New York’s museums and galleries are preparing for a packed fall and winter season. Highlights include overdue retrospectives, immersive sonic experiments, and major thematic surveys, including the blockbuster Ruth Asawa show at MoMA and the long-awaited reopening of the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Here are some of the other shows worth seeing between now and early 2026:

Richard Serra: Running Arcs (for John Cage) at Gagosian

Richard Serra’s massive steel sculptures return to Chelsea. This series is a nod to composer John Cage, whose experimental sound works influenced Serra’s thinking on space, silence and duration. These are the kind of works you don’t just look at, but inhabit.

Running Arcs (for John Cage) opens Sept. 12 at Gagosian West 21st Street.

Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson at the Met

This career-spanning retrospective is the most comprehensive presentation to date of John WIlson’s work. It spans more than 60 years of painting, printmaking and sculpture from the Boston-based artist, who was known for centering Black life and political struggle.

The show ranges from family portraits to political works like Wilson’s studies for his famous bust of Martin Luther King Jr. The show debuted at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Witnessing Humanity opens Sept. 20.

“Man with Bubble, Central Park (Near Bandshell)” by Shawn Walker.

Courtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art

Sixties Surreal at the Whitney

This ambitious, revisionist show focuses on the decade’s more surreal and politically charged undercurrents, rather than the usual suspects of pop art and minimalism. With more than 100 artists, including Yayoi Kusama, Nancy Grossman and David Hammons, this exhibit mostly highlights artists from across the United States.

Sixties Surreal opens Sept. 24.

Blazing A Trail: Dorothy Waugh’s National Parks Posters at Poster House

Before the Works Progress Administration poster boom of the late 1930s, there was Dorothy Waugh. Between 1934 and 1936, she designed a bold series of modernist posters for the National Park Service, now recognized as a turning point in American graphic design.

This exhibition presents the full series, as well as archival materials.

Blazing A Trail opens Sept. 27.

“The Adventures of Today are the Memories of Tomorrow,” 1934, by Dorothy Waugh.

Courtesy of Poster House

Georg Friedrich Haas: 11,000 Strings at Park Avenue Armory

Is it a concert, an installation, or an experiment in tuning? Haas’ “11,000 Strings” puts 50 upright pianos in the cavernous Park Avenue Armory and surrounds the listener with a performance from Klangforum Wien, one of Europe’s top contemporary ensembles.

This is the North American premiere of this limited run, which opens Sept. 30. Tickets are available here.

Improvisations in the Park: Larry Bell at Madison Square Park

NYC art lovers will remember Larry Bell’s larger-than-life glass cubes from his rooftop installation at the Whitney Biennial in 2017. One work from that series, “Pacific Red,” is among six pieces that will be installed on the lawns across Madison Square Park for nearly six months this fall and winter. The others include two commissioned especially for the park, and two recent works being shown for the first time.

The outdoors promises to be a great environment to experience Bell’s works, which shift viewers’ perception along with the changing light throughout the day. So people who live and work nearby will be especially poised to enjoy it.

Improvisations in the Park opens Sept. 30.

“Pacific Red II” 2017, by Larry Bell

Courtesy of Larry Bell, Hauser & Wirth, and Anthony Meier, Mill Valley.

Robert Rauschenberg: Life Can’t Be Stopped at the Guggenheim

Timed to Rauschenberg’s centennial, this exhibition reintroduces the artist with signature works including “Barge,” a 32-foot silkscreen created in a single-day burst of activity. It’s one of the largest in a series rarely shown in public, and returns to New York after two decades.

Other works highlight Rauschenberg’s pioneering use of found materials and collage.

Life Can’t Be Stopped opens Oct. 10.

Arthur Jafa: Less Is Morbid at MoMA

In MoMA’s “Artist’s Choice” series, artists program their own show from the permanent collection. Here, the video artist Arthur Jafa curates nearly 100 works, placing icons like Basquiat, Rothko and more into new context. The idea is to disrupt the usual ways we see their art.

Less is Morbid opens Nov. 19.

Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination at MoMA

What can a portrait accomplish, politically? That’s the question behind this exhibition of 20th century African studio photography, with works by Seydou Keita, Malick Sidibé and others. It’s a look at how images of style, leisure and youth served as cultural markers during and after independence movements in Africa. Coincidentally, Keita has his own exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in October.

Ideas of Africa opens Dec. 14.