Showrunner turned one last month📌 In just the past year, we launched our mobile app, were featured in the New York Times, and partnered with Elephant Magazine and Future Fair 2026.
All the while, we also collected a lot of information on everything happening in the art world. To celebrate this milestone, we decided to do a spring 2026 art season recap.
Over the course of just these five months, we tracked 2,600+ shows in NYC! The below is available as a live, interactive visualization here.
Unsurprisingly, a majority of them were in Chelsea, Tribeca, and the Lower East Side.
At the same time, we were curious as to what these shows were about. Many of the shows we find are given subject matter tags. In this case, only 2,211 were tagged — but they offered a lot of insight. (The following charts are also published here).
To start the year off strong, Showrunner recorded 438 shows for the month of January, with material experimentation being the most popular subject.
In our eyes, Material Experimentation is best represented by Jasper Johns’ show, Copy/Trace. Johns originally made the above work, Studies for Skin I (1962), as a study for a sculpture, but it clearly stands on its own. In the process of creating it — coating his own skin in oil, pressing it to the sheet, and tracing the residual in charcoal — Johns also conducted a meticulous material experiment.
February saw a new player on the board: shows focusing on mental health. The month also had an increase in the societal critique and political commentary categories.
These shows had a heavy focus on introspection through art. Dreamkeeper by Arlina Cai particularly caught our attention, with its water-diluted acrylic interpretations of Cai’s innermost thoughts and experiences. The blurred focus of each work not only lulls you into a meditative trance, but is a fitting reminder that we are being given a window into the mind of the artist. It makes sense, then, that we can only just begin to understand it.
The month also had an increase in the societal critique and political commentary categories, which we’ll get into below.
There’s a lot of overlap between these two, but societal critique shows, such as My Social Media Is My Art, are typically more focused on examining our day-to-day habits. One piece in the show, Kaley Weil’s Id die for you...thanks (2024), does exactly that. By making otherwise ephemeral text messages into ceramic, Weil underscores the absurdity and aloofness conveyed by our primary methods of communication.
The political commentary category, on the other hand, features shows that are a direct response to major world events, as seen in Arleene Correa Valencia’s CÓDICE •• SOBREVIVIENDO A LA PERSECUCIÓN / CODEX •• SURVIVING THE PERSECUTION. Correa Valencia draws on time-honored traditions such as amate papermaking and textiles to criticize our present, bringing us descriptively titled pieces such as Perdí Mi Infancia Aprendiendo A Protegerte Y Lo Haría Todo De Nuevo En Cada Vida. / I Lost My Childhood Learning How To Protect You, And I’d Do It All Again In Every Life. (2025).
The otherworldly category made a comeback in March.
Film stills and digital reproductions don’t do this category justice — as the name suggests, Otherworldly avoids characterization. Just see Fin Simonetti’s solo show, Act of God (1), which flashes images of specially-bred exotic pigeons behind the panes of Gothic windows. As the short film progresses, the birds morph into kaleidoscope-like-forms that evoke biblical angels.
April saw an increase in the nature and environmentalism categories, coinciding with Earth Month.
The nature category not only explores the natural world, but humans’ continually evolving relationship to our planet. Take, for example, Jocelyn Fine’s show, And the Moonbeams Kiss the Sea, in which she removes the boundary separating us from our surroundings. Fine’s work shows how landscapes, like us, are capable of emotions and action, such as kissing, holding, and touching.
Meanwhile, there are no cases in which a show is exclusively labeled as “environmentalism” — it always shows up alongside nature.
As the art world wound down for the summer, the otherworldly and mental health categories made one last push.
Find many more shows like this on Showrunner. The art world is your oyster :)
Notes / Methodology:
A “show” refers to a listing in the Showrunner app. While most of these are actually gallery shows, it also includes booth listings at fairs, such as Future Fair.
The data has been cleaned using a Python script to remove duplicate records. Even then, a general script cannot account for every data entry inconsistency. Because of this, it should be noted that these numbers are all approximate.
In the first visual, a “tagged” show refers to shows that had tags on the Showrunner app. Those without tags were dropped, and duplicate records were removed. Because of this, the number of tagged shows cannot be equated with the total number of shows.
One show can be (and is often) tagged with multiple subject matters. To choose the “most representative,” we filtered shows where the ONLY tag was that category. At the same time, we recognize that this isn’t necessarily representative of the show in its entirety.
Data story by Mia Shou. Mia is a current junior studying art history and journalism at NYU.
Opening This Week
🗓️Friday, June 19
Chelsea
Chris Fallows · Montague Contemporary · 526 W 26th St, 4th Floor
Tribeca
Alley Cats · Ruttkowski;68 · 46 Cortlandt Alley (trending)
Matt Phillips · Dimin · 406 Broadway, 2nd Floor (trending)
Ya-Ting Kao · Nunu Fine Art · 381 Broome St
🗓️Saturday, June 20
Central Brooklyn
Animal [A Listening Gym] · Pioneer Works · 159 Pioneer St
Chelsea
20Th Friends Of Pleiades Exhibtion · Pleiades Gallery · 547 West 27th Street, Suite #304
SoHo-NoHo
Aya Brown · Company Gallery · 145 Elizabeth Street
Taeer M · Company Gallery · 145 Elizabeth Street
Tribeca
Hansi Fuchs · Ulrik · 175 Canal Street, 3rd Floor
David Spriggs · Arsenal Contemporary Art · 21 Cortlandt Alley, 2nd Floor
On View Now (opened this week)
🗓️Wednesday, June 17
East Village
Maud Madsen · Half Gallery · 235 East 4th Street (trending)
Tommy May · Half Gallery · 235 East 4th Street
Lower East Side
Traces Of Human Presence · Kaliner · 42 Allen St
🗓️Thursday, June 18
Chelsea
Roller Rink · Fredericks & Freiser · 536 West 24th Street
Tribeca
Summer Symphony: Work From Ippodo Gallery’S Archive · Ippodo Gallery · 35 N Moore St
Made To Appear · Gr Gallery · 116 Chambers Street, 2F (trending)