Greater New York 2026, the sixth edition of MoMA PS1’s quinquennial survey of artists living and working in the New York City area, closes on August 17 after a four-month run that has placed more than 150 works by 53 artists and collectives across every level of the museum’s historic school building in Long Island City, Queens. The exhibition, which has operated with free admission for its entire duration, represents the largest and most accessible iteration of a series that has been mapping the city’s creative production every five years since 2000. It also marks PS1’s 50th anniversary and is the first Greater New York organized by the museum’s full curatorial team rather than a single curator, a structural shift that shapes both the breadth of the work on display and the exhibition’s framing around the forces that define daily life in New York City in 2026.
Key Takeaways
- Greater New York 2026 closes August 17 at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens, featuring 53 artists and collectives across more than 150 works including paintings, photography, animation, site-specific installations, and performance.
- Admission is free for the entire run; the exhibition spans all levels of PS1’s converted schoolhouse building at 22-25 Jackson Avenue.
- The show is organized by the full MoMA PS1 curatorial team for the first time: Connie Butler (Agnes Gund Director), Ruba Katrib (Chief Curator), Jody Graf and Elena Ketelsen González (Associate Curators), Kari Rittenbach (Assistant Curator), Sheldon Gooch (Curatorial Assistant), and Andrea Sánchez (Curatorial Coordinator).
- The exhibition coincides with PS1’s 50th anniversary and includes new commissions, site-specific works, and pieces never previously exhibited publicly.
- The Greater New York series, launched in 2000, runs every five years and functions as a survey of emerging and under-recognized artists working across the five boroughs.
- Participating artists range in birth year from 1945 (Candace Hill-Montgomery) to 2000 (Coumba Samba), with collectives including the Metoac Indigenous Collective (est. 2025), Red Canary Song (est. 2018), and Women’s History Museum (est. 2015).
A Building-Wide Exhibition in a Converted Schoolhouse
MoMA PS1 occupies a Romanesque Revival school building that dates to the late 19th century, a structure whose classrooms, hallways, stairwells, and outdoor spaces have functioned as exhibition galleries since the institution’s founding in 1976. Greater New York 2026 uses the entire building, placing works in rooms and corridors across all floors and treating the architecture itself as a curatorial element. Visitors move through the building encountering works that shift in scale, medium, and tone from room to room, with large installations occupying former classrooms and smaller works fitted into transitional spaces.
The range of media on display is deliberately broad. Painting hangs alongside photography. Animation screens near scenography. Site-specific installations occupy rooms that were built for other purposes entirely. Several works were commissioned specifically for the exhibition and exist only within the context of PS1’s architecture. Others are recent works by participating artists that have never been shown publicly before. The effect, across more than 150 individual works, is a survey that resists a single curatorial thesis and instead presents the diversity of practice happening across the city at a particular moment in time.
The exhibition also included a performance program that ran through May and June, premiering new works by eight artists: Rezarta Seferi, Sophie Becker, Symara Sarai, Tom Thayer, Chang Yuchen, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Kite, and Georgica Pettus. Additional public programming included artist talks, a wampum belt weaving workshop with the Metoac Indigenous Collective, a family artmaking workshop with Dean Millien, and a 50th anniversary block party held in April with music, food vendors, and gallery access.
53 Artists Mapping the City’s Creative Production
The participating artists and collectives span generations, geographies within the city, and working methods. The youngest participant, Coumba Samba, was born in 2000. The oldest, Candace Hill-Montgomery, was born in 1945. The late Jay Carrier (1963-2025) is included posthumously. The show encompasses artists working in painting (Janiva Ellis, Hardy Hill, Julia Wachtel), photography (Marie Angeletti, Farah Al Qasimi), animation and video (Mary Helena Clark, Tiffany Sia, Cici Wu), and installation (Marc Kokopeli, Piero Penizzotto, Kenneth Tam), among other practices.
Three collectives bring organizational and community-based practice into the exhibition. The Metoac Indigenous Collective, established in 2025, represents Indigenous communities with historical ties to the New York City area. Red Canary Song, founded in 2018, advocates for Asian and migrant sex workers and massage parlor workers. Women’s History Museum, an artist collective established in 2015, operates at the intersection of art, humor, and institutional critique. Their inclusion reflects a curatorial framework that treats collective practice and individual studio work as equally valid modes of artistic production.
The curatorial framing emphasizes what the museum describes as the forces that shape daily life in the city today, alongside strategies of resistance and adaptation in the face of increased surveillance, economic precarity, and shifting technologies. The exhibition registers both the optimism and the anxiety generated through artists’ attention to the layered, lived textures of New York City. That language positions the show not as a celebration of the art market or a showcase for commercially ascendant careers, but as a document of how artists are responding to the conditions of living and working in the city at this particular moment.
The Greater New York Series and What It Measures
Greater New York launched in 2000 as a survey of emerging art in the New York City area, and each subsequent edition has arrived at five-year intervals: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2021 (delayed from 2020 by the pandemic), and now 2026. The quinquennial structure means each edition functions as a snapshot of a different moment in the city’s cultural life, and the accumulated series operates as a longitudinal record of how artistic practice in New York has shifted across more than a quarter century.
The 2026 edition arrives at a moment when the economics of being an artist in New York City are under sustained pressure. Studio rents in Manhattan and increasingly in Brooklyn and Queens have pushed many working artists to the outer edges of the boroughs or out of the city entirely. The pandemic accelerated departures that were already underway, and the cost of living in the five boroughs continues to outpace what most emerging artists can sustain through sales or grants alone. Greater New York 2026, by surveying artists who are still here and still working, implicitly argues that the city remains a place where a critical mass of creative production continues to happen despite the economic forces working against it.
The decision to organize the show with the full curatorial team rather than a single curator is itself a statement about how PS1 wants the survey to function. Previous editions were shaped by individual curatorial visions, which gave each show a distinct point of view but also narrowed the lens through which the city’s art was filtered. The team-based approach distributes curatorial authority across six people with different areas of expertise and different relationships to the communities represented in the exhibition.
Free Admission and What It Means for Access
PS1 has operated Greater New York 2026 with free admission for the entire four-month run, a decision that removes the financial barrier that limits access to most museum exhibitions in New York City. The Museum of Modern Art, PS1’s parent institution, charges $30 for general admission at its 53rd Street location. The Whitney Museum charges $30. The Metropolitan Museum of Art charges $30 for out-of-state visitors. Free admission at PS1 means that the exhibition is accessible to anyone who can reach Long Island City, regardless of income.
The museum sits at 22-25 Jackson Avenue in the Court Square area of Long Island City, accessible by multiple subway lines. The neighborhood has undergone rapid residential development over the past decade, with high-rise apartment towers now surrounding the low-rise school building that houses PS1. The museum’s presence in a neighborhood that has transformed around it adds a layer of context to an exhibition framed around the forces shaping daily life in the city, including the economic pressures that have reshaped Long Island City itself.
Visitors have until August 17 to see the exhibition. PS1 is open Thursday through Monday, 12 to 6 p.m. The museum is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
FAQs
When does Greater New York 2026 close and what are the museum’s hours?
Greater New York 2026 closes on August 17, 2026. MoMA PS1 is open Thursday through Monday, 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., and closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The museum is located at 22-25 Jackson Avenue in Long Island City, Queens. Admission is free.
What is the Greater New York series?
Greater New York is a quinquennial (every five years) exhibition organized by MoMA PS1 that surveys artists living and working in the New York City area. The series launched in 2000, and the 2026 edition is the sixth installment. Each edition functions as a snapshot of the city’s creative production at a specific moment, featuring emerging and under-recognized artists across a range of media. Previous editions took place in 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2021.
How many artists are in Greater New York 2026?
The exhibition features 53 artists and collectives, with more than 150 works spanning painting, photography, animation, site-specific installations, performance, and other media. Participating artists range in birth year from 1945 to 2000, and three collectives (Metoac Indigenous Collective, Red Canary Song, and Women’s History Museum) are also included. The show occupies all levels of PS1’s converted schoolhouse building.
