Hi everyone,

1. This weekend is Art Basel Miami, a prestigious art fair featuring established and emerging artists. Read about some of the galleries that are making their debut at the fair.

2. Read Vince Aletti’s review of the new Grace Wallace Bonner MoMA show.

🎉 Just In

In the Museums

Women Dressing Women

📍 Metropolitan Museum of Art

⏰ opening December 7th

🗓️ fashion (20th century onward)

❓showcasing over 70 womenswear designers from the early 20th century to the present, with icons like Elsa Schiaparelli and contemporary talents like Iris van Herpen and Rei Kawakubo

📏 medium exhibit

🔗 see exhibit details. 

In the Galleries

No new major exhibits are opening in the galleries. Check out our ongoing favorites below!

📢 Editor’s Updates

If you have a free upcoming weekend before the Holidays, you should try to save one Saturday afternoon for gallery hopping. The quality of art on view right now is absolutely top-tier, and we don’t say this lightly.

Here’s the itinerary we recommend (this is ordered for convenience while walking):

Stop 1: Adrian Ghenie | Pace Gallery | Closing Dec 22

📍510 W 25th St

Ghenie’s artworks offer a commentary on our (alienating) relationship with technology. His works feature distorted figures and underscore the entity he is critiquing, whether it be the smartphone or AirPods. Taking photos in this exhibit felt as though Ghenie was holding up a mirror, making us confront our own transgressions.

Stop 2: Derek Fordjour | Petzel Gallery | Closing Dec 22

📍520 W 25th St

Fordjour takes you on a journey with works across 3 separate spaces. The exhibit includes painting, sculpture, kinetic diorama, and performance art, encompassing themes of race, labor, and power. We won’t give too many details, as the exhibit is especially impactful without any preconceptions, but it’s a must-see.

Stop 3: Raqib Shaw, Tim Eitel & Yoo Youngkuk | Pace Gallery | Shaw & Youngkuk Closing Dec 22, Eitel closing Jan 13

📍540 W 25th St

In the next location, there are 3 exhibits you should visit, scattered across the various floor of the impressive Pace Gallery.

Raqib Shaw is an artist of the highest caliber — his opulent scenes are developed through a laborious process in which he applies acrylic liner and enamel paint to an aluminum support. The intricacy of his works demands close observation, a true joy, as these dreamscapes bring you to another world — a blend of fantasy and narrative from Shaw’s own life. Themes include climate disaster, immigration, and sexuality.

Tim Eitel, while still in the narrative space, focuses on precise representation. Eitel engages with the viewer — you quickly realize that the figures in the paintings occupy the very same gallery space as you do. We particularly loved this interplay between the artist, the paintings, and the viewer.

Finally, you’ll find Yoo Youngkuk’s first ever solo exhibit outside of Korea. Youngkuk, a master of color fields, particularly appealed to us, as we’re drawn to geometric works. His works often feature mountain-like forms, a symbol of stability.

Stop 4: Louise Bonnet | Gagosian | Closing Dec 22

📍541 W 24th St

Bonnet stuns us with her unique style of exaggerated human bodies. While the noses held up by wooden planks made us chuckle, the exhibit is actually quite serious, as Bonnet urges us to confront death. The exhibits title and theme draw inspiration from Arthur C. Clarke’s quote in 2001: A Space Odyssey: “Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.” In her paintings, you might notice references to the 17th-century Dutch genre of vanitas, still-life works that serve as a reminder of our mortality. Her works, beautifully grotesque, left us in awe.

Stop 5: Anj Smith & Pipilotti Rist | Hauser & Wirth | Closing Jan 13

📍542 W 22nd St

Your final stop won’t disappoint.

Anj Smith’s exhibit is breathtaking. She presents dreamy, narrative scenes that captivate and invite exploration. Smith’s works, ranging from portraits with humans as the core subject to those focusing on the broader natural world, have a beautiful eeriness to them. In her human portraits, she challenges traditional representations of gender, depicting details like fields of tiny hairs on the female body and chipped paint on fingernails. This exhibit was a favorite of ours.

In the same location, Pipilotti Rist offers an interactive, Instagrammable, maximalist exhibit. The experience feels psychadelic, akin to being in a dream, with swirling and gradient lights throughout. We loved it. It strikes us as the perfect exhibit for Gen Z.

Let us know if you attempt the itinerary!