Typically it looks as if the artwork world has a brief consideration span, skipping from one pattern to the subsequent, so it’s satisfying to search out exhibitions that maintain onto histories and reminiscences. In numerous methods, the exhibits beneath all preserve a reference to the previous. For artists Candida Alvarez and Thomas Holton, this will imply summoning childhood reminiscences and cultural traditions or wanting again on tender and informal moments amongst household. For different artists, equivalent to these included in Queer Lineages on the Wallach Artwork Gallery, drawing on the previous entails studying from inventive precursors who broke down boundaries. Or, when you’re squeezing in a late-summer journey upstate, you would be exploring an enchanting historical past of mushrooms and the equally fascinating story of a renegade mycologist. —Natalie Haddad, Evaluations Editor
Candida Alvarez: Circle, Level, Hoop
El Museo del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Avenue, East Harlem, ManhattanThrough August 3
Candida Alvarez, “Mary in the Sky with Diamonds” (Mary en el cielo con diamantes) (2005), acrylic and enamel on canvas (photograph Valentina Di Liscia/Hyperallergic)
“Throughout [Alvarez’s] oeuvre, abstraction and representation bleed into one another in the same way that memories momentarily coagulate into images before dissolving again.” —NH
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Thomas Holton: The Lams of Ludlow Road
Baxter St. Digital camera Membership, 154 Ludlow Road, Decrease East Facet, ManhattanThrough August 13
Thomas Holton, “A Crowded Christmas” (2022), archival inkjet print (photograph Lisa Yin Zhang/Hyperallergic)
“These photos reveal the beauty emergent from a lifestyle of frequenting businesses run by those of the mother culture, of scrimping and upcycling, and of dutiful ingenuity.” —Lisa Yin Zhang
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Homage: Queer Lineages on Video
Wallach Artwork Gallery, 615 West 129th Road, sixth Flooring, Manhattanville, ManhattanThrough October 19
Set up view of Kang Seung Lee, “The Heart of a Hand” (2022) in Homage: Queer Lineages on Video on the Wallach Artwork Gallery (photograph Daniel Larkin/Hyperallergic)
“In Homage: Queer Lineages on Video, artists draw upon the legacies of folks who opened the doors we now get to walk through.” —Daniel Larkin
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Outcasts: Mary Banning’s World of Mushrooms
New York State Museum, 222 Madison Avenue, Albany, New YorkThrough January 4, 2026
Set up view of Outcasts: Mary Banning’s World of Mushrooms on the New York State Museum, Albany, displaying three botanical illustrations by Banning (photograph Alexis Clements/Hyperallergic)
“Not only was [Banning] one of the first women to put a name to an entire group, or taxon, of fungus, but a full 23 of the 175 species she records in the manuscript were unknown in the field at the time” —Alexis Clements
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