Must See NYC Summer Gallery Shows

New York City became the center of the art world following World War II with the development of Abstract Expressionism. The Big Apple has yet to relinquish the crown.

In addition to its great art museums - The Met, MoMA, the Whitney, to name a few - New York offers an endless array of galleries which show off the best historic and contemporary art money can buy. From portraits by old masters to installations from millennials, the New York gallery scene is endlessly diverse.

Venture out of the museums this summer - and away from the crowds - to explore the city's gallery scene. Admission is free. Gallerists are on-hand to answer questions. And, who knows, you might even find something to buy. Try doing that at The Guggenheim.

Exhibits were chosen based on their broad general interest, historic nature, or unique quality of work displayed.

Through June 15

Willem de Kooning was one of the Abstract Expressionists who, along with Jackson Pollack, wrestled the art crown from Paris following World War II and brought it to New York. This exhibit traces the full arc of his career from the 40s to the 80s as only the Mnuchin Gallery, with its unparalleled De Kooning resources, can provide.

Colorful, ebullient, the depth and quality of work on display from this major figure in Modern Art could scarcely be topped by any museum in the world.

Through June 15

There aren't many bigger names in Modern Art than Willem de Kooning, but Andy Warhol is one of them. Lévy Gorvy presents Warhol Women, an exhibition devoted exclusively to Warhol's portraits of women from the early 1960s through the 1980s.

You'll see Jackie Kennedy, Aretha Franklin, Marilyn Monroe, Dolly Parton, Liza Minelli, Judy Garland and many more depicted in Warhol's instantly-recognizable Pop Art style.

June 28 - September 18

Speaking of big names, even Andy Warhol pales in comparison to Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci's drawing Leda and the Swan returns to the United States for the first time in 15 years as part of Sotheby's Treasures from Chatsworth exhibit. Any opportunity to view original work from da Vinci is exceedingly rare in the States and his Leda and the Swan shows off much of his artistic brilliance.

Museums across the world will be celebrating Da Vinci this year as 2019 marks the 500th anniversary of his death.

Chatsworth House is home to the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. The Devonshire Collection is widely celebrated as one of the most significant collections of art and objects in Europe.

Sotheby's debuted freshly renovated and enlarged exhibition galleries last month, making them the perfect venue for this once in a generation opportunity.

June 20 - July 26

Joseph Yoakum is an artist we should all know better. Of African-American and Native American descent, he traveled with the circus as a young man, served in World War I, spent time hopping train cars in the West and didn't dedicate his life to his artwork until he was 72-years-old.

This exhibit features more than 60 of his works on paper including loans from contemporary art superstars Jeff Koons and KAWS.

Through July 3

Like Yoakum, the artists on view in Galerie St. Etienne's Looking for America exhibit are variously described as "outsider," "outlier," "folk" or "primitive." What that means is they didn't arrive at their artistic style through traditional methods or training.

Of particular interest may be the work of an elderly widow from upstate New York: Anna Mary Robertson Moses. The world knows her as "Grandma Moses." Her charming, folksy, rural landscapes have been endlessly recreated on greeting cards, posters, prints, books, puzzles and anything else they could be applied to.

This is your opportunity to see the real thing.

Through June 28

Frida Kahlo continues to be one of the hottest names in the art world with a variety of museum exhibits - and a hotel room - devoted to her. Di Donna Galleries' Surrealism in Mexico presents three of her paintings which provides reason enough to seek it out.

Come for Kahlo, stay for Leonora Carrington, a British-born artist who spent most of her life in Mexico City following World War II. Her fantastical landscapes and figurative works seem to anticipate our present-day fascination with dragons, unicorns, wizards and imaginary kingdoms.

Through July 31

Keeping with Surrealism, Heather James Fine Art's The Female Gaze also offers work by Kahlo and Carrington along with that of the massively underrated Leonor Fini and Dorothea Tanning among others in an exhibit highlighting the contribution of female artists in the movement. Works on view span from the 1930s to the late 2000s.

Sexual, mysterious, bizarre, empowering and vulnerable, the art on display - which includes paintings, drawings, sculptures, mixed media and collages - challenges viewers to consider the conditions these artists were living through which allowed them to create such extraordinary imagery.

Through June 15

George Miyasaki was born in rural Hawaii to Japanese parents and grew up under martial law during World War II. In 1953 he moved to Oakland, California to study with Richard Diebenkorn and Nathan Oliveira at the California College of Arts & Crafts.

Miyasaki, and numerous other Abstract Expressionist artists of Japanese descent, are only now receiving a portion of the recognition they deserve for the work they created. Remember, Abstract Expressionism reached its apex in the years immediately following World War II, a time of heightened discrimination against the Japanese in America.

Furthermore, with many of these artists working on the West Coast, 3,000 miles from the movement's epicenter in New York, their significant contributions were overlooked.

In 2017, Miyasaki was included in the important exhibition, Abstract Expressionism: Looking East from the Far West at the Honolulu Museum of Art. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston to name just three.

Through July 3

Did you know actor and comedian Steve Martin is also a highly-respected, deeply-involved art collector? This exhibit was his brainchild and largely presents his recently-accumulated collection of contemporary Indigenous Australian painting.

After decades of collecting Martin serendipitously came across a story about an Aboriginal Australian artist with a show in New York while reading the New York Times fine arts section in 2015. As the story goes, Martin was so taken with what he saw, he hopped on his bike, attended the show, bought a piece and a passion was sparked. The rest is history.

One look at the work and you'll understand why Martin was hooked. Large, colorful, somehow simultaneously fresh and familiar, the paintings act as a refuge for eyes which have seen everything.

Through June 22

Born in Nigeria in 1964, Victor Ekpuk is now based in Washington, DC. In this exhibit he re-imagines graphic symbols from diverse cultures to form a personal style of mark making that results in the interplay of art and writing.

In Ekpuk's own words, "The subject matter of my work deals with the human condition explained through themes that are both universal and specific: family, gender, politics, culture and identity."

Keep a close eye out for his Mickey on Broadway which incorporates found objects from Disneyland.

Through August 2

Brooklyn-based artist Leonardo Drew's Number 215 (2019) is a mixed-media showstopper "creating the appearance of an enveloping explosion that is frozen in time and space," as described by the gallery.

Drew's career is on a roll.

His first major outdoor public artwork, City in the Grass, was commissioned by the Madison Square Park Conservancy and can be seen now. He was also featured in the major Solidary & Solitary exhibit which highlighted the contribution of contemporary African-American artists to abstraction and recently ended its run at the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago.

Drew refers to his work as "making chaos legible."

Through July 14

This group show staged in collaboration with a Mexican collective guadalajara9021 features the work of six artists, all under 40 years of age, four of them natives of Mexico.

One of the American-born artists, Brooklyn's Ilana Harris-Babou, was featured on the cover of Art in America magazine recently and is the youngest artist included in this year's Whitney Biennial.

The show's title, Twilight Chorus, takes inspiration from "what happens at twilight, just after the sun sets and the landscape glows, before the world goes completely black," according to the gallery.

Through June 29

Prunella Clough is widely regarded as one of the most significant British artists of the post-war period and this will be her first solo show in New York. It also marks the first time many of these works have been shown in the U.S.

Blast surveys Clough's entire career from early figurative works through mid-career experimentations with abstraction and finally her vibrant, large-scale works from the 80s and 90s that reflect a unique style all her own.

Clough's work is included in the permanent collections of both the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Gallery in London.

Through July 3

Janet Cooling's large-scale paintings are composed on shaped gator board, a rigid poly board used in model-making that gives her works a chunky dimensionality. Additionally, they are all painted on black backgrounds.

Suburban tract houses and nuclear plants remembered from Cooling's childhood in South Orange, New Jersey intermingle with big-haired fashion models and roaming wildlife appropriated from magazines. Elsewhere, women couple erotically in sublime landscapes while other figures are engulfed by burning skyscrapers, fields of lightning, hovering planets, and writhing snakes.

The gallery describes Cooling's work as employing "a fauvist palette with a feminist agenda and makes expressionistic paintings with a conceptual and political edge."