Exemplary exhibitions await across New York City—and for SVA students, many of them are free.
Guadalupe Maravilla (BFA 2003 Photography and Video), Disease Thrower #0, 2022. On view at “Guadalupe Maravilla: Tierra Blanca Joven” at the Brooklyn Museum.
The School of Visual Arts campus is in a city jam-packed with creative resources that can enrich your learning experience. In the Chelsea neighborhood alone—the heart of New York’s art world—you’ll find a rich scene of galleries and museums within footsteps. Take a short train ride to Brooklyn for its namesake museum, the city’s second-largest, or north to the Bronx Museum of the Arts for exhibitions that reflect the borough’s dynamic communities. Feeling up for a leisurely ride on the Staten Island Ferry? Dock at the harbor and head for the Staten Island Museum. There is so much art to explore across the five boroughs.
This page on the SVA site always offers the most up-to-date information regarding museum memberships, including each institution’s guest policy and ticketing information. As a benefit to students, faculty and staff, SVA maintains memberships at various museums, including the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1, New Museum of Contemporary Art and Whitney Museum of American Art. Here are some current exhibitions from those institutions—and others—that you won’t want to miss.
Lisa Alvarado, Vibratory Cartography: Nepantla, 2021–22. On view at the “Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept.”
Brooklyn Museum
Through Sunday, September 18
“Guadalupe Maravilla: Tierra Blanca Joven”
An exhibition featuring new sculptures, retablo paintings, tripa chuca drawings and sound works that center on the need for care and healing, particularly for the undocumented and cancer communities of which Guadalupe Maravilla (BFA 2003 Photography and Video) is a part.
Through Sunday, January 1, 2023
“Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe”
Featuring more than one hundred works by the late Nellie Mae Rowe exploring themes of girlhood, play and spirituality, this exhibition celebrates an under-recognized figure of 20th-century American art. Additionally, it contextualizes Rowe’s practice as a radical act of liberation for a Black woman artist working in the American South.
MoMA PS1
Through Friday, September 23
“Queensbridge Photo Collective: Still, Like Air I’ll Rise”
This exhibition by the Queensbridge Photo Collective utilizes photography, archival research, memorabilia and oral histories to reflect on the lives of the collective’s members, who all grew up in the neighborhoods around MoMA PS1, and is accompanied by public programs with neighboring organizations and community members.
Through Monday, January 16, 2023
Through archival materials and artworks from the 1970s through the present day, this exhibition explores the history of community gardens in New York City and how artists have engaged the city’s interstitial spaces—“vacant” lots, sidewalk cracks, traffic islands and parks, among others—to consider the politics of public space through an ecological lens.
An Installation view of the “Queensbridge Photo Collective: Still, Like Air I’ll Rise” exhibition. On view at MoMA PS1.
Museum of Modern Art
Through Monday, October 10
“Our Selves: Photographs by Women Artists from Helen Kornblum”
Spanning more than 100 years of photography, this exhibition explores how women artists have used photography as a tool of resistance in diverse practices, including portraiture, photojournalism, social documentary, avant-garde experimentation, advertising and performance.
Through Monday, January 2, 2023
“Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas”
An installation of multimedia work that focuses on the struggles for territorial sovereignty, Indigenous rights and the building of environmental memory as seen in an area that the Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe calls Somi Se’k.
The New Museum
Through Sunday, October 9
“Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott”
This exhibition of approximately 40 paintings highlights the 60-year-long career of one of America’s most subversive artists, Robert Colescott. Traversing art history to offer a satirical take on issues of race, beauty and American culture, Colescott explored how personal and cultural identities are constructed and enacted through the language and history of painting.
Whitney Museum of Art
Through Sunday, October 16
“Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept” (partial view)
One of the most anticipated events on the cultural calendar, the Whitney Biennial surveys the landscape of American art. This year’s biennial features an intergenerational and interdisciplinary group of 63 artists and collectives whose dynamic works reflect the challenges, complexities and possibilities of the American experience today.
A promotional image for “Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room.”
Other Exhibitions (no or low cost)
Bronx Museum of the Arts
Free admission
Through Sunday, October 2
“Jamel Shabazz: Eyes on the Street”
Photographer Jamel Shabazz has been capturing the lives of the men and women, young and old, who imbue the streets of New York with theater and style since he was 15 years old. This exhibition pays homage to Shabazz’s illustrious career of over 40 years.
Wednesday, October 12, 2022 – Sunday, April 9, 2023
Return later in October to see “Abigail DeVille: Bronx Heavens,” a large-scale installation that includes a living-room space housing paintings and sculptures related to familial histories and history of the Bronx, examining the myths and realities of local, familial and ancestral histories and the convoluted notion of freedom in a country fraught with oppression and racism.
Brooklyn Botanic Gardens
$12 for students with ID
Installed across the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens grounds, this exhibition is composed of dozens of site-specific bird houses by artists, inspired by bird species in residence at the gardens.
Brooklyn Bridge Park
Free
Through Sunday, November 27
Displayed on the shores of a former shipping port, this collection of public artwork is inspired by the diaspora across the ocean that connects Africa with the Americas and Europe. The exhibit consists of work by five artists, including alumnus Dozie Kanu (BFA 2016 Film), who have looked to both global histories and personal experiences to craft new identities and futures.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Pay what you wish for New York State residents and New York students
Ongoing
“Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room”
A new room at the Met, this exhibit embraces the African and African diasporic belief that the past, present and future are interconnected. Driven by Afrofuturism—a transdisciplinary creative mode that centers on Black imagination, excellence and self-determination—and activated through vision, sound, storytelling, and works from The Met’s collection. Featuring work by Willie Cole (BFA 1976 Media Arts) and Lorna Simpson (BFA 1982 Photography).
Through Sunday, February 5, 2023
“Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina”
This exhibition presents approximately 50 ceramic objects from Old Edgefield District, South Carolina, a center of stoneware production in the decades before the Civil War, in dialogue with contemporary artistic responses.
The Morgan Library and Museum
$13 for students; free admission on Friday evenings
Through Sunday, October 2
“Please Send to Real Life: Ray Johnson Photographs”
The final project of pop artist Ray Johnson—a collection of photos created using 137 disposable cameras—makes its debut alongside earlier photo-based collages and works of mail art.
Museum of Arts and Design
$12 tickets for students; all tickets are half-price on Thursdays
Through Sunday, January 8, 2023
Deftly melding innovative material experiments with an expressive refinement of form, Chris Schanck’s (BFA 1998 Fine Arts) elaborately carved and colorfully hued objects are contemporary talismans of stories from the past, present and future.
Through Sunday, February 19, 2023
“Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle”
An exhibition of over 80 works by the queer experimental theater artist Matthew Flower, better known as Machine Dazzle, intertwining stagecraft, design, performance and music.
The Rubin
$14 for students; free admission on Friday evenings
Through Monday, January 16, 2023
“Healing Practices: Stories from Himalayan Americans”
An exhibition of over 25 pieces from the Rubin Museum’s collection set alongside personal stories and experiences from Himalayan Americans to create dialogue around ideas of prevention, healing and longevity.
Staten Island Museum
Suggested $5 for students
Through Sunday, March 26, 2023
A hyperlocal exhibition of recent work by 36 artists exploring life on an island. Through video, performance, painting, photography, installation and drawing, artists navigate legacies of self-determination, land development and the enduring power of nature, altogether investigating what it means to be connected to Staten Island.
An installation view of “Chris Schanck: Off-World.” On view at the Museum of Arts and Design.