Featured Events in New York in March, 2025 (April Updated)

Friedrich is a master of landscape painting. He pioneered the back-drawing method and was good at depicting landscapes with profound symbolic meanings in a romantic style, expressing faith through the depiction of the natural world. This is Friedrich's first major exhibition in the United States, which will display 75 exquisite works from 30 collections. You can let your inner tenderness fly in the mist and mountains that the artist has painted for us.

Friedrich is a master of landscape painting. He pioneered the back-drawing method and was good at depicting landscapes with profound symbolic meanings in a romantic style, expressing faith through the depiction of the natural world. This is Friedrich's first major exhibition in the United States, which will display 75 exquisite works from 30 collections. You can let your inner tenderness fly in the mist and mountains that the artist has painted for us.

Playful, kinetic, and full of surprises, Songs of New York is an immersive interactive experience that introduces visitors to a full range of music from and about New York City, from the 1920s to the 2020s, showcasing everything from be-bop to K-pop, across genres, boroughs, and musical movements. Songs of New York will be installed in a dedicated gallery on the Museum’s second floor in February 2025. Featuring music from 100 artists, programmed with both sound and visuals, Songs of New York reflects on topics like the subway, apartments, nightlife, and neighborhoods, toggling through acts as diverse as Susanne Vega, Tito Puente, Merle Haggard, LCD Soundsystem, Yoko Ono, Lil’ Kim, and many, many others. The interactive experience will be paired with original photography from the MCNY collection, including works by notable photographers including Allan Tannenbaum, Joe Conzo, Fred W. McDarrah, and Janette Beckman, who captured images of NYC icons such as Blondie, LL Cool J, and the Velvet Underground that celebrate the city’s longstanding role as a place for music making and a source of inspiration for artists across the five boroughs.

He is one of the greatest entertainers of all time. Now, Michael Jackson’s unique and unparalleled artistry has finally arrived on Broadway in a brand-new musical. Centered around the making of his 1992 Dangerous World Tour, and created by Tony Award®- winning Director / Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage, MJ goes beyond the singular moves and signature sound of the star, offering a rare look at the creative mind and collaborative spirit that catapulted Jackson into legendary status. Turn it up, Broadway — MJ is here! • MASKS OPTIONAL - All guests are strongly encouraged to wear a mask in the theatre to protect themselves and others, but it is no longer required.

The exhibition is co-hosted by the Shanghai Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, USA. It brings together more than 200 collections from important domestic and foreign institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the British Museum in the UK, the Cernuschi Museum in France, the Palace Museum, the Shanghai Museum, and the Liaoning Provincial Museum. This exhibition is a friendly exchange project between the two museums. After the closing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in September 2025, the exhibition will move to the East Hall of the Shanghai Museum.

The exhibition is co-hosted by the Shanghai Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, USA. It brings together more than 200 collections from important domestic and foreign institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the British Museum in the UK, the Cernuschi Museum in France, the Palace Museum, the Shanghai Museum, and the Liaoning Provincial Museum. This exhibition is a friendly exchange project between the two museums. After the closing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in September 2025, the exhibition will move to the East Hall of the Shanghai Museum.

The exhibition is co-hosted by the Shanghai Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, USA. It brings together more than 200 collections from important domestic and foreign institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the British Museum in the UK, the Cernuschi Museum in France, the Palace Museum, the Shanghai Museum, and the Liaoning Provincial Museum. This exhibition is a friendly exchange project between the two museums. After the closing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in September 2025, the exhibition will move to the East Hall of the Shanghai Museum.

Leila Heller Gallery, New York, presents the debut exhibition of work by American photographer Aileen Bordman, whose photographs of Claude Monet’s iconic gardens in Giverny, France, capture what the Impressionist painter called “my one and only masterpiece.”

After the resounding success of Alioune Diagne’s Senegalese pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale international art exhibition, TEMPLON New York unveils the very first show of this rising star of the African art scene on American soil. “Jokkoo”, which means connection or linking in Wolof, features a group of approximately thirty canvases, that offer a cross-examination between of the artist’s home country and the United States.

Brazilian contemporary artist Beatriz Milhazes creates mural-like, abstract paintings through an innovative technique she calls “monotransfer.” She begins this process by painting her forms onto clear plastic sheets. Once dry, she layers and adheres the painted films onto the canvas, and then peels off the plastic sheets, revealing the forms in reverse. The resulting vibrant and dynamic compositions balance abstract forms, organic patterns, and geometric structures on densely textured and intricate surfaces.

Thousands of artists—including Norman Rockwell, Mark Rothko, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Jacob Lawrence—have studied and taught at the Art Students League, a New York institution founded in 1875 by a group of young artists who believed that an arts education should be accessible to anyone seeking it and who envisioned an artist-run school free from dictates of process or style. To mark the 150th anniversary of the League, The New York Historical showcases works by League affiliates with featured paintings drawn from The Historical’s promised gift of 130 scenes of New York City from art collectors and philanthropists Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld. The installation is part of a larger city-wide, cross-institutional, year-long celebration programmed by the Art Students League. Curated by Wendy Nālani E. Ikemoto, vice president & chief curator, in collaboration with Ksenia Nouril, gallery director and curator, and Esther Moerdler, curatorial assistant, at the Art Students League.

Brazilian contemporary artist Beatriz Milhazes creates mural-like, abstract paintings through an innovative technique she calls “monotransfer.” She begins this process by painting her forms onto clear plastic sheets. Once dry, she layers and adheres the painted films onto the canvas, and then peels off the plastic sheets, revealing the forms in reverse. The resulting vibrant and dynamic compositions balance abstract forms, organic patterns, and geometric structures on densely textured and intricate surfaces.

Thousands of artists—including Norman Rockwell, Mark Rothko, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Jacob Lawrence—have studied and taught at the Art Students League, a New York institution founded in 1875 by a group of young artists who believed that an arts education should be accessible to anyone seeking it and who envisioned an artist-run school free from dictates of process or style. To mark the 150th anniversary of the League, The New York Historical showcases works by League affiliates with featured paintings drawn from The Historical’s promised gift of 130 scenes of New York City from art collectors and philanthropists Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld. The installation is part of a larger city-wide, cross-institutional, year-long celebration programmed by the Art Students League. Curated by Wendy Nālani E. Ikemoto, vice president & chief curator, in collaboration with Ksenia Nouril, gallery director and curator, and Esther Moerdler, curatorial assistant, at the Art Students League.

Thousands of artists—including Norman Rockwell, Mark Rothko, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Jacob Lawrence—have studied and taught at the Art Students League, a New York institution founded in 1875 by a group of young artists who believed that an arts education should be accessible to anyone seeking it and who envisioned an artist-run school free from dictates of process or style. To mark the 150th anniversary of the League, The New York Historical showcases works by League affiliates with featured paintings drawn from The Historical’s promised gift of 130 scenes of New York City from art collectors and philanthropists Elie and Sarah Hirschfeld. The installation is part of a larger city-wide, cross-institutional, year-long celebration programmed by the Art Students League. Curated by Wendy Nālani E. Ikemoto, vice president & chief curator, in collaboration with Ksenia Nouril, gallery director and curator, and Esther Moerdler, curatorial assistant, at the Art Students League.

Lorenzo Homar was a pioneering printmaker, poster designer, calligrapher, painter, illustrator, caricaturist, and costume and theatrical set designer. Active from the 1950s through the 1990s, few equal his impact and influence as a teacher of poster design and printmaking in Latin America. This exhibition focuses on his poster output over a thirty year period during which time his work reflected the complex history of Puerto Rico, encompassing elements of Taíno, Spanish, and African cultures as well as the rising tensions between tradition and modernity under the Luis Muñoz Marín government. His influence is so extensive that today he is known as the father of the Puerto Rican poster. Alejandro Anreus is Emeritus Professor of Art History and Latin American Studies, William Paterson University. A former curator at the Jersey City Museum and Montclair Art Museum, he is the author of over sixty articles and catalogue essays, and six books on Latin American and Latinx Art.

One of the most prominent features of art from the late eighteenth century onwards, particularly after World War II, is artists’ tendency to evolve traditional artmaking methods outside the studio’s boundaries. This exhibition examines the ways in which contemporary artists enacted new ideas formed by the social and historical contexts of their time and pushed the boundaries of artmaking and materials as a result. By Way Of offers a suite of works from the museum’s permanent collection inspired by the D.Daskalopoulos Collection Gift. Major artists from the Arte Povera movement of the 1960s and 1970s, like Jannis Kounellis and Mario Merz share the galleries with artists working today, such as Rashid Johnson, Mona Hatoum, and Senga Nengudi.

The Museum of Modern Art announces Jack Whitten: The Messenger, the first comprehensive retrospective dedicated to the groundbreaking art of Jack Whitten (American, 1939–2018), on view from March 23 through August 2, 2025, in the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Center for Special Exhibitions. Presented solely at MoMA, the exhibition will explore the full range of Whitten’s innovative art over his nearly six-decade career, showing more than 175 works from the 1960s to the 2010s, including paintings, sculptures, rarely shown works on paper, and archival materials. Together, these works will reveal how Whitten overturned the tenets of modern art-making to become one of the most important artists of our time. Beginning his career during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, Whitten was under great pressure to create directly representational art as a form of activism, yet he dared to invent new forms of abstraction and, in the process, transformed the relationship between art, memory, and society.

Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie radically reimagines the story of European porcelain through a feminist lens. When porcelain arrived in early modern Europe from China, it led to the rise of chinoiserie, a decorative style that encompassed Europe’s fantasies of the East and fixations on the exotic, along with new ideas about women, sexuality, and race. This exhibition explores how this fragile material shaped both European women’s identities and racial and cultural stereotypes around Asian women. Shattering the illusion of chinoiserie as a neutral, harmless fantasy, Monstrous Beauty adopts a critical glance at the historical style and its afterlives, recasting negative terms through a lens of female empowerment. Bringing together nearly 200 historical and contemporary works spanning from 16th-century Europe to contemporary installations by Asian and Asian American women artists, Monstrous Beauty illuminates chinoiserie through a conceptual framework that brings the past into active dialog with the present. In demand during the 1700s as the embodiment of Europe’s fantasy of the East, porcelain accumulated strong associations with female taste over its complex history. Fragile, delicate, and sharp when broken, it became a resonant metaphor for women, who became the protagonists of new narratives around cultural exchange, consumption, and desire.

A large art project called Day's End now stands in the Hudson River near Pier 52. Created by David Hammond, it's made of slender steel pipes and pays tribute to artist Gordon Matta-Clark, who transformed an abandoned shed on the same pier in 1975. The sculpture changes with the light, connecting to the history of the waterfront as a shipping hub and a gathering place for the gay community. It took seven years to complete the installation, and it's now open to the public for free. The Whitney Museum collaborated with the Hudson River Park Trust on this project, and they will work together on a maintenance plan. To celebrate its completion, the Whitney offers free admission on May 16, and there will be family workshops throughout the day. You can find Day's End at Hudson River Park, across from the Whitney Museum, on the southern edge of the new Gansevoort Peninsula, where it will remain permanently.

A large art project called Day's End now stands in the Hudson River near Pier 52. Created by David Hammond, it's made of slender steel pipes and pays tribute to artist Gordon Matta-Clark, who transformed an abandoned shed on the same pier in 1975. The sculpture changes with the light, connecting to the history of the waterfront as a shipping hub and a gathering place for the gay community. It took seven years to complete the installation, and it's now open to the public for free. The Whitney Museum collaborated with the Hudson River Park Trust on this project, and they will work together on a maintenance plan. To celebrate its completion, the Whitney offers free admission on May 16, and there will be family workshops throughout the day. You can find Day's End at Hudson River Park, across from the Whitney Museum, on the southern edge of the new Gansevoort Peninsula, where it will remain permanently.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is one of the world’s premiere performing arts organizations. On October 8, 2022, David Geffen Hall reopened as a welcoming cultural anchor for New York City, some 60 years after it was first inaugurated as the home of the New York Philharmonic. The new Hall reimagines the concert-going experience by providing more inclusive public spaces for diverse cultural performances and community uses. This initiative includes an annual program of art commissions, where all members of the public are invited to engage with the work of leading contemporary artists free of charge. The democratic approach instills a sense of welcome both indoors and out, beckoning those who may never have interacted with Lincoln Center or the New York Philharmonic, and encouraging those long familiar with the campus to see it afresh. Public Art Fund partnered with The Studio Museum in Harlem to advise Lincoln Center on the selection of artists for this first iteration of the art program. Two prominent sites were identified for the site-specific commissions: the 50-foot Hauser Digital Wall in the lobby, which Jacolby Satterwhite has animated with a richly layered and inclusive celebration of performance that brings into dialogue the past, present and future; and the Hall’s 65th Street façade, which Nina Chanel Abney has transformed into a captivating tribute to the vibrant history and culture of San Juan Hill. Both artists undertook extensive research to develop their works. They emerge as gifted visual storytellers, committed to a more inclusive understanding of the past while giving us all a sense of future potential at a moment of reopening and reinvention. The artworks are commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in collaboration with The Studio Museum in Harlem and Public Art Fund. Nina Chanel Abney, Nina Chanel Abney’s monumental work of art for the façade of David Geffen Hall pays homage to San Juan Hill. In the 1940s and 50s, this predominantly Black and Brown neighborhood was forcibly displaced to make way for redevelopment, including what would become Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Abney’s constellation of figures, words, shapes, and symbols reflects the thriving community that lived here. Featured residents include pioneering healthcare workers Edith Carter and Elizabeth Tyler. Also pictured are James P. Johnson, whose music gave rise to the Charleston dance craze, and Thelonious Monk, a pioneer of Bebop and other jazz styles. Reclaiming this important history in her bold and vibrant style, Abney aims to spark curiosity and inspire a more inclusive future. Jacolby Satterwhite, Jacolby Satterwhite’s commission for David Geffen Hall reconsiders the past, present, and future of Lincoln Center and the New York Philharmonic. weaves together archival images, live action footage, and digital animation. We see a colorful and densely layered festival of performance that traverses historical periods through virtual space. Satterwhite’s inclusive cast represents artists since the Philharmonic’s founding in 1842, while featuring young musicians and dancers from across New York City. They play instruments and dance on stages and sculptural monuments set into a landscape inspired by Central Park and surrounded by buildings covered in screens, reminiscent of Times Square. Grounded in a more democratic view of history, Satterwhite’s work offers us his playful and richly inventive vision of a creatively empowered future. is known for combining representation and abstraction. Her paintings capture the frenetic pace of contemporary culture. Broaching subjects as diverse as race, celebrity, religion, politics, sex, and art history, her works eschew linear storytelling in lieu of disjointed narratives. The effect is information overload, balanced with a kind of spontaneous order, where time and space are compressed and identity is interchangeable. Her distinctively bold style harnesses the flux and simultaneity that have come to define life in the 21st century. Through a bracing use of color and unapologetic scale, Abney’s canvases propose a new type of history painting, one grounded in the barrage of everyday events and funneled through the velocity of the internet. Abney’s work is included in collections around the world, including the Brooklyn Museum, The Rubell Family Collection, Bronx Museum, and the Burger Collection, Hong Kong. Her first solo museum exhibition, , curated by Marshall Price, was presented in 2017 at the Nasher Museum of Art, North Carolina. It traveled to the Chicago Cultural Center and then to Los Angeles, where it was jointly presented by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the California African American Museum. The final venue for the exhibition was the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York. is celebrated for a conceptual practice addressing crucial themes of labor, consumption, carnality, and fantasy through immersive installation, virtual reality, and digital media. He uses a range of software to produce intricately detailed animations and live action film of real and imagined worlds populated by the avatars of artists and friends. These animations serve as the stage on which the artist synthesizes the multiple disciplines that encompass his practice, namely painting, performance, illustration, sculpture, photography, and writing. Satterwhite draws from an extensive set of references, guided by queer theory, modernism, and video game language to challenge conventions of Western art through a personal and political lens. An equally significant influence is that of his late mother, Patricia Satterwhite, whose ethereal vocals and diagrams for visionary household products serve as the source material within a decidedly complex structure of memory and mythology. Satterwhite received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Arts, Baltimore and his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. His work has been presented in numerous exhibitions and festivals internationally, including most recently at Haus der Kunst, Munich,2021; Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju,(2021; and Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, 2021. Nina Chanel Abney , 2022 Latex ink and vinyl mounted on glass Commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in collaboration with The Studio Museum in Harlem and Public Art Fund Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and Public Art Fund, NY. Jacolby Satterwhite , 2022 HD color video and 3D animation 27:23 mins Commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in collaboration with The Studio Museum in Harlem and Public Art Fund © Jacolby Satterwhite. Courtesy of the Artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and Public Art Fund, NY.

Experience this good musical. The denizens of the Kit Kat Club have created a sanctuary inside Broadway’s August Wilson Theatre, where artists and performers, misfits and outsiders rule the night. Step inside their world. This is Berlin. Relax. Loosen up. Be yourself.

Calling all adventurers! GetDungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Taverntickets and prepare for an evening that’s part play, part game, and all entertainment. No previous knowledge of Dungeons & Dragons is necessary: at Stage 42, everyone is a player as you control the evening’s quest, which means no two shows are the same. Solve puzzles, explore hidden secrets, and enter a mythical land of dragons, elves, and warriors at Stage 42.

This focused exhibition presents a selection of superlative drawings from the courts and centers of India and Pakistan (with a few related Persian works) dating from the late sixteenth to the twentieth century. These works are mainly selected from The Met collection in partnership with film director James Ivory, whose recent gift to the Museum of nineteenth-century photograph albums will also be featured in the exhibition (2021.381.1-16). The drawings will include fresh and informal preparatory exercises for paintings as well as beautifully finished works in their own right. The photographs will present the subject matter and styles that came about in the contexts of royal patronage and ceremony; views of architecture, cities, landscapes, and people, among others. As an artist and filmmaker, James Ivory will help us appreciate this material through his unique gaze. A short film — An Arrested Moment — directed by Dev Benegal, will accompany the show.

This focused exhibition presents a selection of superlative drawings from the courts and centers of India and Pakistan (with a few related Persian works) dating from the late sixteenth to the twentieth century. These works are mainly selected from The Met collection in partnership with film director James Ivory, whose recent gift to the Museum of nineteenth-century photograph albums will also be featured in the exhibition (2021.381.1-16). The drawings will include fresh and informal preparatory exercises for paintings as well as beautifully finished works in their own right. The photographs will present the subject matter and styles that came about in the contexts of royal patronage and ceremony; views of architecture, cities, landscapes, and people, among others. As an artist and filmmaker, James Ivory will help us appreciate this material through his unique gaze. A short film — An Arrested Moment — directed by Dev Benegal, will accompany the show.

Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century landscape artists often sketched outdoors in oil paint on paper to capture nature from direct observation. Yet as natural as these scenes look, the vantages were chosen or augmented to draw the viewer into the composition. Whether through adding a prescribed path, capturing flecks of light glinting off a winding river, or presenting a series of plateaus receding into the distance, artists created a point of entry and route along which the viewer could journey. These small-scale oil sketches—including a work by one of the few female European landscape painters of her era, Louise-Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont—illustrate how artists synthesized the real and ideal to evoke the experience of encountering nature.

Edra Soto (b. 1971, Puerto Rico) explores the relationship between our private, interior lives and shared public history and culture. Graft is the latest in an ongoing series of installations based on rejas, wrought iron screens frequently seen outside homes in Puerto Rico. Rejas often feature repeating geometric motifs that can be traced to West Africa’s Yoruba symbol systems, in contrast to the Spanish architecture celebrated in official Puerto Rican tourism. Graft investigates how Puerto Rican cultural memory often masks the Black heritage of the island as folklore.

Edra Soto (b. 1971, Puerto Rico) explores the relationship between our private, interior lives and shared public history and culture. Graft is the latest in an ongoing series of installations based on rejas, wrought iron screens frequently seen outside homes in Puerto Rico. Rejas often feature repeating geometric motifs that can be traced to West Africa’s Yoruba symbol systems, in contrast to the Spanish architecture celebrated in official Puerto Rican tourism. Graft investigates how Puerto Rican cultural memory often masks the Black heritage of the island as folklore.

For the 2024 Genesis Facade Commission, South Korean artist Lee Bul (born 1964, Yeongju, based in Seoul) has created four new sculptures that combine figurative and abstract elements. The Genesis Facade Commission: Lee Bul,Long Tail Halois the artist’s first major project in the United States in more than twenty years and the fifth in the series of contemporary commissions for The Met Fifth Avenue’s facade niches. With a career that spans four decades, Lee is widely recognized as the preeminent artist from South Korea. She is known for her sophisticated use of both highly industrial and labor-intensive materials, incorporating artisanal practices as well as technological advancements into her work. Her sculptures, often evoking bodily forms that are at once classical and futuristic, address the aspirations and disillusions that come with progress. The Genesis Facade Commission is part of The Met’s series of contemporary commissions in which the Museum invites artists to create new works of art, establishing a dialogue between the artist’s practice, The Met collection, the physical Museum, and The Met’s audiences.

This groundbreaking exhibition explores the everyday clothing of ordinary women, from worn-out housecoats to psychedelic micro miniskirts and modern suits to the uniforms of fast-food workers. On view in the Joyce B. Cowin Women’s History Gallery and featuring objects from Smith College’s Historical Costume Collection on display for the first time in a museum, the exhibition traces how women’s roles have changed and evolved across race and class over the decades. Each garment holds a rich story about the women who wore it and made it, the materials used, and the context of place and time. Whether homemade or ready-made, many of the garments on display are modest and inexpensive, rarely preserved or displayed in a museum setting. Some are one-of-a-kind pieces; others are examples of clever makeshift pieces, and many were influenced by the popular styles and trends of their day. Visitors to Real Clothes, Real Lives will learn about the "real" women who worked and dressed in America for two centuries.