New York City’s Fall Exhibition Calendar Is Reaching Peak Girlhood

While the Museum at FIT’s doll exhibition explores dolls as purveyors of fashion primarily in the 20th and 21st centuries, the Brooklyn Museum offers a deeper look at the longstanding significance of dolls for girls and women in Hopi (an Indigenous tripe in northeastern Arizona) traditions. Intricately crafted from cottonwood and painted, kachina dolls represent Katsinam, spirits who bring moisture and keep the world in balance. Kachina dolls additionally mark milestones in a Hopi woman’s life, as they are gifted, for example, during baby-naming ceremonies and marriages, along with other objects, such as pottery and baskets.

Drawing largely on its expansive Indigenous art collection, the Brooklyn Museum presents more than 120 artworks, including 53 kachina dolls, from the 19th century to the present. A newly commissioned video underscores their importance through interviews with Hopi artists and community members.

At the American Folk Art Museum from October 9, 2026–February 28, 2027

Needlework Picture, Newburyport, Massachusetts c. 1805–1810. Silk on linen. 16 1/4 x 17 1/2 in. American Folk Art Museum.

Photo: Adam Reich.

Presented during America’s 250th anniversary year, “Locating Girlhood” gives new weight to the early American traditions of needlework and ornamental arts. During the 18th and 19th centuries, samplers, watercolors, and craft-based art forms were part of girls’ education. Historically labeled as “schoolgirl art,” however, these objects have largely been undervalued in the canon.

With nearly 100 works (many loaned from the nation’s leading institutions), this exhibition reconsiders its chosen subject matter from a conceptual standpoint—in particular, why representations of place were so prevalent in works made by girls and young women. Anticipating the popularity of American landscape art, these works uniquely reflected shifting social values, as well as girls’ complex inner worlds.

At the Hispanic Society Museum & Library from November 20, 2026–March 28, 2027

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746 – 1828), The Duchess of Alba, 1797

Courtesy Hispanic Society Museum & Library