10 Museum Exhibitions in NYC to See Right Now – And Have You Heard of Shady Ladies Tours?

Heading to New York City for NY NOW Summer 2017 this weekend (Aug. 19-23)? Planning your trip to Women’s New York Fashion Week 2017 (Sept. 7-14)? Live in the city and looking for something to do? From art, photography and illustration to fashion, architecture and decor, these 10 museum exhibitions in NYC are definitely worth finding time for!
 

CHIHULY

Where: New York Botanical Garden

When: Through October 29, 2017

Museum Exhibitions in NYC - Chiluly - Dale Chihuly at the New York Botanical Garden - NYBG - Art exhibits in New York, Art Exhibits in NYC
“Artworks by world-renowned artist Dale Chihuly are now on view at NYBG in his first major garden exhibition in New York in more than ten years. CHIHULY, presented by Bank of America, showcases more than 20 installations and includes drawings and early works that reveal the evolution and development of Chihuly’s artistic process during his celebrated career. Set within NYBG’s landmark landscape and buildings, this sensory-filled exhibition is a must-see throughout the changing seasons from spring through fall.”
 

NEW YORK AT ITS CORE: 400 YEARS OF NYC HISTORY

Where: Museum of the City of New York
When: Ongoing
Museum Exhibitions in NYC - NEW YORK AT ITS CORE: 400 YEARS OF NYC HISTORY Where: Museum of the City of New York - New York art exhibits - exhibits about new york city
“What made New York New York? Follow the story of the city’s rise from a striving Dutch village to today’s “Capital of the World,” and consider its future in our changing world.
Framed around the key themes of money, density, diversity, and creativity, New York City’s history and future come alive in this first-of-its-kind exhibition, through the stories of innovation, energy, struggle, and the vision of generations of immigrants, politicians, tycoons, dreamers, master builders, and ordinary New Yorkers.”
 

NEW YORK SILVER THEN AND NOW

Where: Museum of the City of New York
When: Ongoing
Best Museum Exhibitions in NYC - NEW YORK SILVER THEN AND NOW Museum of the City of New York - Evening Purse, designed and made by Michael Izrael Galmer - Cooper Hewitt - Evening Purse, 2014–2015; Designed and made by Michael Izrael Galmer (American, b. Soviet Union, 1947); (Long Island City, New York, USA); Cast, chased, and electroformed silver, partly gilt silver and mesh silver; 11.4 × 14.6 × 5.1 cm (4 1/2 in. × 5 3/4 in. × 2 in.); Gift of Michael Izrael Galmer, 2015-38-2; Photo: Matt Flynn © Smithsonian Institution
New York Silver, Then and Now links the rich history of silversmithing in New York City to present-day artistic practice. It features newly commissioned works by leading metalworkers, created in response to historical objects from the Museum’s collection.
The Museum’s holdings, widely recognized as one of the foremost collections of American silver in the nation, include leading examples of silver designed and produced in New York from the mid-17th through the 20th century. Comprised of more than 1,800 works by such notable craftsmen as Cornelius Kierstede, Myer Myers, and Charles LeRoux , and renowned retailer/manufacturers like Black, Starr & Frost and Tiffany & Co., the collection demonstrates how, for over four centuries, the city’s silversmiths and designers have adapted international styles to make them distinctively “New York” in look and feel.”
 

MAURIZIO CATTELAN: “AMERICA” (AN 18K GOLD TOILET!)

Where: The Guggenheim
When: Through September 15, 2017
Museum Exhibitions in NYC MAURIZIO CATTELAN: "AMERICA" Where: The Guggenheim - Installation - 18K Gold Toilet
“Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s bold, irreverent work skewers social complacencies and re-imagines cultural icons. On the occasion of his 2011–12 retrospective at the Guggenheim, which featured virtually every work he had ever made suspended from the oculus of the rotunda, Cattelan announced his retirement from art making. Five years later, he returns from this self-imposed exile with a new, ongoing project at the museum. For “America”Cattelan replaced the toilet in this restroom with a fully functional replica cast in 18-karat gold, making available to the public an extravagant luxury product seemingly intended for the 1 percent. Its participatory nature, in which viewers are invited to make use of the fixture individually and privately, allows for an experience of unprecedented intimacy with a work of art. Cattelan’s toilet offers a wink to the excesses of the art market but also evokes the American dream of opportunity for all—its utility ultimately reminding us of the inescapable physical realities of our shared humanity.”
 

 

VISIONARIES: CREATING A MODERN GUGGENHEIM

Where: The Guggenheim
When: Through September 6, 2017
Museum Exhibitions in NYC - VISIONARIES: CREATING A MODERN GUGGENHEIM Where: The Guggenheim - art installation nyc, art exhibit nyc
“Curator Megan Fontanella introduces Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim, an exhibition featuring over 170 modern works from the Guggenheim’s collection. Visionaries focuses on six pioneering collectors and patrons who brought to light some of the most significant avant-garde art of the late 19th through the mid-20th centuries. Visitors to the exhibition will learn about the museum’s founder, Solomon R. Guggenheim, and his wish to create “a monument of our own time.”
Visionaries includes works by such iconic artists as Alexander Calder, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, and Vincent van Gogh, among many others.”
 

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AT 150: UNPACKING THE ARCHIVE

Where: The Museum of Modern Art

When: Through October 1, 2017
Museum Exhibitions in NYC - FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AT 150: UNPACKING THE ARCHIVE Where: The Museum of Modern Art - Frank-Lloyd-Wright-Falling-Water-Drawing-Architecture-MoMA-Exhibit-NYC-001
“Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the most prolific and renowned architects of the 20th century, a radical designer and intellectual who embraced new technologies and materials, pioneered do-it-yourself construction systems as well as avant-garde experimentation, and advanced original theories with regards to nature, urban planning, and social politics. Marking the 150th anniversary of the American architect’s birth on June 8, 1867, MoMA presents Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive, a major exhibition that critically engages his multifaceted practice. The exhibition comprises approximately 450 works made from the 1890s through the 1950s, including architectural drawings, models, building fragments, films, television broadcasts, print media, furniture, tableware, textiles, paintings, photographs, and scrapbooks, along with a number of works that have rarely or never been publicly exhibited. Structured as an anthology rather than a comprehensive, monographic presentation of Wright’s work, the exhibition is divided into 12 sections, each of which investigates a key object or cluster of objects from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives, interpreting and contextualizing it, and juxtaposing it with other works from the Archives, from MoMA, or from outside collections. The exhibition seeks to open up Wright’s work to critical inquiry and debate, and to introduce experts and general audiences alike to new angles and interpretations of this extraordinary architect.”
 

THE THEATER OF DISAPPEARANCE

Where: The Met Fifth Avenue
When: Through October 29, 2017
Best Museum Exhibitions in NYC - THE THEATER OF DISAPPEARANCE Where: The Met Fifth Avenue, Artist - Adrián Villar Rojas, Cantoor Roof NYC, Art Installation
“Argentinian artist Adrián Villar Rojas has transformed the Cantor Roof with an intricate site-specific installation that uses the Museum itself as its raw material. Featuring detailed replicas of nearly 100 objects from The Met collection, The Theater of Disappearance encompasses thousands of years of artistic production over several continents and cultures, and fuses them with facsimiles of contemporary human figures as well as furniture, animals, cutlery, and food. Each object—whether a 1,000-year-old decorative plate or a human hand—is rendered in the same black or white material and coated in a thin layer of dust.
The artist has reconfigured the environment of the Cantor Roof by adding a new pergola, a grand tiled floor, a bar, public benches and augmented planting throughout the space. The Met’s own alphabet has even been incorporated into the graphic identity of the project. To realize this extensive work, the artist immersed himself in the Museum and its staff for many months, holding conversations with the curators, conservators, managers, and technicians across every department who contributed to the realization of this installation.”
 
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REI KAWAKUBO/COMME DES GARÇONS: ART OF THE IN-BETWEEN

Where: At The Met Fifth Avenue

When: Through September 4, 2017

Museum Exhibitions in NYC - REI KAWAKUBO/COMME DES GARÇONS: ART OF THE IN-BETWEEN Where: At The Met Fifth Avenue - Fashion Exhibition New York City, NYC Fashion Exhibit
“The Costume Institute’s spring 2017 exhibition examines the work of fashion designer Rei Kawakubo, known for her avant-garde designs and ability to challenge conventional notions of beauty, good taste, and fashionability. The thematic show features approximately 140 examples of Kawakubo’s womenswear for Comme des Garçons dating from the early 1980s to her most recent collection, many with heads and wigs created and styled by Julien d’Ys.
The galleries illustrate the designer’s revolutionary experiments in “in-betweenness”—the space between boundaries. Objects are organized into nine aesthetic expressions of interstitiality in Kawakubo’s work: Absence/Presence, Design/Not Design, Fashion/Anti-Fashion, Model/Multiple, Then/Now, High/Low, Self/Other, Object/Subject, and Clothes/Not Clothes. Kawakubo breaks down the imaginary walls between these dualisms, exposing their artificiality and arbitrariness.”
 

If you visit The Met for one of the museum exhibitions in NYC listed above, and you are looking for a unique museum tour experience…one that puts the fun back into history and art! You must make time to take one of the Shady Ladies Tours, a tour that explores the lives, loves and racy backstories behind the Courtesans, royal mistresses, and scandalous women that line the walls of the Metropolitan Museum, from ancient Greek hetaerae to Sargent’s Madame X.

 

AMERICAN VISIONARY: JOHN F. KENNEDY’S LIFE AND TIMES

Where: New-York Historical Society

When: Through January 07, 2018

Museum Exhibitions in NYC - AMERICAN VISIONARY: JOHN F. KENNEDY'S LIFE AND TIMES Where: New-York Historical Society, Best Museum Exhibitions in New York, New York Photography Exhibits - John and Jackie Kennedy - Photo Booth
American Visionary: John F. Kennedy’s Life and Times is a new exhibition commemorating President John F. Kennedy’s private life and public trajectory. One of the most exhaustively researched collections of Kennedy photos ever assembled, it brings together images from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, Getty Images, private collections, and the Kennedy family archives that capture public and private moments from Kennedy’s life. Some of the photographs on display are iconic; others have rarely been seen.”
 

ELOISE AT THE MUSEUM

Where: New-York Historical Society
When: Through October 9, 2017

Best Museum Exhibitions in NYC - Hilary Knight (b. 1926). Unpublished color concept rendering for “There is a lobby which is enormously large . . . ,” ca. 1955. Eloise. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955. Graphite, pen and ink and watercolor on paper. Collection of Hilary Knight. Copyright © by Kay Thompson - luxury furniture
“The New-York Historical Society celebrates the feisty charm and audacious spirit of Eloise, who continues to be a picture book superstar more than 60 years after her debut. Eloise at the Museum reveals the creative collaboration between cabaret star Kay Thompson (1909–1998) and the young illustrator Hilary Knight (b. 1926) that brought the precocious character to life. The exhibition showcases more than 75 objects, ranging from original manuscript pages to sketchbooks, portraits, photographs, and vintage dolls. Organized by The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA, where it debuted earlier this year, New-York Historical’s presentation fully immerses visitors into Eloise’s world with evocations of the grand lobby of the Plaza Hotel filled with luxury furniture, her bedroom―complete with a storytelling corner―and her bubbly “bawthroom,” where she often made mischief. A host of family activities bring the Plaza’s most famous resident to life throughout the exhibition’s run, inviting young visitors to explore the exhibition in creative ways.”
 
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A NOTE: All exhibition descriptions included in this article are direct quotes from the exhibits websites – the teams executing these amazing museum exhibitions in NYC spend countless hours writing the perfect descriptions for them, why try to compete?!