New York’s gallery scene continues following Frieze New York 2026 with a dynamic lineup of museum-quality exhibitions across galleries Chelsea and Tribeca. From Julie Mehretu and Firelei Báez to Anselm Kiefer and Katherine Bernhardt, L’Etage Magazine highlights the essential contemporary art exhibitions defining New York’s post-Frieze season.
Julie Mehretu — Our Days, Like a Shadow (a non-abiding hauntology)
Gallery: Marian Goodman Gallery
Location: Tribeca – 385 Broadway, New York, NY 10013
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 AM–6 PM
Exhibition Dates: April 14 – June 6, 2026
Julie Mehretu’s latest exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery continues the artist’s exploration of abstraction, mapping, political memory, and layered spatial histories. Known for her monumental gestural paintings and architectural compositions, Mehretu’s practice merges cartography, urbanism, and social unrest into richly textured visual environments. Our Days, Like a Shadow (a non-abiding hauntology) presents new works that meditate on impermanence, movement, and contemporary global anxieties through sweeping mark-making and atmospheric depth. The exhibition also features collaborative performance elements developed with choreographer John Jasperse.
Firelei Báez — feet squelching on wet grass, nourished by uncertainty
Gallery: Hauser & Wirth
Location: Chelsea – 22nd Street, New York, NY
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 AM–6 PM
Exhibition Dates: May 12 – July 31, 2026
Firelei Báez unveils an immersive body of new paintings, works on paper, and bronze sculptures in her first New York exhibition with Hauser & Wirth. Across two floors, Báez examines colonial histories, diasporic memory, spirituality, and ecological transformation through layered visual narratives. Her richly symbolic compositions dissolve boundaries between figuration and abstraction while engaging Caribbean histories and Afro-diasporic futures. A centerpiece of the exhibition is View of Nature (2026), an expansive multi-panel painting inspired by 19th-century scientific engravings and reimagined through Báez’s fluid painterly language.
Sanford Biggers — The Gift of Tongues
Gallery: Boesky Gallery
Location: Chelsea – 507 West 24th Street, New York, NY
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 AM–6 PM
Exhibition Dates: April 30 – June 13, 2026
Sanford Biggers’ newest solo exhibition at Boesky Gallery presents multidisciplinary works that challenge established narratives surrounding race, mythology, spirituality, and American cultural history. Working across quilt-based assemblage, sculpture, painting, film, and performance, Biggers transforms historical materials into contemporary meditations on identity and memory. The Gift of Tongues continues the artist’s investigation into improvisation, symbolism, and the layered complexities of collective consciousness.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye — Many a Moonlight Caveat
Gallery: Jack Shainman Gallery
Address: Tribeca – 46 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10013
Chelsea Location: Chelsea -513 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 AM–6 PM
Exhibition Dates: April 24 – July 31, 2026
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is internationally recognized for her psychologically charged figurative paintings depicting fictional Black subjects suspended in timeless, ambiguous spaces. Her work explores memory, presence, and the emotional possibilities of portraiture through luminous brushwork and poetic atmosphere. The artist’s exhibitions consistently bridge contemporary painting with historical portrait traditions while challenging representational conventions.
Danielle McKinney — Forest for the Trees
Gallery: Marianne Boesky Gallery
Address: 507 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 AM–6 PM
Exhibition Dates: May 7 – June 13, 2026
Danielle McKinney’s Forest for the Trees presents new paintings and watercolors depicting solitary Black women within intimate domestic interiors illuminated by cinematic light and shadow. Drawing inspiration from photography, film noir, and psychological storytelling, McKinney creates emotionally resonant scenes balancing contemplation, vulnerability, and quiet power. The exhibition further establishes the artist as one of the leading voices in contemporary figurative painting.
Lindsay Adams — SOIL
Gallery: Sean Kelly Gallery
Location: Chelsea, 75 10th Avenue, New York, NY 10018
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 AM–6 PM
Exhibition Dates: April 25 – June 6, 2026
Lindsay Adams’ exhibition SOIL explores materiality, landscape, memory, and the body through layered sculptural and painterly forms. Presented at Sean Kelly Gallery’s Chelsea location, the exhibition examines themes of transformation and rootedness while engaging organic textures and earth-toned palettes that evoke geological and emotional terrains.
Emily Kraus — In Relation
Gallery: Luhring Augustine
Location: Tribeca,17 White Street, New York, NY 10013
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 AM–6 PM
Exhibition Dates: May 1 – June 13, 2026
Emily Kraus’ In Relation investigates interpersonal connection, spatial dynamics, and emotional resonance through contemporary abstraction. Presented at Luhring Augustine’s Tribeca location, the exhibition features immersive works that balance gesture, color, and structural tension to examine how relationships shape perception and lived experience.
Katharina Fritsch — Auto and Wohnwagen/Car and Caravan, 1979/2026
Gallery: Matthew Marks Gallery
Location: 522 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 AM–6 PM
Exhibition Dates: May 2 – June 27, 2026
Katharina Fritsch revisits one of her seminal sculptural installations with Auto and Wohnwagen/Car and Caravan, 1979/2026. Known for her psychologically charged sculptures and uncanny manipulation of scale and color, Fritsch transforms ordinary objects into surreal encounters that blur reality and dreamlike perception. The installation exemplifies her enduring influence on contemporary sculpture and conceptual practice.
Kim Dacres — Lost on a Two Way Street
Gallery: Charles Moffett Gallery
Location: 394 Broadway, Second Floor, New York, NY 10013
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 AM–6 PM
Exhibition Dates: May 8 – June 20, 2026
Kim Dacres continues her acclaimed sculptural practice using recycled tires to create monumental portraits exploring Black identity, resilience, and cultural memory. Lost on a Two Way Street reflects the artist’s ongoing engagement with representation, monumentality, and material experimentation within contemporary sculpture. An expansion upon Dacres’ 2025 body of work, Crossroads Like This, this exhibition marks the artist’s second solo show with the gallery. Maximizing the conceptual and formal possibilities of her signature material of reclaimed tires, Dacres’ new busts and wall-mounted sculptures probe the extreme range of emotions experienced over the last 18 months in the United States, an evocation of what it feels like to live through, and to strive for a state of peace amid, the relentless assault on universal rights to life and liberty.
Katherine Bernhardt — Peanut Butter and Jelly
Gallery: Canada Gallery
Location: 60 Lispenard Street, New York, NY 10013
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 AM–6 PM
Exhibition Dates: May 7 – June 20, 2026
Katherine Bernhardt’s exuberant paintings transform everyday pop-cultural imagery into vibrant large-scale compositions filled with humor, repetition, and energetic color. Peanut Butter and Jelly continues the artist’s playful exploration of consumer culture, cartoon iconography, and visual excess through her instantly recognizable painterly language.
Kawayan de Guia — Excavations from the Land of Not So Plenty
Gallery: Silverlens Gallery
Location: Chelsea – 505 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 AM–6 PM
Exhibition Dates: May 1 – June 20, 2026
Kawayan de Guia’s multidisciplinary exhibition examines colonialism, labor, environmental instability, and Filipino identity through assemblage, installation, and sculptural intervention. Drawing from indigenous histories and contemporary socio-political realities, the exhibition creates speculative narratives about scarcity, survival, and cultural inheritance.
Anselm Kiefer — Seal My Ears Shut and I Shall Hear You
Courtesy Gagosian. © Anselm Kiefer
Gallery: Gagosian
Location: 541 West 24th Street, Chelsea, New York, NY
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 AM–6 PM
Exhibition Dates: May 5 – June 27, 2026
Anselm Kiefer’s latest exhibition at Gagosian presents monumental works confronting memory, mythology, history, and transcendence. Renowned for his immersive material surfaces incorporating ash, lead, straw, and organic matter, Kiefer continues his investigation into collective trauma, poetry, and spiritual reckoning. Seal My Ears Shut and I Shall Hear You reflects the artist’s enduring engagement with philosophy, literature, and the fragility of civilization.
Derrick Fordjour – ARCHETYPES
Venue: The High Line
Location: On the High Line between 25th and 26th Streets, Chelsea, New York, NY
Hours: Daily, 7 AM–10 PM
Exhibition Dates: May 2026 – Closes April 2027
Derrick Fordjour’s large-scale installation and public art presentation at The High Line continues the artist’s exploration of spectacle, performance, race, and American cultural identity. Known for his richly textured paintings, sculpture, and immersive environments, Fordjour examines the intersections of social ritual and visibility through layered materials and dynamic figuration. ARCHETYPES, a series of painted bronze sculptures depicting a boxer, server, and burlesque dancer installed between 25hth and 26th Streets. Together, the works consider the historic use of the Black body as a vehicle for social mobility within economies of entertainment, labor, and performance. Alongside the sculptures, Fordjours’s mural Backbreaker Double extends these themse into the surrounding cityscape, trasforming the High Line into a meditation on visibility, aspiration, and the systems that shape public life.
Presented within one of New York’s most visited public art spaces, the exhibition expands the dialogue between contemporary art and the urban landscape while reinforcing Fordjour’s position as one of the leading voices in contemporary American art.