American Museum of Natural History
As New York City continues celebrating 50 years of hip-hop’s mainstream breakthrough, the American Museum of Natural History enters the conversation with an unexpected contribution. Ice Cold: An Exhibition of Hip-Hop Jewelry, located in the glorious new Allison and Roberto Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals, displays the metals and gems of everyone from Notorious B.I.G., Slick Rick, and Jay-Z to Nicki Minaj, Erykah Badu, and A$AP Rocky. There’s even an accompanying playlist for listening while viewing.
The Noguchi Museum
Ahead of The Noguchi Museum’s 40th anniversary in 2025, works from the museum’s original second-floor installation return to display through September 14, 2025 in Against Time. Isamu Noguchi’s catalogue for the museum, written one year before his death in 1987, reveals that he considered many of these particular sculptures to be breakthrough works from his six-decade practice.
Museum of the Moving Image
It’s odd to consider that the internet has been around for long enough that one of its pioneer artists is now of age for a career retrospective. Auriea Harvey: My Veins Are the Wires, My Body Is Your Keyboard is a wonderfully nebulous, searching survey of the net-artist and sculptor’s strange and prescient work. Installed here are interactive, “net-based” interactive pieces alongside video games and augmented-reality sculptures that challenge the viewer to ponder digital media’s ability to bring people together while keeping them physically apart. Very far out, and on view through December. Joining Auriea on September 7 is Recording the Ride: The Rise of Street-Style Skate Videos with copious VHS footage depicting skaters and their tricks in the ‘80s and ’90s.
Film at Lincoln Center
Between September 27 and October 14, Film at Lincoln Center will be buzzier than usual as the 62nd New York Film Festival gets up and running across its three-theater campus. Get a pass or buy your tickets à la carte and enjoy not just a brand new movie on the cutting edge but also a fabulously reactive audience (God bless New York City) and, often, Q&As with cast and crew afterwards. This year, they’ve got flicks from international greats like Steve McQueen, Pedro Almodóvar, Mike Leigh, David Cronenberg, Hong Sangsoo (whose film, A Traveler’s Needs, stars Isabelle Huppert), and Mati Diop to name a few.
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.
