New York art week arrived with relentless energy, then faded under a soggy nor’easter. The storm did little to dampen the volume of reviews, labor news, and openings across the city, even as some attendees sought a quieter pace.
Several critics weighed in on headline exhibitions. Stephanie Wambugu examined Arthur Jafa’s expansive New Museum retrospective, I Am Tony, noting how its gallows humor and dense references to music, popular culture, religion, cinema, and political violence push his long-running themes into even more idiosyncratic territory.
Along Museum Mile, Aruna D’Souza assessed Taryn Simon’s Father Country I Do Love You at the Guggenheim Museum, a spiraling inquiry that piles evidence and associations around the rotunda. Across the East River, Alex Santana considered Teresa Margolles’s En el lugar de los hechos (At the Scene) at MoMA PS1, questioning the visual potency of distilled violence and the borders it reinforces in the name of capital.
Beyond the marquee shows, the Museum of the City of New York launched a permanent exhibition on activism, tracing 250 years of organizing through artifacts and ephemera. For those seeking the arcane, the Morgan Library & Museum’s large-scale tarot exhibition enters its final days.
Labor developments continued to build. According to organizers, unionized staff at the Brooklyn Museum and the American Folk Art Museum are weighing tentative agreements reached in recent days.
At the Whitney Museum of American Art, the union announced an October 5 strike deadline as negotiations continue. On the film front, John Wilson’s debut feature documentary, The History of Concrete (2026), drew praise for its lateral leaps and dry humor during a late screening, offering a left-field complement to the week’s art discourse.
Art Fair Coverage
Reports from the piers described a noticeably subdued edition of the Armory Show, with one critic observing that the finance conference one floor below felt livelier by comparison.
From Our Critics
Aruna D’Souza on Taryn Simon at the Guggenheim Museum
D’Souza wrote that the overwhelming accumulation of material becomes the spectacle in Father Country I Do Love You, inspiring awe at the artist’s curiosity and research but leaving a lingering sense of helplessness about power’s reach.
Alex Santana on Teresa Margolles at MoMA PS1
Santana argued that Margolles pares complex ideas to minimal gestures that expose a system of violence dividing “us” and “them,” an economy of means that confronts the codification of harm.
Features and New York art week
Feature coverage continued throughout the week, complementing reviews and fair reporting with on-the-ground observations and artist-focused pieces from around the city. For broader seasonal context, readers can revisit The Cathedral of Joy: Scenes, art news, and fall guides.
News
News updates highlighted institutional moves, community programming, and citywide cultural developments that intersected with the broader rhythm of New York art week. These developments underscored the ongoing negotiations shaping museums and arts organizations across the city.
What Else is Happening?
- Member studio visits and conversations with residents at the International Studio & Curatorial Program in New York.
- AGI Fine Art’s New York, I Love You at Agora Gallery, presenting contemporary works shaped by the city’s energy and flux.
- Japanese Craft, Evolved at Vanderplas Gallery, featuring practices in cloisonné enamel, urushi lacquer, Kamakura-bori, ceramics, and hammered aluminum.
- The Poetry Society of New York’s Fourth Annual Masquerade Ball at Pen + Brush Gallery with readings, performances, installations, and a silent auction.
- A screening at MoMA of videos by Christopher Kulendran Thomas, interweaving archival material, found footage, and AI-generated deepfakes in layered narratives.
- The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture hosts FEMINIST CANARIES, a conversation with Roxane Gay, Jenn M. Jackson, Mikki Kendall, and Loretta Ross.