An award-winning NYC blogazine, primarily about painting
Saturday, March 14, 2026
Contributed by Katarina Wong / In the heat of summer, “Curvilinear Abstraction” at McKenzie Fine Art is a bracing group show that takes the viewer on a journey by turns lyrical, cosmic, regenerative, and intimate, calling on the imagination as much as formal appreciation.
Contributed by Sharon Butler / At 68 Prince Street Gallery, a spacious new gallery in Kingston, now featuring Jeanette Fintz’s paintings alongside Monika Zarzeczna’s architecturally oriented work in “Elusive Thresholds,” Fintz engaged in a freewheeling conversation with noted painter Stephen Westfall. I was fortunate enough to get hold of the recording and here try to distill some wisdom. Both artists are geometric abstractionists, and they discussed the evolution of Fintz’s artistic practice from cubist-influenced studies in the 1980s to her current explorations of the environment through geometry, touching on philosophical and technical considerations underlying contemporary abstract painting.
Contributed by Marcy Rosewater / “Cautionary Tales,” a retrospective of works on paper by artist Harvey Weiss, is located in Holden House, a grand old mansion in historic Newburgh, New York, now restored and hosting occasional art exhibitions. Both the work and the house beckon melancholic remembrances. The show comprises paintings, drawings, and collaged and manipulated magazine pages and photographs, spans almost 40 years, and presents twelve distinct series. Each begins with a familiar image that undergoes a transformation revealing the artist’s emotional, physical, conceptual, and spiritual processing, yielding a narrative duet between what is seen and what is felt.
Contributed by David Carrier / Rebuilding seems to be a cyclical occurrence for older art museums. The collection expands, styles of display change, more capacious restaurants and shops may be needed. Older museums have to construct new galleries. To the original European galleries, entered atop the stairs at the entrance, the Metropolitan Museum of Art added space for Islamic art, contemporary work, and Asian paintings. Alternatively, a wealthy museum can rebuild almost from scratch, as MoMA has repeatedly done. Yet, for most of the time I have been going to art museums, New York’s Frick Collection has been basically unchanged, an island of stability. I remember once being shocked that one of its masterworks – Rembrandt’s The Polish Rider – was away on loan. No other major New York art institution has remained basically the same over such a lengthy period, celebrating idiosyncratic displays that mix sacred and secular works in a luxurious setting. Henry Clay Frick had a great eye.
Contributed by Adam Simon / One of the most evocative and lyrical artworks I’ve experienced recently was not located in a gallery or museum, but in the woods on the western edge of the Catskills, behind the Catskill Water Discovery Center in Arkville, New York. To be clear, mine was not the ideal encounter. I was aware of the project, “Headwaters,” and set out to find it.
Contributed by Karlyn Benson / It has been a really busy summer in the Hudson Valley, and as we move into August the momentum continues with dozens of noteworthy exhibitions throughout the region. Highlights include Ashley Garrett’s solo show opening August 16 at SEPTEMBER in Kinderhook, Janet Biggs’ multi-channel installation Eclipse (Amazon, September 7, 1858) at Private Public Gallery in Hudson, In This Here Place, We Flesh at Gallery 495 in Catskill, Jeanette Fintz and Monika Zarzeczna at 68 Prince Street in Kingston, and opening August 30, Nicole Cherubini, Susan Jennings, and Michelle Segre at Tanja Grunert in Hudson. Don’t miss the outdoor sculpture exhibitions MUSKEG, curated by Jacob Rhodes and Jessica Hargreaves at Mother-in-Law’s in Germantown and S.C.A.P.E., curated by Linda Dubillier and Jen Dragon at a new sculpture park in Woodstock.
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 Margaret McCann /Amy Sherald’s paintings of mostly ordinary and upright African Americans, in “American Sublime” at the Whitney Museum, transcend portraiture, vaulting to socio-political metaphor. Their evocative titles – drawn from Emily Dickinson, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and other cultural figures – suggest an array of personalities or experiences. But the exhibition title, from Elizabeth Alexander’s poem of the same title, unsettles our understanding of what both figures and viewers behold.
Contributed by Wells Chandler / Skin is the largest organ of the body, home to over four million pores, each one a threshold. The epidermis is not merely a boundary but a porous membrane between self and environment, a breathing eye through which consciousness meets the world. The canvas, like the body, is an envelope of sensation, holding a field of awareness that does not end at its edges.
Contributed by Will Kaplan / Beck Lowry’s sculptural paintings act as vessels. But what do they hold? Memory? Sensation? Labor? Five such pieces comprise “First Storm,” at Yossi Milo Gallery, the artist’s first New York solo show. In its earthen palette and irregular construction, the work resembles ceremonial objects, though the associated eras and cultures remain mysterious. For understanding the art’s function and what it contains, Lowry’s process is key.
Contributed by Amanda Church / Happiness is … three dynamic, joy-producing artists under one roof, a phenomenon realized by curator José Freire in the three-person show “Acquaintance” – Episode One of the Happiness Project – at Lubov Gallery in Chinatown. The show brings together Linda Daniels, Marilyn Lerner, and Jill Levine, all of whom showed at some point with Freire at Fiction/Nonfiction in the East Village in the late 1980s or thereafter after at Team in Soho. This show marks Freire’s first curatorial project since Team closed in 2020, and the spirit is upbeat and sanguine, in line with Pharrell Williams’ exhortation to “clap along if you know what happiness is to you.”
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Next month, Two Coats of Paint Residency Program welcomes Ithaca, NY, artist Ariel Bullion Ecklund. Ecklund creates ceramic objects and photographs that draw from the memories she accumulates as she moves through the world. Universal themes such as absence, impermanence, memory, and yearning inform work that is also deeply personal. For our next resident, our bodies hold memories as much as our minds do. This understanding is the foundation for everything she makes.
Contributed by David Whelan / “Esthetic Bomb Shelter,” at Ulrik gallery, comes at a time of overwhelming crisis. Conflict and hostility seem to have entered every aspect of life without clear exits. Painters Allen Berke and Lise Soskolne tap into this quandary by visualizing moments of discontent and unease, abstracting form and narrative. Though unsettling, the works are also strangely enjoyable, prompting a kind of cognitive dissonance in the viewer.
Contributed by Peter Schroth / Artist Polina Barskaya – born in Ukraine, raised in Brooklyn, now living in Italy – paints intimate portraits of domestic life. In “The Good Life,” her current exhibition at Harkawik, the life in question encompasses a self-contained triangle of father, daughter, and mother, the latter being the artist and observer. It’s hard to take such a title at face value – especially, perhaps, in light of current events. Except for one painting set in a courtyard, the strictly interior world of the home – be it a private residence or a hotel room – is depicted. Each scene is rendered within a symmetrically balanced box in one-point perspective and contains a central anchoring element. These snug spaces take on a womb-like character, suggesting not only nurture or shelter but also isolation.
Contributed by John Goodrich / Georges Rouault’s star has fallen considerably since 1945, the year the curator and collector James Thrall Soby dubbed him “one of few major figures in 20th century painting.” The artist’s religiosity and stained-glass-window style are not so captivating today. …The 21 paintings now on view at Shin Gallery invite a reassessment. Organized in conjunction with Skarstedt Gallery, the exhibition offers a particularly strong selection of the Rouault’s work.
Doomscrolling 3-D IRL: The 2026 Whitney Biennial
2025’s intrepid cinema
Sally Gall: What am I looking at?
Mira Schor: Uncensored
Two Coats Resident Artist: Nichole van Beek, March 16–20
Tappeto Volante’s rich conversations
Kate Hargrave: Unsettling and generous
Felix Beaudry’s malleable boys
Sharon’s Substack / March 3, 2026
Araujo, Greenberg, and Simon at Ptolemy
NYC Selected Gallery Guide, March 2026
Hudson Valley (+ Vicinity) Selected Gallery Guide, March 2026
