New York's March 2026 exhibition season runs from the monumental to the intimate — the Whitney Biennial's deliberately themeless 56-artist survey, the New Museum's 60,000-square-foot OMA expansion opening this weekend, Carol Bove's first Guggenheim retrospective, and a group show opening tonight in a Chelsea apartment asking what time does to the things we make. Anarchy Daily's picks for what to see right now.

New York's March 2026 exhibition season runs from the monumental to the intimate — the Whitney Biennial's deliberately themeless 56-artist survey, the New Museum's 60,000-square-foot OMA expansion opening this weekend, Carol Bove's first Guggenheim retrospective, and a group show opening tonight in a Chelsea apartment asking what time does to the things we make. Anarchy Daily's picks for what to see right now.

Maria Lassnig — Petzel Gallery

456 West 18th Street · Through April 18

"Figuration comes about almost automatically, because in my art I start first and foremost with myself."

Lassnig painted the body from the inside out — not how it looks but how it feels. Submerged figures, psychic tension, anthropomorphic forms caught between vulnerability and survival. This survey of her late Vienna years, from the late 1980s through early 2000s, is the quietest and most devastating show in Chelsea right now. If you see one exhibition this month that stays with you, it's this one.

*Whitney Biennial installation view - Young Joon Kwak.*

1. Whitney Biennial 2026 Whitney Museum · 945 Madison Avenue Open now through August 23 · Free under 25

56 artists, no thesis, no theme. The most important American art survey of the year decided the current moment can't be named. Make of that what you will.

Exterior of the New Museum's new OMA-designed expansion at 235 Bowery, New York, opening March 21 2026 with exhibition New Humans: Memories of the Future — *New Museum expansion designed by OMA. Opens March 21 — free all weekend.*

2. New Humans: Memories of the Future — New Museum

235 Bowery · Opens March 21 · Free March 21–22

Over 200 artists, writers, scientists and filmmakers in a brand new OMA-designed 60,000-square-foot expansion — exploring how technology and social change keep reshaping what it means to be human. Sarah Lucas on the entrance plaza. Go opening weekend. Register for free tickets at newmuseum.org.

Carol Bove installation view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York 2026, large-scale industrial steel sculpture in the Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda — *Carol Bove at the Guggenheim. The steel is inside. The picket line was outside.*

3. Carol Bove — Guggenheim

1071 Fifth Avenue · Through August 2

Her largest museum survey ever. Industrial steel in the rotunda. Workers picketing outside opening night. The most talked-about show in New York right now — for more than one reason.

Michael Heizer Negative Sculpture exhibition view at Gagosian Chelsea, 555 West 24th Street New York, closing March 28 2026 — *Michael Heizer at Gagosian Chelsea. Closes March 28. Last week.*

4. Michael Heizer: Negative Sculpture — Gagosian Chelsea

555 West 24th Street · Closes March 28

The man who spent 50 years carving City into the Nevada desert, now showing the inverse logic of that project in Chelsea. Go this week or miss it.

*Mapplethorpe at 60x60 inches. Perfection as devotion. Through April 18.*

Robert Mapplethorpe — Gladstone Gallery

515 West 24th Street · Through April 18

Sixteen new large-scale, limited-edition photographs — flowers, nudes, portraits of artists and celebrities and striking self-portraits — presented in sprawling 60x60 inch format, organized in collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Works that fulfill a longtime wish of the artist. Mapplethorpe at this scale is a different experience entirely. The obsession with perfection reads as something closer to devotion. Worth every minute.

5. Roy Lichtenstein — Gagosian

541 West 24th Street · Opens March 19

Opening week. First chance to see it.

Yuko Mohri kinetic installation view from Falling Water Given at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, 521 West 21st Street New York, 2026 Calder Prize recipient — *Yuko Mohri at Tanya Bonakdar. Quiet, precise, and the antidote to everything loud this week.*

6. Yuko Mohri: Falling Water Given — Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

521 West 21st Street · Through April 18

Kinetic, site-responsive installations inspired by makeshift water-leak solutions in Tokyo subway stations — animated by found objects and instruments discovered in New York. Mohri is the 2025 Calder Prize recipient and represented Japan at the Venice Biennale. Quiet and precise. The antidote to everything loud this week.

*Jo Messer’s new exhibit is a must see.*

Jo Messer: Speed Stick — 56 Henry

56 and 105 Henry Street · Opens tonight March 19 · Through May 17

Bodies, fish and gestures sliding between figuration and abstraction. Messer's paintings don't resolve — they slip, repeat, and fall off the edge of the surface. The show is called Speed Stick. The press release asks: Do it fast. Do it messy. Do it a little bit wet? That's either a provocation or a instructions manual. Probably both.

Exhibition view of What Falls, Hangs, Drips and Comes Undone at JOHS New York, group show opening March 19 2026 in a domestic apartment setting featuring works by Ezra Cohen, Bjorn Copeland, Oliver Clegg and others — Ezra Cohen

7. What Falls, Hangs, Drips and Comes Undone — JOHS NYC‍ ‍

Opening tonight March 19 · Through May 1

Ezra Cohen, Bjorn Copeland, Oliver Clegg, Isaiah Davis, Jo Dennis, Daniel Tyree Gaitor-Lomack, Perla Krauze, Lina McGinn, Maria Naidich, Renata Del Riego, Ernesto Solana, Gordon Winarick.

Twelve artists in an apartment. Surfaces as archives. Time made visible through abrasion, oxidation, layering. The show doesn't ask you to think about art. It asks you to think about what objects remember. In a domestic setting that question lands differently than it does in a white cube — which is precisely the point.

Opening tonight. The rest of the week it's yours.

Exhibits To See In NYC Right Now

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