May is one of the most beautiful months to be on the Upper East Side. The neighborhood is in bloom, Madison Avenue feels especially alive, and the gallery calendar is filled with exceptional exhibitions worth seeing. From blue-chip gallery shows to spring auction previews and intimate townhouse exhibitions, this is the Upper East Side at its best: elegant, cultural, and quietly full of discovery.
Marcel Duchamp + Robert Rauschenberg at Gagosian
April 25–June 27, 2026 | 980 Madison Avenue
Gagosian’s new ground-floor space at 980 Madison Avenue opens with a major Marcel Duchamp presentation, bringing his iconic readymades back into focus in the same building where these editions made their American debut in 1965. Alongside it, Gagosian is presenting important early works by Robert Rauschenberg from the Cy Twombly Foundation. Together, the two exhibitions create a sharp conversation between two artists who changed the way we think about objects, authorship, experimentation, and the boundaries of art.
Tom Sachs: “Furniture” at Salon 94
April 23–June 20, 2026 | 3 East 89th Street
At Salon 94, Tom Sachs turns furniture into a study of sculpture, function, craft, and daily life. The exhibition brings together his unmistakable visual language with objects designed to be used, lived with, and reconsidered. It is playful, design-aware, and very Upper East Side in the best way — a thoughtful look at how the things around us can become part of a larger artistic conversation.
Sotheby’s Spring Auction Exhibitions
Public Exhibition: May 2–18, 2026 | 945 Madison Avenue
Sotheby’s spring auction exhibitions are always worth visiting during the May sales season, offering the chance to see museum-level works before they move into private collections. The experience feels different from a museum or gallery: part exhibition, part market preview, part glimpse into the world of collecting. Make it an afternoon and book a table for lunch at the newly opened Marcel, Sotheby’s restaurant on the Breuer’s mezzanine, for a polished uptown stop after the previews.
Salvador Dalí: “The Great Years, 1929–1939” at Di Donna
April 16–June 13, 2026 | 744 Madison Avenue
Di Donna’s Dalí exhibition focuses on one of the most important decades in the artist’s career, when he developed the visual language and public persona that made him one of the defining figures of Surrealism. The show offers a concentrated look at Dalí’s world during these pivotal years: dreamlike, theatrical, psychologically charged, and unmistakably his own.
Matisse: “The Pursuit of Harmony” at Acquavella Galleries
April 9–May 22, 2026 | 18 East 79th Street
Acquavella’s Matisse exhibition brings together paintings, works on paper, and sculpture tracing the artist’s exploration of form, color, balance, and rhythm across several decades. It is elegant, refined, and beautifully suited to Acquavella’s townhouse setting. For anyone who loves modern art, this is one of the most classic and rewarding Upper East Side gallery experiences of the season.
Selected Works: 19th and 20th Century at Helly Nahmad Gallery
Through May 22, 2026 | 975 Madison Avenue
Helly Nahmad Gallery’s Selected Works: 19th and 20th Century is a refined Madison Avenue stop for classic blue-chip art. The exhibition offers the kind of quiet, highly curated experience that makes the Upper East Side gallery scene so special. It is not about spectacle; it is about seeing important works in an intimate, polished setting.
Domenico Gnoli: “The Adventure of Domenico Gnoli” at Lévy Gorvy Dayan
March 18–May 23, 2026 | 19 East 64th Street
Lévy Gorvy Dayan’s Domenico Gnoli exhibition is one of the most distinctive shows uptown this month. Gnoli’s close-up paintings of fabric, buttons, beds, furniture, hair, and everyday details feel surreal, stylish, and strangely contemporary. His work sits somewhere between fashion, design, Pop, and Surrealism, but it remains entirely its own — precise, elegant, and quietly unforgettable.
Leonor Fini: “A Practice of Transformation” at Colnaghi
May 13–June 26, 2026 | Colnaghi New York
Colnaghi’s Leonor Fini exhibition brings together works on paper in dialogue with Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and African ritual objects. Fini’s sphinxes, feline priestesses, and androgynous figures are shown alongside masks, reliquaries, and ancestral forms, creating a layered conversation around identity, metamorphosis, ritual, and the body as a site of transformation. It is theatrical, symbolic, and deeply atmospheric.
Why This May Art Walk Is Worth It
What makes the Upper East Side gallery scene so special is the way culture is woven into the neighborhood itself. You can move from Madison Avenue auction previews to townhouse galleries, from modern masters to Surrealism, from design objects to contemporary sculpture, all within a few beautiful blocks. This May, the neighborhood offers an especially strong reason to spend an afternoon uptown — seeing art, walking the avenues, and discovering the quieter cultural rhythm that makes the Upper East Side one of New York’s most enduring neighborhoods.
