The Six Best is a monthly column where contributor and writer of The Rose Period, Rose Florence Anderson, gives an edit of the most happening shows in NYC. Each edition covers the shows worth seeing and the special, unusual, and little-known stories behind them – written for the curious (not the credentialed). There’s no inside art jargon here. This column is sponsored by Showrunner, the most comprehensive guide to art in NY & LA, and Elephant Magazine, a global art publication specializing in artist-led coverage. See the full list of exhibitions on Showrunner.
The fashion world has the Met Gala. The sports world has the Super Bowl. And the New York art world has Art Month in May.
To those unfamiliar (me, a few years ago), Art Month is when the art fairs descend on the city at once – Frieze, TEFAF, Independent – and every gallery worth its white walls times a major opening to coincide. For a few brilliant weeks in May, the fashionable collectors, whip-smart curators, and buzzy artists come together to obsess over the up-and-coming.
And yes, while the fairs can cost you a pretty penny – or at least your afternoon Butterfield Market lunch – if you know where to look, it’s the best free show in the city.
I’m Rose, a native Minnesotan (which means I still say thank you so much to my cashier) who’s been in NYC for almost a decade. My full-time job is in fashion, as Brand Director at Alex Mill, but on the side I write The Rose Period, a newsletter about the special, the unusual, and the slightly unexpected stories from the art world that you should know. My NYC art roundups have become a reader favorite – which makes me think you, too, might like having a great list of things to see.
We’ll keep it light here. I won’t use intimidating jargon, mostly because I don’t know most of it myself. What I do know is that since I started writing these lists, people have told me it’s opened up a whole side of New York they hadn’t been able to access before. The galleries! A practically free afternoon! Troves of women artists who might have otherwise fallen into oblivion! A second home without having the second home.
Ready? Here are the six best free art shows to see this May:
- Matisse, The Pursuit of Harmony at Aquavella (through 5/22)
Everyone knows Matisse for his brilliant use of color – but his other great subject was the human form. His Blue Nude was the first piece of art I truly fell in love with (before I became devastated to learn it had become the rallying cry of every twenty-something’s first apartment).
This show gets at exactly that – with sculpture and painting that you probably haven’t seen before. All together in one room!
Even though I’ll always prefer his work on canvas (the color!), the real draw here is the sculpture. At the center is the Back series: four life-sized bronze sculptures of a woman’s back – made between 1908 and 1930 – rarely shown together. Look at them side by side – and you can see how Matisse learned to simplify the human figure – eventually landing on the abstract form we know him for now.
The IYKYK: Matisse never showed the four Backs together during his lifetime – and we don’t really know if he intended them as a series at all. What we do know is that each one coincides with a major painting. Did he need to make the sculpture to figure out the painting? It’s all part of the mystery you can wonder about when you see this show.
- Domenico Gnoli at Levy Gorvy Dayan (through 5/23)
The show that has become Instagram viral since it opened – and for a good reason!
The Italian artist behind it, Domenico Gnoli, died at just 36 in 1970, leaving behind a small, but almost shockingly perfect body of work. He painted everyday objects – a shirt collar, a knot of hair, a tucked bedsheet – cropped so close the familiar becomes almost eerie. A bedsheet becomes a landscape. A collar becomes architecture.
This show is incredible. It’s the largest US show of his work in over fifty years, at Lévy Gorvy Dayan’s gorgeous townhouse on 64th Street (worth the trip in itself).
The IYKYK: that texture you see in his work? It’s because he mixed sand into his paint, giving every canvas a frescoed, ancient look. Photos don’t do it justice – you have to see it in person.
Matisse: The Pursuit of Harmony at Acquavella Galleries (Upper East Side)
- GaHee Park: Half-Looking, Half-Seen at Perrotin (through May 30)
Paintings that will stop you mid-scroll. GaHee Park has been on my watch list for a few years, which made it all the more exciting to see her come to NYC for Art Month.
Her paintings are full of things that shouldn’t go together, but somehow do. A double-mouthed woman cradling a duck. A human figure washed up alongside sea creatures. Everything is gorgeous but just slightly off – I promise you won’t be able to stop thinking about it.
The IYKYK: this show is a warm-up of sorts – Park’s first US institutional show opens in August at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. See her here first!
- Michael McGregor: Lunch at Dan Yoshi (through 6/12/2026)
The artist making hotel notepad drawings famous.
I first discovered McGregor on Pinterest and have been obsessed ever since. His reimaginings of ubiquitous things – fries, a BLT, flip phones, luxury watches – have made him a darling of fashion collabs like Acne Studios and Chanel.
McGregor sketches in cafés, hotel lobbies, and bars while traveling, on whatever paper is within reach. For Lunch, that paper is menus – ones he’s collected throughout his life, from family heirlooms to finds snatched from bodegas, hole-in-the-wall bars, and lunch counters.
The IYKYK: luckily, I’m friends with McGregor on Instagram so I asked him to share a fact with the class. His words: “the work is very ‘lived in’ — stained with wine or olive oil, smears of mustard and mayonnaise, rips and tears from stuffing menus in jeans pockets or inside my boot. Look close enough and you might even smell a taste of spicy mustard. There’s a lot to be revealed under the surface.”
- Jasper Johns: Copy/Trace at David Zwirner (May 7–June 26)
One of the greatest living American artists – and guess what, he’s 94 and still at it.
The show takes its name from his process: Johns has spent decades copy and tracing his own earlier work (his iconic flags, targets, maps). On display are examples of that from the 1960s through 2010s. The question at hand: can the copy be just as original as well, the original?
The IYKYK: Johns made his first Flag painting in 1954 after dreaming about it. He’s been circling the same handful of images since.
- Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Jack Shainman (through 7/31/2026)
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is a British painter whose subjects have one thing in common: none of them exist. She invents them from imagination and purposely keeps them at a distance from a specific time or place.
In the art world, she’s become A Big Deal: in the MoMA collection, a Turner Prize finalist (the UK’s Oscars for art, essentially), and her canvases now sell for millions at auction. This is her first solo show at Jack Shainman since 2019.
The IYKYK: read the titles carefully. She chooses them to add another layer to the work – not to describe it.
