Artemundi’s top picks for May in New York

May is a particularly active month for the art world in New York, marked by a concentration of auctions, fairs, and significant exhibitions. These are our highlights of the most relevant cultural events focused on 20th-century and contemporary art—essential appointments for anyone interested in the city’s artistic landscape.

Auctions Week: Christie’s, Sotheby’s & Phillips
New York’s major auction houses host their spring sales of postwar and contemporary art. Collectors, investors and art market experts gather as headline works by Warhol, Rothko, Basquiat, Cecily Brown, and others hit the block. Beyond setting record prices, these auctions offer a condensed view of collector appetite, secondary-market momentum, and shifts in institutional taste. Preview exhibitions across the city add to the excitement of this key moment in the global art calendar.

Ed Ruscha, Alvarado to Doheny, 1998. Phillips

Frieze New York – The Shed, May 7–11
Frieze New York brings together top international galleries at The Shed, with presentations ranging from historical 20th-century works to bold contemporary artists. Known for its curatorial focus and collaborations with non-profits and museums, Frieze is a place to see major names alongside emerging voices. Site-specific installations, artist talks, and institutional crossover make it more than a commercial fair—it’s one of the city’s central art events each spring.

Frieze New York. Photo: Jeena Moon.

TEFAF New York – Park Avenue Armory, May 9–13
TEFAF’s New York edition expands its scope beyond Old Masters to include blue-chip modern and postwar art, as well as design. This year’s offerings include works by Giacometti, Picasso, and Fontana, displayed in the unique setting of the Park Avenue Armory. TEFAF combines museum-quality material with a slower pace and intimate presentation, drawing seasoned collectors and curators seeking rare, historically significant pieces.

TEFAF 2024. Photo: Loraine Bodewes.

Amy Sherald: American Sublime – Whitney Museum, April 9 – August 10
This career-spanning exhibition is the first museum retrospective of Amy Sherald, whose portraits are deeply commited with visibility in American painting. Known for her grayscale skin tones and luminous color palettes, Sherald explores identity, history, and representation with quiet power. The show includes early and recent works, many never before shown publicly, highlighting the evolution of her approach to portraiture, both intimate and politically resonant.

Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers – Guggenheim Museum, April 18 – January 18, 2026
Spanning nearly three decades, this survey traces Rashid Johnson’s exploration of race, healing, and selfhood across painting, sculpture, video, and installation. The show culminates in Sanguine, a vast steel structure filled with plants, books, and a piano used for live performances. Using the Guggenheim’s spiraling architecture, Johnson transforms the space into a meditative, living environment—part greenhouse, part shrine—for collective reflection and care.

Modern Masters at the Galleries
Several standout gallery shows this season focus on key figures of 20th-century art. Picasso: Tête-à-tête at Gagosian (Apr 18–Jul 3) explores intimate dialogues in his late portraits. At 125 Newbury, Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb (May 3–Jul 25) traces these two Abstract Expressionists’ shared interest in myth, symbol, and expressive form. The Surrealist Collage: Where Dreams and Reality Meet at Di Donna (Apr 25–Jun 27) brings together works by Miró, Ernst, Duchamp, and other big names of this historical movement.