11 must-see exhibitions we're looking forward to in 2022

One of New York’s biggest art events, the Whitney Biennial, generally takes place every two years but, after being postponed a year due to Covid, the massive cultural festival hasn’t taken place in the city since 2019. Now, America’s premier survey of contemporary art is coming back in a big way and will be held in the city’s Meatpacking District from April to August. The event also marks the 80th edition of the Biennial.

A new exhibition featuring 200 never-before-seen and rarely seen works by Jean-Michel Basquiat called “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure” is set to open in early Spring 2022 at the Starrett-Lehigh Building in Chelsea. The exhibition will feature a wide range of mediums including paintings, drawings, multimedia, ephemera and artifacts to provide larger context to the work of one of the world’s most famous artists. Alongside that theme of a greater intimacy, the exhibition was actually conceived by the artist’s sisters Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, who run The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat along with their stepmother Nora Fitzpatrick.

This year's Pantone Color of the Year is Very Peri, which is blue with red undertones. The soft, almost purple-y color will show up next year across ad campaigns and in fashion, Pantone predicts. In fact, it'll be the subject of a new digital art show at Chelsea's ARTECHOUSE in the new year. The show will evoke the emotion and feel of the color and offer a customized cocktail menu from the gallery's newly opened XR Bar. We're excited to be awash in this calming color and see a new trippy art show to start our 2022 off right.

The Library for the Performing Arts in Lincoln Center is taking a "walk on the wild side" with the first large-scale exhibition featuring previously unseen and unheard work from Lou Reed’s archive. Opening on what would've been Reed's 80th birthday on June 9, 2022, "Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Stars" is a chance for fans to see how influential the musician was up close with never-before-displayed material across Reed’s creative life from his 1958 Freeport High School band, The Shades, to his final performances in 2013. Audio and video of performances and interviews, photographers’ original prints and contact sheets, handwritten lyrics, personal correspondence, studio notes, album proofs, press, tour posters and Reed’s personal book and record collections and even a selection of Reed’s guitars and stage equipment will be on display from the Lou Reed Archive as well as the newly acquired Salvatore Mercuri Velvet Underground Collection.

As of January 21, the Brooklyn Museum will have a new gallery dedicated to the Arts of Buddhism collection. It'll juxtapose artwork with nearly 70 objects from 14 countries dating from the second century C.E. to the early 2000s. Many of the works on display will be sculptural depictions of Buddhas and other enlightened figures, as well as ritual tools and ornaments made for use in Buddhist temples and a small selection of paintings. Among the objects newly on view are several of the Museum’s masterpieces, including a rare eighth-century image of the goddess Tara from Odisha, India; a Chinese silver reliquary dedicated by a Buddhist monk and his mother; and a gilt-bronze seated Buddha from southern China. There are also at least nineteen objects that have never before been on display at the museum. In addition, as part of the inaugural installation of the gallery, a pair of important Japanese mandala paintings, dating to the fourteenth century, will be on view for the first time in twenty-five years.