Here are some of the top museum shows coming to New York in 2025

New York’s many art galleries are still putting together their slates for 2025. But museums, which have years-long lead times to arrange their biggest shows, have begun to announce what’s coming. And with post-renovation reopenings from the New Museum and more, there’s plenty to look forward to on the art calendar in 2025.

“Whether you’re drawn to historic masterpieces or contemporary innovations, there’s something extraordinary for everyone,” wrote art advisor Megan Fox Kelly in an email.

Here’s a look at some of the top shows worth seeing this year, in chronological order of their opening.

Nick Cave at Jack Shainman Gallery

The American artist and dancer Nick Cave has had a longstanding relationship with Jack Shainman Gallery, which presented his iconic “Soundsuits” — elaborate wearable sculptures that are sometimes presented empty but sometimes used in dance, photo, or video. The gallery will open its new flagship TriBeCa location, which Kelly called “stunning,” with a show of new sculptures and mixed-media works from the artist.

Amalgams and Graphts opens at Jack Shainman Gallery on Jan. 10.

Never-realized New York City projects by Christo and Jeanne-Claude at The Shed

Many New Yorkers will remember “The Gates,” when more than 7,000 orange-draped gates took over Central Park in 2005. Those who don’t can see an animated recreation at The Shed in Hudson Yards, with a virtual model of The Gates “on a large-scale map of the original project location, designed by technology studios Dirt Empire and Pixels Pixels," according to the Shed’s website. The work moves through time over the decades of planning and execution for the project.

The show also includes plans and digital imaginings of multiple other site-specific NYC works which the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude envisioned for the city but never got approved.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Gates and Unrealized Projects for New York City opens Feb. 12. Tickets are free but reservations are required.

A century of the New Yorker magazine at the New York Public Library

Opening at the New York Public Library’s Stephen Schwarzman building in Bryant Park in February, this yearlong exhibit will celebrate 100 years of the New Yorker magazine, including manuscripts, drafts, correspondence between editors and authors like Vladimir Nabokov and J.D. Salinger, typewriters, and other publishing ephemera.

There will also be artwork from painter Kara Walker and longtime contributor, cartoonist Charles Addams.

A Century of the New Yorker opens Feb. 22.

Rashid Johnson at the Guggenheim

Following major shows at Hauser & Wirth over the past several years, the conceptual artist Rashid Johnson is getting a major show at the Guggenheim, filling up the museum’s iconic rotunda with more than 90 works.

The entire top ramp of the museum will host a new site-specific installation with a piano embedded into the space, which will host live performances during the show’s run.

Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers opens April 18.

The Frick Collection reopening

In April, the Frick Collection will reopen in its Fifth Avenue home. The original Frick mansion, which is a large part of the museum’s appeal, has been closed for renovations since 2020.

The second floor of the building will be open to visitors for the first time, reimagined with 10 gallery spaces. In late April, the museum will hold a weeklong festival dedicated to one of its best-loved features, a series of classical and chamber music performances in one of the Frick galleries. A new commission will recreate the original floral arrangements from the Frick’s 1935 opening in ceramics.

And of course, there will be a Vermeer show, drawing on the Frick’s own collection as well as borrowings from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and others.

John Singer Sargent’s years in Paris and abroad

A favorite portraitist in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent collection, the American painter John Singer Sargent is getting a new presentation this spring.

Titled “Sargent & Paris,” the exhibition will cover the decade Sargent spent based in Paris and his travels in that time to Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and North Africa. It will feature not only Sargent’s portraits and drawings from that time, but also works from his Parisian contemporaries highlighting their portraits of Paris society at the time.

Sargent and Paris opens April 27.

Also of note at the Met this year are exhibitions of the German romantic landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich opening in February and the Brooklyn-born photographer Lorna Simpson, opening in May.

The Studio Museum’s grand reopening

The Studio Museum in Harlem, which celebrates artists of African descent, has been closed since 2018 for a top-down rebuild that replaces the site’s old bank building headquarters with a new, bespoke building.

The museum will reopen this fall with a retrospective of Tom Lloyd, the sculptor and engineer who worked with technology to create light-based sculptures and installations. Lloyd was the subject of the museum’s first exhibition, in 1968.

The permanent collection will also be presented anew, drawing on more than 200 artists including Dawoud Bey, Jordan Casteel, Norman Lewis, and Faith Ringgold.

Ruth Asawa retrospective at MoMA

Perhaps the showstopper of this year’s major museum calendar, the Japanese-American modern artist Ruth Asawa will be the subject of a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.

Presenting more than 300 works from across six decades of Asawa’s career, the exhibition will of course feature her famous paper foldings and wire sculptures, along with paintings, drawings, and archival work and ephemera.

Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective will open Oct. 19.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the date the Frick's temporary home in the Breuer building closed.