Real Clothes, Real Lives on view through June 22, 2025
International Center of Photography
Photographer Weegee (born Arthur Fellig, 1899-1968) was concerned in his work with two sides of the same coin, and that coin was spectacle. He made a name for himself depicting crime scenes, fires, car crashes, and the rubberneckers witnessing such horrors across New York City in the ‘30s and ’40s. Once his name was made, he turned his eye toward celebrities and the fanatical crowds gathering to see them at film premieres and awards shows. Weegee: Society of Spectacle aims to juxtapose the two, asking the question: How different were these two phases, really? While there, be sure to also look in on concurrent exhibition To Conjure: New Archives in Recent Photography for a look at seven other artists also working primarily in photography.
Both on view through May 5, 2025.
The Museum of Sex
The Museum of Sex makes the list for the first time with Looking at Andy Looking, presented in collaboration with Pittsburgh‘s The Andy Warhol Museum as well as MoMA—these two institutions together digitized the original film material presented in this exhibition. The theme here is desire, particularly homosexual desire, with the centerpiece being the 5-hour 21-minute Sleep (1963) depicting Warhol’s then-lover John Giorno lost in the titular act. There are 16 films in total, half of which have never before been screened before, so it’s worth popping in.
No close date announced
Brooklyn Museum
Breaking the Mold: Brooklyn Museum at 200 is almost simply what it sounds like. When it opens February 28 and runs all the way through February 22, 2026, this exhibition will retrospect not only on two centuries of its own history as an institution but also on the wider borough’s artistic practices and legacies as established since the 17th century. This is a story of Brooklyn, its museum, and the Beaux-Arts building that has long housed it.
On view through February 22, 2026.
New York Transit Museum
Whether they love it or hold it in contempt, the New York subway is an essential part of a New Yorker’s daily life. If you’re visiting the city, you should take it at least once to understand how the people that live here get around—it’s what makes the city so accessible. And why not take that subway to Brooklyn’s New York Transit Museum, located conveniently off the 4 and 5 trains at Borough Hall and A, C, and F trains at Jay Street-MetroTech, for The Subway Is… in celebration of our metro’s 120th birthday. It does this with several artifacts, photographs, and multimedia installations that highlight the subway’s long life since its opening October 27, 1904.
No close date announced
Brooklyn Public Library
Did you know that Turkey saved James Baldwin’s life, or did you learn it from the title of Brooklyn Public Library’s latest exhibition, Turkey Saved My Life – Baldwin in Istanbul, 1961–1971? Last year marked the centennial of the seminal American author’s birth, and this exhibition looks at a period of his life he spent intentionally elsewhere, in the populous city on the Bosphorus, in order to distance himself from American racism and homophobia. “Turkey saved my life,” is something Baldwin actually said and meant, and it was there that he wrote Another Country.
