The holidays are busy, but everyone needs a break, and what better way to replenish your mind and soul than to see some art? Below are a few shows to catch when you can slip away from all the chaos and take a moment, or more, to revel in the gifts of art. Whether it’s the subtle humor of Thomas Schütte, the embodied emotion of Ralph Lemon, the aesthetic splendor of Alexandra Exter, or anything else on our list, you’ll be glad you made the time. —Natalie Haddad, Reviews Editor
Deshaun Price
15 Orient, 72 Walker Street, 3rd floor, Tribeca, Manhattan
Through January 4, 2025
Deshaun Price’s pensive portraits of people and landscapes breathe gently in the gorgeous new Tribeca location of 15 Orient, previously an apartment gallery in Brooklyn. Both the gallery space and the art on the walls seem unfinished, but that’s exactly what makes the show so complete. Half there and not there, Price’s figures beckon us into their world, where closeness and distance, solitude and togetherness, are constantly negotiated. They may leave you with necessary, new questions about your place in the world. —Hakim Bishara
Thomas Schütte
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, Midtown, Manhattan
Through January 18, 2025
Schütte’s sculptures are often infused with a dry humor that helps humanize forms that sometimes feel staid or academic, and that collision of sensibilities makes the results endearing. For instance, his curious Melonely series from 1986 combines the terms “melon” and “lonely,” while evoking the term melancholy as well. He’s turned watermelon wedges into strange shapes that suggest a type of meaning that eludes us as viewers, even if, at times, we sense that we are on the verge of understanding it. A large retrospective with many threads for the viewer to pull on. —Hrag Vartanian
Alexandra Exter: The Stage Is a World
The Ukrainian Museum, 222 East 6th Street, East Village, Manhattan
Through January 19, 2025
If you’ve never heard of Alexandra Exter, you can add her to the list of under-appreciated women artists. Fortunately, the Ukrainian Museum has. The Stage Is a World includes over 30 works by the multi-talented artist, a figure in avant-garde European art circles in the early 20th century who alternated between painting, drawing, filmmaking, traditional crafts, theater design, and fashion with ease. Weaving together different artistic styles and eras, Exter conjured a striking aesthetic world that employed color and pattern as formal and affective elements. A series of costume designs rendered in a Constructivist style coax out the drama of the movement. Paintings like the spectacular “Masked Figures by the Banks of a Venetian Canal” and “Carnival Procession” (both c. 1927–29) draw on Cubism and Futurism for their architectural backdrops, while harlequins and masked figures in the foreground create an uncanny atmosphere, like two worlds colliding. A film in its own spacious screening room, accompanied by a mannequin in one of Exter’s designs, brings her visual imagination to life. —NH
Vital Signs: Artists and the Body
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, Midtown, Manhattan
Through February 22, 2025
I placed this exhibition on my best of the year because it refuses to be carnivalesque in its display — which can happen easily when dealing with the human body — and instead offers a more cerebral take on corporeal realities. From Rosemary Mayer’s ethereal “Galla Placidia” (1973), which celebrates a marginalized fifth-century Roman empress, to Ted Joans’s 132-artist-long exquisite corpse that sits in the center of one of the main galleries, and includes contributions by Ishmael Reed, Ray Johnson, Dorothea Tanning, Barbara Chase-Riboud, and so many others, the works challenge us not only to think about the human body, but also how we connect — or don’t — to one another. —HV
Ceremonies Out of the Air: Ralph Lemon
MoMA PS1, 22–25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
Through March 24, 2025
The well-known choreographer has been delving increasingly into contemporary art and this large celebration of his mostly visual and performance art career includes not only an impressive four-channel video and sound installation he staged with artist Kevin Beasley, but a wide range of dense drawings and meme-y sculptures, and a series of special musical and dance performances that seem to excavate the emotions storied in our bodies.
“Tell it anyway” was the first of a six-performance series and it was a thrilling experiment in visual and auditory narration that dragged the audience into Lemon’s mind. There’s a lot to see and experience here, so take your time and fully immerse yourself in this celebration of movement and form by someone who clearly has an itch to innovate. —HV
Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection
Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue, East Harlem, Manhattan
Through August 10, 2025
It is a real pleasure to see the collection of Martin Wong, who was not only a very accomplished contemporary artist but also a pioneer in collecting graffiti from the makers themselves. This is a rare window into a genre that continues to excite audiences of all types with its raw and playful energy. Unlike other collectors in the field, Wong amassed these works with a true artist’s eye, and the results are less decorative and more aesthetically challenging than other graffiti collections from the era. Rammellzee, Lee Quiñones, Lady Pink, Futura 2000, and many others are represented, among additional examples from a movement that changed the world. —HV
