By Kat Herriman
Works by Mark di Suvero preside over the South Fields at Storm King Art Center in New York’s Hudson Valley.
The best summers aren’t spent in one place. For those looking to soak in the best of the contemporary art scene across the country this year, that is especially true. The institutions are swinging big, and the geographic options for art travel sprawl from the Hudson Valley to the Nevada desert. Whether you’re mapping out an American road trip or collecting excuses to fly somewhere, here’s where summer is actually happening.
Rural New York & New England
Upstate Art Weekend (June 25–29) is just a taste of the programming that awaits a couple of hours’ drive from New York. The Hudson Valley and Berkshires are brimming with a brand-new crop of shows: Close to the city, Storm King Art Center plays host to Anicka Yi’s outdoor debut. Yi—who has taken over the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern and the Guggenheim—touches down at the sprawling sculpture park with work that is, true to form, very much alive. Not far away, at Dia Beacon, check in for a presentation of late iconoclast John Chamberlain’s smashed vehicles: It’s the only parking lot worth lingering in this summer. Further afield, in Western Massachusetts, MASS MoCA, the industrial plant–turned-kunsthalle, looms larger, with a major presentation by Indigenous artist Jeffrey Gibson, who has been at the forefront of the contemporary art vanguard for the past couple of years.
Ellsworth Kellys’ Color Panels for a Large Wall II (1978) at the Parrish Art Museum.
Far East
The cradle of Ab-Ex heroes like Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, the Hamptons have long been a storied destination for artists and art lovers alike. The institutions keep that spirit alive by serving the summer throngs their biggest blockbusters of the year. This season brings an Ellsworth Kelly moment to the Parrish Art Museum’s airy halls; his bright, defined shapes are a pleasing contrast to the wild meadows that surround the museum. And farther down the road, don’t miss a visit to Dia Bridgehampton, where hometown hero Alan Ruiz answers the genius of Dia forebear Dan Flavin with incisive work that wields the language of minimalism to address the power structures that lurk behind our built environment.
Raven Halfmoon with her glazed stoneware sculptures, now on view at Ballroom Marfa; photo by Alex Marks, courtesy of Ballroom Marfa.
Desert Days
Burning Man isn’t the only summer art destination in the desert—but it is the one most beloved by artists. Every year, for one week culminating on Labor Day, a devoted subsection of the art world heads out to the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada to romp around with other creators, and the temporary city they collectively build is one of the most radical artistic experiments on Earth. Not far away, in Reno, the Nevada Museum of Art has transformed its entire 120,000– square-foot building to accommodate “Into the Time Horizon,” a landmark survey of nearly 200 artists reckoning with the climate crisis. It is the most ambitious exhibition in the institution’s history. In July, Art Santa Fe is the desert’s most welcoming on-ramp for new collectors. And if you’re making the full pilgrimage into Texas Hill Country, don’t skip Ballroom Marfa, where Raven Halfmoon presents colossal, glazed stoneware sculptures that honor her Caddo Nation ancestors and the generations of Indigenous women who keep their traditions alive.
Nobuo Sekine’s Phase of Nothingness—Stone Stack (1970/2025) at Utah’s Powder Art Foundation; courtesy of Nobuo Sekine Estate.
Mountain Time
As we have established, the mountains aren’t just for winter. In fact, in the summer, the hills tend to sing. We recommend hiking the ones over at Powder Art Foundation in Utah, where new large-scale artworks are added every year. Look out for chandeliers in the trees by Kayode Ojo, or a towering rock totem by Nobuo Sekine. If you’re in the Rockies, there’s a good chance you’ll be stopping through Aspen—the art world’s high season is in late July, when the Aspen Art Museum hosts well-heeled pilgrims for the annual AIR Festival, bringing artists from all over the world for five days of performance and activation. This year’s highlights include a new theatrical performance by artist Camille Henrot with sets by designer Adam Charlap Hyman.
Frank Stella’s Double Concentric Squares, on view at The Art Institute of Chicago; courtesy The Art Institute of Chicago and Artists Rights Society, New York.
Lake Country
When the Great Lakes start to warm up, Chicago’s art scene springs into full bloom. At the Museum of Contemporary Art, the late sculptor Kenzi Shiokava finally gets his due: a first museum solo surveying nearly 50 years of work made in a Compton warehouse, where he transformed driftwood, telephone poles, and castoff objects into towering wooden totems and enigmatic box assemblages. A second-generation Japanese Brazilian who arrived in Los Angeles just before the 1965 Watts riots, Shiokava drew on Japanese woodcarving, Afro-Brazilian spiritual traditions, and the assemblage lineage of South LA to build a practice that resists every category while somehow belonging to all of them. Across town at the Art Institute of Chicago, “Beyond Form: Abstraction at Midcentury” offers a different kind of immersion: a chance to sit with the paintings and gestures that cracked open the 20th century.
An installation view of “Everything Now All At Once” at the Nasher; photo by Brian Quinby, courtesy Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.
Southern Charm
The South always has its own rhythms, idling rather than catapulting, and the art scene follows this independent script. At Glenstone, the incomparable jewel-box museum campus tucked into the Maryland countryside, you can catch one of the largest presentations of Andrea Bowers’s work to date. It captures Bowers at the height of her powers, deploying eye-catching strategies (disco balls, neon lights, functional swings) to draw people into thoughts and questions that usually take the energy out of the room. In Durham, North Carolina, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke is marking 20 years of visionary collecting with “Everything Now All At Once,” a greatest-hits survey put together by current staff that reads like the spine of an excellent mixtape, with works by Nick Cave, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Firelei Báez, Barkley L. Hendricks, and other icons.
Maren Hassinger’s Tree Duet I, 5617 San Vicente Blvd, Los Angeles, 1977-2021.
Best of the Left Coast
California boasts some of the most spectacular art campuses in North America, including its latest addition in LA, the David Geffen Galleries, designed by Peter Zumthor, which recently opened after nearly two decades of anticipation. It hits the mark. Up the Pacific Coast Highway, the Bay Area also delivers two summer must-sees. At the de Young, Nigerian artist Nengi Omuku makes her first US institutional debut with “The Gathering,” bringing her luminous landscape paintings on hand-woven sanyan fabric into conversation with the living density of Golden Gate Park. Across the bay at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, better known as BAMPFA, the view is longer. “Maren Hassinger: Living Moving Growing” is the most comprehensive retrospective yet of an exceptional LA–born artist who has spent 50 years coaxing wire, rope, and industrial castoffs into new life forms.
What to Pack
Before you set off on your artful escape, head to Bal Harbour Shops to pick up these inspired looks to take along for the adventure.
