Holland Cotter
A Trio of Art World Highlights
Among modern art’s great influencers, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) was right up there with Picasso, though you wouldn’t know this from the paltry record of major Duchamp shows. His last career survey at the Museum of Modern Art was in 1973. As if to make up for lost time, in April MoMA will fill its sixth floor with a retrospective look at an artist who punctuated the word “art” with a question mark, forever changing the enterprise.
I’m also looking forward to the reopening this spring of the much-missed New Museum after its closure for the construction of a new wing. And I savor, as I always do, the prospect of another Whitney Biennial, the 2026 edition organized by two bright in-house curators, Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, who could hardly have had a more pressured environment than the past year in which to work.
Maya Phillips
Christopher Nolan’s Latest Epic
It feels strange to say that a text more than 2,000 years old is going to be the basis of the big movie event of 2026, but that’s certainly the case with “The Odyssey.” For his follow-up to the Oscar-winning “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan, a master of grim-faced, large-scale dramas, used IMAX film cameras to replicate the epic scope of his source material. It also features the kind of killer cast audiences have come to expect from his projects, including Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya as well as Matt Damon as the cunning soldier perpetually lost at sea. It all seems to point to a film that may make even the non-mythology buffs seek out a Lattimore or Wilson translation and become Greek epic enthusiasts.
James Poniewozik
‘The Comeback’ Lives Up to Its Name
“The Comeback” may be the most aptly titled comedy on TV; it premieres, dazzles, then takes about a decade to recede from memory before, well, coming back. Season 1, which in 2005 introduced Valerie Cherish (Lisa Kudrow), a onetime sitcom actress looking to revive her career in the era of reality TV, was a sharp sendup of the fickle business and the thirst for fame. Season 2, in 2014, was a masterpiece; the multilayered production — involving a reality show about the shooting of a dramedy about the making of a sitcom — was laser-targeted at showbiz misogyny, and Kudrow’s performance was devastating. I haven’t yet seen the new (and evidently final) season, arriving in March, so I can’t say if it continues the upward trajectory. But let’s hope the third time’s a charm.
Joshua Barone
An Opera Visionary Takes on Wagner
Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” whose love-drunk score casts an uncanny spell over nearly four hours that teem with tension, returns to the Metropolitan Opera on March 9 with a new production that doubles as the start of a new era at the company. Yuval Sharon, the most interesting opera director in America, who has transformed the scenes in Los Angeles and Detroit, will be making his house debut (before taking on the monumental, four-part “Ring” next). And the luminous soprano Lise Davidsen will be back for the first time since becoming a mother, giving a taste, let’s hope, of more mature Wagner roles to come.
Alissa Wilkinson
Another Take on ‘Frankenstein’
Last year, my contribution to this list was Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!,” which had been due out in September. Well, as often happens in Hollywood, the movie got pushed into this year, and so I am once again hotly anticipating “The Bride!” It stars Jessie Buckley, who by now is known to many audiences for playing Agnes Shakespeare in “Hamnet,” as Frankenstein’s bride, and Christian Bale as Frankenstein’s monster. The delayed opening only adds intrigue, given that Buckley seems likely to win her first Oscar just a week after this film’s opening and Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” streamed on Netflix this fall.
Mike Hale
David E. Kelley Teams With a Top Cast
This year marks David E. Kelley’s 40th anniversary in the TV business, and his unparalleled work ethic shows no signs of flagging. “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” coming to Apple TV on April 15, will be the 14th series he’s created, alone or with partners, in the last decade. The shows are always entertaining, and the new one, based on a novel by Rufi Thorpe, has an alluring cast: Elle Fanning as a broke mom who turns to OnlyFans; Michelle Pfeiffer and Nick Offerman as her parents (a former Hooters waitress and a former wrestler); along with appearances from Nicole Kidman, Greg Kinnear and Marcia Gay Harden.
Gia Kourlas
A Visceral Exploration of the Digital Age
The energizing explosion of joy that is (La)Horde, a French multidisciplinary collective, returns to New York City with “Age of Content,” which looks at how identity survives in the digital age. The directors Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer and Arthur Harel — who have led the Ballet National de Marseille since 2019 — present this visceral evening-length work, part of the Dance Reflections festival by Van Cleef & Arpels, focusing on virtual and real bodies. What makes a live performance truly alive? As usual, the directors are not limited by one form: highly technical choreography shares the stage with viral TikTok dances.
Jason Zinoman
From the Team That Brought You ‘30 Rock’
This year is the 20th anniversary of the premiere of “30 Rock,” one of the greatest sitcoms of the century and one that rewards repeated viewings. For those looking for something new in its style, the upcoming NBC sitcom “The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinklage” sounds awfully promising. Tracy Morgan stars as a disgraced former football star (some echoes of “Chad Powers” here) and Daniel Radcliffe is a filmmaker trying to help him improve his image. Much of the “30 Rock” creative team is back at the helm: Tina Fey is an executive producer, while Robert Carlock returns as showrunner, sharing the duties with the “30 Rock” writer Sam Means.
Holland Cotter is the co-chief art critic and a senior writer for the Culture section of The Times, where he has been on staff since 1998.
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