Mary Cassatt, Breakfast in Bed , 1897. Image courtesy of Art Institute of Chicago. “Mary Cassatt: After Impressionism” Where : Art Institute of Chicago When : Sept. 6 – Jan. 3, 2027 Why It’s Worth a Look : Mary Cassatt was one of few women and the only American to exhibit with the French Impressionists. To this day, she’s considered an integral part of the movement. This show, however, looks to her career after the final Impressionist group show in 1886, a period in which Cassatt created some of her most accomplished work. Know Before You Go : Visitors will find some of Cassatt’s canonical pieces, like The Child’s Bath , 1893, as well as pastels and what remains of a landmark mural commission for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
The show will also mark the 100th anniversary of Cassatt’s death in 1926. Karimah Ashadu, MUSCLE (Film Still), 2025. Image courtesy of the artist and the Renaissance Society. “ Karimah Ashadu: Tendered ” Where : Renaissance Society, Chicago When : Sept. 12 – Nov. 1 Why It’s Worth a Loo k: Karimah Ashadu’s latest uses moving image works to probe the masculine ideals of different subcultures, from bodybuilders to slaughterhouse workers. Her steady production of work over the last few years has seen her solidify herself as a major voice in contemporary West African art. Know Before You Go : This show will mark the U.S. debut of MUSCLE , 2025, her exploration of bodybuilding as a mode of self-invention in the slums of Lagos.
The show is presented in conjunction with the Art Institute of Chicago, where Ashadu’s work Machine Boys , 2024, will also be installed. Georgia O’Keeffe, Black Door With Red , 1954. Image courtesy of the Detroit Institute of Art. “ Georgia O’Keeffe: Architecture ” Where : Detroit Institute of Art When : Sept. 13 – Jan. 3, 2027 Why It’s Worth a Look : Although Georgia O’Keeffe may be best known for her depictions of nature, the painter was quite taken with architecture and returned to it throughout her career. She painted the adobe homes of rural New Mexico but also wind-weathered barns and even the glimmering skyscrapers of Manhattan.
Know Before You Go : Remember the scene in Breaking Bad where Jesse’s artist girlfriend teases him for not understanding why O’Keeffe would want to paint a door over and over again? Repetition and close observation were central to O’Keeffe’s artistic practice, as she returned to our built environments with new eyes every time. Taryn Simon, One Little Room on Fire , 2026. Image courtesy of the artist and the Guggenheim Museum. “ Taryn Simon: Father Country I Do Love You ” Where : Guggenheim, New York When : Sept. 18 – Mar. 14, 2027 Why It’s Worth a Look : This interactive exhibition will offer a new body of never-before-seen work from the multimedia artist, nearly a decade in the making.
Across photographs, sculptures, text, and video, Taryn Simon tells the story of an unnamed federal agent moving through history. Know Before You Go : The show is dedicated to Simon’s father, who traveled widely in his work for the U.S. government before retiring to sell arcade games. After he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, Simon mourned the fact that she only had a partial understanding of his life story. “‘But America,’ he always said, ‘was the best story on earth, if you could find someone to tell it,’” Simon recalls in the show notes.
Bruce Nauman, “Begin Again” at Sperone Westwater (Installation view), 2026. © 2026 Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image courtesy of Bruce Nauman Studio. “ Bruce Nauman: Identical ” Where : Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas When : Sept. 19 – Mar. 21, 2027 Why It’s Worth a Look : This latest show from Bruce Nauman features polyurethane, silicon, and plaster-cast animals, sculpted from taxidermy casts of the wild foxes and coyotes that haunt the area around his New Mexico studio. The creatures are alarmingly caught in a tangle of wire, contorted and suspended. Know Before You Go : Nauman has been creating these creatures since the 1980s, most notably with Animal Pyramid , 1989, although the ones on display were created in the last three years.
Gesture is especially notable here: The creatures in his work careen with motion, even in their inanimate state. Isamu Noguchi, My Arizona (second state with original elements) , 1943. Photography by Kevin Noble. © 2026 The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. “ Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America ” Where : Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia When : Sept. 20 – Jan. 10, 2027 Why It’s Worth a Look : Japanese internment during World War II left an indelible mark on the landscape of American culture. This exhibition will explore the as-of-yet-untold impact that it had on art, looking at some of modern design’s luminaries as they navigated racial persecution during wartime.
Know Before You Go : This exhibition tells the story of internment through the lens of two generations. Designers like Isamu Noguchi and George Nakashima and artists like Ruth Asawa and Kei Sekimachi were all imprisoned by the U.S. government but found novel ways to persist and continue their art practices. Arthur Jafa, Pledge of Allegiance , 1899, 2017. Image courtesy of the artist, Gladstone, and the New Museum. “ Arthur Jafa: I Am Tony ” Where : New Museum, New York When : Sept. 24 – Jan. 4, 2027 Why It’s Worth a Look : It’s been a decade since Jafa’s seminal video work Love is the Message, The Message is Death confirmed him as one of, if not the, most celebrated video artists working today.
But the artist’s oeuvre boasts four decades of work beyond that. There’s his early days in the film industry, collaborating with Spike Lee, Stanley Kubrick, and Julie Dash. There’s his music videos for Solange, Jay-Z, and Ye. And, of course, his Golden Lion-winning video essay The White Album , using found footage to explore whiteness in America. Know Before You Go : This will be the first U.S. museum survey of Jafa ‘s work. It will also be curated by Massimiliano Gioni in his first show at the New Museum since being named its director earlier this year.
Huguette Caland, Guerre Incivile , 1981. Image courtesy of the Hammer Museum. “ Huguette Caland: A Life in a Few Lines ” Where : Hammer Museum, Los Angeles When : Sept. 27 – Feb. 28, 2027 Why It’s Worth a Look : How did the only daughter of the president of Lebanon end up leaving her husband and children in the 1970s to pursue a career in art? Such was the extraordinary life of Huguette Caland and her rebellious streak that infused her unruly and often erotic paintings. Know Before You Go : Caland was, if not a bohemian, then certainly living life according to her own rules.
She married the nephew of her father’s political rival. She painted O’Keeffian abstractions, pastel and priapic. She moved to Southern California later in life and passed away in 2019, but a 2024 retrospective at the Museo Reina Sofía caused a surge of interest in all things Caland. Wayne Thiebaud, Clown and Beast , 2018–19. Image courtesy of the SFMOMA and RM. “ RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me ” Where : SFMOMA, San Francisco When : Oct. 3 – Feb. 7, 2027 Why It’s Worth a Look : Ever wondered what kind of art RM from BTS collects? The show features over 200 (yes, 200) collected works from one of K-pop’s reigning kings.
Not only is it a chance to get a glimpse inside the pop star’s personal taste, it’s also the first time many of these pieces have ever been shown publicly in the United States. Know Before You Go : Korean Modernist artists are notably well-represented here including Yun Hyong-keun, Chang Ucchin, and Park Rehyun. The museum will put them in conversation with other canonical artists from its permanent collection including Mark Rothko, Agnes Martin, Henri Matisse, and Georgia O’Keeffe. Roy Lichtenstein, Girl in Window (Study for World’s Fair Mural) , 1963. Image courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
“ Roy Lichtenstein: Like New ” Where : Whitney Museum, New York When : Opens Oct. 11 Why It’s Worth a Look : With their current sheen of canonical fine art, it’s hard to remember that when they were initially unveiled, Roy Lichtenstein’s paintings were viewed as quite commercial. His crisp technique nodded to mass production and the language of advertisements of the time, cannily predicting the ways images would be duplicated, remixed, and recirculated in the 21st century. Know Before You Go : The exhibition was co-curated by artist (and CULT100 alum) Alex Da Corte , whose dreamy installations include a Kermit the Frog parade at the Place Vendôme and a Big Bird on the roof of the Met.
The artist has his own debt to pay to Lichtenstein in his recontextualization of pop culture ephemera. Artwork by Carlotta Corpron. Image courtesy of the Hirshorn Museum. “ Light Is a Plastic Medium: The Photography of Carlotta Corpron ” Where : Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC When : Oct. 16 – Mar. 14, 2027 Why It’s Worth a Look : Abstract photographer and educator Carlotta Corpron may have spent most of her life and career away from America’s coastal artistic hubs (she lived and worked in Denton, Texas, where she taught photography at a women’s college), but she still saw herself in league with the fine art photographers of the day, like Alfred Stieglitz.
Know Before You Go : Light and shadow were central concerns for Corpron, in no small part thanks to the influence of the New Bauhaus school, which opened in Chicago in 1937. Across six bodies of work at the Hirshhorn, Corpron’s work illuminates foundational elements of light and form. Alonzo Davis, Self Portrait Inside Series, 1974. Image courtesy of LACMA. “ The Brockman Gallery: Los Angeles, 1967–1990 ” Where : LACMA, Los Angeles When : Oct. 18 – Jan. 24, 2027 Why It’s Worth a Look : This will be the first large-scale exhibition dedicated to the Brockman Gallery, the first major commercial gallery run by and for Black artists.
Founded at the height of the Black Arts Movement, the gallery helped nurture the careers of Suzanne Jackson, David Hammonds, and Carrie Mae Weems. Over 60 works from the gallery’s tenure will be on view alongside a history of the space and its impact. Know Before You Go : Back in the late 1960s, summer uprisings against LAPD violence reshaped the landscape of South Los Angeles, making storefront space cheaper and more accessible. Two brothers, Alonzo Davis and Dale Brockman Davis, steered the gallery until it shuttered in 1990. Constantin Brancusi, Newborn II , 1927. Photography by Adam Rzepka. © Succession Brancusi.
“ Brancusi: The Artist and His Studio ” Where : MoMA, New York When : Oct. 25 – Feb. 27, 2027 Why It’s Worth a Look : There’s something so contemporary about the design language of the late Romania-born, Paris-based Modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi. The rounded edges—sometimes earthenware, sometimes metallic, always sleek—of his work were inspired by folk art from Eastern Europe to Polynesia, but continue to influence designers of everything from tech to sex toys today. Know Before You Go : When Brancusi died in 1957, he left the contents of his studio to the country of France, where it became a beloved fixture of the Centre Pompidou, including a scale replica of his studio adjacent to the museum.
While the center and Brancusci’s studio are closed for renovations through 2030, a collection of sculptures rarely-exhibited outside of France will travel to MoMA for this show. Abbas Akhavan, curtain call, variations on a folly (Installation view), 2021/23. Photography by David Stjernholm. Image courtesy of the Walker Art Center. “ Abbas Akhavan: Variations on a Garden ” Where : Walker Art Center, Minneapolis When : Nov. 12 – Apr. 18, 2027 Why It’s Worth a Look : The show at the Walker Art Center will be Abbas Akhavan’s first major U.S. show and his first mid-career survey, with works from the past two decades of the 49-year-old artist’s career.
Akhavan’s small-scale sculptures and larger installations touch upon the ecology and history of Iran, where he was born, and the Middle East more broadly. Know Before You Go : Akhavan reached new audiences this year representing Canada at the Venice Biennale with a botanical pavilion full of mossy boulders and water lilies. At the Walker, find everything from small bronze-cast flowers to a full-scale replica of the ancient Palmyra Arch in Syria. Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I , 1907. Image courtesy of Neue Galerie New York. “ 25th Anniversary Exhibition: Masterworks from the Neue Galerie ” Where : Neue Galerie, New York When : Nov.
12 – Jan. 11, 2027 Why It’s Worth a Look : This full-museum takeover will highlight some of the Neue Galerie’s most renowned artworks, including Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I , 1907 as well as masterpieces from Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, and Richard Gerstl. Know Before You Go : In May, the Upper East Side institution announced that it would merge with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What does that mean exactly? The merger won’t be complete until 2028, but the museum’s historic building will be undergoing restorations beginning Memorial Day 2027. This show could be your last chance the Neue Galerie for a while.
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