Must-see New York City museum openings and exhibitions in fall 2025

One of this fall’s most anticipated art world events is undoubtedly the reopening of the Studio Museum after its closing in 2018. Designed by Adjaye Associates in collaboration with Cooper Robertson, the institution’s new 82,000-square-foot building will more than double space for exhibitions and the museum’s Artist-in-Residence program. The museum will open with a major presentation of the work of Tom Lloyd, who was the subject of the Studio Museum’s inaugural exhibition in 1968; a presentation of archival photographs and ephemera from the institution’s 56-year history; new site-specific commissions by Camille Norment and Christopher Myers; and much more.

This fall The Met will make history with the first exhibition to spotlight Man Ray’s rayographs within the context of his boundary-pushing oeuvre. In 1921, the artist put his own twist on 19th-century camera-less image-making by placing objects on or near a sheet of light-sensitive paper. Once exposed to light and developed, everyday objects, from slinkies to hair combs, appeared as reversed silhouettes, resulting in the mysterious, hazy photograms he’d coin ‘rayographs’. Approximately 60 rayographs and 100 paintings, objects, films and more will shed new light on Man Ray’s experimental practice.

Though Claude Monet only visited Venice once — in 1908 — the floating city made an indelible impression on him: ‘My trip to Venice has had the advantage of making me see my canvases with a better eye’, said the Impressionist, who found the city’s dazzling light and water the ideal subject. Organised with the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Brooklyn Museum will present New York’s largest museum show dedicated to the artist in over 25 years. Reuniting 19 of Monet’s Venetian paintings for the first time since their 1912 debut in Paris, the exhibition will feature more than 100 artworks, books and ephemera in dialogue with works by Canaletto, John Singer Sargent and more artists who immortalised the city’s singular beauty.

After three years, the New Museum will reveal its 60,000-square-foot expansion designed by OMA / Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas in collaboration with Cooper Robertson. Not only will the East Village museum’s exhibition space be doubled, but it will also create new venues for artist residencies, public programs and the institution’s cultural incubator NEW INC. Visitors to the revamped museum will be greeted by Tschabalala Self’s facade intervention and Sarah Lucas’s sculpture commissioned for a new outdoor plaza, while inside, the atrium will feature a site-specific installation by Klára Hosnedlová, the artist’s first U.S. museum project. The inaugural exhibition, New Humans: Memories of the Future, will explore the evolving relationship between humans and technology through the work of more than 150 international artists, writers, scientists, and other thought leaders.

In celebration of Robert Rauschenberg’s Centennial, the Museum of the City of New York, supported by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, will delve into the artist’s complex relationship with New York City through his groundbreaking photographic practice. A photographer in his own right, Rauschenberg frequently incorporated found objects and imagery into his works, producing compelling assemblages of urban life. A cornerstone of this exhibition is In + Out City Limits, a three-year (1979–81) photographic survey conducted across the United States. Whether of storefronts of apartment windows, the New York photographs from this series reflect Rauschenberg’s preoccupation with human culture.

Discover the breadth and history of France’s legendary Sèvres Manufactory in the company’s first major exhibition outside of France. Organised by Sèvres, Manufacture et Musée nationaux, and Bard Graduate Center (BGC), the upcoming exhibition will feature both functional and decorative pieces by the porcelain purveyor who has produced exceptional sculpture with numerous leading artists and makers since its 18th-century founding. These include Jean Arp, Louise Bourgeois, Yayoi Kusama, Les Lalanne and Ettore Sottsass, amongst many more.

After debuting at SFMOMA this spring, the highly anticipated Ruth Asawa retrospective will travel to New York where East Coast audiences can enjoy 300 artworks by the artist, educator and civic leader. This first posthumous survey brings together Asawa’s endless variety of looped-wire sculptures, bronze casts, drawings, paintings and prints from her six-decade-long career. Also explored are her public commissions, including fountains, murals and memorials in the Bay Area and beyond.

Also don’t miss:

Flora Yukhnovich’s Four Seasons, The Frick Collection (3 September 2025 through 9 March 2026)

Dress, Dreams, and Desire: Fashion and Psychoanalysis, The Museum at FIT (10 September 2025 through 4 January 2026)

Chiharu Shiota: Two Home Countries, Japan Society (12 September 2025 through 11 January 2026)

Sixties Surreal, Whitney Museum of American Art (24 September 2025 through 19 January 2026)

Designing Motherhood Things that Make and Break Our Births, Museum of Arts and Design (4 October 2025 through 15 March 2026)

The Gay Harlem Renaissance, New York Historical (10 October 2025 through 8 March 2026)

Renoir Drawings, Morgan Library & Museum (17 October 2025 through 8 February 2026)

Spanish Style: Fashion Illuminated, 1550-1700, Hispanic Society Museum & Library (6 November 2025 through 8 February 2026)

Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World, Guggenheim (7 November through 26 April 2026)