Art: Courtesy of the artist and Harkawik, New York
In this season of gold toilets selling for millions of dollars, it would be easy to miss that there were more good shows than you could shake a stick at in 2025. The Bronx Museum came alive with the first major exhibition of the Reverend Joyce McDonald, who showed the healing powers of art. Los Angeles–based provocateur Laura Owens commandeered every square inch of Matthew Marks with her interactive painting. Harkawick Gallery attached photos by over 200 artists to refrigerators that lined the gallery, while Maxwell Gallery showed works that had not sold the year before. Meanwhile, White Columns artist Elizabeth Klay did what most curators can’t get right: Rather than coming up with an idea and then finding art to illustrate the idea, Klay picked work from various artists that together created meaning. That and much more made this a banner year.
Art: © Laura Owens, Courtesy of the Artist and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
A wildly ambitious takeover of virtually every inch of the Matthew Marks 22nd Street spaces that had optical verve and became a beloved online sensation.
Art: Courtesy of White Columns, New York and Marc Tatti
Usually curators think of a theme and find artists to illustrate it. Here, Kley simply picked all of the artists she admired and let them make the meaning.
Art: Courtesy of Alannah Farrell
This trans artist found a crazy walk-up space in Chinatown where they showed a work depicting a seated person carrying a horse crop, wearing men’s blue socks, and baring a tiny penis and surgical scars beneath their chest.
Art: Courtesy of the artist and Canada, New York
In her 80s, Bradford has the wisdom of a visionary and is utterly on her game, creating captivating paintings of figures suspended in fields of blue paint.
Art: © Cady Noland, Courtesy of Gagosian, New york
Noland is the missing link between late-20th- and 21st-century sculpture. Also on display, in conversation with Noland’s work, are the ripped and twisted canvases of the late Steven Parrino, who died on New Year’s Day in 2005.
Art: Courtesy of Falcon Art Collective
A gigantic group show curated by New York–based Falcon Art Collective in an unfinished midtown building. An over-the-top reclamation of a post-pandemic city.
Art: Courtesy of Maxwell Graham, New York
This supercool Lower East Side outpost installed solo work it had exhibited that failed to sell, and it was fantastic — a biting commentary on letting the art market determine a work’s value.
Art: Courtesy of The Frick Collection and Nicholas Venezia
These indispensable institutions came back with great fanfare, visual majesty, and charismatic aplomb.
Art: Courtesy of Harkawik, New York
A row of Whirlpool refrigerators lined the back wall of this Chinatown gallery, each bedecked with photographs of naked people — refreshingly maximalist.
Art: Courtesy of Gordon Robichaux, New York
A true living visionary of the first rank, McDonald bears witness to injustice, suffering, and tremendous nobility in this spectacular show.
