The exhibitions this week present us how we form ourselves in historical past’s picture, and the opposite manner round. Lotus L. Kang’s assemblages at 52 Walker draw from diasporic reminiscence, but her draped movie sculptures type an ongoing doc of the exhibition’s idiosyncrasies of sunshine and motion. In the meantime, Rashid Johnson’s survey on the Guggenheim Museum attracts from a dense community of Black mental thought, providing in flip a up to date visible vernacular.
Then, two group reveals — Making Dwelling at Cooper Hewitt and Superfine at The Met — tackle the methods odd individuals assemble identities, whether or not that be by means of our home settings or our particular person model. As you’ll be able to see, although three of the 4 reveals are mere blocks aside on the Higher East Aspect’s Museum Mile, they span continents and centuries, and radically completely different programs of thought. However that’s the miracle of New York, and the miracle of artwork. —Lisa Yin Zhang, Affiliate Editor
Lotus L. Kang: Already
52 Walker, 52 Walker Road, Tribeca, ManhattanThrough June 7
Lotus L. Kang, “Molt (Toronto-Chicago-Woodridge-New York-)” (2022–25) (picture Danielle Wu/Hyperallergic)
“[Lotus L.] Kang evaluates what new possibilities and temporalities can emerge from engaging in processes alien or forbidden, such as exposing film to sunlight.” —Danielle Wu
Learn the total assessment right here.
Making Dwelling—Smithsonian Design Triennial
Cooper Hewitt, 2 East 91st Road, Higher East Aspect, ManhattanThrough August 10
Set up view of “Hālau Kūkulu Hawaiʻi: A Home That Builds Multitudes” (2025) (picture Julie Schneider/Hyperallergic)
“Featuring a wide-ranging medley of 25 newly commissioned installations with pliable interpretations of both home and design, Making Home takes visitors on a meander through the minds of artists and designers from the US, US territories, and Tribal Nations.” —Julie Schneider
Learn the total assessment right here.
Superfine: Tailoring Black Fashion
Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Higher East Aspect, ManhattanThrough October 26
“Superfine: Tailoring Black Style is a triumph not only for its expansion of Black fashion history and visual culture, but also for its stirring and substantive approach that centers ordinary individuals and their dress practices.” —Imani Wiliford
Learn the total assessment right here.
Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, Higher East Aspect, ManhattanThrough January 18, 2026
Rashid Johnson’s “Untitled Totem” (2021), solid bronze and crops (left), and “Untitled Anxious Audience” (2019), ceramic tile, black cleaning soap, and wax (picture Seph Rodney/Hyperallergic)
“[Rashid Johnson’s] discernment is key to this exhibition of 95 works of art that are replete with references to Black identity, its rhetorical construction and historical antecedents, and its visual codes, the dense thicket of signifiers in the forest that is Blackness.” —Seph Rodney
Learn the total assessment right here.
