An award-winning NYC blogazine, primarily about painting
Tuesday, January 6, 2026
A painting-centric guide to NYC art exhibitions
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Because of you, Two Coats of Paint will continue to thrive in 2026. Your contributions will enable us to continue producing these painting-centric monthly gallery guides that help the painting community discover exhibitions in New York City, the Hudson Valley, and beyond. Cheers to another year of great art, great writing, and great community, despite the dark days ahead….
Hello, December! I’m grateful to everyone who has already supported Two Coats of Paint 2025 Year-end Fundraising Campaign. With roughly four weeks left, we still need additional contributions to fund 2026. If you haven’t yet donated, I encourage you to consider making your tax-deductible gift now. For two decades, I’ve managed to sustain Two Coats of Paint on a lean…
Welcome to the Two Coats of Paint November selected guide to painting-centric exhibitions in New York, Brooklyn, and Queens….
Welcome to the Two Coats of Paint October selected guide to painting-centric exhibitions in New York, Brooklyn, and Queens. We’ll be updating the listings around mid-month, so if you want your show considered for inclusion, please send info about the show to staff@twocoatsofpaint.com. NOTE: The year-end fundraising campaign starts in a few weeks, but readers who want to get a headstart can make a tax-deductible contribution here. Thank you!
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Make today a day you, like me, refrain from doomscrolling in despair or listening to pundits vainly in search of packaged optimism. Cued by this guide, you might instead opt for art feeds on Instagram and ultimately the shows themselves because nothing is more hopeful than art in the fall in New York. We kick off the first week with the art fairs and then turn our attention to gallery exhibitions, hopping from neighborhood to neighborhood, absorbing new work by artists we’ve known for years and others we’ve never met. For a good time, this is the place to scroll.
Contributed by Sharon Butler / This month, many galleries are taking a well-deserved break after a shitshow of a year. A few, though, are curating through the heat and hanging new shows. At Karma, Jane Dickson holds forth with a series of amusement park nocturnes. 5-50 presents in “Becoming Otherwise” – paintings by Jocelyn Fine, Will Hutnick, Geist Topping, and Peter Schenck that crackle with energy in LIC. Deanna Evans Projects’ “ExtraOrdinary” features unsettled scenes of American home life by Lisha Bai, JJ Manford, and Ann Toebbe. At Margot Samel, Glasgow gallery Kendall Koppe presents Laura Aldridge, while Essex Flowers mounts “Overhang 2,” a ro art services pop-up riffing on the idea of summer group-show abundance and community. At The Hole, on Bowery, don’t miss “Herbivore,” which includes work by Bushwick stalwart Ben Godward.
Contributed by Sharon Butler / A special note to New Yorkers who, like me, are loath to leave the city over holiday weekends or at any point during the summer, really: always check to see if galleries are open on Saturday. Chances are they aren’t. Many gallerists, kind of like Bartleby, simply prefer to close up shop for the entire long weekend. Other galleries, possibly your favorites, are shuttered until late summer or early fall, back to work only after the dust has settled from the September art fairs and blockbuster openings. For the hardcore stay-cation crowd of course, a slew of wonderful group shows are on view – sometimes freewheeling affairs in which emerging artists hang alongside more established ones we know and perhaps love. Where possible, I’ve listed the artists in each show so that you can hunt down the names already on your radar or target a few less familiar up-and-comers. Some of my best memories involve wandering around a nearly empty gallery with the editor on a sweltering summer afternoon and then ending up in a dark hideaway, drinking pints and arguing about the shows we saw. Save the shore for the off-season. As my mother, a woman who lived in a seaside town for most of her life, used to say, why go to the the beach in the summer? It’s a mob scene!
Contributed by Sharon Butler / June, academics’ favorite month, is here. I’m looking forward to checking out Smack Mellon’s“Remains to be seen,” a group show that brings together nine emerging artists whose practices find meaning in waste. Artist Austin Eddy has curated a star-studded exhibition called “A Movable Feast” at Halsey Mckay’s Greenpoint outpost. Abbey Lloyd has a solo at Ptolemy, a newish gallery in Queens. I’m looking forward to seeing some aggressive abstraction, with Iva Gueorguieva’s solo at Derek Eller and…
Contributed by Sharon Butler / May is Art Fair Week in New York, but don’t forget to visit the galleries. A few have closed since our last guide—Dinner, Spanierman, and Pocket Utopia are all taking a break. Nathalie Karg is on hiatus. On a brighter note (literally), be sure to see “LFG” at The Hole, a group exhibition featuring blinking LED lights, painting, sculpture, and installation informed by video game aesthetics. McBride/Dillman, the newest…
From my perspective, April has become a prime month for exhibitions in NYC, sandwiched between March’s print and photo fairs and the May Madness of the big spring fairs. The city’s brick-and-mortar art galleries take center stage, and there’s no shortage of engaging exhibitions. I’m looking forward to Rick Briggs’s offbeat abstraction at Satchel Projects in Chelsea, Carolyn Case’s “wild domestic” paintings in Asya Geisberg’s temporary Cortlandt Alley space in Tribeca, and Dustin Hodges’ new work at 15 Orient, also in Tribeca. Artist-writer Mira Dayal has what tracks as an austere, smart solo at Spencer Brownstone. On the opposite side of the emotional spectrum, “Love Poems,” a big, heartfelt group show curated by Chris Martin, is on view at Anton Kern. With due respect to Eliot, April has become one of my favorite months. I’ll see you out there.
After several years during which galleries have focused relentlessly on narrative and figurative work, I feel a vibe shift in the air. Is it wishful thinking or is abstract painting roaring back? I recommend checking out RJ Messineo’s show at CANADA, James Miller at Nichelle Beauchene, Nicolas Bermeo at King’s Leap, and Franklin Evans, who has moved from site-specific wall installations onto canvas in his show at Miles McEnery. I’m looking forward to Moira Dryer’s solo show at Magenta Plains, too. Known for a witty strain of post-minimal abstraction in the 1990s, she was a hero to painters of my generation who were then living in the long shadow of video, photography, and installation work.
Contributed by Sharon Butler / It’s February, we’re two weeks into the first hundred days, and your head, like mine, may be spinning. Take your mind off the world for a minute. Be grateful for the good things in your life, maybe figure out how to help where help is needed. A little light could emerge from the February shows. “La Banda” gets back together at Tappeto Volante Projects. Platform Project Space reopens from their winter break with a big group show called “New Life,” curated by Alexi Worth and Danica Lundy. Rumor is that it involves paintings of babies. Maybe it’s time to see a show at Halsey McKay Gallery HMGP in Greenpoint, where Timothy Bergstrom’s work is on view. Then let’s all go buy a canister of pepper spray and sign up for a self-defense class.
January news: Astonishing. Completely astonishing. Thanks to you, Two Coats of Paint raised about 20% more last year than in 2023, setting a record for our year-end fundraising campaigns. Due in large part to the Open House art and merch sale in December, this result affords us the resources to continue operating: to pay the server fees and the writers and to craft an online publication that matters to the NYC art community and beyond. Your donations and purchases, combined with our modest advertising revenue and your generous recurring contributions, will keep the lights on….
This month, as many in the art world head to Miami for the fairs, most galleries have extended their exhibitions into December. If you missed a show you were hoping to catch, there’s good news—it’s likely still on view. But before you scroll down to see what’s in the galleries
Contributed by Sharon Butler / This month, Marian Goodman has opened her new space in Tribeca—a thoughtfully renovated building at 385 Broadway. Just nearby, at 394 Broadway on the third floor, Pierogi Gallery, a longtime staple in Williamsburg, is marking its 30th anniversary with a pop-up exhibition. The show features works by numerous represented artists, along with selections…
