Autumn in New York City: This inescapable cultural moment is not only one of my most sought-after trips, but it also marks one of the most important periods in the global art scene — the revival of a post-summer slumber. Galleries, museums and auction houses unveil their most anticipated showings and establish the benchmark for market direction. The city maintains its status as an epicenter of culture and sets the tone for the art we’ll see in the coming year.

After leaving Ann Arbor to visit world-renowned museums and sign my name in galleries’ guest books, I witnessed all the city had to offer. Here’s a roundup of the unmissable art that caught my eye this autumn in New York.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met is more than a museum — it’s the city’s cultural staple. Enjoying The Met, regardless of one’s art knowledge, is easy. The real challenge is choosing what to see in a limited time frame. This was my third visit and I decided to focus on the duality and interconnectedness between preconquest and modern art. As Walter Mignolo said, “there is no modernity without coloniality.”

The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing is home to art displays from Africa, Oceania and the ancient Americas. I spent most of my time in the latter — exploring Mesoamerican objects, Incan textiles and the manipulation of the elements. There, I noticed the similarities between what was previously not considered “art” and what we now view as the pinnacle of it. There’s “A Stone Sphere from Costa Rica” — nothing but a perfectly polished spherical stone — evidence of Cezanne’s theory that all art can be reduced to a cylinder, sphere and cone. The Wari and Tiwanaku people’s four-cornered hats from 500-900 C.E., adorned with intricate patterns crafted by Peruvian artisans, bear a striking resemblance to the colorful accessories in “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” And last but not least, the Calima Ilama-era mask, originally designed as a burial offering, resembles the finest jewelry and faces in modern surrealist paintings.

Straight ahead, the Modern and Contemporary Art wings are home to some of the most famous works at the Met. From a post-colonial perspective, the handling of colors in Henri Matisse’s and Paul Gauguin’s primitivist works stand out. Matisse’s odalisques portray nude women in Morocco while Gaunguin’s Tahitian subjects are also eroticized in the popular manner of the time. 

Honorable mentions that stood out to me were Edgar Degas’ oddly lifelike “The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer” sculpture, Georges Seurat’s pointillist “Study for ‘Sunday on La Grande Jatte,’” Gustav Klimt’s confident “Mäda Primavesi,” René Magritte’s “The Eternally Obvious” and Florine Stettheimer’s four cathedrals — especially “The Cathedrals of Art.”

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Arguably one of the most recognizable architectural masterpieces both in the New York City art scene and internationally, the Guggenheim’s curvature and spirals are hard to miss on the Museum Mile. In addition to the masterpieces it houses, this posthumous Frank Lloyd Wright design is part of the Guggenheim’s global art project. The inside of this iconic modernist structure contains a spiral ramp that leads to a domed skylight — an unusual yet brilliant way to display art. Unlike other museums that might seem daunting to those unfamiliar, navigating the Guggenheim is undemanding. This season, plants hung from the rotunda’s ceiling and the stage hosted a poetry reading, an additional dimension to an already complex building.

On view until Jan. 19, 2026, Rashid Johnson’s “A Poem for Deep Thinkers” represents the countless mediums art can occupy — including everything from the traditional canvas to spray paint on mirrors, film, mosaics, textiles, music and even ghee (yes, ghee). Mixing disciplines, Johnson seeks to mediate Black popular culture and establish his role as both an art historian and a creative contemporary artist. The top of the spiral makes the walk worthwhile; there, shorts play on retro TVs and the same plants that hang from the skylight in metal cubes meet Johnson’s Twombly-esque patterned canvas.

The ongoing collection, “Modern European Currents,” presents an integral legacy for the early 20th century: the avant-garde’s reaction to socio-economic changes. The superlative artist of this collection is Pablo Picasso, whose four vastly different works on display create a narrative of his life. The earliest of his works, the 1900 “Le Moulin de la Galette,” is one of his first creations in Paris. Emerging from the shadows, we’re presented with movement and clusters of social classes, his commentary on modern-day life. Consequently, the 1901 “The Fourteenth of July” portrays somewhat similar content in a vastly different form. Evident brushstrokes, a colorful palette and human figures demarcated by black make a scene of Bastille Day. Picasso’s next painting, “Woman Ironing,” is part of his widely known Blue Period, where, opposite to his last two group scenes, he presents a melancholic portrait. Using blues, grays and whites, he evokes empathy for a laborious woman. The last Picasso painting on display is the 1928 “Bird on a Tree”; the piece’s style isn’t comparable to his other works in the Guggenheim. Influenced by his use of cubism, he created a flat, colorful scene of a bird, a classic symbol of freedom akin to his own ever-changing artistic style.

The Frick Collection

The last museum I visited was the newly renovated Frick Collection, reopened in April 2025. Similar to the Guggenheim, the building itself tells a bigger story. This Fifth Avenue Gilded Age mansion’s art collection was left by Henry Clay Frick for the public to enjoy. The art on display is mostly from the 14th to 19th centuries (think of Old Master paintings), including medals and sculptures accompanied by decorative arts which are themed for each of the mansion’s rooms. In contrast to the clean walls of the aforementioned museums, the Frick still resembles a mansion’s interior design, adding depth to the Rembrandt, Goya and Vermeer pieces that grace the walls. The Garden Court, located on the first floor, provides visitors with reprieve from the mansion’s intricacy with its refreshing openness, natural lighting, powerful columns and grandiose fountain.

On display until Jan. 5, 2026, is “To the Holy Sepulcher: Treasures from the Terra Sancta Museum,” a truly groundbreaking demonstration of opulence donated by European Catholic monarchs to the church in Jerusalem. Prior to the opening of the Terra Sancta Museum, this collection traveled around Europe and North America, with the Frick serving as its first venue. Not only does it signify the church’s wealth and immense influence on art history, it also shows the mastery of managing precious materials in silversmithing and textiles. Dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries, many of these works were largely unknown until scholars rediscovered them in the 1980s. The distinct styles of each region, including Spain, Portugal, France and the Kingdom of Naples, persist as they all seek to display power and proximity to the church through liturgical objects, 40 of which are at the Frick. 

Lévy Gorvy Dayan

Moving away from Museum Mile, while still on the Upper East Side, I moved one block to the left to visit three galleries, with Lévy Gorvy Dayan as the first. On display from Sept. 18 to Dec. 13, 2025, and in collaboration with art dealer and collector Mary Boone, the brilliant “Downtown/Uptown: New York in the Eighties” was my first stop. The artists on display highlighted a community that drove the New York art scene, one based on experimentation and popular culture. Speaking of popular, the exhibition included works by the most recognizable names in American history, including but not limited to Jean-Michel Basquiat’s groundbreaking neo-expressionist oeuvre, Andy Warhol’s repetitive photography, Keith Haring’s cartoonish figures and Jeff Koons’ use of physical dimensions. Nonetheless, artists I was less familiar with, such as Francesco Clemente, the collective Guerrilla Girls and Barbara Kruger, made sure that afternoon felt like I was transported to this iconic moment in time. My favorites: Haring’s “Untitled (Gold Vase),” which includes suggestive scenes opposite to his playful style; Guerilla Girls’ critique of the lack of representation of women in the previously mentioned museums; Richard Prince’s “Untitled (cowboy)” two-part photographs; and the eye-catching Kruger that adorns the spaces’ stairs and reminded me, amid the city that never sleeps, of my worryful nature in a shockingly red font. 

Di Donna Galleries

“In the Mind’s Garden,” on display until Dec. 13, consisted of more than 80 paintings and sculptures by the renowned surrealist artist René Magritte and the artist couple Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne. Di Donna’s entrance consists of a deceptive black-and-white pattern and outlining, a conversation between the subconscious and unseen materiality. Magritte’s recognizable style, consisting of precise dreamlike compositions, covered the walls of the gallery. Mixing backgrounds with shapes and utilizing figure-ground perspective to toy with the viewer’s cognitive skills and understanding, Magritte once again creates a sense of artistic eeriness with his work. The female nude was a consistent theme throughout, with works like “Le viol,” “Le miroir universal” and “Moralité du sommeil,” a testament to the movement’s connection with Freudian psychoanalysis and the exploration of desire. Similarly, many of Magritte’s works, such as “Le Traité du paysage,” “Le séducteur” and “Le choeur des sphinges,” among others, explore the illogical and almost inverse relationship between an object and its background in our mind. Les Lalanne, on the other hand, worked with the material to create functional flora and fauna. François-Xavier’s “Hippopotame I,” “Moutons de Laine,” “Poisson Paysage” and “Petit Rhinocéros III” are all examples of the inspiration he drew from animals, with a mischievous wit. The other Lalanne, Claude, merges the plant and body, a testament to humans’ roots in nature. “Choupatte” and “Petit lapin debout à collerette” are some of the many physical manifestations of anthropomorphism — the attribution of human traits to animals.

Salon 94

Urs Fischer’s “Shucks And Aww” at Salon 94 lived up to its namesake as it filled the gallery’s first two floors with visual wit through design. On the first floor, Fischer presents a plethora of equally different objects — a paraffin wax statue of former President Bill Clinton resting on a chair, a toilet whose bowl is full of fruits, a chair and its shadow painted on the wall and a steel sculpture with a Pinocchio-esque face and a resting cat on its nose. A playful representation of the mundane through mediums, subject matter and humor, this collection demonstrates a retrospective view of Fischer’s evolution toward design. Consequently, on the second floor, there is a more complete employment of Fischer’s design abilities, my personal favorite. As you move around the room, “Elegy,” a symphony of golden drops falling from the ceiling, creates a different pattern at every angle. This golden curtain of rain, composed of 800 hand-blown glass drops from Venice, creates a sense of movement in a completely still room. With the windows facing the typical New York City view of brownstones, checkered tile flooring and an etched stone background, this installation transcends Fischer’s work. The addition of mirrors on the wall allowed me to enter the design, not only reflecting the jaw-dropping golden rain, but also my role as a participant in the art.

Daily Arts Writer Lucia Larach can be reached at llarach@umich.edu

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