As September settles in, Armory Week returns to New York, filling the city's fairs, galleries, and project spaces with some of the most compelling work on the global art calendar. With so much to see across a single packed week, a little insider direction goes a long way. Here's what industry tastemakers have on their must-see lists for Armory Week 2026.

Rachel Cole, Principal, RCAA

Emily Mae Smith, Transit of Venus at Petzel: Emily Mae Smith’s new exhibition at Petzel is probably the show I’m most looking forward to seeing this week. I’ve always loved the way she engages with art history while creating a visual language that feels entirely her own: smart, surreal and often slyly funny. I’m particularly excited to see this new body of work and how her familiar figures and symbols continue to evolve. 

Emily Mae Smith courtesy of RCAA

Soumya Netrabile, Field Conditions at Anat Ebgi: I’m also looking forward to seeing Soumya Netrabile’s new paintings alongside her glazed ceramic sculptures. Her work has such an organic, intuitive quality, with forms that seem to emerge and shift across the canvas. I’m curious to see how the sculptures expand that language into three dimensions.

Soumya Netrabile courtesy of RCAA

Lee Bul, The Anatomy of Every Setting Sun at Hauser & Wirth: Lee Bul’s first exhibition with Hauser & Wirth is also on my list. Her practice moves between sculpture, architecture, technology and the body, and I’m looking forward to experiencing the scale and physicality of the work in person.

Lee Bul courtesy of RCAA

Yun Lee, Vice President, FITZ & CO

Top of my list is “Wesselmann x Matsuyama”, staged inside the studio where Tom Wesselmann worked until his death in 2004. Brooklyn-based artist Tomokazu Matsuyama has been invited to show alongside Wesselmann's own work, and the results feel like a genuine conversation between the two artists. One of the show’s standouts is Matsuyama's “We The People”, an eighteen-month undertaking that relocates the figures from David's “The Death of Socrates” into the aisle of an American supermarket, using cereal boxes and medicine packaging to build a dizzying, almost theatrical sense of space. This exhibition follows Matsuyama’s 2024 commission for “Pop Forever, Tom Wesselmann &...” at Fondation Louis Vuitton, and seeing his work sit directly against Wesselmann's in the studio where it all took shape is a rare opportunity.

Wesselmann x Matsuyama

I'm also keeping an eye on artist Hun Chung Lee's solo show of new ceramic and concrete work at R & Company. If you have time to head upstate while you're in town, it coincides with a presentation of Lee's work at MANITOGA / The Russel Wright Design Center. Worth the trip for anyone who wants to see it in dialogue with Wright's own home and landscape!

Natasha Roberts, Communications & Partnerships, Bonhams & Founder, The KNOW

At the ARMORY fair, I'll be looking for Sandra Brewster's "Make Trouble", a large-scale photo-based installation presented by Southern Guild Gallery in the PLATFORM section.

Courtesy of Spinello Projects

I'm also looking forward to seeing Andrew Sendor's paintings presented by Newchild Gallery, and Elliott & Erick Jiménez's new body of work presented by Spinello Projects in the FOCUS section which, this year, highlights artists of Caribbean descent, while exploring its influence on contemporary artistic discourse. 

There's a deeply cinematic quality to all these works that I'm eager to experience IRL.

Barbara Escobar, Senior Vice President, Resnicow and Associates
 
There are some really outstanding gallery shows worth seeing during Armory Week. At Andrew Edlin Gallery, Conduits of the Unseen: Women Artists Imagine Other Worlds brings together 17 artists from the 20th century onward who have been truly pioneering in exploring alternate realities, spirits, cosmic forces, and other planes of consciousness. It's an incredibly exciting show full of discoveries! At Gladstone, the gallery is presenting its first exhibition of Joseph Yaeger, who is known for his paintings of physically charged subjects, and a solo exhibition of works by the great Ugo Rondinone. NORR COHAN has the not-to-be-missed pairing of Ilana Savdie and Chaïm Soutine, bringing together two painters separated by a century yet joined by a shared investigation of bodies in a state of flux. The gallery is also debuting a solo exhibition of new and recent paintings by Vicky Colombet at its 52 Walker location, which will be open late as part of Downtown Gallery Night on Friday, September 25.Beyond the galleries, the esteemed photography nonprofit and publisher Aperture just opened its new home on September 18 in a historic building on the Upper West Side. Aperture is undeniably one of the most important photography organizations in the world, having published the first books for many of the great photographers in contemporary history, so it's an absolute can't-miss during Armory Week.

Aperture, 380 Columbus Avenue, New York, NY, Photo courtesy of Kris Graves © Aperture