From surreal 1960s visions to fashion photography masterworks, these six New York exhibitions define the city’s September art scene.
September in New York is peak gallery going, and this edit charts a clear path through museums and top galleries. From the Whitney’s “Untitled” (America) and “Sixties Surreal” to MoMA’s media savvy “Face Value,” then on to Paolo Roversi’s luminous photographs at Pace, EJ Hill’s durational installation at 52 Walker, and Joel Shapiro’s early sculpture at Paula Cooper, these are the shows worth your time. We include addresses, dates, and why each matters, so you can plan around Fashion Week openings, late nights, and neighborhood walks. Book timed tickets when possible, check hours on the day, and leave room between stops for a coffee and a look around.
“Untitled” (America)
Where: Whitney Museum of American Art | 99 Gansevoort St, New York, NY 10014
When: Opened July 5, 2025; ongoing (Fall 2025)
With “Untitled” (America), the Whitney marks its 10th anniversary downtown by offering a sweeping statement on American art. This expansive seventh-floor installation brings together 80 years of works from the 1900s through the 1980s, highlighting how U.S. artists responded to place, pop culture, and abstraction across turbulent decades. The exhibition takes its title from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s lightbulb piece “Untitled” (America), which shimmers in a museum window as a beacon connecting the galleries to the world outside. Iconic favorites (think Three Flags by Jasper Johns or Georgia O’Keeffe’s desert blooms) appear alongside newer acquisitions, inviting visitors to reflect on the evolving idea of “America” through many artistic voices.
Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography
Where: Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) | 11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019
When: June 28, 2025 – June 21, 2026
The glamour of Old Hollywood gets a closer look in Face Value, which examines the “celebrity-making machinery” of the 20th-century studio star system. MoMA’s curators have mined historic fan-magazine archives and film still collections to reveal how publicity photographs of actors and public figures were staged and retouched, long before the age of Photoshop. Glossy portraits of starlets like Jean Harlow were once painstakingly altered with paint and razor blades to craft an idealized image for the press. By displaying both untouched originals and marked-up edits, Face Value pulls back the curtain on the analog techniques (silhouetting, airbrushing, collage) that studios used to manufacture celebrity and allure. It’s a fascinating, nostalgia-tinged dive into media artifice and the origins of image culture.
Paolo Roversi: Along the Way
Where: Pace Gallery | 508 W 25th St, New York, NY 10001
When: September 12 – October 25, 2025
Fashion photography meets fine art in Along the Way, a career-spanning showcase of renowned image-maker Paolo Roversi. This is Roversi’s first solo show in New York with Pace since 2019, timed to coincide with Fashion Week. The focused retrospective presents 35 years of his ethereal, dream-like photographs, shedding light on Roversi’s legacy as “the artist behind some of the most iconic fashion images of our time”. Expect to see his signature large-format Polaroids and softly lit portraits that have graced the pages of Vogue and campaigns for Dior. From supermodel muse portraits to collaborative projects (including recent experiments with fiber artist Sheila Hicks), each image on view reflects Roversi’s unique ability to merge the timeless and the avant-garde. In short, Along the Way is a must for lovers of photography and style, demonstrating how Roversi’s poetic vision has influenced both art and fashion.
You may also like: Paolo Roversi’s New Book Captures 50 Years of Fashion
EJ Hill: Low-slung Promises on the Tongues of the Devout
Where: David Zwirner | 52 Walker St, New York, NY 10013
When: June 25 – September 13, 2025
Installation view of EJ Hill’s Low-slung Promises on the Tongues of the Devout at 52 Walker, where church pews face a neon sculpture and vibrant panel works. This profoundly spiritual exhibition transforms David Zwirner’s 52 Walker space into what one critic called a “chapel of stamina.” Los Angeles-based artist EJ Hill has revived his durational performance practice here after a seven-year hiatus: every gallery day for eight hours straight, Hill kneels in silent prayer on a red leather kneeler, hidden just behind a velvet curtain. Surrounding him is an environment of his own making, with paintings and drawings of fluffy clouds and bright flowers in joyful pinks, oranges, and blues, arranged like modern stained-glass windows. Viewers are invited to sit on wooden pew benches as if attending a solemn service, contemplating the artist’s endurance piece. Low-slung Promises on the Tongues of the Devout is an intense meditation on faith, devotion, and resilience. It blurs art and ritual, leaving visitors moved by the weight of what it means to keep faith in trying times.
Joel Shapiro
Where: Paula Cooper Gallery | 521 West 21st Street, New York, NY 10011
When: September 4 – October 11, 2025
This exhibition offers a poignant look back at the early career of Joel Shapiro, the celebrated New York sculptor who passed away in 2025. Hosted by Paula Cooper Gallery, which gave Shapiro his first solo shows in the 1970s, the show serves as both a retrospective and a tribute. On view is an intimate selection of Shapiro’s sculpture and works on paper from 1971 to 1980. Many pieces are small in scale (diminutive cast-bronze and iron forms that sit directly on the floor or shelf), yet they command space through their bold simplicity and latent figurative energy. These minimalist house shapes, blocks, and abstracted figures helped redefine sculpture’s possibilities, proving that “geometry could carry human meaning,” as critic Roberta Smith once noted. With one large late-’80s work punctuating the display, the exhibition traces Shapiro’s evolution from tiny, gravity-defying blocks to the dynamic, midair forms that became his signature. Longtime followers and new audiences alike will appreciate this concise homage to Shapiro’s visionary play of scale and space, the 22nd one-person Shapiro show that Paula Cooper has mounted over the decades.
Sixties Surreal
Where: Whitney Museum of American Art | 99 Gansevoort St, New York, NY 10014
When: September 24, 2025 – January 19, 2026
Linda Lomahaftewa’s psychedelic painting Untitled Woman’s Faces (1960s) is one of over 100 artworks in the Whitney’s Sixties Surreal, which revisits a tumultuous era through a surrealist lens. This once-in-a-generation exhibition is a bold, scholarly reappraisal of American art from 1958 to 1972. With more than 100 artists represented, Sixties Surreal shines light on an often overlooked creative undercurrent of the 1960s: an effusion of “psychosexual, fantastical, and revolutionary tendencies” that ran parallel to Pop Art and Minimalism. Rather than focusing on familiar movements, the show brings together famous figures and recently rediscovered talents alike, from avant-garde icons like Diane Arbus, Yayoi Kusama, and Louise Bourgeois to artists such as Linda Lomahaftewa and Mel Casas. Each embraced a personal, sometimes psychedelic surrealism to grapple with an era of rapid social and political upheaval. Walking through Sixties Surreal, visitors encounter everything from trippy paintings and erotic sculptures to protest-minded collages, all of which reveal how “life itself [in the ’60s] [was] surreal” amid the chaos of the times. Ambitious in scope and decades in the making, this exhibition offers a fresh, eye-opening take on the art of a tumultuous age, making it one of fall’s absolute must-sees.
