On View Now: Warhol, Lee Friedlander, Njideka Akunyili Crosby and More

Spring was jam packed with fairs and auctions; the summer art season offers an opportunity to savor what's on view more slowly.

After a packed month of fairs and auctions, the art world is entering its summer season with looks back at masters like Warhol and showcases of present-day greats like Sara Cwynar. From David Zwirner’s westward expansion to an ambitious encapsulation of pop culture and art in New York City, here are seven gallery and museum shows not to miss this June.

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Andy Warhol: Thirty Are Better Than One at The Brant Foundation

New York City

A gallery space with pop art.
An installation view of ‘Andy Warhol: Thirty Are Better Than One’ at The Brant Foundation. Photo: Tom Powell Imaging

Peter Brant has collected Andy Warhol since the age of twenty, making him more than equipped to put together a career-spanning exhibition of the artist that stands apart. The five decades’ worth of purchases are indisputably impressive, with more than enough of the Pop artist’s greatest hits to comprise a crash course in Warhol. Keep an eye out for the Marilyn Monroe featuring a bullet hole that Warhol insisted on keeping after the performance artist Dorothy Podber asked if she could shoot the canvas—and proceeded to do so not with a camera but with a pistol.

Terry O’Neill at Fotografiska 

New York City 

English singer-songwriter Elton John performing at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, October 1975. Terry O'Neill / Iconic Images

For those who try not to throw around the word “iconic,” describing the photographs that Terry O’Neill took over the course of his decades-long career presents a challenge. His subjects included the Beatles, Elizabeth Taylor, Naomi Campbell, Elton John, Kate Moss—and many, many more, as seen in the late British photographer’s new solo exhibition at Fotografiska (on view through September 19). Starting with Audrey Hepburn playing cricket between scenes on the set of Two for the Road (1967) and capping with Amy Winehouse backstage at a celebration of Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday in 2008, the show will leave you wondering if there are any celebrities the British photographer didn’t encounter before his death in 2019. Standouts include the portrait of a poolside Faye Dunaway that Jamie Lee Curtis recently recreated to celebrate her surprise Oscar win.

Faith Ringgold at Jeffrey Deitch

Los Angeles

A map of the U.S. in green and red
‘United States of Attica,’ 1972. Photo by Joshua White. Courtesy of the artist and ACA Galleries, New York

It’s hard to believe that Faith Ringgold’s unprecedented retrospective American People, which has traveled to New York’s New Museum, San Francisco’s de Young, Paris’s Musée Picasso and soon, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, has no planned stop in L.A. Fortunately, Jeffrey Deitch has teamed up with her representative of nearly three decades, ACA Galleries, to present her first comprehensive survey in the city. The oil paintings, political posters, tankas and of course, signature narrative quilts will leave you marveling at the degree to which Ringgold has honestly and brazenly examined America—and herself, through works like textile pieces documenting her struggles with weight.

SEE ALSO: Sir Elton John and David Furnish Share Their Passion for Photography at London’s V&A

Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen at Fraenkel Gallery

San Francisco

A black and white photo of a bathroom
Lee Friedlander, Nashville, 1963. Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Luhring Augustine, New York.

When the gallerist Jeffrey Fraenkel initially floated the idea of curating a show of Lee Friedlander (known as one of the greatest living photographers) to Joel Coen (one half of the director duo behind films such as No Country for Old Men and Fargo), he kept it casual. A selection of just ten photographs would be enough—but after poring over hundreds that spanned more than six decades with Friedlander, Coen had chosen enough to populate not one, but two exhibitions. And a book with an afterword by Coen’s wife, four-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand! With the eye of a filmmaker, Coen focused on Friedlander’s composition, meaning the photos on display at San Francisco’s Fraenkel Gallery and New York’s Luhring Augustine showcase a lesser-known side of the master street photographer.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby at David Zwirner

Los Angeles

‘Still You Bloom in This Land of No Gardens,’ 2021. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen. © Njideka Akunyili Crosby

David Zwirner becomes the latest New York art gallery to go bicoastal with the opening of a new flagship location on a section of Los Angeles’s Western Ave also favored by East Coast peers like Sargent’s Daughter and Clearing. Fittingly, the first artists to exhibit—Stan Douglas and Njideka Akunyili Crosby—are both Angelenos. The latter chose to inaugurate the space with a mix of new and recent paintings, drawings and collages that take you through her Nigerian and American upbringing, incorporating images from her personal archives and motifs of meticulously researched flora and fauna.

Sara Cwynar at FOAM

Amsterdam

‘Louis Vuitton Jeff Koons Rubens Bag,’ 2020. © Sara Cwynar.

Ten years after her first solo show at the esteemed Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Sara Cwynar returns with another show that makes it clear why the photographic institution chose to spotlight the Canadian multimedia artist early on. While Cwynar has long focused on the female consumer, capitalism and desire, the works that make up S/S 23 (a reference to the spring/summer 2023 fashion season) feel linked to the present; they include a new series inspired by a scrolling session on the popular e-commerce site SSENSE and a previously unseen video portrait of Pamela Anderson.

This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture at the Museum of the City of New York

New York City

This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture at the Museum of the City of New York
Berenice Abbott, ‘Tempo of the City I,’ 1938. Museum of the City of New York

If any institution is equipped to sum up a century of art and pop culture in NYC, it’s the one that takes its name from the city itself. The Museum of the City of New York got ambitious with the exhibition that marks its centennial, and the end result has something for everyone. Among the many highlights: Edward Hopper paintings, Berenice Abbott’s 1930s-era street photography, Carrie Bradshaw’s tutu from the Sex and the City opening credits and borough-themed interactive installations soundtracked by songs like “Jenny From the Block.” It’s no wonder they’re keeping it all on view until July of next year.

On View Now: Warhol, Lee Friedlander, Njideka Akunyili Crosby and More