"Stay tuned for updates about the 2027 season." That line sits at the top of the Brooklyn Museum's First Saturdays page this week. It means the free evening program that has run for more than 25 years has no dates left this year. The 2026 series ran six times, from February 7 to August 1. The last one was "Where Brooklyn Meets the Caribbean," and there is nothing listed for the fall.
This matters more this year because the fall season is unusually full. Michael Richards: Free F'All has been in the lobby since September 11. Then, over the first weekend of October, the museum opened five more exhibitions. Cézanne to Modigliani, Hopi Kachina Dolls and Mika Ninagawa: Feel the Flow(ers) opened on October 2. Art of Manga and Manga Before Manga followed on October 3. The October shows opened together, but everything on view now closes one show at a time, starting on November 8. If you are a short walk away, the useful questions are which shows close first and how to see them at the lowest cost.
Pay-What-You-Can Only Works at the Desk
The museum's general admission is pay-what-you-can, with one condition in the fine print. In the words of the museum's tickets page, "By purchasing tickets online or at a kiosk, you agree to pay the full suggested amount. Visit our Admissions Desk to pay what you can." A general admission ticket is untimed and covers the whole museum except the two ticketed exhibitions.
The two ticketed exhibitions are Art of Manga and Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses. Both use timed entry in 15-minute slots, and each ticket includes general admission. The gap between the two ticket types is widest for the youngest visitors:
| Visitor | General admission, suggested | Ticketed exhibition |
|---|---|---|
| Adults | $20 | $30 |
| Adults 65+, visitors with disabilities, students 20+ with ID | $14 | $21 |
| Ages 13–19 | Free | $21 |
| Ages 4–12 | Free | $12 |
| Members | Free | Free, untimed |
For an adult, a ticketed show costs $10 more than the suggested general admission price. For a teenager, the same visit goes from free to $21. Members pay nothing for either show and don't need a time slot. The museum also holds back a limited number of tickets for same-day purchase on site. The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday, 11 am to 6 pm, and closed Monday and Tuesday. That cuts the number of days left for anything closing soon.
The Closing Order
Here is how the current exhibitions leave the building, by the closing dates on the museum's exhibitions page:
- Common Sense, November 8, 2026. Included with general admission.
- Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses, December 6, 2026. Ticketed.
- Art of Manga, January 31, 2027. Ticketed. Manga Before Manga closes the same day and is included with general admission.
- Breaking the Mold: Brooklyn Museum at 200, February 7, 2027.
- Donald Moffett: IMPEACH, April 11, 2027.
- Cézanne to Modigliani: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection, April 18, 2027.
- Mika Ninagawa: Feel the Flow(ers), listed through April 2027.
- Michael Richards: Free F'All, June 6, 2027.
- Hopi Kachina Dolls: Blessings for a Balanced World, June 27, 2027.
The two shows closing first are also the two that opened in May. The October openings stay well into 2027. So the deadlines that matter between now and the new year belong to exhibitions that may have been easy to put off all summer.
Common Sense Has Nine Open Days Left
From Thursday, October 29, through Sunday, November 8, the museum is open on nine days. Common Sense pairs Thomas Paine's Common Sense and The American Crisis with nine contemporary works. It sets the founding-era texts next to present-day questions of democracy, history, community and social justice. It is included with general admission, so you can see it for whatever you pay at the desk.
Iris van Herpen has a little more time but costs more. The museum describes it as the designer's first major New York exhibition, organized by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Matthew Yokobosky, Senior Curator of Fashion and Material Culture, organized the Brooklyn presentation. Counting from Thursday, October 29, it has fewer than 30 open days left before it closes December 6. Each van Herpen ticket also includes general admission, so one $30 adult ticket bought before November 8 covers Common Sense too.
The Pearlman Show Is the Last Time the Collection Hangs Together
Cézanne to Modigliani runs into April, and it is the one fall exhibition whose contents will not be seen together again after it closes. Henry and Rose Pearlman's collection was given jointly to the Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. Brooklyn received 29 works, which the museum calls one of the most significant gifts of European art in its history. The show presents more than fifty works, including paintings, sculpture and works on paper by Cézanne and Modigliani alongside Degas, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Soutine. The museum's fall exhibitions announcement calls it "the final exhibition of the full collection." Lisa Small, Senior Curator of European Art, organized the Brooklyn presentation, which the museum co-organized with LACMA.
The museum also calls the Pearlmans' history "a quintessential American and Brooklyn story." 300Magazine covered the show's artists and the collection's history on October 20. The show is included with general admission and runs until April 18. Unlike Common Sense, it can wait for a quieter weekday after the holidays. After that date, the works that hung together here go back to three institutions on two coasts.
Art of Manga Fills the Calendar Through December
Art of Manga is the first major exhibition in the Americas to treat manga as an art form, and Brooklyn is its East Coast debut. It includes more than 600 drawings by artists including Takahashi Rumiko, Oda Eiichiro, Araki Hirohiko, Yoshinaga Fumi and Taniguchi Jirō. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco organized the exhibition. In Brooklyn, Joan Cummins and Pauline Vermare oversaw the presentation. amNewYork's October 2 preview noted that timed tickets start at $30. The Art Newspaper wrote on October 5 about how the museum is engaging manga's fan base.
The two related shows cost nothing beyond general admission. Manga Before Manga gathers 21 objects from the museum's own collection, including 19th-century printed sketchbooks that were among the first books called "manga" and a 15th-century narrative handscroll. Mika Ninagawa: Feel the Flow(ers) is the photographer's first immersive installation in the United States. It fills the Education Gallery with flower photographs on the floor, touchable foam images on the walls and fabric hung from the ceiling.
With no First Saturdays left this year, the exhibition's own programs are the museum's main event calendar until the new year. The Art of Manga page lists:
- November 8: Casita Manga Book Club, Inuyasha
- November 13: Teen Programs Presents, Anime x Art-Making Night
- November 17: Verbal Description Tour
- November 19: Curator-Led Member Tour
- November 24: Brooklyn Mornings
- December 1: Virtual Verbal Description Tour
- December 6: Casita Manga Book Club, Ōoku: The Inner Chambers
- December 10: Art History Happy Hour
November 8 brings the first book club session and the last day of Common Sense. December 6 brings the second book club session and the last day of Iris van Herpen. A visit on either date can cover a program and a closing show in one trip.
The Rest of Eastern Parkway Runs on Its Own Dates
At Central Library, Christopher Myers: Unbound shows site-specific tapestries and stained glass installed in the library through January 15, 2027. Brooklyn Botanic Garden's ticketed winter light trail, Lightscape, opens November 20 and runs through January 3, 2027. On Saturdays, the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket runs year-round from 8 am to 4 pm at Prospect Park West and Flatbush Avenue. Its clothing collection closes at 2 pm.
Put together, the calendar from now through January looks like this. Common Sense closes on November 8. Lightscape opens November 20. Iris van Herpen closes December 6. Lightscape ends January 3, Unbound on January 15, and both manga shows on January 31. Cézanne to Modigliani stays until April 18, and the Richards and Hopi installations run into June.
At Greg Mire Team, we follow how the Eastern Parkway institutions schedule their seasons, because those calendars shape the blocks around them. If programming patterns like these figure into a decision you are weighing, we invite you to request a confidential consultation.
