Pierre Huyghe’s brain activity-inspired dreamscapes, Orientalism at The Met, a menagerie of mystical animals, and so much more.
We didn’t need the Knicks to show us that we’re a city of champions, but it sure doesn’t hurt. This has been a major year in New York’s art world — we saw the reopening of the Studio Museum and the expansion of the New Museum, and the stars aligned with marquee exhibitions like the Whitney Biennial and MoMA PS1’s Greater New York landing at the same time. You might even say that The Met’s hard-hitting group show on Orientalism probes the empire state of mind.
And then, of course, there are the wildcards that make this city such a haven for the weird, the experimental, the magical. Can’t really get freakier than Pierre Huyghe’s brain activity-inspired dreamscapes at MoMA. How about an exhibition at Subtitled NYC — a little artist-run Brooklyn project space — that recasts the internet as a water system? Or an ark-full of animals at Powerhouse Arts, and a menagerie of mythical creatures at the Cloisters? We say chase the unicorn this summer — New York’s a wonderland, as an exhibition of New Deal-era murals of Alice and her crew zooming around NYC at the Museum of the City of New York shows us. You need only open your eyes to it.
— Lisa Yin Zhang, associate editor
