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 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. Harkawik attached photos by 280 artists to refrigerators that lined a wall of the gallery, while Maxwell Gallery showed works that had not sold. Meanwhile, White Columns curator Elisabeth Kley did what most can’t get right: Rather than coming up with an idea and then finding art to illustrate the idea, Kley picked work from various artists that together created meaning. That and much more made this a banner year.
10.
Laura Owens at Matthew Marks
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.
9.
White Columns Annual, curated by Elisabeth Kley
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.
8.
Alannah Farrell & Mae Lim Stark
Two artists found a crazy walk-up space in Chinatown where trans artist Alannah Farrell 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.
7.
Katherine Bradford at Canada gallery
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.
6.
Cady Noland and Steven Parrino at Gagosian
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.
5.
“R U Still Painting???”
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.
4.
“This artwork did not sell.” at Maxwell Graham Gallery
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.
3.
The Reopenings of the Studio Museum and the Frick
These indispensable institutions came back with great fanfare, visual majesty, and charismatic aplomb.
2.
“Photos on Fridges” at Harkawik
A row of Whirlpool refrigerators lined the back wall of this Chinatown gallery, each bedecked with photographs of naked people — refreshingly maximalist.
1.
The Reverend Joyce McDonald at the Bronx Museum
A true living visionary of the first rank, McDonald bears witness to injustice, suffering, and tremendous nobility in this spectacular show.