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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Hilma af Klint, ‘What Stands Behind the Flowers’ — MoMA
Swedish artist Hilma af Klint was a forerunner of abstract art. The spiritualist considered her large-scale abstract paintings to be guided by mystical higher powers. But a series of botanical drawings reveals af Klint’s attunement to the natural as well as the supernatural. On show for the first time, these 46 botanical sketches from the spring and summer of 1919 and 1920 uncover the artist’s intent to link the “plant world and the world of the soul”. Closely observed watercolours of native Swedish flora are appended with esoteric diagrams, a visual language first developed in the checkerboard grids of af Klint’s series Atom (1917), which is displayed alongside the drawings. On the Viewing of Flowers and Trees (1922) depicts the lasting impact of the botanical on her practice, while af Klint’s notebooks record plants with the same detailed, scientific precision as her sketches. moma.org
‘Sargent and Paris’ — The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Met plays host to the largest international exhibition of John Singer Sargent’s work since the turn of the century, presenting almost 100 works in the centenary year of the artist’s death. In partnership with the Musée d’Orsay, the exhibition covers the portraitist’s education in Paris, from early sketches and watercolours to his scandalous portraits of high society in the mid-1880s. The notorious “Madame X” (1884) is joined with preliminary studies of the work for the first time. Examining the culture of celebrity in the late 19th-century French capital, the Met considers the clientele and artistic milieu that made Sargent’s fame. metmuseum.org
Rashid Johnson, ‘A Poem for Deep Thinkers’ — The Guggenheim
Chicago-born Rashid Johnson’s solo exhibition presents almost 30 years of multidisciplinary practice. With close to 90 pieces encompassing the whole of the Guggenheim rotunda, it is the contemporary artist’s largest exhibition to date. Johnson adopts from literature, philosophy and music, such as the exhibition’s title, a line taken from poet and political activist Amiri Baraka. Black aesthetics and questions of masculinity come to the fore, from photographs of a fictitious African-American secret society to the ceramic and glass shard mosaics of the series Broken Men (2019). The exhibition also includes the monumental steel installation “Sanguine” (2025), as well as his 2024 film of the same name, featuring the artist alongside his father and son. guggenheim.org
Candida Alvarez, ‘Circle, Point Hoop’ — El Museo del Barrio
Candida Alvarez returns to the site of her first US exhibition with a triumphant five-decade career review. El Museo del Barrio, whose exhibitions she once curated, provides a long-awaited tribute to the Brooklyn-born “Diasporican” artist’s collage, embroidery and painting, in her first large-scale museum survey. Alvarez’s Puerto Rican roots are a fount of inspiration for her figurative work in the 1970s. The exhibition reveals her turn in the 1990s to more conceptual work, such as the coiled, almost molecular spirals of reinterpreted numericals in “Los Numeros” (1994). Displaying rarely seen works, the exhibition spotlights an artist whose pioneering works are often eclipsed by her New York contemporaries. elmuseo.org
Sonia Gomes, ‘Ô Abre Alas!’ — Storm King Art Center
The Afro-Brazilian artist Sonia Gomes invites viewers to step outside in her first institutional solo show in the US. Before expansive views of the Hudson Valley, Gomes’s found fabric sculptures hang from tree branches. Marking the sculpture park’s reopening, Gomes’s commission accompanies a survey of her sculptures in Storm King’s indoor galleries. stormking.org
‘The Gatherers’ — MoMA PS1
MoMa’s Long Island City outpost assembles 14 artists who consider the aftershocks of political upheaval and environmental degradation. Through sculpture, discarded materials, architectural installations and documentary film, these international artists, many making their US debut, depict the detritus of overconsumption. Bosnian artist Selma Selman forges motorised machines from scrap metal, while Emilija Škarnulytė’s video “Burial” (2022) documents Lithuania’s decommissioned Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, once a symbol of Soviet technological advancement. momaps1.org
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