September is always the best time of the year for contemporary art. With the end of summer, families return from vacationing and get back into the swing of school and work. Participating in cultural programming returns to prominence and, with winter and the headaches of preparing for the holidays still a few months away, those interested in collecting art swarm gallery districts. Exploiting their patrons' fresh return, art dealers push forward their key exhibitions for the year. Coveted September exhibition slots are offered to the most valued gallery artists, in a signal to the market that these are the most exciting artists to watch, the thoroughbred race-horses competing for the triple crown of sales, critical review and buzz.

Though by no means an exhaustive list of the many amazing shows currently on display this month, The Ministry of Artistic Affairs shares the following selections from the many fantastic exhibitions we saw last week in New York City. All of the galleries are listed below with live links to their online version but if you have time to drop some NYC in the next few weeks, we highly recommend hitting each of these shows in person:

Two years ago, artist Luis Gispert was photographing landscapes in Miami when he stumbled upon the Escalade that would change his life. Upholstered entirely in knock-off material from Takashi Murakami's 2009 campaign with Louis Vuitton, the SUV represented a subculture he never knew existed. The vehicle's owner "had no idea who Murakami was," said Gispert. "It was all very low-rent. All fake, and all home-made."

American art superstar Julian Schnabel has spent his life pushing the limits of painting and crossing artistic boundaries as an award-winning filmmaker. Now, for the first time, a major retrospective examines the connections between painting and film in Schnabel’s work, tracing how his paintings exist in dialogue with the cinema and revealing the rich interplay between the two media.