Muses: The City & The Artist

Opera Gallery New York

08 November - 07 December 2023

Opera Gallery New York is pleased to present Muses: The City & The Artist, a group exhibition exploring the reciprocal influence of New York City on its artist community. From artists who’ve lived and died in the city, to artists whose relationship to the city was merely transient, this exhibition explores the personification of the city as a demanding and mercurial muse and ‘the artist’ as an assemblage of interwoven stories both real and imagined from the past and present.

The exhibition will feature works by Mel Bochner, Alexander Calder, John Chamberlain, George Condo, Willem de Kooning, Niki de Saint Phalle, Shepard Fairey, Keith Haring, Robert Indiana, Alex Katz, Yayoi Kusama, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Prince, David Salle, Kenny Scharf, Mickalene Thomas, Manolo Valdés, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselman and Kehinde Wiley.

Muses: The City & The Artist examines broader themes of cultural currency and the artist’s economic and identity-oriented relationship to urbanism. The exhibition further explores the influence of fame, politics, and public policy on the development, destruction and/or disappearance of hallowed cultural ground in New York City. We invite visitors to explore this complicated yet enduring love story between the city & the artist–muses whose stories are intricately and inherently intertwined.