The best museum exhibitions in NYC right now

Portraits of American First Ladies typically don't tell us much about the personality of the person. Maybe we can see a steely determination in her eyes or get a sense of her style, but we don’t learn much about who she is. Amy Sherald’s portrait of Michelle Obama changed all of that by focusing on the essence of the subject.

You can now see this iconic portrait and many other renowned works by Sherald in a new exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art located in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. The exhibition, titled “Amy Sherald: American Sublime” is open April 9-August 10, 2025. With nearly 50 paintings, it’s the most comprehensive exhibition of the American artist’s work, which includes a portrait of Breonna Taylor, as well as paintings that center everyday Black Americans. 

Those who lived through the Cold War era will remember the horrors of the time: Wearing identification tags to school, practicing duck-and-cover drills and facing the constant threat of nuclear war. Though we’re only a few decades removed from that generation, it can be hard for younger people to wrap their minds around those terrors. 

A new exhibit at NYC’s Poster House titled “Fallout: Atoms for War & Peace” sheds light on the Nuclear Age, exploring its potential for scientific innovation and its use as a dangerous weapon. The exhibit chronicles the past through a visually stunning collection of 60 posters, including artwork by General Dynamics as well as activist pieces protesting nuclear war; it also offers important lessons for our future.

“Fallout” is the debut point-counterpoint exhibition at Poster House, which is the first museum in the U.S. dedicated to the history of posters. Find the exhibit in the Flatiron District museum through September 7, 2025.

The Brooklyn Museum is celebrating a big birthday. As the museum turns 200, it’s marking the occasion with a sprawling exhibition that celebrates the museum's history, showcases artists from the borough and highlights new gifts in the collection. The massive show highlights hundreds of paintings, sculptures, and photographs pulled from the impressive museum’s full collection of 140,000 items. 

“Breaking the Mold: Brooklyn Museum at 200” is now open through February 22, 2026.

Amid the hustle and bustle of Chelsea, where moving fast is a requirement, the Museum at FIT invites us to slow down and peek into its gigantic cabinet of curiosities.

“Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities,” a free exhibit now on view through April 20, features more than 200 garments and accessories inspired by the many objects you might have found within these encyclopedic collections, typically owned by the wealthy back in the 16th–18th centuries. 

Some of the objects on view are being showcased for the very first time. All of them are meant to pique curiosity through their rarity, beauty or originality.

Running through May 11, Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature is the first comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the German Romantic artist held in the United States. Thanks to unprecedented loans from more than 30 lenders in Europe and North America, the exhibition features more than 75 works by Friedrich, spanning oil paintings, finished drawings, and working sketches from every phase of the artist’s career.

"Friedrich's art evokes a watershed moment in the development of human understanding of the natural world," said Alison Hokanson, the exhibition's curator. "His landscapes mark the rise of the Romantic entwinement of nature and the self—a sensibility that intersected with the start of the industrial revolution and the growth of what we now call ecological awareness."

The show was organized in cooperation with the Alte Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and Hamburger Kunsthalle.

It's hard to imagine now in our globalized world, but many of the young American soldiers who headed onto massive ships like the USS Intrepid during World War II had never even seen the ocean before. They’d soon be navigating the Pacific, launching planes off of aircraft carriers and battling Axis enemies. 

Now, the stories of those military members are on display in a new permanent exhibit at the Intrepid Museum, the historic aircraft carrier docked along the Hudson River in Hell’s Kitchen, which served from 1943 to 1974. The new 10,000-square-foot exhibit includes 50 never-before-seen artifacts, crew member oral histories, videos and photos showcasing the ship's history.

Plus, you’ll get to see the museum’s newest WWII aircraft acquisition, a legendary fighter-bomber called the FG-1D Corsair. Planes just like it often flew off of Intrepid’s flight deck during the war.

Step into the vibrant world of Lorenzo Homar, a pioneering printmaker, poster designer, calligrapher, painter, illustrator, caricaturist, and theatrical set designer. Homar's poster work is the subject of an exhibit at Poster House titled "Puerto Rico in Print: The Posters of Lorenzo Homar" on view through September 7, 2025. 

Es-pranza Humphrey, assistant curator of collections at Poster House, describes Homar as "the father of the Puerto Rican poster." Homar was active from the 1950s through the 1990s, and few artists equal his impact and influence as a teacher of poster design and printmaking in Latin America.

In the exhibition, you'll see the artist's use of non-traditional colors at complements and the way he plays with silk-screening, typography, and calligraphy. The exhibition showcases the breadth of Homar's work, featuring posters for jazz performances, ballet shows, jazz concerts, and political causes. 

In honor of The Handmaid’s Tale finale, The Paley Museum in midtown is hosting an immersive exhibit featuring the costumes, artifacts and props from the Emmy Award-winning show. It's on view through Sunday, June 8.

At the Paley Museum, “The Legacy of The Handmaid’s Tale: June’s Evolution from Handmaid to Rebel” will put you face-to-face with its costumes, including June's iconic red handmaid’s dress, cloak and white winged bonnet and Serena Joy Waterford’s haunting teal dress, as well as costumes worn by other pivotal characters. You’ll also get to see Commander Waterford’s Scrabble board, Nichole’s doll from Nick, June’s Boston map and June’s terrifying Handmaid muzzle.

Long before New Yorkers could aimlessly scroll on their phones while riding on the subway, they could always read The Subway Sun. This subway poster series, designed to look like a newspaper's front page, encouraged civility, safety, cleanliness, and pride in their city and its mass transit rail system.

A new exhibit at the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn, titled "Shining a light on The Subway Sun: The art of Fred G. Cooper and Amelia Opdyke Jones," brings the ad campaign's story to life. See a collection of original artwork and vintage posters from the 1930s and 1940s—many of which are still incredibly relevant today.

This new exhibit celebrates New York City through 100 different songs about NYC that were released between the 1920s and the 2020s. Patrons will notice a map of the five boroughs projected onto the floor of the space. Once stepping on an area, they'll hear music connected to that specific borough. 

"Songs of New York: 100 Years of Imagining the City Through Music" is an exciting new interactive exhibit set to debut at the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) on February 14. 

In addition to the audio-adjacent portion of the program, visitors will be able to look through archival photos of the artists whose music the exhibit focuses on. Expect photographs by Allan Tannenbaum, Joe Conzo, Fred W. McDarrah and Janette Beckman, among others, with lens pointed to legendary acts like Blondie, LL Cool J and the Velvet Underground.

It was only a matter of time until Flaco, NYC's fallen owl king, became the subject of his very own exhibit. The beloved Eurasian eagle-owl used to fly around the city after escaping from the zoo, until he passed away about a year ago. 

"The Year of Flaco," a new exhibit at The New York Historical, is now on view through June 6. Featuring photos and videos "documenting Flaco's flight and his new life in the city, along with letters, drawings and objects left at a memorial beneath Flaco’s favorite oak tree following his death one year ago," the program will also examine "the dangers faced by birds in urban environments, legislation inspired by Flaco's legacy and practical steps for creating a safer city for wildlife."

One of the most visited historical sites in Europe, the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, has opened an exhibition in New York for the first time. Find it at the Center for Jewish History in the Flatiron District through April 30, 2025.

New Yorkers can now walk through a full-scale re-creation of the rooms where Anne Frank, her parents Otto and Edith, her sister Margot, the Van Pels family and Fritz Pfeffer (all Jews) spent two years in hiding from the Nazis during World War II. Inside the re-created annex itself, every object displayed in glass cases is original—things that Anne, her family and fellow hideout Jews touched and used daily, alongside exact replicas of other items.

Brace yourself for a deeply emotional experience.

Depending on what you learned in high school history class, you might be surprised to discover that Brooklyn—an area firmly in the northern Union states—actually has significant ties to slavery. A new exhibit coming to the borough digs into that painful history.

Titled "Trace/s: Family History Research and the Legacy of Slavery in Brooklyn," the exhibit will open at the Center for Brooklyn History on January 30. While there are few firsthand testimonies from enslaved people in Brooklyn, the exhibit offers clues to what they endured. It also sheds light on the often-overlooked narratives of enslaved individuals in Kings County and the generational legacies of inequality. The exhibit is free to visit through August 30 in the center's Fransioli Gallery.

Expect to see archival documents, rare personal accounts from enslaved Brooklynites and artwork that helps visitors visualize this period in Brooklyn's development. The exhibit also delves into genealogy and celebrates the work of family historians, researchers, and artists who trace their roots through this difficult past.

On October 27, 1904, New Yorkers dressed in their finest clothing and hosted dinner parties to celebrate the big news of the year. After four years of messy, sometimes controversial construction, a subway had opened in New York City. Officials didn't know if people would show up for its debut, but more than 100,000 people descended beneath the ground that evening to traverse the system's 9 miles and 28 stations. The next day, a Sunday, more than 1 million people showed up on the subway's first full open day. 

It may not seem like a big deal to us now, but the subway was revolutionary—and it still is. A fascinating new exhibit at the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn digs into the history and the future of our underground rail system. Titled "The Subway Is...," the exhibition brings together artifacts, photos, multimedia installations, old advertisements, train models and more to tell the story of our city's subway system. 

The clothes we put on our bodies every day don't just keep us warm or covered or in fashion. They also say something. Clothing conveys meaning—sometimes in direct ways like "I'm mourning" and sometimes in indirect ways like "screw the status quo." 

A new exhibit titled "Real Clothes, Real Lives: 200 Years of What Women Wore" at The New York Historical digs into how clothing has played a crucial role in the lives of everyday women. The exhibit, on view through June 22, 2025, explores how women have influenced, adapted and defied societal expectations through clothing. See a wide array of women's clothing, from a Depression-era house dress to a psychedelic micro mini to an Abercrombie & Fitch wool suit from 1917. Unlike most other women's fashion exhibitions, there's not a ball gown in sight, and that's exactly what makes this show so special. 

Now on view at the Museum of Sex, Long Island Girl: The Superrealism of Carole Feuerman is a series of early sculptures by New York-based artist Carole Feuerman that have never before been publicly exhibited in the US.

Feuerman's superrrealist works from the 1970s and '80s are an evocative exploration of "sexuality and female interiority as a celebration of the human experience, emphasizing agency and empowerment." The exhibition includes more than 30 sculptures from the pioneering artist, as well as a re-creation of a studio corner offering a behind-the-scenes look at Feuerman's process, which includes manipulating industrial materials like vinyl and painted resins to achieve astonishingly lifelike effects. 

See the show through August 31, 2025.

When you think of Franz Kafka, there are a few words that likely come to mind: Lonely, tortured, isolated. But this depiction doesn’t actually tell the full story of Kafka, a new exhibit at The Morgan Library & Museum argues. Yes, the Czech writer known for his surrealist literary masterpieces like The Metamorphosis, did have a difficult life before dying at the age of 40 from tuberculosis.

But he was also known to be funny, a brilliant love letter writer, a good friend, and even a playful spirit. In fact, many of the solo photos we see of Kafka were really photos with other people who have been cut out of the scene over the years, Sal Robinson, curator at The Morgan explained during a tour of the new exhibit. The show, simply titled "Franz Kafka," is now on view through April 13, 2025.

When Robert A. Caro's The Power Broker was first published 50 years ago, the book's release was met with great anticipation. Excerpts in The New Yorker gained lots of attention—including from the biography's subject, NYC government official Robert Moses, who described the deeply researched book as "venomous." Even so, it was impossible to predict whether a 700,000-word biography would resonate with readers. 

The book quickly earned acclaim, winning the Pulitzer Prize and finding a home on bookshelves across America, especially among New Yorkers. Now, five decades later, the monumental work still resonates for its look at NYC’s past and the lessons it holds for our future. The book and its tenacious author are the subject of a new exhibit at The New-York Historical titled "Robert Caro’s The Power Broker at 50." See it at the Upper West Side museum through August 3, 2025. 

The legendary Shirley Chisholm is deservedly getting a major museum presentation courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York and the Shirley Chisholm Project at Brooklyn College. Running through July 20, 2025, Changing the Face of Democracy: Shirley Chisholm at 100 will delve into the life and legacy of the native New Yorker and barrier-breaking politician, who was the first Black woman elected to Congress and the first woman to run for president on a major party ticket.

Marking the centennial of the late Chisholm’s birth, her first major exhibition will take over the museum's second-floor North Gallery and tell the multi-dimensional story of the American icon in three sections—Brooklyn Life, Political Career, and Legacy—using historical artifacts, photographs, archival footage, and art pieces.

Majestic, incredible elephants are getting the spotlight in a new exhibit at The American Museum of Natural History. "The Secret World of Elephants" showcases both modern and ancient elephants, offering visitors a chance to see a full-scale model of a woolly mammoth, learn about what elephants eat, touch an elephant's tooth, listen to elephant calls and more.

The exhibition is now open in the museum’s LeFrak Family Gallery. An additional ticket is required to visit the exhibit; museum members can visit for free.

Eighty years ago, as World War II raged on, Danish citizens worked together to ferry 7,000 Jewish people to safety, keeping them out of concentration camps. 

Now, New York City’s Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust is commemorating that anniversary, known as one of the most effective examples of mass resistance in modern history. "Courage to Act: Rescue in Denmark," the museum’s first exhibition developed for elementary-age students, is now opne.

The exhibit focuses on themes of separation, bravery and resilience to help children ages 9+ reflect on the dangers of prejudice and on their own potential for courageous collective action. 

After nearly a decade of planning, designing and building, the massive new wing at the American Museum of Natural History is now open to the public. The architecturally stunning, 230,000-square-foot Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation houses scientific wonders—including a butterfly vivarium, an insectarium and a 360-degree immersive experience.

From amazing costumes to Broadway history to fun photo opps, this long-awaited new museum is a must-see for theater buffs.  

You can expect the new museum to highlight over 500 individual productions from the 1700s all the way to the present. 

Among the standout offerings: A special exhibit dubbed "The Making of a Broadway Show," which honors the on- and off-stage community that helps bring plays and musicals to life multiple times a week. 

Your Roblox avatar can now get a whole new wardrobe, including an ancient Greek helmet, Japanese warrior armor and even Vincent van Gogh’s straw hat, courtesy of this new app created by The Met museum and Verizon. 

The free app, called Replica, allows visitors to scan certain objects at the museum, which are then turned into digital images that can be applied in the Roblox online gaming platform. The augmented reality initiative was designed as a way to attract kids to The Met, museum spokesman Kenneth Weine said, but collecting the digital items promises fun for all ages. 

Inside the museum, 37 objects are now a part of the Replica app, and finding each one sets visitors on a scavenger hunt throughout the galleries. Objects are scattered throughout the museum in sections including Arms and Armor, The American Wing, Egyptian Art and several more. 

Here's more about how it works. 

As the Revolutionary War came to a close, British Loyalists and soldiers evacuated the colonies in droves. But the evacuation was more complicated for Black Loyalists, some of whom joined the British cause in response to offers of freedom. 

In 1783, the new government formed a special committee to review the eligibility of some Black Loyalists to evacuate with the British Army, and that committee met at Fraunces Tavern in Lower Manhattan. A new permanent exhibit at the Fraunces Tavern Museum explores this important moment in history. 

The exhibition first opened last year, and officials are now moving it to a larger permanent gallery within the museum. The new space will offer a chance to include recent new discoveries of significant information concerning the identities of individuals participating in the Birch Trials and their inclusion in the Book of Negroes.

Hundreds of items have been pulled from the New York Public Library's expansive and centuries-spanning archive to be put on display—many of them for the first time—in a permanent exhibition called "The Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures."

Inside the NYPL's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building and its beautiful Gottesman Hall, are more than 250 unique and rare items culled from its research centers spanning 4,000 years of history and includes a wide range of history-making pieces, including the only surviving letter from Christoper Columbus announcing his "discovery" of the Americas to King Ferdinand’s court and the first Gutenberg Bible brought over to the Americas.

Can you imagine how grim our world would be without the influence of Jim Henson? For those of us who learned comedy, whimsy and even literacy from Sesame Street and the Muppet franchise, the Museum of the Moving Image has provided the ultimate treat: a permanent exhibition featuring over 47 Muppet and puppet characters; 27 screens of archival footage from The Dark Crystal, The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock and beyond; and stories of how the great genius and his architects brought to life some of our favorite characters.

The energy in INTER_, Manhattan’s newest art experience, feels more like a meditation retreat than a typical gallery—and that’s by design. 

The experiential, multi-sensory museum now open in Soho invites visitors into a heightened state of contemplative awareness through a sound bath, light installations and aspects of meditation all combined with interactive digital art. 

INTER_ is now open at 415 Broadway. Tickets—which start at $36 for adults and $27 for kids 12 and under—can be purchased here. (Time Out readers get a discount with code TIMEOUT15.)