New York

Art Fairs to See in New York City and Jersey City in May

Published

8 months ago

May 2, 2025

Art Fairs to See in New York City and Jersey City in May

Art lovers of all kinds — from seasoned curators and collectors to newcomers — flock to New York City in May to experience the area’s vibrant art scene.

“May in New York is a special moment on the cultural calendar — the city is in full bloom,” said Amy Hau, director of the Noguchi Museum in Queens. Art fairs such as TEFAF and Frieze bring together artists and galleries from around the world, but the scope and volume can be overwhelming.

“For anyone just starting to collect, I always say — don’t be intimidated by the big fairs, even if they can feel like a bit of a visual overload,” Hau said. “Just go, look around, and see what resonates with you. Even if you’re not buying, these fairs are an inspiring, low-pressure way to learn, explore and connect with artists and gallerists.”

Here is a selection of some of the May fairs that will introduce visitors to works and experiences, including 18th-century portraits, new voices in contemporary art and an interactive art scavenger hunt. Venues range from an elegant Beaux-Arts building on Manhattan’s East Side to a former warehouse in the Powerhouse Arts District in downtown Jersey City, N.J. Some offer free admission.

May 1-4 and 8-11 at 528-532 West 28th Street

More than 70 self-represented contemporary and emerging artists are displaying about 250 works, including paintings, sculptures, photographs, mixed media works and installations, at Clio Art Fair, named for the Greek Muse of history and the poetry she inspired. The artists have their own exhibition spaces to encourage relaxed and direct interaction with visitors, and prices range from $250 to $25,000. “Behave as if God Exists,” an immersive performance project, explores spiritual, social and existential themes through live actions and interventions by artists.

May 6-10 at New York Estonian House, 243 East 34th Street

Twenty-five galleries from 18 cities around the world will fill the elegant New York Estonian House for Esther’s second year. Founders Margot Samel and Olga Temnikova, gallerists with strong connections to Tallinn, Estonia, discarded the traditional art fair booth concept in favor of shared gallery spaces. Artworks, site-specific installations, performances and events will be presented — and experienced — throughout the four-story Beaux-Arts building, once a gathering spot for Estonian refugees after World War II. “Return to Innocence,” a series of sculptural candle holders by the Tallinn artist Edith Karlson, will guide visitors, and the basement will be transformed into a showroom that will include custom-made products by the Estonian designer Laivi.

May 6-12 at 75 Varick Street

Nontraditional exhibition venues, free spaces for independent curators and reduced-cost spaces for galleries and nonprofits — strategies designed to reduce upfront risk and encourage experimental work — are a few of the hallmarks of SPRING/BREAK Art Show. More than 350 midcareer and emerging artists will be showcased at a landmark building that was once home to many firms in printing and related trades. Among them is the actor Alia Shawkat, whose paintings chart her Assyrian lineage and family migration, reflecting the immigrant story motif that recurs in this year’s theme of “PARADISE LOST + FOUND.”

May 7-10 at Chelsea Industrial, 535 West 28th Street

Future Fair’s fifth anniversary edition will feature nearly 70 local, national and international exhibitors. A quarter are minority-owned, a quarter are global and over half are led by women. Since its founding in 2020, the fair has embraced a cooperative business model, initially profit sharing with founding galleries. Starting this year, the fair will commit 15 percent of its profits toward a pay-it-forward fund that allocates grants to rising art dealers. Visitors can swing by a culinary pop-up by the Brooklyn restaurant Stowaway and grab some Southern-inspired fare and limited-edition anniversary beers crafted by Grimm Artisanal Ales.

May 8-11 at 157B First Street, Jersey City

“Our name (14C) is a wink to the ‘What exit?’ joke about New Jersey,” Robinson Holloway, Art Fair 14C’s chief executive, wrote in an email, “and we embrace our Jersey roots and celebrate the art of our native state.” But exhibitors are wide ranging and include the International Sculpture Center, an artists collective from Brooklyn and a small New Jersey nonprofit that works with artists with disabilities. The Pompidou Center in Paris, which plans a North American outpost in Jersey City, she said, will provide programming, including a workshop for children based on masterpieces from their permanent collection in cooperation with the Jersey City Free Public Library. The venue is a former warehouse for the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P) in the Powerhouse Arts District. Tours will be available before regular hours for visitors who are visually impaired or need low sensory environments.

May 8-11 at ZeroSpace, 337-345 Butler Street

The 15th edition of the Other Art Fair Brooklyn, presented by Saatchi Art, continues its mission to support artists and make the art world more accessible and inclusive in unexpected and fun ways. A wide variety of works, in forms including documentary photography and embroidery, by 125 New York-area artists, will be shown along with immersive installations, performances and artist-led activities. Highlights include a fantasy drawing experience by the portrait painter Ben Lenovitz, an interactive art scavenger hunt led by the multimedia artist Joe Kraft and machine-free tattoo pop-ups. Special Mother’s Day weekend events feature photographic portrait sessions with the artist and author Anna Marie Tendler and hands-on workshops for making paper flowers.

May 10-13 at Bohemian National Hall, 321 East 73rd Street

The American Art Fair, now in its 18th year, exclusively celebrates 18th- to 21st-century American works. More than 400 landscapes, portraits, still lifes and sculptures — from folk Art and the Hudson River School through the modernist movements — will be on view. The fair offers a series of lectures, such as one tied to the “Sargent and Paris” exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that looks at the early years of the American painter John Singer Sargent’s career, from his arrival in Paris in 1874 as a young art student through the mid-1880s.

More Art Events

There are plenty of art goings-on in New York City beyond the fairs.

MoMA PS1 in Queens will present the first U.S. museum exhibition of the Angolan-born artist Sandra Poulson. Her sculptures, made from furniture and influenced by daily life and customs in her hometown, Luanda, examine how intimate spaces become spheres for political consciousness.

Nature lovers may enjoy the photo-based work inspired by the gardens of the poet Emily Dickinson at Rick Wester Fine Art in Chelsea, or a respite at the Davis Center in Central Park, which opened last week and has a series of special events planned.

NYC Tourism + Conventions’ Spring 2025 Arts Guide provides a raft of art exhibitions, live performances, festivals and outdoor public art programs, including museums, memorials, monuments and attractions that are always free or are free on specific days and times. A special website this year lists places and events that commemorate 400 years of New York City history.

“Don’t miss some of the great museum exhibitions that will be on view,” Hau of the Noguchi Museum said. “This season’s highlight is definitely the Amy Sherald show at the Whitney.”

She also recommends visiting the newly renovated Frick Museum, checking out the public art along the High Line, stopping by the nearby Chelsea galleries and taking a ferry to Queens to visit the institution she leads, which is dedicated to the work of the Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Special exhibits, art-making activities, musical performances, and dance and culinary programs are among the events planned at the museum in May, many to celebrate its 40th anniversary.

“And visitors shouldn’t forget the garden,” she added. “It’s one of the most beautiful times to experience our outdoor space, offering a quiet, contemplative escape from the energy and pace of the city.”

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New York

Vote For the Best Metropolitan Diary Entry of 2025

Published

16 hours ago

December 12, 2025

Press Room

Vote For the Best Metropolitan Diary Entry of 2025

Every week since 1976, Metropolitan Diary has published stories by, and for, New Yorkers of all ages and eras (no matter where they live now): anecdotes and memories, quirky encounters and overheard snippets that reveal the city’s spirit and heart.

For the past four years, we’ve asked for your help picking the best Diary entry of the year. Now we’re asking again.

We’ve narrowed the field to the five finalists here. Read them and vote for your favorite. The author of the item that gets the most votes will receive a print of the illustration that accompanied it, signed by the artist, Agnes Lee.

The voting closes at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 21. You can change your vote as many times as you’d like until then, but you may only pick one. Choose wisely.

Click “VOTE” to choose your favorite Metropolitan Diary entry of 2025, and come back on Sunday, Dec. 28, to see which one our readers picked as their favorite.

Two Stops

Published on Feb. 16

Dear Diary:

It was a drizzly June night in 2001. I was a young magazine editor and had just enjoyed what I thought was a very blissful second date — dinner, drinks, fabulous conversation — with our technology consultant at a restaurant in Manhattan.

I lived in Williamsburg at the time, and my date lived near Murray Hill, so we grabbed a cab and headed south on Second Avenue.

“Just let me out here,” my date said to the cabby at the corner of 25th Street.

We said our goodbyes, quick and shy, knowing that we would see each other at work the next day. I was giddy and probably grinning with happiness and hope.

“Oh boy,” the cabby said, shaking his head as we drove toward Brooklyn. “Very bad.”

“What do you mean?” I asked in horror.

“He doesn’t want you to know exactly where he lives,” the cabby said. “Not a good sign.”

I spent the rest of the cab ride in shock, revisiting every moment of the date.

Happily, it turned out that my instinct about it being a great date was right, and the cabby was wrong. Twenty-four years later, my date that night is my husband, and I know that if your stop is first, it’s polite to get out so the cab can continue in a straight line to the next stop.

— Ingrid Spencer

Ferry Farewell

Published on April 6

Dear Diary:

On a February afternoon, I met my cousins at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. Their spouses and several of our very-grown children were there too. I brought Prosecco, a candle, a small speaker to play music, photos and a poem.

We were there to recreate the wedding cruise of my mother, Monica, and my stepfather, Peter. They had gotten married at City Hall in August 1984. She was 61, and he, 71. It was her first marriage, and his fourth.

I was my mother’s witness that day. It was a late-in-life love story, and they were very happy. Peter died in 1996, at 82. My mother died last year. She was 100.

Peter’s ashes had waited a long time, but finally they were mingled with Monica’s. The two of them would ride the ferry a last time and then swirl together in the harbor forever. Cue the candles, bubbly, bagpipes and poems.

Two ferry workers approached us. We knew we were in trouble: Open containers and open flames were not allowed on the ferry.

My cousin’s husband, whispering, told the workers what we were doing and said we would be finished soon.

They walked off, and then returned. They said they had spoken to the captain, and they ushered us to the stern for some privacy. As the cup of ashes flew into the water, the ferry horn sounded two long blasts.

— Caitlin Margaret May

Unacceptable

Published on May 4

Dear Diary:

I went to a new bagel store in Brooklyn Heights with my son.

When it was my turn to order, I asked for a cinnamon raisin bagel with whitefish salad and a slice of red onion.

The man behind the counter looked up at me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t do that.”

— Richie Powers

Teresa

Published on Sept. 14

Dear Diary:

It was February 2013. With a foot of snow expected, I left work early and drove from New Jersey warily as my wipers squeaked and snow and ice stuck to my windows.

I drove east on the Cross Bronx Expressway, which was tied up worse than usual. Trucks groaned on either side of my rattling Toyota. My fingers were cold. My toes were colder. Got to get home before it really comes down, I thought to myself.

By the time I got home to my little red bungalow a stone’s throw from the Throgs Neck Bridge, the snow was already up to my ankles.

Inside, I took off my gloves, hat, scarf, coat, sweater, pants and snow boots. The bed, still unmade, was inviting me. But first, I checked my messages.

There was one from Teresa, the 92-year-old widow on the corner.

“Call me,” she said, sounding desperate.

I looked toward the warm bed, but … Teresa. There was a storm outside, and she was alone.

On went the pants, the sweater, the coat, the scarf, the boots and the gloves, and then I went out the door.

The snow was six inches deep on the sidewalks, so I tottered on tire tracks in the middle of the street. The wind stung my face. When I got to the end of the block, I pounded on her door.

“Teresa!” I called. No answer. “Teresa!” I called again. I heard the TV blaring. Was she sprawled on the floor?

I went next door and called for Kathy.

“Teresa can’t answer the door,” I said. “Probably fell.”

Kathy had a key. In the corner of her neat living room, Teresa, in pink sweatpants and sweaters, was sitting curled in her armchair, head bent down and The Daily News in her lap.

I snapped off the TV.

Startled, she looked up.

“Kathy! Neal!” she said. “What’s a five-letter word for cabbage?”

— Neal Haiduck

Nice Place

Published on July 20

Dear Diary:

When I lived in Park Slope over 20 years ago, I once had to call an ambulance because of a sudden, violent case of food poisoning.

Two paramedics, a man and a woman, entered our third-floor walk-up with a portable chair. Strapping me in, the male medic quickly inserted an IV line into my arm.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his partner circling around and admiring the apartment.

“Nice place you’ve got here.” she said. “Do you own it?”

“Yeah,” I muttered, all but unconscious.

Once I was in the ambulance, she returned to her line of inquiry.

“Do you mind me asking how much you paid for your apartment?”

“$155,000,” I croaked.

“Wow! You must have bought during the recession.”

“Yeah” I said.

They dropped me off at Methodist Hospital, where I was tended to by a nurse as I struggled to stay lucid.

At some point, the same medic poked her head into the room with one last question:

“You wouldn’t be wanting to sell any time soon, would you?”

— Melinda DeRocker

Illustrations by Agnes Lee.

New York

They Witness Deaths on the Tracks and Then Struggle to Get Help

Published

5 days ago

December 8, 2025

Press Room

They Witness Deaths on the Tracks and Then Struggle to Get Help

‘Part of the job’

Edwin Guity was at the controls of a southbound D train last December, rolling through the Bronx, when suddenly someone was on the tracks in front of him.

He jammed on the emergency brake, but it was too late. The man had gone under the wheels.

Stumbling over words, Mr. Guity radioed the dispatcher and then did what the rules require of every train operator involved in such an incident. He got out of the cab and went looking for the person he had struck.

“I didn’t want to do it,” Mr. Guity said later. “But this is a part of the job.”

He found the man pinned beneath the third car. Paramedics pulled him out, but the man died at the hospital. After that, Mr. Guity wrestled with what to do next.

A 32-year-old who had once lived in a family shelter with his parents, he viewed the job as paying well and offering a rare chance at upward mobility. It also helped cover the costs of his family’s groceries and rent in the three-bedroom apartment they shared in Brooklyn.

But striking the man with the train had shaken him more than perhaps any other experience in his life, and the idea of returning to work left him feeling paralyzed.

Edwin Guity was prescribed exposure therapy after his train struck a man on the tracks.

Hundreds of train operators have found themselves in Mr. Guity’s position over the years.

And for just as long, there has been a path through the state workers’ compensation program to receiving substantive treatment to help them cope. But New York’s train operators say that their employer, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has done too little to make them aware of that option.

After Mr. Guity’s incident, no official told him of that type of assistance, he said. Instead, they gave him the option of going back to work right away.

But Mr. Guity was lucky. He had a friend who had been through the same experience and who coached him on getting help — first through a six-week program and then, with the assistance of a lawyer, through an experienced specialist.

The specialist prescribed a six-month exposure therapy program to gradually reintroduce Mr. Guity to the subway.

His first day back at the controls of a passenger train was on Thanksgiving. Once again, he was driving on the D line — the same route he had been traveling on the day of the fatal accident.

Mr. Guity helps care for his 93-year-old grandmother, Juanita Guity.

M.T.A. representatives insisted that New York train operators involved in strikes are made aware of all options for getting treatment, but they declined to answer specific questions about how the agency ensures that drivers get the help they need.

In an interview, the president of the M.T.A. division that runs the subway, Demetrius Crichlow, said all train operators are fully briefed on the resources available to them during their job orientation.

“I really have faith in our process,” Mr. Crichlow said.

Still, other transit systems — all of which are smaller than New York’s — appear to do a better job of ensuring that operators like Mr. Guity take advantage of the services available to them, according to records and interviews.

An Uptick in Subway Strikes

A Times analysis shows that the incidents were on the rise in New York City’s system even as they were falling in all other American transit systems.

Source: Federal Transit Administration.

Note: Transit agencies report “Major Safety and Security Events” to the F.T.A.’s National Transit Database. The Times’s counts include incidents categorized as rail collisions with persons, plus assaults, homicides and attempted suicides with event descriptions mentioning a train strike. For assaults, The Times used an artificial intelligence model to identify relevant descriptions and then manually reviewed the results.

Bianca Pallaro/The New York Times

San Francisco’s system provides 24-hour access to licensed therapists through a third-party provider.

Los Angeles proactively reaches out to its operators on a regular basis to remind them of workers’ compensation options and other resources.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has made it a goal to increase engagement with its employee assistance program.

The M.T.A. says it offers some version of most of these services.

But in interviews with more than two dozen subway operators who have been involved in train strikes, only one said he was aware of all those resources, and state records suggest most drivers of trains that strike people are not taking full advantage of them.

“It’s the M.T.A.’s responsibility to assist the employee both mentally and physically after these horrific events occur,” the president of the union that represents New York City transit workers, John V. Chiarello, said in a statement, “but it is a constant struggle trying to get the M.T.A. to do the right thing.”

New York

Video: Protesters Arrested After Trying to Block a Possible ICE Raid

Published

2 weeks ago

November 30, 2025

Press Room

Video: Protesters Arrested After Trying to Block a Possible ICE Raid

new video loaded: Protesters Arrested After Trying to Block a Possible ICE Raid

transcript

Protesters Arrested After Trying to Block a Possible ICE Raid

Nearly 200 protesters tried to block federal agents from leaving a parking garage in Lower Manhattan on Saturday. The confrontation appeared to prevent a possible ICE raid nearby, and led to violent clashes between the police and protesters.

: [chanting] “ICE out of New York.”
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Nearly 200 protesters tried to block federal agents from leaving a parking garage in Lower Manhattan on Saturday. The confrontation appeared to prevent a possible ICE raid nearby, and led to violent clashes between the police and protesters.

By Jorge Mitssunaga

November 30, 2025