Are people who FaceTime while walking down the street literally insane?

Frieze returns May 13–17 with dozens of leading galleries from New York City and around the world. The 2026 installment will transform The Shed into an international destination for the visual art community with a particular focus on art from Latin American countries. Another highlight is choreographer, artist and writer Jonathan González' Body Configurations (2023–2025), a photographic installation on Level 6 of The Shed, as well as the premiere of his new work, magic hour–golden time. 

If you’ve ever wondered what haute couture might look like at the bottom of the ocean, inside a mushroom spore or on a distant alien planet, the Brooklyn Museum has an answer—and it involves bioluminescent algae, laser-cut dresses and a whole lot of 3D printing.

Opening on Sunday, May 16, “Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses” marks the North American debut of the Dutch designer’s sprawling retrospective, bringing more than 140 of her couture creations to Brooklyn along with contemporary art, scientific specimens, fossils, sound installations and immersive video works.

But honestly, calling these things “dresses” barely does them justice. Van Herpen has spent the past two decades becoming fashion’s reigning architect of the impossible, building garments that resemble frozen waterfalls, coral reefs, jellyfish and microscopic organisms more than anything you would traditionally see in Vogue. Her work mixes old-school couture craftsmanship with technologies like 3D printing, laser cutting and experimental biomaterials, often in partnership with scientists, architects and engineers.

Celebrate all things design at this annual festival that brings in the city’s top designers, makers, and manufacturers, along with cutting-edge design businesses and districts, and leading cultural and academic institutions. The festival covers all areas of design, from architecture and urban design to product design and entertainment design.

The week-long festival from May 14–20 will take place at different venues across the five boroughs, so make sure to check out their website for updates on programming. 

After more than a decade of drawing crowds to Brooklyn waterfronts and Prospect Park’s lawns, Smorgasburg is finally heading somewhere a little more central. Starting on May 14, the city’s best-known open-air food market will set up shop at Columbus Circle, bringing craveable eats to the southwest corner of Central Park.

For anyone who’s ever schlepped to Brooklyn for a bao bun and a soft-serve moment, this is big. The new outpost will feature more than 25 vendors—though the exact lineup hasn’t dropped yet, expect the usual Smorgasburg formula: plenty of newcomers, cult-favorite regulars and dishes engineered to go viral.And here’s the twist: you won’t have to wait for the weekend. The Central Park edition will run Thursday through Saturday from 12 pm to 8 pm, turning what used to be a once-a-week pilgrimage into an office-lunch-break option. Entry is free, you pay per bite and the rest is up to you. But the real appeal might be the setting. Instead of jostling for picnic tables, you can take your haul straight into the park.

The expansion comes as Smorgasburg enters its 16th season, already operating in Williamsburg, Prospect Park and the World Trade Center. This year’s broader roster includes more than 70 vendors across all the locations, so the Central Park addition feels like a natural next step (and arguably its most high-profile yet).

The new market will run May 14 through September 19 at the Columbus Circle entrance on West 59th Street. Show up hungry, bring friends and maybe a blanket.

For a playwright who's been dead for a few hundred years, Molière is sure having a moment. Hot on the heels of dueling Off Broadway productions of Tartuffe, beloved annual Brooklyn tradition Molière in the Park has announced its 2026 season of performances, workshops and outdoor productions, all completely free. The ambitious slate reaffirms the company’s mission to make classical theater accessible to everyone, regardless of background or income.

The season kicks off on May 14 at BRIC with A Very Modern Classical Evening, a double-bill that pairs contemporary and classical voices. The program includes staged readings of The Regulars, a new verse tragedy by playwright Le’Asha Julius, alongside Molière’s satirical one-act comedy The Ludicrous Ladies, starring Michael Emerson and Lakisha May. The performance continues MIP’s practice of placing classic texts in conversation with modern storytelling.

Sounds That Move takes over Bushwick May 15–17 for a block-party-style sprawl across Scott Avenue with five stages, indoor-outdoor venues and a steady churn of live music, DJs and creative collisions. Expect the thrill of discovering new artists, unexpected sets and spontaneous moments plus nightlife energy that bleeds from one space to the next. Come ready to wander, linger and lose track of time (and likely your friends).

The Ninth Avenue International Food Festival (a.k.a. the city's oldest and largest food festival) turns Hell’s Kitchen into a gloriously chaotic, mile-long buffet, shutting down Ninth Avenue from 42nd Street to 57th Street for two days of serious eating from 10am to 6pm. Expect a globe-trotting spread—Brazilian, Thai, Greek, Italian and more—plus live music, street performers and the kind of crowd size that makes grazing an extreme sport. 

A landmark exhibition of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s earliest works is heading back to the borough where it all began—and for New York art obsessives, this is the kind of show that doesn’t come around often.

Opening during New York Art Week this May, Our Friend, Jean: Early Works of Jean-Michel Basquiat will take over Brooklyn’s Bishop Gallery, offering a rare look at the artist before the fame, the auctions and the mythology. The show runs May 13–17 and centers on a deeply personal collection that captures Basquiat in his formative years, when he was still hustling between downtown apartments and making work wherever he could.

Much of the work on view comes from the collection of Alexis Adler, who lived with Basquiat during a crucial stretch from 1979 to 1980. Her archive includes intimate photographs and pieces created on everything from doors to furniture, documenting the moment just before Basquiat’s meteoric rise.

the-top smash burger creation.

Built around richly marbled A5 Wagyu beef that is ground in-house daily and seared to a perfect medium-rare, this is less fast-food nostalgia and more downtown steakhouse fantasy disguised as a burger. Every detail leans indulgent without losing the messy, craveable spirit that makes a smash burger great in the first place.

The burger is layered with a 13-year aged white cheddar that brings deep sharpness and nutty richness, balanced by a slow-braised sweet onion compote infused with Herbes de Provence. Then things get gloriously excessive. A quenelle of truffle sturgeon caviar crowns the burger before it is finished tableside with generous shavings of fresh black truffle.

Everything lands on a house-baked brioche bun brushed with roasted bone marrow butter, adding another layer of savory richness that somehow pushes the entire thing even further into celebration territory.

At $30, Sovereign’s Burger Month special feels designed for people who believe burgers deserve the same reverence as tasting menus. It is decadent, dramatic, and unapologetically extra in all the right ways.

Available for a limited time during Burger Month at Time Out Market Union Square, this is the burger equivalent of ordering champagne at lunch on a Tuesday simply because you can.

A film festival dedicated entirely to Wallace Shawn is landing on the Lower East Side this month, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. Titled “Wallace Shawn: The Master Builder,” the series kicked off on May 8 at Metrograph, running through May 22 with a lineup that stretches beyond the actor’s most meme-able roles.

Shawn, now 82, has spent decades bouncing between worlds: beloved character actor, playwright, essayist and occasional leading man. There’s Clueless, where he plays the perpetually exasperated Mr. Hall, and yes, there’s The Princess Bride, the source of that immortal one-word catchphrase. But the real draw here is everything in between.

There’s Vanya on 42nd Street, where Shawn takes center stage in a Chekhov adaptation, and A Master Builder, his 2013 reworking of Ibsen that gives the festival its name. There’s also the rarely seen Marie and Bruce, starring Julianne Moore and Matthew Broderick, which never received a proper theatrical release and is being screened here with special permission.