Independent 20th Century is pleased to announce highlights of the upcoming show, to be held September 24th–27th, 2026, at Marcel Breuer’s iconic edifice at 945 Madison Avenue. Invited international galleries fill the building with curated exhibitions of 20th-century art, which include solo surveys of both canonical and overlooked figures, and thematic presentations of specific movements in art from 1900 to 1999.

Notable solo and group exhibitions at the show include less familiar works by legendary artists, reactivations of seminal projects from the past century, and explorations of compelling topics in the work of key practitioners. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, based in New York, exhibits a selection of Warhol’s homoerotic drawings from the 1950s, many of them never before seen. Created before Warhol (1928–87) became a leading proponent of Pop Art, these drawings of objects of desire, affection and intimacy between men, and graphic depictions of sex, evince a nascent queer sensibility in New York art and cultural circles a decade and more before Stonewall. New York Times critic and Warhol biographer Blake Gopnik has said of these works that, “No other American artist of their era could have made them.” The presentation, titled Andy Warhol: Love, Sex, and Desire, marks the first time the Warhol Foundation will participate in an art fair.

Other presentations during the run of Independent 20th Century also look at particular moments in modernist art, and many of these feature themes that span two or more exhibitions, creating art-historical throughlines across the show. A self-taught artist, Emma Kunz (1892–1963) hailed from rural Switzerland and thought of herself primarily as a “healer.” In 1938, she began to create large-scale abstract geometric drawings in graphite and colored pencil on graph paper as diagnostic tools. Meant to envision “energy fields,” the specific functions of the complex drawings remain unknown and they were largely unseen during the artist’s lifetime. Hauser & Wirth, with multiple locations around the world, brings a selection of Kunz’s drawings to Independent 20th Century, where they converse with the works of General Idea, the seminal Canadian artist trio, active from the late 1960s to 1994. After two of its members were diagnosed with AIDS in the early 1990s, the group’s multidisciplinary practice turned to the representation of the epidemic, with paintings, posters, and sculptures that appropriated the format of Robert Indiana’s Pop icon “LOVE” to read “AIDS” and enormous sculptures of AZT capsules, one of the few drugs available to treat the disease at the time. AA Bronson (b. 1946), the surviving member of General Idea, has gone on to a solo career as an artist and healer, which includes AA Bronson’s School for Young Shamans. New York’s Mitchell-Innes & Nash will mount an exhibition of General Idea’s work, including the late “AIDS” paintings, at Independent in September.

In the 1950s, the torch of abstraction in the United States was taken up by the Abstract Expressionists in New York. Several of Independent’s presentations this fall touch upon this remarkable history. The legendary dealer Eleanor Ward opened Stable Gallery on West 58th Street in 1953 and quickly began to champion the group. While AbEx has come down to us mythologized as the art of macho, hard-drinking men, women always formed a crucial part of the movement and Ward showed and supported them from the outset. At Independent 20th Century in September, New York’s Berry Campbell will present The Women of Stable Gallery, a group exhibition of eight artists who showed with Ward during their lifetimes: Ethel Schwabacher (1903–84), Alice Baber (1928–82), Janice Biala (1903–2000), Elaine de Kooning (1918–89), Dorothy Dehner (1901–94), Perle Fine (1905–88), Joan Mitchell (1925–92), Mercedes Matter (1913–2001), Charlotte Park (1918–2010), and Yvonne Thomas (1913–2009).

A complementary solo presentation of Elaine de Kooning’s work may be seen at New York’s Olney Gleason, while an exhibition of Joan Mitchell’s sketchbook drawings in colored markers is mounted by Bueno & Co., also from New York. A related talk at the fair, Market Insight: The Women of Abstract Expressionism, will feature Sotheby’s Specialist in Contemporary Art Kathleen Hart, Nick Olney (Olney Gleason), Martha Campbell (Berry Campbell), and writer Marion Maneker (Puck).

Bockley Gallery from Minneapolis brings a survey of work in various mediums from across six decades by George Morrison (1919–2000). A member of the Ojibwe Tribe, Morrison came from Minnesota to New York in 1943 and quickly found his way to Abstract Expressionist circles, becoming one of the only Indigenous members of the group. His work toggles between abstract and representational modes and often retains a connection to place, whether the city or the rural Great Lakes region where he grew up and later retired.

Bronx-born Rita Keegan (b. 1949) moved to London in 1980 and quickly became a leader in the British Black Arts Movement. She helped found several institutions, including the Brixton Art Gallery, a pioneering space that championed artists of color, women, and queer artists long before notions of identity politics entered the mainstream. Keegan was an innovative early adopter of emergent technologies, such as computers, scanners, and digital animation, and began using photocopiers as part of her collage practice in the mid-1980s. Niru Ratnam from London brings a selection of Keegan’s work from the 1980s to Independent 20th Century, including her photocopy collage works that meditate on ideas of selfhood, family, and community, and incorporate photographic images from her own middle-class Black Canadian family, dating back to the Victorian era.