Each week, we search New York City for the most exciting, and thought-provoking, shows, screenings, and events. See them below.

Tuesday, September 13–Saturday, October 22

Zoe Leonard, London (1947). Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth.

1. Zoe Leonard, “In the Wake” at Hauser & Wirth
Zoe Leonard takes a hard look at photography’s role in constructing history in a new show at Hauser & Wirth—and she’s mining her own personal archive to do it. “In the Wake,” which includes images of her family in post-war New York, raises issues of immigration, displacement, and representation. As Leonard states in the press release: “We live in a country primarily of immigrants, and that informs who we are. While each of us has a different relationship to that fact, and a different family narrative, this experience figures deeply in our collective background.” Here, she invites us to see how that fact figures into hers.

Location: 32 East 69th Street
Price: Free
Time: 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.

—Rain Embuscado

Tuesday, September 13, 2016–Sunday, January 15, 2017

Thomas Broadbent, Spaceman. Courtesy of Front Room Gallery.

2. “Mission to Space” at Children’s Museum of the Arts
The mysteries of the cosmos provide fodder for the artistic imagination at the this show at the Children’s Museum of the Arts about the potential future of space exploration. The show will include PULSE Prize winner Thomas Broadbent‘s evocative Spaceman, of an astronaut floating on a haunting white ground; Andrew Zuckerman will be exhibiting a new body of photographs titled me | we, consisting of previously undeveloped photographs from the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 missions, from film canisters the artist purchased at auction.

Location: 103 Charlton Street
Price: $12
Time: Monday, 12:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m.; Thursday and Friday, 12:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 10:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Thursday, September 15–Saturday, October 1

Jessica Stockholder: The Guests All Crowded Into the Dining Room. Installation view courtesy of Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NY, 2016.

3. Jessica Stockholder “The Guests All Crowded Into the Dining Room” at Mitchell-Innes & Nash
The artist is presenting “a large-scale site-responsive installation” as well as repurposed works of found materials using tire scraps, rusty hinges, roofing tile, and other such objects ripe for reinvention for her third show at the gallery. The installation, which is a winding yellow-and-white viewing platform, puts gallery-goers at eye level in order to see a selection of elevated drawings “with a splash of color” in closer detail.

Location: 534 West 26th Street
Price: Free
Time: Thursday, 6:00–8:00 p.m.

—Kathleen Massara

Thursday, September 15–Saturday, October 22

Thomas Schütte, Bronzefrau Nr. 1 (1999-2000). © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Courtesy Private Collection.

4. Thomas Schütte, “Frauen“ at Skarstedt
At its Chelsea branch, Skarstedt is presenting sculptures and a suite of etchings by Thomas Schütte for the new show “Frauen.” It includes monumental sculptures made of bronze, steel and aluminum that “examine and expand the relationship between the female form and sculpture,” according to the gallery. The etchings, which are from 2006, complement the Frauen figures with “delicate details juxtaposed with the immediate physicality,” of the sculptures they’re based on. They range from near classical-style female nudes to distortions where the form is barely recognizable. The show continues through October 22.

Location: 550 West 21^st Street
Price: Free
Time: Thursday, 6:00–8:00 p.m.

—Eileen Kinsella

Friday, September 16

Danny Lyon, Tesca, Cartagena, Colombia (1966). Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York, © Danny Lyon.

5. “Photography and Social Activism“ at Whitney Museum of American Art
Julian Cox, chief curator at the de Young museum in San Francisco, moderates a discussion about, as the press release notes, “the evolving relationship of photography and film to social activism” in the US with New Orleans-based photographers Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick, and Magnum alumna Susan Meiselas. While there, don’t miss the exhibition “Danny Lyon: Message to the Future,” which is on view until September 25.

Location: 99 Gansevoort Street
Price: $10
Time: Friday, 6:30–8:00 p.m.

—Kathleen Massara

Harry Bertoia. Courtesy of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York.

6. “Performance, Panel, and Screening: Harry Bertoia’s Sonambient Works” at the Museum of Arts and Design
As the Museum of Arts and Design prepares to wrap up its current Harry Bertoia exhibition, “Atmosphere for Enjoyment” (through September 25), New York-based musicians Lizzi Bougatsos and Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe will perform original compositions commissioned by the museum and created in the Sonambient barn in Pennsylvania. A panel discussion led by George Grella, music editor at the Brooklyn Rail, will follow.

Location: Film Forum, 209 West Houston St. west of 6th Ave.
Price: $10
Time: 6:00 p.m. performance, 7:00 p.m. panel discussion

—Sarah Cascone

Saturday, October 22, 2016–Monday, January 2, 2017

Carmen Herrera, Irlanda (1965). Collection of Pérez Simón © Carmen Herrera.

7. Carmen Herrera, “Lines of Sight“ at Whitney Museum of American Art
Following her impressive show at Lisson Gallery, Lines of Sight will mark Herrera’s first museum retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The exhibition will focus on the years of 1948 to 1978, the period during which Herrera established her groundbreaking geometric style of abstraction. As a contemporary to Ellsworth Kelly, Barnett Newman and Frank Stella, she remained relatively unknown until she sold her first piece at the age of 89. The majority of Herrera’s hard-edge paintings have yet to be seen, and we expect to be astonished by the results.

Location: Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street
Price: $22
Time: Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday 10:30 a.m.–6:00 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 10:30 a.m.–10:00 p.m.

—Kevin Umaña

Saturday, September 17

A work by Walter De Maria at the Riggio estate in Bridgehampton. Courtesy of the Cultural Landscape Foundation.

8. “Garden Dialogues: The Hamptons, with Christopher LaGuardia” at the estate of Leonard and Louise Riggio
The Cultural Landscape Foundation is offering unique guests access to the art world elite with this conversation series hosted at private art gardens at mansions in the Hamptons. This week’s event offers a tour of the grounds of the Riggio’s newly-expanded garden, featuring sculpture by Richard Serra and Barry Le Va, as well as Lay of the Land, a new earthwork by Maya Lin.

Location: Bridgehampton
Price: $75
Time: 11:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone