NYC art exhibitions we’re most excited about in fall 2023

Long before Pablo Picasso's works made it to major American museums, an art collector in Brooklyn identified the artist's talents and believed his works should be displayed. In fact, he wanted to hang Picasso's works on his very own walls. 

In 1910, Hamilton Easter Field commissioned Picasso to adorn a room in his Brooklyn Heights home with murals, but Picasso didn't finish the works before Field died. Now, for the first time, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is bringing together six paintings linked to the commission. "Picasso: A Cubist Commission in Brooklyn" opens on Thursday, September 14 and runs through January 14, 2024.

"It's an important aspect of Picasso's work that has been not researched on that level, has been not known before we embarked on this project," The Met's director Max Hollein said. "I hope the exhibition will be as revelatory to our audience as it has been to us."

A new art exhibit puts queer domesticity at the forefront.

Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art's fall group exhibition, “Dreaming of Home,” looks at depictions of queer and trans domesticity via various perspectives and mediums. 

Curated by cultural advisor Gemma Rolls-Bentley, the exhibition starts with Catherine Opie’s famed 1993 photograph “Self-Portrait/Cutting,” which examines queer people’s desires and restrictions by society.

The exhibit's open in Soho through January 7, 2024.

Robert Indiana's iconic LOVE sculpture has been MIA from its usual corner of 55th Street and Sixth Avenue for the past few years, after the work was removed from its post for conservation in 2019. Now Rockefeller Center is bringing a little love—pun intended—back to New York with an installation of work from the American artist. 

From Wednesday, September 13 through Tuesday, October 24, see artworks from Robert Indiana throughout Rockfeller Center's landmark campus, including the long-awaited return of his LOVE sculpture to Manhattan.

Famed artists Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas were born just two years apart in the 1830s, hailed from similar French upbringings and ran in the same circles. At times, they were friends but at other times, frenemies. 

A new exhibit coming to The Metropolitan Museum of Art this fall will explore the friendship and rivalry of these two masters of 19th-century French art. "Manet/Degas" runs from September 24-January 7, 2024. 

Expect to see 160 paintings and works on paper, including rarely loaned masterpieces, that explore the relationship between Manet and Degas. It's the first exhibition to dig into this significant dialogue in modern art; The Met worked with the Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie in Paris to create the show.

He's one of our most famous New Yorkers—and now legendary director Spike Lee (Do The Right Thing, Crooklyn, The 25th Hour) is getting his own immersive installation at the Brooklyn Museum this fall.

Running from October 6-February 4, 2024, "Spike Lee: Creative Sources" will delve into the world, works and influences of the acclaimed director who, though born in Atlanta, Georgia, was raised and revered as one of New York's own, particularly in the borough of Brooklyn. 

The exhibit will feature more than 300 works from Lee's personal collection, "items that have been touchpoints for Lee and the topics he explores on-screen," the museum said.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute’s fall 2023 exhibition will be a celebration of female designers and women-led fashion houses, curated from the museum’s permanent collection. 

On view at The Met from December 7 through March 3, 2024, the exhibit will showcase about 80 objects documenting the fashion work of more than 70 makers, tracing the history of influential women-led fashion houses from the 20th century until today.

“Women Dressing Women” will take on four main themes: anonymity, visibility, agency, and absence/omission. The exhibit is curated to offer a new interpretation of the traditional canon of fashion history and explore how the fashion industry has been influential for women’s social, financial, and creative autonomy.