8 New York City Art Shows to Kick Off the New Year
From the visual pleasures of Mary Sully to the cultural critique of Gary Simmons, to a lesson in Haitian art history, there’s plenty of great art to see right now.
by Natalie Haddad, Hakim Bishara, AX Mina, Seph Rodney, Julie Schneider and Daniel Larkin 
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Romare Bearden: Paris Blues/Jazz and Other Works
DC Moore Gallery, 535 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, Manhattan
Through January 18, 2025
Walking between Romare Bearden’s paintings at DC Moore, I felt a sudden urge to have music in my ears. When I realized that I had left my headphones at home, I became deeply frustrated. That is until I understood that the music I really wanted to hear was begging to burst out of Bearden’s jazz-infused images of Paris, New York, and New Orleans. It was at this point that I began not just seeing, but also listening. Keep your eyes and ears open in this great show, and dream. —Hakim Bishara
Sohrab Hura: Mother
MoMA PS1, 22–25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
Through February 17
Sohrab Hura’s first US survey show is far too expansive to summarize in a paragraph, much like the New Delhi-based artist’s multilayered practice. Encompassing video, painting, sculpture, and photography, Motherdeserves time and attention, and rewards it with an intimate look into Hura’s world and experiences. A room filled with gouache paintings of remembered scenes and people, including Hura’s family, has a warm, inviting feel. While each individual work feels like a window into a moment in time, together, sweeping across the walls, they form the ebbs and flows of life. Best known as a photographer and filmmaker, Hura’s recent explorations of painting in the series Things Felt But Not Quite Expressed(2022–ongoing) and Ghosts in My Sleep(2023–ongoing) reveal a more introspective side of a prolific talent. —NH
The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting from the Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Through August 3
Overall (each): 72 in. × 12 ft. 2 1/2 in. (182.9 × 372.1 cm)
Surveying a millennium’s worth of works, The Three Perfections: Japanese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting from the Mary and Cheney Cowles Collectionshows how these three art forms merge in Japanese aesthetic traditions. “The Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals” is a gorgeous set of painted screens from the 17th century that portrays courtly poets — only five of them women — deemed important at the time. It’s a good example of the three perfections in one: the calligraphy, portraits, and poems are by different people. This sits in dialogue with 159 other works on view, including the 20th century “Handscroll of Tyrannical Government,” depicting a woman who lost her entire family to tigers but still preferred life in the mists, far from an authoritarian government, where soldiers were enlisted to reinforce class inequality. —AX Mina
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