As New York Fashion Week brings its September 2026 season to a close, the city’s creative energy continues beyond the runway. This week, galleries, artist-run spaces, and cultural venues across the East Village, SoHo, Tribeca, Chinatown, and Two Bridges offer a mix of openings, exhibitions, conversations, and events — making downtown a natural place to keep exploring between shows, dinners, and late nights.
It’s one of many exhibitions to take in this week as downtown’s galleries and cultural spaces offer a different rhythm from the fashion schedule happening across the city. From the East Village through SoHo, Tribeca, Chinatown, and Two Bridges, here’s what to see and where to go each weekday during NYFW.
East Village | Tuesday
Cooper Union, 7 East 7th Street, ‘On This Spot at The Cooper Union: Five Pioneering Women Artists’ with Margaret Morton, Eva Hesse, Lee Krasner, Marcia Marcus, and Maria Lassnig
Nguyen Wahed, 504 E 12th St, ‘Malleable Archives: What the Future Remembers’ featuring various artists, curated by Vanessa Fuchs and Nhung Nguyen
Hemispheric Institute, 20 Cooper Square, ‘In The Dark: Scenes from a Moving Archive’ from 6pm’ by Carlos Martiel
Soho | Tuesday
Peter Freeman, 140 Grand St, ‘Once and Future’ by John Dilg
Pomegranate Press at 66 Greene St, Agua E zone launch and signing by Myles Loftin, 6pm-9pm
East Village | Wednesday
Cooper Union, 41 Cooper Square, Guild & Greyshkul, with Sarah VanDerBeek, Anya Kielar, Johannes VanDerBeek, 5pm-8pm
Goethe Institute, 30 Irving Place, ‘A Horizon Remains’ by Tammam Azzam
Lower East Side | Wednesday
Fierman, 127 Henry St, 10 Years of Fierman
Tribeca | Wednesday
Almine Rech, 361 Broadway, ‘The Tesseract’ by Zio Ziegler
Artists Space, 11 Cortlandt Alley, Book release reception/signing from 7pm with Glenn Ligon
Lower East Side | Thursday
Entrance, 48 Ludlow Street, work by Tom Friedman
Studio 9BC, 616 East 9th St, work by Will Warasila
Hannah Traore Gallery, 150 Orchard Street, ‘Nonsites Revisited’ by James Perkins
The Hole, 312 Bowery, ‘Medley’ by Pablo Tomek
14BC Gallery, 626 East 14th St, Sex, War, and The Devil by Alex Mitchell, 6pm-9pm
Gordon Gallery, 139 Norfolk St, ‘Groundwork’ by Smadar Eliasaf
Soho | Thursday
Pietro Alexander, 59 Wooster St, 2nd Floor, ‘Luminous Landscapes’ featuring various artists, ‘Eleven Day Paintings’ by Ryan Oakes, Trevor Oakes
The White Loft, 273 Grand Street, The Extraordinary Ordinary - A Memoir in Photographs 1945-1954, 5pm-9pm\
Tribeca | Thursday
James Cohan, 52 Walker St, ‘Memory of the Surface’ by Vicky Colombet
Anonymous Gallery, 136 Baxter St, grass roots- hinges’ by Dozie Kanu
Off Paradise, 120 Walker Street, ‘Through’ with Greg Bogin, James Rosenquist, Jane Reyonds, Maximilian Schubert, Kristin Walsh, 4pm-8pm
15 Orient, 72 Walker Street, 3rd Floor, Paintings and Drawings 2017-2022 by Deborah Kahn, 6pm-9pm
Featured this week is Refik Anadol, whose work appears in Malleable Archives: What the Future Remembers at Nguyen Wahed Gallery. Curated by Vanessa Fuchs and Nhung Nguyen, the group exhibition brings together eight artists whose practices explore movement, transformation, and the shifting relationship between physical and digital life.
Together, these artists consider how something that appears fixed can remain in motion. The archive, traditionally understood as a record of the past, becomes something more fluid — a place where memory and meaning can be reconsidered and remade. Malleable Archives asks what deserves to be carried forward, what might need to change, and how the choices we make in the present shape what the future remembers.
Anadol’s Winds of Yawanawá, created with the Yawanawá people, brings Indigenous drawings and songs into dialogue with AI and environmental data from the Amazon. Weather, culture, and technology become part of an evolving visual language, turning data into something that behaves less like a fixed record and more like a living archive. The work also raises questions about how technology can be used to amplify cultural knowledge, draw attention to the rainforest, and reconsider the traces we leave behind.
Featured work above by Refik Anadol
