9 can't-miss art exhibits in NYC this spring

What does home look like? A new photography exhibit at Museum of the City of New York will explore the concept of how we live now. 

"New York Now: Home - A Photography Triennial" features the work of 33 contemporary photographers. Their images range from social documentary to conceptual, examining the way homes cross geographic borders, how homes are havens of safety for some but not all, and the fact that homes are chosen as much as they are inherited. Works also explore the experience of the home made within the human body.

This is the first in an ongoing photography exhibition series, which will occur every three years as a way to document different themes and issues of the contemporary city. See this year's show now at the Upper East Side museum.

For the first time in more than a century, two of Van Gogh's most beloved paintings—"Wheat Field with Cypresses" and "The Starry Night"—will be on display together in a new exhibition at The Met starting this spring.

The show, titled "Van Gogh's Cypresses," will be the first to focus on the artist's fascination with the flamelike trees.

Presented on the 170th anniversary of Van Gogh's birth, this show will bring together 40 works by Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). With a focus on the towering cypress trees featured in Van Gogh's work, the exhibition will explore one of the most famous trees in art history.

In addition to "Wheat Field with Cypresses" and "The Starry Night," the show will also feature "Country Road in Provence by Night" as well as drawings, with a deep focus on how the artist represented cypresses.

The show will run from May 22-August 27, 2023.

Indigenous plants will fill The Morgan Library & Museum's garden this summer, complementing an exhibit on Lenape teacher and herbalist Nora Thompson Dean.

To create the exhibit on Indigenous heritage, The Morgan is partnering with the Lenape Center, a Manhattan-based arts, culture and community center. This summer, native plants such as amaranth, Lenape squash and pumpkins will begin blooming in the museum's garden. Inside the museum's rotunda, visitors can explore the life of Nora Thompson Dean, "a Lenape elder who devoted her life to maintaining and sharing Lenape culture, language and knowledge, including knowledge about the natural environment of Lenapehoking, the land on which the Morgan is located," said Sal Robinson, a curator at The Morgan. Dean was one of the last fluent speakers of Lenape.

The exhibit will include Dean's letters and photographs as a way to explore her teaching, especially the knowledge she shared about the role of plants and planting in the Lenape worldview. Music by native composer Brent Michael Davids will accompany the exhibition. The show will be on view from June 6-September 17.