Brooklyn Now

Curated by FITZ & CO · 5 exhibitions

Brooklyn's art landscape this week is anchored by Public Art Fund's presentation of Guardian Spirit by Woody De Othello at Brooklyn Bridge Park, where monumental ceramic and bronze forms transform domestic objects into spiritually charged presences. Nearby, the Brooklyn Museum opens Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses, a major survey bringing together fashion, technology, science, and ecology through more than 140 works. In Red Hook, Pioneer Works continues its interdisciplinary program with Khajistan's Office of War Information. In DUMBO, A.I.R. Gallery's Benefit & Moving Party doubles as a farewell to the cooperative's Plymouth Street home ahead of its move to Manhattan. In Bushwick, Underdonk offers a tightly curated two-person exhibition that runs as a quiet counter-rhythm to the May fair circuit.

Exhibitions

Public Art Fund — Brooklyn Bridge Park · For his first solo outdoor exhibition in New York City, Woody De Othello (b. 1991, Miami, Florida) presents Guardian Spirit, comprising four recent large-scale bronzes and three new totemic redwood sculptures. This exhibition highlights the artist's ongoing exploration of nkisi — ritual objects from Western and Central Africa that embody spiritual presences and channel protective or healing forces. The exhibition features seven sculptural works exploring themes of communication and emotion through everyday objects transformed into ceremonial forms, with symbolic hand-carved totems incorporating imagery of hands, kneeling figures, ears, and birds.

Brooklyn Museum · Couture-as-sculpture survey of the Dutch designer's collaborations across architecture, biology, and engineering.

Pioneer Works · An immersive installation by Karachi-based archive and publishing platform Khajistan, founded by filmmaker Saad Khan, that reimagines the machinery of American wartime messaging as an office in decay. Printers continuously produce reproductions of US military propaganda leaflets dropped over Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya between 1990 and 2022, while computer terminals invite visitors into a digital archive of the leaflets and their translations. The show extends Khajistan's mission of preserving censored and underrepresented print media across a cultural geography from North Africa to South Asia.

A.I.R. Gallery · A.I.R.'s annual spring benefit doubles in 2026 as a farewell to the gallery's longtime Plymouth Street home before its move to Manhattan. The benefit exhibition pairs an in-person preview (May 13, 6–8pm) with an online auction featuring works donated by over twenty-five A.I.R. members, and culminates in a May 27 Moving Party with a performance by Asia Stewart. Proceeds fund the renovation of A.I.R.'s new Manhattan space, which will double the square footage devoted to programs.

Underdonk · A two-person exhibition pairing Angela Conant and Laura Frantz at Underdonk's Bushwick artist-run space. The show takes its title from a meditation on origins, threshold states, and the work that precedes a recognizable beginning — a quiet counter-rhythm to the May fair circuit.

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