October in New York, Part One: The Museums 🍂 אוקטובר בניו יורק: חלק ראשון, המוזיאונים 🍂

October is my favorite month. The smell of cinnamon rising from the cafés, the trees changing color, and the urge to go outside and wander. And on the especially cold days, nothing beats a good exhibition at a museum.

This time I decided to split my October recommendations between museums and commercial galleries, and I am dedicating the first post to museum exhibitions that are truly worth seeing this month.

Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Everyone knows Jackson Pollock. Far fewer people know Lee Krasner, his wife. She was born in Brooklyn to a family of Jewish immigrants, was a gifted painter even before she met Pollock, and after his death in 1956 she went on creating for almost three more decades. For years she remained in his shadow.

The huge exhibition at the Met brings together more than 120 works and follows both careers side by side, including the impressive works Krasner made after his death. It is the first major exhibition in New York devoted to Krasner or Pollock in more than 20 years, and it finally gives Krasner the place she deserves: an artist equal in stature to her husband. In my opinion it is also the most interesting exhibition, and if you choose only one thing to do this month, my recommendation is to go to it.

Siena: The Art of Bronze, 1450 to 1500 | The Frick Collection

Another exhibition I am looking forward to is the bronze exhibition at the Frick Collection. Starting on October 15, about 40 bronze sculptures from the city of Siena in Tuscany will be on view at the museum. In the 15th century Siena was one of Florence's great rivals and an important artistic center in its own right, with an exceptional tradition of working in bronze.

One of the central names in the exhibition is Donatello, with a monumental tomb monument, one of only eight signed works by him, arriving in the United States for the first time. Alongside him will be works by Vecchietta, one of Siena's important artists, and by his student Francesco di Giorgio, a sculptor, architect and engineer, some of whose works were once even attributed to Leonardo da Vinci.

Many of the works have hardly ever been shown outside Tuscany, which makes the exhibition a rare opportunity to see a lesser known but fascinating chapter of the Italian Renaissance, and also a perfect excuse for an autumn stroll on the Upper East Side.

On view through January 18, 2027.

The Surrealist Book: Tomorrow Lives in Mirrors | MoMA

When we think of Surrealism, most of us picture Dalí's melting clocks. But the movement was actually born out of words: Surrealism was founded by the poet André Breton, and the movement was deeply rooted in written manifestos, poetry and texts.

The exhibition at MoMA focuses on artists' books, meaning books created from the start as works of art, and on the central role they played in the movement. For the Surrealists, the book was the perfect tool for experimenting with and spreading their revolutionary ideas. Poets and painters worked on it together, tried to dive into the unconscious, and turned the ordinary book into an art object in its own right: a book bound in broken glass, poetry blended with photography, a binding that becomes a sculpture.

The exhibition features books by Breton, Dalí, Max Ernst and others, from the 1920s to the 1960s. Most come from a collection of rare artists' books donated to the museum by Helen and Sam Zell, and are being shown here for the first time.

Sam Zell, a Jewish real estate magnate from Chicago who died in 2023, was a lover and passionate supporter of Israel, and the founder of the Zell Entrepreneurship Program at Reichman University in Herzliya. The exhibition itself is made possible by the Eyal and Marilyn Ofer Family Foundation, in his honor.

On view through January 23, 2027.