“Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952–1965” at Grey Art Gallery, New York University, January 10–April 1, 2017
An homage to the role of alternative spaces in the ecology of New York art, from the network of cooperative 10th Street galleries to the politicized art spaces of the early ’60s.

“Rotative Repository of Latin American Video Art: Mono Canal” at El Museo del Barrio, January 11–April 30, 2017
Single-channel video art from across Latin-America, from an interesting cast of artists, both new and well-known: Maricruz Alarcón, Francisca Benitez, Alberto Borea, Nat Castañeda, Javier Castro, Lionel Cruet, Marcos Chaves, Gianfranco Foschino, Ignacio Gatica, Eduardo Gil, Alfredo Jaar, Joiri Minaya, Iván Navarro, Crack Rodriguez, and Margarita Sanchez.

“Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space” at the Met Breuer, January 24–May 7, 2017
Five decades of work from Marisa Merz, one of the most famous artists associated with Italy’s Arte Povera movement—and its only woman.

“Perpetual Revolution: The Image and Social Change” at the International Center of Photography, January 27–May 7, 2017
A deep dive, in exhibition form, into the ways that the momentous political events of the last few years have interacted with a mutating photographic culture, organized around five thematic threads: #BlackLivesMatter, gender fluidity, climate change, terrorist propaganda, and the refugee crisis.

“Treasures from the Nationalmuseum of Sweden: The Collections of Count Tessin” at the Morgan Library & Museum, February 3–May 14, 2017
Sweden’s largest museum tours a trove of ravishing material to NYC, including Boucher’s febrile Triumph of Venus (above) and a large number of Old Master drawings.

“Native Fashion Now” at the National Museum of the American Indian, February 17, 2017–September 4, 2017
Originating at the Peabody Essex Museum, this exhibition showcases a half-century’s worth of creativity from Native fashion designers and artists.

“Seurat’s Circus Sideshow” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 17–May 29, 2017
Centering on the Met’s star Seurat, Circus Sideshow (above), this show gathers related works by the Pointillist, plus a broad array of works by contemporaries and disciples, documentary material, and even period music instruments, adding up to an argument about the importance of the travelling circus in the modernist imagination.

“Turner’s Modern and Ancient Ports: Passages through Time” at the Frick Collection, February 23–May 14, 2017
This exhibition sets a course through the deep waters of Turner’s oeuvre, with his love of ports as its guiding star.

“Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern” at the Brooklyn Museum, March 3–July 23, 2017
A fresh look at Georgia O’Keeffe, featuring some paintings but with an eye to celebrating her style via displays of clothing and a selection of photographic portraits, emphasizing her carefully crafted public image.

“Whitney Biennial 2017” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, March 17–June 11, 2017
For the Whitney’s signature event, curators Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks have cooked up a survey that promises to look both inward (to the theme of “formation of self”) and outward (to the theme of “the individual’s place in a turbulent society.”) It has an intriguing list of artists, and should, as always, be the talk of the town.

“Doug Wheeler: PSAD Synthetic Desert III, 1971” at the Guggenheim, March 24–August 2017
The Guggenheim promises the first IRL realization of a long-percolating series of proposition by Light and Space pioneer Doug Wheeler, transforming one of the museum’s Tower Galleries into a “semi-anechoic chamber.”

“Marinella Senatore: Recent Work” at the Queens Museum of Art, April 9–July 30, 2017
Senatore (b. 1977) is known for public art that functions at community scale, engaging “the creative power of crowds.” The exact details of the Queens Museum show remain obscure, but it promises both a retrospective and new work.  

“Louise Lawler: WHY PICTURES NOW” at the Museum of Modern Art, April 30–July 30, 2017
Best known for focusing her lens on how art is displayed, Lawler here promises a characteristically bewildering sample of her own work. More a reinterpretation than a retrospective, it includes mural-scale images that have been “adjusted to fit” their space, and black-and-white tracings of past images stuck to the wall as decals.

“Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry” at the Jewish Museum, May 5–September 24, 2017
A full-throated homage to Stettheimer (1871–1944), featuring her distinctive paintings and drawings alongside theater sets, her poetry, and a variety of ephemera, the exhibition reconstructs the creative ferment around her in Jazz Age New York.

“Robert Rauschenberg” at the Museum of Modern Art, May 21–Sept. 17, 2017
The maestro of mixed media gets his due with more than 250 works in all media, plus exhibition design by Charles Atlas meant to foreground the role of dance and choreography in his work. A symphonic experience of the total Rauschenberg.