The New York art exhibitions to see in August

In the 20th century, New York cemented itself as the home of Abstract Expressionism and subversive Pop Art. These days, the city is a canvas for a new school of artists pushing the boundaries of media and holding social justice as their primary message.

World-renowned institutions such as MoMA, The Metropolitan Museum Of Art, and the Guggenheim continue to draw tourists and art aficionados in equal measure, and leading commercial galleries such as Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace, Perrotin and David Zwirner all occupy vast square footage, some with multiple locations.

With Manhattan’s art fairs, New York is proving that it remains a powerhouse of creativity, originality, commerce, and connection. Here are the best art exhibitions to see around the city now. Visiting? See the Wallpaper* edit of New York's best design hotels.

The best New York art exhibitions: what to see this month

‘Voyage à Paris’

Findlay galleries until 20 Aug 2024

Paris is this year’s city of the summer. If you couldn't catch a flight to see the Olympics and get your French culture fix, Voyage à Paris at Findlay Galleries might be a close second. Presenting a series of paintings by artists with varying interpretations of the City of Lights, from the Eiffel tower to the Seine, to the city’s beautiful gardens, the viewer is taken on a creative journey by artists from around the globe.

Writer Tianna Williams

'Helen Marden: The Grief Paintings'

Gagosian Park & 75 until 14 Sep 2024

A new collection of work from American artist Helen Marden, explores the journey of grieving. After caring for artist and husband Brice, Marden created a series of resin paintings in the months following his passing. The abstraction is created from powdered ink and resin with natural objects carefully layered which extend over the paintings circular borders. The Grief Paintings is Marden’s artistic nod to the journey of life and how to grieve on your own terms.

Writer Tianna Williams

'Sounds of Silence'

Halsey McKay Gallery until 26 Aug 2024

Brooklyn-based artist Alex Dodge presents ‘Sounds of Silence’, a showcase of still-life works on canvas. Inspired by the 1966 song and album by Simon & Garfunkel, Dodge makes sure each piece has calming muted tones, and almost an incomplete feel. In his notable style, the series includes an amalgamation of computer-generated images with oil on canvas, creating a non-existent human figure, its form shaped from draped textiles.

Writer Tianna Williams

'Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm'

Brooklyn Museum until 18 August 2024

It is the last month to see Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm at the Brooklyn Museum. Through McCartney’s Pentax camera, he shows the viewer the year of ‘Beatlemania’ from 1963–64. The band's first U.S. tour, which projected them into superstardom, is captured via McCartney’s lens, with 250 rediscovered photographs found in his personal archive.

Writer Tianna Williams

‘Ice Cold: An Exhibition of Hip-Hop Jewelry’

The American Museum of Natural History until 5 January 2025

Be immersed in the sparkling world of Hip-Hop jewellery at the American Museum of Natural History. Oversized gold chains and diamond encrusted keyrings are accompanied with star-studded names- The Notorious B.I.G., Jam Master Jay and Erykah Badu among them. But ‘Ice Cold’ aims higher, going way beyond the brilliantly audacious designs to illuminate hip-hop jewellery as part of a multi-layered trajectory of style, politics and sociocultural trends.

Writer Caragh Mckay

Fruit and Fruition

GRIMM, New York until 9 Aug 2024

Curated by artist Angela Heisc Fruit and Fruition delves into the memories of a group of artists who have created a visual representation of their individual psychological landscapes. Through abstraction, the exhibition aims to explore memory and emotion through the conscious and subconscious mind. The aptly named title nods to the illustration of emotions via objects and forms (fruit) and the development (fruition) that these forms undergo and blossom. grimmgallery.com

Writer Tianna Williams

The Imaginary Made Real

Berry Campbell Gallery until 16 August 2024

Featuring 31 individual artists, The Imaginary Made Real, curated by New York-based artist and writer Paul Laster, is a celebration of the centennial of Surrealism. Through sculpture, ceramics, painting, drawing, mosaics and more, the exhibition explores ways of thinking and creating something abstract which embraces spiritual and psychological viewpoints. With pieces displayed at different scales you journey through a dreamlike landscape which can be seen from inside and outside the gallery. berrycampbell.com

Writer Tianna Williams

Peter Hujar: Rialto

The Ukrainian Museum, New York, until 1 September 2024

Born to an immigrant Ukrainian family in New York, Peter Hujar became one of the major American photographers of the late 20th Century. This exhibition, focusing on the first fifteen years of his career, showcases three important photo series, which paved the way for the artist he would become.

Three bodies of work created in the 1950s and 1960s are the focus of Peter Hujar: Rialto, with many photographs from Southbury (1957), Florence (1958), and the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo (1963) previously unseen. Also on view are Hujar’s black and white portraits of the characters who frequented bohemian downtown New York, including Iggy Pop and Janis Joplin.

'In the Shadow of the American Dream: David Wojnarowicz'

Museum of Modern Art, ongoing

Wojnarowicz's work has been recontextualised by MoMA, who have presented it alongside his contemporaries from the eighties New York downtown scene including filmmaker Marion Scemama, Donald Moffett, Agosto Machado and painter Martin Wong. Important works here include Wojnarowicz's's 1987 Fire, while Machado’s Shrine is a moving time capsule of ephemera. It includes a ‘Justice for Marsha’ sign, referring to questions around the suspicious death of trans activist Marsha P Johnson in 1992, as well as club flyers and memorial service cards.

Writer: Lauren Cochrane

Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory

El Museo del Barrio until August 11 2024

‘Amalia Mesa-Bains: Archaeology of Memory’ marks a significant milestone as the first retrospective dedicated to the pioneering Chicanx installation artist, curator and theorist Amalia Mesa-Bains. Organised by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and hosted at El Museo del Barrio in New York, the exhibition provides a rare and long-overdue opportunity to delve into three decades of the artist’s genre-defying artworks, including her emblematic large-scale altar installations, prints, books and codices – many seen together for the first time. Writer: Sofia De La Cruz.

‘The Real Thing: Unpacking Product Photography’

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Until 4 August 2024

Comprised of more than 60 works from the first century of photo advertising (beginning in the 1850s), the images in ‘The Real Thing: Unpacking Product Photography’ were pulled solely from the Met’s own collection in New York – a constraint that helped set parameters says curator Virginia McBride, noting that it is not a complete history of commercial photography – and most of the pieces have rarely been publicly exhibited. The curator was keen to rectify this, she says, and moreover she was curious to unpack their role in shaping the visual language of modernism, as the show endeavours to do.

Writer: Zoe Whitfield

Light Line: Jenny Holzer

The Guggenheim, until 29 September 2024

Former Wallpaper* Guest Editor, Jenny Holzer, transforms The Guggenheim's Frank Lloyd-Wright designed rotunda with a spiralling display of LED panels, broadcasting phrases from her series of essays. A reimagination of her 1989 exhibition at Guggenheim, Light Line highlights the incisive use of the written word across time and media in Holzer’s practice. In addition to the LED sign, the exhibition features a selection of Holzer’s works from the 1970s to the present day, including paintings, works on paper, and stone pieces. Between May 16-20, the building's exterior will also be used to project a selection of poems and observations which speak on the need for peace.

Writer: Charlotte Gunn

Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion

The Met until 2 September 2024

The Met’s latest Costume Institute exhibition, ‘Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’ is a multi-sensory journey of sight, smell and touch.

‘Fashion is a living art form that requires most of our senses for its fullest appreciation and the greatest understanding,' said curator, Andrew Bolton. As a result, visitors are encouraged to smell, hear and touch the fabrics of the garments. With a collection of 200 pieces from the likes of Dior, Lanvin, Loewe and Phillip Treacy, the exhibition is impressive in scope and scale, with garments ranging from the 1600s to today.

Read our first-look review of 'Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion'.