Whether you’re trying to beat the winter blahs or enjoy the rare moments of midwinter sunshine, there’s plenty of compelling art to see in New York City’s museums and galleries. Prepare for the overlap of Inauguration and MLK Day with Kamari Carter’s incisive take on the American flag, check out the spiritual art of Shakers, bask in Esther Mahlangu’s colorful patterns and the esoteric worlds of Forrest Bess, and wander into a field of conceptualism with Michael Asher. And when the snowstorms roll in, curl up on your couch and enjoy dozens of online exhibitions designed by the Morgan Library & Museum, including two on the wondrous Beatrix Potter! If you’re in need of some creative community on January 20, visit artist Eva Mueller’s Wall of Emotions (WOE) pop-up event at Satellite Gallery on the Lower East Side. Mueller will be exhibiting their photo portraits of people from LGBTQ+ and allied communities and on hand to take photos of visitors who want to join their wall. —Natalie Haddad, Reviews Editor
Esther Mahlangu: Time in Color
Ross+Kramer Gallery, 515 W 27th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan
Through January 25
Award-winning South African visual artist and a cultural ambassador of the Ndebele tribe Esther Mahlangu uses the “Sacred Geometry” of her community to paint canvases of varying sizes that use form, colors, and lines to tell their own stories that may appear cryptic to the uninitiated. On display are more than 30 paintings created over a 10-year period (2011–21) as well as a fully hand-painted art car.
Since her international art world debut during the art historically significant Magiciens de la terre exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, she’s gone on to share her creations, which signal an important contribution to our understanding of art in southern Africa and its contributions to contemporary art. I suggest spending time with the work in order to enjoy the variations in borders and lines, and how the artist renders meaning to a vocabulary that feels as fresh as ever. —Hrag Vartanian
Johanna Seidel: Salamander
Gaa Gallery, 17 White Street, Tribeca, Manhattan
Through January 25
Named after that spritely creature that scurries across the landscape, this show doesn’t feature a single salamander — even in the exhibition’s namesake painting. Yet once you get over the false advertising (I’m still recovering, but I’ll live) you can easily see the beauty of these works (all painted in 2024), which feel happily trapped between narrative and metaphor.
In “October,” three young women sit in the backseat of a vehicle holding hands. Two of them are smoking cigarettes, while a fourth individual who appears to be the driver focuses ahead. The spirit is carefree, even as shadowy birds and branches hover overhead. The imagery suggests the fleeting nature of loving connections.
Each title suggests a larger narrative, of which we’re never allotted more than a glimpse. In “Rose, Jasmine, and Narcissus,” a lounging bather is surrounded by objects that look like they belong in 1924 more than today, and in “Playlist” the subject of the painting is that which we can’t see — even the rearview mirror foils our attempts at clarity.
Luxurious, urbane, and elegant, the fairytale world of White women rendered on these canvases is as familiar as it is contemplative and strange. —HV
Kamari Carter: Vexillary
Microscope Gallery, 525 West 29th Street, 2nd Floor, Chelsea, Manhattan
Through January 25
One of the main works in artist Kamari Carter’s exhibition is called “Patriot Act” and features three megaphones (one red, one white, and one blue) that are hooked up to a live feed of radio transmissions by the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC. The artwork is designed to highlight the culture of surveillance leading up to, during, and after the inauguration of our 47th President, Donald Trump. Art lovers can even visit the gallery on Inauguration Day (Monday, January 20, 2025, 12–6pm), which is also MLK Day this year, and listen to this unique perspective, while exploring the display the artist created for this crucial event of political theater. A word of caution: Be sure not to hold your ear too close to one of the megaphones, since the transmission volume can fluctuate quite suddenly.
The audio work is not the only piece on view, as Carter scrutinizes and transforms the US flag in varying ways, including in “Perfidy,” a white version of the Stars and Stripes that hangs in the space. At the back of the gallery, in an adjacent room, he’s also frozen Old Glory in a block of ice, suggesting a history of conceptual art practices, but also the promise of a symbol that feels imprisoned. Titled “Frozen Flag,” the encased flag confronts us through temporary barriers and is a reminder that the distance between our ideals and our actual selves is challenging but not insurmountable. —HV
Anything but Simple: Gift Drawings and the Shaker Aesthetic
American Folk Art Museum, 2 Lincoln Square, Lincoln Square, Manhattan
Through January 26
Simple lines, muted earth tones, and spare elegance are celebrated hallmarks of Shaker design, showing up in the famed oval nesting boxes, purpose-built wooden furniture, and orderly communal living spaces. But vibrant color and expressive embellishment also have a place in Shaker spiritual life, as illustrated in this special showing of 25 “gift drawings,” each made in the mid-19th century, during a period of spiritual revival known as the “Era of Manifestations.” Young Shaker women would enter trances and receive comforting divine messages that they’d transcribe and give to an intended recipient. Rendered in great detail in ink and watercolor, these heavenly missives are mysterious and thoroughly fascinating, with a pull that continues to inspire artists working today, nearly two centuries later (as explored in the museum’s panel discussion, which I moderated). Steady your gaze on the drawings, buzzing with symbols and laced with precise handwriting, and see if you can decode the messages of love and encouragement. —Julie Schneider
“Jack was my first art collector.” Forrest Bess – From the Estate of Dr. Jack Weinberg
Franklin Parrasch Gallery, 19 East 66th Street, Lenox Hill, Manhattan
Through January 31
Forrest Bess called his paintings “visions.” In a show that is intimate in all senses of the word — from the canvas sizes to the personal, almost private subjects of the works — those visions are at once enigmatic and energetic. Even paintings that are ostensibly landscapes feel like portals to an interior world. An untitled work from 1946, for instance, depicts what appears to be a landscape studded with nebulous cacti in primary colors, a figure split down the middle — black on one half, white on the other — poised as if loping toward the viewer in the foreground. The star of the show might be another untitled painting from the same year, larger than the rest and hanging on the opposite wall. It’s a kaleidoscopic psycho-landscape with dueling factions of color and texture that seem to meet at a frenetic chasm that cuts diagonally across the center, like contradictory ideas clashing violently within the mind. —Lisa Yin Zhang
Longing: In Between Homelands
Palo Gallery, 30 Bond Street, Soho, Manhattan
Through February 8
The silent beauty of the Dead Sea, a sorrowful child on a Beirut beach, and bathers commingling in the hot springs of Jordan. These are some of the images in this group show, captured by three Palestinian photographers who live in the diaspora: Lina Khalid, Nadia Bseiso, and Ameen Abo Kaseem. Born out of place, they observe their environments from within the gaping wound of exile. Though most were taken in 2024, the photos enclose a generations-old memory of an ancestral place that can be seen in the near horizon, but not reached. In a heartwarming gesture by the gallery, all proceeds from the sales will go to the artists, who need the money. —Hakim Bishara
Michael Asher
Artists Space, 11 Cortlandt Alley, Tribeca, Manhattan
Through February 8
I’m usually bored to tears with Michael Asher’s institutional critiques, since they feel so staid and conservative nowadays, but I still recognize the art historical significance of an artist who helped open our understandings of what is and can be art, and what we should consider part of the conversations.
If you want a primer on this important figure in late 20th-century art, this is a show to see. If you normally avoid archive-heavy exhibitions that are slippery in the way only a grad student can love, then don’t bother — also, I find Asher much more interesting when experienced in books than in galleries but I guess curators have to make a living.
On Thursday, January 23rd at 7:30pm, Artists Space will be rescreening “a film” that was first made in 1973 at Project Inc. Like so much else on display, this project apparently has no name. Have fun! Oh wait, it’s Asher, so don’t have fun, just think really, really hard — and make sure to perform your thinking by bunching your brows so others know that you’re deep in thought. Ok, I’ll stop. As I said, it’s well worth a look. —HV
Beatrix Potter: The Picture Letters and other online exhibitions
Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, Murray Hill, Manhattan
Ongoing
Some days you’d like to see art but you just can’t stand to leave the house, especially in the freezing cold of mid January. For times like these, the Morgan has us covered with its rich, informative, and engrossing series of online exhibitions. These shows — continuations of in-person exhibitions (including the current show Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy, at the museum through May 4) — are composed like stories carrying the virtual visitor from one moment to the next, often with video or audio augmenting the text and visuals. It’s easy to spend hours with the museum’s dozens of online shows.
My personal favorite at the moment is Beatrix Potter: The Picture Letters, created to accompany a 2012–13 museum exhibition. The show is a fascinating look at letters Potter sent to the children of her friends and family between 1892 and 1900, replete with personal details and beguiling drawings of animals at work or play. As we learn from the show, The Tale of Peter Rabbit began as a letter to Noel Moore, the young son of Potter’s former governess, when he fell ill. Potter’s graceful line drawings — including a charming one of the doctor Mr. Mole and Nurse Mouse tending to a bedridden child mouse — are perfectly matched with her warm messages: “I hope the little mouse will soon be able to sit up in a chair by the fire.” —NH
