Holland Cotter, The New York Times Journalist Profile

Articles

The Best Art Shows of 2025, So Far

5 days ago | nytimes.com | Holland Cotter |Jason Farago |Wesley Morris |Deborah Solomon

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. Our critics pick 11 outstanding exhibitions — many still on view this summer —and tour the renewed Frick Collection and the Met’s Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. People walk through the exhibition “Jack Whitten: The Messenger,” 2025, at the Museum of Modern Art. The work is Whitten’s monumental “9.11.01.,” from 2006.
Painting as a Weapon of Freedom

3 weeks ago | nytimes.com | Holland Cotter

In a small but haunting survey at the Met, a celebrated conceptual artist shifts gears, with meteoric results. Some of our most interesting artists have one thing in common.
El arte más maravilloso del mundo en 1.726 objetos

1 month ago | clarin.com | Holland Cotter

NUEVA YORK — Si quiere sentir la emoción que el gran arte —sin límites imaginativos— y las nuevas ideas al respecto pueden brindar, visite el ala Michael C. Rockefeller del Museo Metropolitano de Arte, rediseñada y reconcebida, y su colección de obras de África, América y Oceanía, que se inaugura el sábado. Disfrute del puro placer visual de las obras —créame, le dejarán boquiabierto— y de las historias que aún se desarrollan.
What to See in N.Y.C. Galleries in May

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Andrew Russeth |Holland Cotter

This week in Newly Reviewed, Holland Cotter covers Sheyla Baykal's downtown stars, a group show from a radical feminist art collective and Young Joon Kwak's quieter side. Through May 10. Soft Network, 636 Broadway; 917-803-3620, softnetwork.art. Image In the New York City art world in the 1960s, '70s and even early '80s, the descriptive terms "downtown" and "underground" were pretty much synonymous.
Jack Whitten's Show Is a Peak MoMA Moment

Mar 27, 2025 | nytimes.com | Holland Cotter

Critic's PickOver nearly six decades, this fantastically inventive artist experimented with paint, turning it into a sculptural medium. Our critic calls his survey "scintillating and sweeping."Jack Whitten, "9.11.01" (2006), a 20-foot-long memorial to the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11, an event that he witnessed firsthand. Credit...
The Frick Collection is Reopening. Here's a Sneak Peek.

Mar 19, 2025 | nytimes.com | Holland Cotter
What to See in N.Y.C. Galleries in February

Feb 6, 2025 | nytimes.com | Holland Cotter

This week in Newly Reviewed, Holland Cotter covers two group shows: one devoted to an important gallery from the past, the other focused on language and silence. Through March 22. Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery, Hunter College, 132 East 68th Street, Manhattan; 212-772-4991, huntercollegeart.org. Image D.E.I. didn't exist in the mainstream New York art world a half-dozen decades ago.
At the Met, an Ancient Balm for the Depths of Winter

Dec 26, 2024 | nytimes.com | Holland Cotter

A centuries-old Buddhist model of the universe has new meaning for the shortest of days and longest of worries. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is, in these darkest days of midwinter, one of the city's spiritual hot spots, thanks to the harmonic convergence of two outstanding and very different exhibitions, both closing soon.
Lorraine O'Grady, Artist Who Defied Category, Is Dead at 90

Dec 15, 2024 | nytimes.com | Holland Cotter

For that piece, she constructed a float at the 1983 Afro-American Day Parade in Harlem and hired a crew of performers to ride on it. Each of the performers held an empty gilded picture frame. As the float made its way up Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, the performers descended into the street and invited spectators to pose for portrait photos within the frames - that is, to be turned into art. The piece was a hit.
Best Art of 2024

Dec 12, 2024 | nytimes.com | Holland Cotter

Art-wise, 2024 had an in-between-things vibe. It was a year of big-deal biennials, but the consensus was that none delivered much firepower. There was a lot of talk about money - what sold for what, and to whom - but no radically record-busting news. In general, the institutional art world veered, as it always does, between uplift (some strong museum shows) and cringe (the $6.2 million banana). I'll go mostly with uplift in the (unranked) list of highlights below.