CONTEMPORARY GALLERIES HONORING HISTORIC ARTISTS
This week, our newsletter turns to gallery exhibitions highlighting the work of artists who are no longer living. With our favorite fall activity being popping in and out of galleries on a beautiful fall day, we hope you will go for an educational walk to see shows that reassess artistic greatness from the contemporary perspective.
Gordon Parks: Voices in the Mirror at Jack Shainman
An incredible collection of historic photos compiled by the families depicted in them, Gordon Parks: Voices in the Mirror marks the 20th anniversary of The Gordon Parks Foundation with a collaborative exhibition examining the relationship between Parks, his subjects, and the struggles to achieve both equality and Black excellence. Gordon Parks lived from 1912 to 2006, and beautiful reflections on these photos by the families of Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X, actor Isabella Rossellini, artist Hank Willis Thomas, director Ava DuVernay, former Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver, and others help tell the stories and impart texture of these incredible works.
Through November 6
Gordon Parks, “Untitled, Mobile, Alabama,” 1956, archival pigment print 64 x 64 inches (print) (GP56.026.XXL) © The Gordon Parks Foundation. Courtesy of The Gordon Parks Foundation and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Norman Lewis: Jumping Jive at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
Norman Lewis: Jumping Jive celebrates the profound role music played in Lewis’s (1909-1979) life and work, depicting these musical influences drawn across jazz, blues, classical, pop, and reggae. Surveying a diverse body of work from four decades ranging from lyrical abstraction to expressive figuration, this exhibition emphasizes the powerful universal language of music embedded in this great artist’s personal expression.
Through November 14
Untitled (Jazz Club), 1945
George Baselitz: Meine Schule at Gagosian
The great German-Austrian painter, sculptor, and graphic artist George Baselitz conceived of and designed the forthcoming show at Gagosian before he passed away in April 2026. Marking over 25 years of collaboration between Gagosian and Baselitz and presenting a series of profound, expressive works created at the end of the artist’s life, Meine Schule presents the artist’s last completed paintings and last sculptures. These works carry echos of Baselitz’s early childhood memories and depict an artist drawing between past and present in beautiful ways.
November 12-January 23
Keine Frage, Euphemismus (No Question, Euphorie), 2025
Mary Lovelace O’Neal at Marianne Boesky
An exhibition of work by Mary Lovelace O’Neal (b. 1942, Jackson, MS; d. 2026, Mérida, Mexico) from the 1980s and 1990s, Requiem presents beautifully-expressionist paintings across abstraction and figuration. First discovered in David Driskell’s class at Howard University, the artist infuses childhood memories with ongoing investigations into color, shape, light, and form. The result are lyrical works, filled with life and beauty.
October 29-December 19
Requiem for a Daffodil [detail], 1997
Yvonne Jacquette: From the Air at Karma
Artist Yvonne Jacquette (1934-2023) was a keen observer of the world from above, as she depicted cities and fields from an aerial view. Across her paintings and drawings showing Manhattan or Maine, these beautiful works are personal as they are universal. The group on display at Karma are made between 1971 and 2016 and present touching views of the world in which we live.
Through October 31
N.Y. Aerial View from Helicopter (Looking East from Hudson Yards Area) II, 2011–12. Oil on canvas, 49 × 97⅞ in. (124.46 × 248.62 cm); 50 × 98 7⁄8 in. (127 × 251.14 cm) framed
LAST CHANCE TO SEE:
Savdie / Soutine at Noor Cohen
IN ITS FINAL DAYS: Working a century apart, the artists Chaïm Soutine (1893–1943) and Ilana Savdie (b. 1986) are both marked by their inventiveness and lyrical gestures. New paintings by Brooklyn-based Savdie [the one artist on this list who is very much alive and active today], whose large-scale painting practice explores themes of performance, excess, survival, and transgression provide incredible texture to the historical paintings of Belarusian-born Soutine, who fled to Paris where he worked alongside over émigré artists Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, and Jacques Lipchitz. Modigliani in Montparnasse, this exhibition is worth stopping by before it closes.
Through October 24
ILANA SAVDIE El Rey Golero, 2026