing grief, and of spiritual community.
“Elizabeth Colomba” at Venus Over Manhattan
April 15–May 17, 2025
Elizabeth Colomba, (2025). Courtesy of Venus Over Manhattan.
For her first show with Venus Over Manhattan, Elizabeth Colomba is showcasing her take on Old Master paintings. Her flawlessly executed canvases largely depict ornate, familiar-looking period rooms—but these works are starring richly attired Black women who normally would have been excluded from those masterworks. Her figures are regal and powerful, depicted here with symbols of the occult, creating a missing chapter of art history.
“Leonor Fini: Small Faces” at Nagas
April 7–May 24, 2025
Leonor Fini, . Photo: courtesy of Nagas, New York.
Surrealist painter Leonor Fini (1907–1996) has enjoyed a long-overdue surge of attention in recent years for her sensual, otherworldly paintings of women. But you probably haven’t seen many of her drawings, a selection of which, featuring women’s faces, are the subject of this intimate outing. The artist’s delicate line work captures the simplicity of form in dreamy fashion.
“Francis Picabia: Eternal Beginning” at Hauser & Wirth
May 1–August 1, 2025
Francis Picabia, , 1951. Photo: courtesy Mercatorfonds, Belgium,and Comité Picabia Geier Family Collection, ©2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
This Francis Picabia show from the Comité Picabia and co-curated by its president, Beverley Calté, and art historian Arnauld Pierre, comes to New York by way of Hauser & Wirth Paris—that’s right, a museum-caliber gallery exhibition so buzzy, it traveled. If you caught the artist’s 2017 retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, you’ll be aware that he developed new and totally distinct styles every few years, exploring Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, and Dadaism. Here, the focus is on the twilight of Picabia’s career, from 1945 to 1952, the year before his death—a period that saw him create yet another new style by seeking to bridge the movements of Surrealism and abstraction.
“Tanya Aguiñiga: Weighted” at Albertz Benda
May 8–June 21, 2025
Tanya Aguiñiga, . Photo: by Julian Calero, courtesy of the artist and Albertz Benda, New York and Los Angeles.
Raised on the border of Mexico and California, Tanya Aguiñiga creates art inspired by her experiences with communities in both countries. In the Los Angeles artist, activist, and educator’s first New York solo show, Aguiñiga looks to expand on her work using art as a tool to empower her community, and celebrate their physical strength. Drawing on traditional craft practices, she uses cotton, flax, copper, stone, and clay to make abstract woven and braided textile works that represent marginalized bodies. Some of the works use red dye secreted from cochineal insects native to Mexico and the Southeast U.S.—but only the females of the species—that became a valuable trading commodity during colonial times.
“Ching Ho Cheng: Tracing Infinity” at Bank
May 1–June 14, 2025
Ching Ho Cheng, (1982). Photo: Gustavo Murill, courtesy of Bank and the Ching Ho Cheng Estate.
A long-time resident of legendary New York artist haven the Chelsea Hotel, the late Ching Ho Cheng is known for his psychedelic canvases. The second New York show for Shanghai’s Bank gallery will feature archival photographs documenting his place in the downtown scene of the ’60s and ’70s, as well as some of Cheng’s never-before-displayed gouache windows works. Each one is a carefully observed painting of sunlight as it passed through the windows of his apartment and studio, rendered in thin layers of pigment applied with an airbrush in a technique Cheng developed himself. This effort to capture the ever-changing light of the sun ties into the Buddhist principle of impermanence, which is inescapable, and defines our own lives.
“Teruko Yokoi: NohTheater” at Hollis Taggart
May 1–June 14, 2025
Teruko Yokoi, (1987). Courtesy of Hollis Taggart, New York.
Another former denizen of the Chelsea Hotel, the late Japanese artist Teruko Yokoi, is getting a restaurant at the building named in her honor later this month. But first, Hollis Taggart is opening a show of 20 works dating from the 1950s to year 2000. Yokoi trained in traditional Japanese painting before moving to the U.S. in 1953 and studying at the California School of Fine Arts and under Hans Hoffman in New York. Though she was one of the few women in the Abstract Expressionist scene, Yokoi remained deeply influenced by her native country. This show is focusing on her embrace of Japan’s traditional Noh theater in her work and artistic philosophy.
“Mary Ann Unger: Across the Bering Strait” at Berry Campbell
April 17–May 17, 2025
Mary Ann Unger, (1992–94). Photo: ©the artist courtesy of Berry Campbell, New York.
Don’t miss the late sculptor Mary Ann Unger‘s monumental installation of abstract sculpture, , being shown in New York City in its entirety for the first time. A feminist artist and curator—and member of the Guerrilla Girls—Unger suffered from cancer the last 14 years of her life, and is only now gaining more recognition for her work thanks to the efforts of her daughter, artist Eve Biddle, and widower, photographer Geoffrey Biddle. Convinced of Unger’s art historical importance, her family saved her large-scale works, including the most monumental of the all, , a series of 34 large gray modular forms that recall bones and body parts. It’s a piece of great weight, both physically and philosophically, inspired by migration and the bodily suffering it can cause.
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
