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

Encapsulating 100 years of moving-image history, Christian Marclay’s The Clock (2010) is a 24-hour montage composed from thousands of film and television clips depicting clocks and other references to time. James Bond checks his watch at 12:20 a.m.; Meryl Streep turns off an alarm clock at 6:30 a.m.; a pocket watch ticks at 11:53 a.m. as the Titanic departs. With each clip synchronized to the local time, The Clock collapses the fictional time presented on screen with the actual time of each passing minute. The work is both a cinematic tour-de-force and a functioning timepiece. Building on his background as a musician in Boston and New York’s underground scenes of the late 1970s and 1980s, Marclay has for five decades combined visual and sonic fragments to explore the complex relationships between image and sound. His resulting works have taken form across a wide range of mediums: sculpture, painting, photography, print, performance, and video. With the help of assistants searching for footage, Marclay spent three years meticulously editing The Clock—the culmination of his innovative approach to looking at the world anew through found material. The Clock speaks to cinema’s rich history as both a mirror of and escape from reality, a paradox that is ever more central to daily life in today’s era of instant broadcast, streaming services, and artificial intelligence. Marclay’s assemblage of carefully selected clips takes us on a journey through the past in order to heighten our awareness of an ever-elusive and unfolding present. By editing together fragments from cinema’s vast archive to tell the current time, Marclay reframes our collective memory of movies as an uncanny confrontation with ourselves.

Encapsulating 100 years of moving-image history, Christian Marclay’s The Clock (2010) is a 24-hour montage composed from thousands of film and television clips depicting clocks and other references to time. James Bond checks his watch at 12:20 a.m.; Meryl Streep turns off an alarm clock at 6:30 a.m.; a pocket watch ticks at 11:53 a.m. as the Titanic departs. With each clip synchronized to the local time, The Clock collapses the fictional time presented on screen with the actual time of each passing minute. The work is both a cinematic tour-de-force and a functioning timepiece. Building on his background as a musician in Boston and New York’s underground scenes of the late 1970s and 1980s, Marclay has for five decades combined visual and sonic fragments to explore the complex relationships between image and sound. His resulting works have taken form across a wide range of mediums: sculpture, painting, photography, print, performance, and video. With the help of assistants searching for footage, Marclay spent three years meticulously editing The Clock—the culmination of his innovative approach to looking at the world anew through found material. The Clock speaks to cinema’s rich history as both a mirror of and escape from reality, a paradox that is ever more central to daily life in today’s era of instant broadcast, streaming services, and artificial intelligence. Marclay’s assemblage of carefully selected clips takes us on a journey through the past in order to heighten our awareness of an ever-elusive and unfolding present. By editing together fragments from cinema’s vast archive to tell the current time, Marclay reframes our collective memory of movies as an uncanny confrontation with ourselves.

Over the course of forty years, Lea R. Sneider (1925–2020) formed a significant collection of Korean art that challenged established norms. While appreciating literati art, she was particularly drawn to lively and colorful forms connected to everyday life, resulting in a diverse collection that illustrates Korea’s vibrant material culture. This exhibition features a substantial gift and loans from the Lea R. Sneider Collection, generously provided by her children. Through approximately 100 pieces from the fifth century to the present, Including paintings, ceramics, furniture, textiles, and funeral and ritual objects, the exhibition highlights the pervasiveness of auspicious symbolism and the unpretentious dynamism in Korean art. Sneider has said that the works reflect the vitality and warmth of the people who engaged with them, a sentiment that her collection, with its emphasis on cultural and everyday relevance, underscores.

Among the various mock combats fought by knights and noblemen in tournaments, the joust was one of the most spectacular. The joust of peace required highly specialized armor that was unsuited to any other use, and usually made by the greatest armorers due to the exceptional metalworking skills required. This special installation features an armor for the joust of peace of Philip I of Castile (1478–1506) on loan from the Imperial Armory, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. A rare example among surviving armors for its refined decoration, it is also remarkable in that it was intended for a teenager. Its owner Philip I became duke of Burgundy, count of Flanders, and the ruler of additional lands, although in name only, upon his birth. He began wearing armor when he was just six years old, and this one was made for training and participating in tournaments around the time that he turned 15, when he was declared ready to rule. Through marriage, Philip became king consort of Castile and the first member of the House of Habsburg to rule over Spanish territories. His jousting armors were key to shaping his public image of a capable leader.

Photography has played a key role in structuring systems of power in society, including those related to crime and punishment. This exhibition presents immersive contemporary installations by the artist Jesse Krimes (American, b. 1982) alongside nineteenth-century photographs from The Met collection by the French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon, who developed the first modern system of criminal identification before the adoption of fingerprinting. Krimes’s image-based installations, made over the course of his six-year incarceration, reflect the ingenuity of an artist working without access to traditional materials. Employing prison-issued soap, hair gel, playing cards, and newspaper he created works of art that seek to disrupt and recontextualize the circulation of photographs in the media. Displayed at The Met in dialogue with Bertillon, whose pioneering method paired anthropomorphic measurements with photographs to produce the present-day mug shot, Krimes’s work raises questions about the perceived neutrality of our systems of identification and the hierarchies of social imbalance they create and reinscribe. An artist for whom collaboration and activism are vital, Krimes founded the Center for Art and Advocacy to highlight the talent and creative potential among individuals who have experienced incarceration and to support and improve outcomes for formerly incarcerated artists.

Photography has played a key role in structuring systems of power in society, including those related to crime and punishment. This exhibition presents immersive contemporary installations by the artist Jesse Krimes (American, b. 1982) alongside nineteenth-century photographs from The Met collection by the French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon, who developed the first modern system of criminal identification before the adoption of fingerprinting. Krimes’s image-based installations, made over the course of his six-year incarceration, reflect the ingenuity of an artist working without access to traditional materials. Employing prison-issued soap, hair gel, playing cards, and newspaper he created works of art that seek to disrupt and recontextualize the circulation of photographs in the media. Displayed at The Met in dialogue with Bertillon, whose pioneering method paired anthropomorphic measurements with photographs to produce the present-day mug shot, Krimes’s work raises questions about the perceived neutrality of our systems of identification and the hierarchies of social imbalance they create and reinscribe. An artist for whom collaboration and activism are vital, Krimes founded the Center for Art and Advocacy to highlight the talent and creative potential among individuals who have experienced incarceration and to support and improve outcomes for formerly incarcerated artists.

Photography has played a key role in structuring systems of power in society, including those related to crime and punishment. This exhibition presents immersive contemporary installations by the artist Jesse Krimes (American, b. 1982) alongside nineteenth-century photographs from The Met collection by the French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon, who developed the first modern system of criminal identification before the adoption of fingerprinting. Krimes’s image-based installations, made over the course of his six-year incarceration, reflect the ingenuity of an artist working without access to traditional materials. Employing prison-issued soap, hair gel, playing cards, and newspaper he created works of art that seek to disrupt and recontextualize the circulation of photographs in the media. Displayed at The Met in dialogue with Bertillon, whose pioneering method paired anthropomorphic measurements with photographs to produce the present-day mug shot, Krimes’s work raises questions about the perceived neutrality of our systems of identification and the hierarchies of social imbalance they create and reinscribe. An artist for whom collaboration and activism are vital, Krimes founded the Center for Art and Advocacy to highlight the talent and creative potential among individuals who have experienced incarceration and to support and improve outcomes for formerly incarcerated artists.

Enamel decoration is a significant element of Chinese decorative arts that has long been overlooked. This exhibition reveals the aesthetic, technical, and cultural achievement of Chinese enamel wares by demonstrating the transformative role of enamel during the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties. The first transformational moment occurred in the late 14th to 15th century, when the introduction of cloisonné enamel from the West, along with the development of porcelain with overglaze enamels, led to a shift away from a monochromatic palette to colorful works. The second transformation occurred in the late 17th to 18th century, when European enameling materials and techniques were brought to the Qing court and more subtle and varied color tones were developed on enamels applied over porcelain, metal, glass, and other mediums. In both moments, Chinese artists did not simply adopt or copy foreign techniques; they actively created new colors and styles that reflected their own taste. The more than 100 objects on view are drawn mainly from The Met collection.

Based on the 1960 film by Roger Corman and featuring a book by Howard Ashman, music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Ashman, Little Shop follows meek plant store attendant Seymour, his co-worker crush Audrey, her sadistic dentist of a boyfriend and the man-eating plant that threatens them and the world as we know it.

Nothing in Florida is quite what it seems. A popular tourist destination since the early twentieth century, it is a place where fantasy and reality collide, a subtropical paradise threatened by hurricanes and rising sea levels, a refuge for extremism and eccentricity. This exhibition brings together photographs and paintings of Florida by two artists of different generations who have sought to understand its complexity and contradictions: Anastasia Samoylova (born 1984), a Russian-American photographer based in Miami, and Walker Evans (1903–1975), an influential originator of documentary-style American photography.

Based on the 1960 film by Roger Corman and featuring a book by Howard Ashman, music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Ashman, Little Shop follows meek plant store attendant Seymour, his co-worker crush Audrey, her sadistic dentist of a boyfriend and the man-eating plant that threatens them and the world as we know it.

How do we make sense, or poetry, out of the system of images we face today? This is one of the questions taken up by CAMP, a collaborative artists’ studio in Mumbai, India, that draws on widely available technologies, including CCTV and cell phone cameras as well as the internet, “to think and to build what is possible, what is equitable, and what is interesting, for the future.” The group’s projects rethink our relationship with the technologies that constantly capture us. Founded in 2007 by Shaina Anand, Ashok Sukumaran, and Sanjay Bhangar, this shapeshifting group runs a rooftop cinema, cohosts online video archives, and uses moving images, radio broadcasts, lecture performances, and interventions in public spaces to examine the political and socioeconomic conditions of contemporary life. This exhibition includes three works that trace the arc of CAMP’s output over nearly two decades. Each redefines relationships between video’s producers, distributors, and spectators: a participatory television network in a dense New Delhi neighborhood; a film made from cell phone footage and music in collaboration with sailors navigating trade routes across the Indian Ocean; and a dramatic, multi-channel video panorama of Mumbai filmed by pushing a single surveillance camera to its limits. CAMP’s practice reorients communication devices, transport infrastructures, and surveillance equipment to transform entrenched systems into new opportunities for hope, longing, desire, and collective action.

The critically acclaimed bestselling novel Water for Elephants comes to vivid life on Broadway in a unique, spectacle-filled new musical. After losing what matters most, a young man jumps a moving train unsure of where the road will take him and finds a new home with the remarkable crew of a traveling circus, and a life—and love—beyond his wildest dreams. Seen through the eyes of his older self, his adventure becomes a poignant reminder that if you choose the ride, life can begin again at any age. Directed by Tony Award® nominee Jessica Stone (Kimberly Akimbo), with a book by three-time Tony nominee Rick Elice (Jersey Boys, Peter and the Starcatcher) adapted from Sara Gruen’s novel, and a soaring score by the acclaimed PigPen Theatre Co., Water for Elephants unites innovative stagecraft with the very best of Broadway talent in an authentic and deeply moving new musical that invites us all to give ourselves to the unknown.

Ganesha, the son of Shiva and Parvati, is a Brahmanical (Hindu) diety known to clear a path to the gods and remove obstacles in everyday life. He is loved by his devotees (bhakti) for his many traits, including his insatiable appetite for sweet cakes and his role as a dispenser of magic, surprise, and laughter. However, Ganesha is also the lord of ganas (nature deities) and can take on a fearsome aspect in this Guise. The seventh- to twenty-first-century works in this exhibition trace his depiction across the Indian subcontinent, the Himalayas, and Southeast Asia. Featuring 24 works across sculptures, paintings, musical instruments, ritual implements, and photography, the exhibition emphasizes the vitality and exuberance of Ganesha as the bringer of new beginnings.

How do we make sense, or poetry, out of the system of images we face today? This is one of the questions taken up by CAMP, a collaborative artists’ studio in Mumbai, India, that draws on widely available technologies, including CCTV and cell phone cameras as well as the internet, “to think and to build what is possible, what is equitable, and what is interesting, for the future.” The group’s projects rethink our relationship with the technologies that constantly capture us. Founded in 2007 by Shaina Anand, Ashok Sukumaran, and Sanjay Bhangar, this shapeshifting group runs a rooftop cinema, cohosts online video archives, and uses moving images, radio broadcasts, lecture performances, and interventions in public spaces to examine the political and socioeconomic conditions of contemporary life. This exhibition includes three works that trace the arc of CAMP’s output over nearly two decades. Each redefines relationships between video’s producers, distributors, and spectators: a participatory television network in a dense New Delhi neighborhood; a film made from cell phone footage and music in collaboration with sailors navigating trade routes across the Indian Ocean; and a dramatic, multi-channel video panorama of Mumbai filmed by pushing a single surveillance camera to its limits. CAMP’s practice reorients communication devices, transport infrastructures, and surveillance equipment to transform entrenched systems into new opportunities for hope, longing, desire, and collective action.

From a young age, acclaimed Pop artist David Hockney (British, b. 1937) cemented his reputation as one of the most innovative and experimental artists of his generation. Hockney/Origins: Early Works from the Roy B. and Edith J. Simpson Collection examines the early period of Hockney’s career in depth, from his time as a student at the Royal College of Art in London during the early 1960s to his formative years in the 1970s.

The critically acclaimed bestselling novel Water for Elephants comes to vivid life on Broadway in a unique, spectacle-filled new musical. After losing what matters most, a young man jumps a moving train unsure of where the road will take him and finds a new home with the remarkable crew of a traveling circus, and a life—and love—beyond his wildest dreams. Seen through the eyes of his older self, his adventure becomes a poignant reminder that if you choose the ride, life can begin again at any age. Directed by Tony Award® nominee Jessica Stone (Kimberly Akimbo), with a book by three-time Tony nominee Rick Elice (Jersey Boys, Peter and the Starcatcher) adapted from Sara Gruen’s novel, and a soaring score by the acclaimed PigPen Theatre Co., Water for Elephants unites innovative stagecraft with the very best of Broadway talent in an authentic and deeply moving new musical that invites us all to give ourselves to the unknown.

Redwood is a transportive new musical about one woman’s journey into the precious and precarious world of the redwood forest. Jesse is a successful businesswoman, mother and wife who seems to have it all, but inside, her heart is broken. Finding herself at a turning point, Jesse leaves everyone and everything behind, gets in her car and drives... Thousands of miles later, she hits the majestic forests of Northern California, where a chance meeting and a leap of faith change her life forever. With its deeply personal story, refreshingly contemporary sound, and awe-inspiring design, Redwood explores the lengths –and heights– one travels to find strength, resilience and healing.

Nothing in Florida is quite what it seems. A popular tourist destination since the early twentieth century, it is a place where fantasy and reality collide, a subtropical paradise threatened by hurricanes and rising sea levels, a refuge for extremism and eccentricity. This exhibition brings together photographs and paintings of Florida by two artists of different generations who have sought to understand its complexity and contradictions: Anastasia Samoylova (born 1984), a Russian-American photographer based in Miami, and Walker Evans (1903–1975), an influential originator of documentary-style American photography.

From a young age, acclaimed Pop artist David Hockney (British, b. 1937) cemented his reputation as one of the most innovative and experimental artists of his generation. Hockney/Origins: Early Works from the Roy B. and Edith J. Simpson Collection examines the early period of Hockney’s career in depth, from his time as a student at the Royal College of Art in London during the early 1960s to his formative years in the 1970s.

More than a hundred remarkable objects from the Heber Bishop collection, including carvings of jade, the most esteemed stone in China, and many other hardstones, are on view in this focused presentation. The refined works represent the sophisticated art of Chinese gemstone carvers during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) as well as the highly accomplished skills of Mogul Indian (1526–1857) craftsmen, which provided an exotic inspiration to their Chinese counterparts. Also on view are a set of Chinese stone-working tools and illustrations of jade workshops, which will introduce the traditional method of working jade.

Join Tony Award® winner James Monroe Iglehart and a talented ensemble cast as they bring Louis Armstrong’s incredible journey to life, from New Orleans to worldwide fame. This full-scale musical features a rich tapestry of characters, including the extraordinary women who helped shape his remarkable life and career. Be captivated by Armstrong’s timeless hits like “What a Wonderful World” and “When You’re Smiling,” performed by a large, dynamic cast. Don’t miss this spectacular celebration of music, filled with vibrant dance numbers, stunning sets, and unforgettable performances. Get your tickets now for an unforgettable night that honors the iconic man who defined an era.

The Department of Drawings and Prints boasts more than one million drawings, prints, and illustrated books made in Europe and the Americas from around 1400 to the present day. Because of their number and sensitivity to light, the works can only be exhibited for a limited period and are usually housed in on-site storage facilities. To highlight the vast range of works on paper, the department organizes four rotations a year in the Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery. Each installation is the product of a collaboration among curators and consists of up to 100 objects grouped by artist, technique, style, period, or subject. In 2024, the Museum received a remarkable gift from JoAnn Edinburg Pinkowitz of some three hundred prints by Mexican and other (mainly American) artists who worked in Mexico. This gift builds on JoAnn’s earlier donation of twentieth-century Chinese prints of the modern woodcut movement. JoAnn was raised in a family passionate about collecting art. During the 1960s, as a teenager, she volunteered in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She began collecting prints in 2009 after being inspired by the museum's exhibition Vida y Drama: Modern Mexican Prints. JoAnn was attracted to art that had a strong social and political message. Many of the prints on view were published by the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Workshop of Popular Graphic Art), a printmaking collective founded in 1937 in Mexico City “with the aim of stimulating graphic arts production in the interests of the Mexican people.” In the 1950s, artists from the workshop traveled to China, where they introduced their work to local artists. Artists from both countries treated similar subjects, and this spurred JoAnn to give Chinese prints to The Met. The Pinkowitz material dovetails perfectly with The Met’s outstanding collection of Mexican prints and includes works by artists not previously represented. Prints by American artists in Mexico and mid-century Chinese artists also deepen our appreciation of traditions of democratic printmaking.

In 1969, The Who created a rock opera that changed the course of music history. Some 25 years later,The Who’s TOMMYarrived on Broadway, winning 5 Tony Awards® and pushing the boundaries of what musical theatre can be. This March, the Amazing Journey arrives in a dazzling new production direct from a sold-out, record-breaking, award-winning Chicago premiere. “Broadway has nothing else like this wizardry going on, not this season and nothing I know of for next season. Visually and sonically overwhelming, it’s a prescient masterpiece of a rock opera.”Chris Jones,Chicago Tribune

How do we make sense, or poetry, out of the system of images we face today? This is one of the questions taken up by CAMP, a collaborative artists’ studio in Mumbai, India, that draws on widely available technologies, including CCTV and cell phone cameras as well as the internet, “to think and to build what is possible, what is equitable, and what is interesting, for the future.” The group’s projects rethink our relationship with the technologies that constantly capture us. Founded in 2007 by Shaina Anand, Ashok Sukumaran, and Sanjay Bhangar, this shapeshifting group runs a rooftop cinema, cohosts online video archives, and uses moving images, radio broadcasts, lecture performances, and interventions in public spaces to examine the political and socioeconomic conditions of contemporary life. This exhibition includes three works that trace the arc of CAMP’s output over nearly two decades. Each redefines relationships between video’s producers, distributors, and spectators: a participatory television network in a dense New Delhi neighborhood; a film made from cell phone footage and music in collaboration with sailors navigating trade routes across the Indian Ocean; and a dramatic, multi-channel video panorama of Mumbai filmed by pushing a single surveillance camera to its limits. CAMP’s practice reorients communication devices, transport infrastructures, and surveillance equipment to transform entrenched systems into new opportunities for hope, longing, desire, and collective action.

Ganesha, the son of Shiva and Parvati, is a Brahmanical (Hindu) diety known to clear a path to the gods and remove obstacles in everyday life. He is loved by his devotees (bhakti) for his many traits, including his insatiable appetite for sweet cakes and his role as a dispenser of magic, surprise, and laughter. However, Ganesha is also the lord of ganas (nature deities) and can take on a fearsome aspect in this Guise. The seventh- to twenty-first-century works in this exhibition trace his depiction across the Indian subcontinent, the Himalayas, and Southeast Asia. Featuring 24 works across sculptures, paintings, musical instruments, ritual implements, and photography, the exhibition emphasizes the vitality and exuberance of Ganesha as the bringer of new beginnings.

The Jefferson R. Burdick collection of ephemera at The Met contains one of the most distinguished collections of historical baseball cards anywhere in the world. In 1947, Burdick (1900–1963), an electrician from Syracuse, New York, and avid collector of ephemera, began to donate in large batches his holdings of more than 300,000 trade cards, postcards, and posters to the Museum. Included in the donation were more than 30,000 baseball cards dating back to the 1880s. This exhibition features over one hundred dating cards from 1895 to 1956. Produced using a variety of printing techniques and in a range of styles, the cards feature legends of the game from a bygone era.

Since the early 1970s, artist, activist, and scholar Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe (b. 1951, Chicago, IL; lives and works in South Kent, CT) has made photographs that testify to the beauty and complexity of Black life, honoring the rhythms of the everyday and marking important rites of passage for the people who appear in them.

Since the early 1970s, artist, activist, and scholar Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe (b. 1951, Chicago, IL; lives and works in South Kent, CT) has made photographs that testify to the beauty and complexity of Black life, honoring the rhythms of the everyday and marking important rites of passage for the people who appear in them.

Since the early 1970s, artist, activist, and scholar Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe (b. 1951, Chicago, IL; lives and works in South Kent, CT) has made photographs that testify to the beauty and complexity of Black life, honoring the rhythms of the everyday and marking important rites of passage for the people who appear in them.