Plus, Raúl Cordero partners with poet-critic Barry Schwabsky, and Art Table hosts its annual benefit luncheon.
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Each week, we search for the most exciting and thought-provoking shows, screenings, and events, both digitally and in-person in the New York area. See our picks from around the world below. (Times are all EST unless otherwise noted.)
Pandiscio Green designed the invitation to the 2022 Art Production Fund Gala. Courtesy of Art Production Fund.
1. Art Production Fund Gala at the Grill, New York
The last big art party I attended before lockdown was Art Production Fund’s over-the-top 2020 soirée honoring husband-and-wife Tom Sachs and Sarah Hoover at the Grill in the Seagram Building. Hoover was responsible for the evening’s decadent menu, combining comfort food like hamburgers and ice cream sundaes with luxurious touches like caviar and champagne. This year’s event honors Sanford Biggers, who will perform with his concept band Moon Medicin, and Hoover is back to select dishes for the dinner, which has, appropriately, a “class reunion” theme.
Location: The Grill, 99 East 52nd Street, New York
Price: Contact [email protected] for information
Time: Cocktails, 6 p.m.; dinner 7:30 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
“Eric Aho: Headwater” at BCA Center, Burlington, Vermont. Photo courtesy of the BCA Center, Burlington, Vermont.
2. “Virtual Artist Talk: Eric Aho” at the BCA Center, Burlington, Vermont
On the occasion of his solo show, “Headwater” (through June 5), Eric Aho talks about how he blends abstraction and realism, and drawing inspiration from essayists and poets, and the bucolic landscape surrounding his home in Vermont.
Price: Free with registration
Time: 6 p.m.
—Nan Stewert
Bea Scaccia, Do you hear that lady talk (2021). Courtesy of JDJ Tribeca, New York.
3. “Bea Scaccia: With Their Striking Features” at JDJ Tribeca, New York
In her first solo show, Italian artist Bea Scaccia presents a body of paintings from the past two years. Her figures are typically faceless, genderless, and arrayed in finery—lace, ribbons, and jewelry—in a commentary on stereotypical notions of femininity and the labor required to meet societal beauty ideals.
Location: JDJ Tribeca, 373 Broadway B11, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 4 .m.–7 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.
—Tanner West
Kay WalkingStick, Havasu Revisited (2020). Courtesy of NYFA.
4. NYFA’s 2022 Hall of Fame Benefit at Capitale, New York
At its annual gala, the New York Foundation for the Arts is inducting Kay WalkingStick and Chin Chih Yang into its Hall of Fame. (The two were originally set to be honored at the cancelled 2020 event.) The festivities include musical performance by Pyeng Threadgill, and each attendee will be given a WalkingStick print. Those unable to attend in person are invited to bid in the online benefit auction, featuring works by artists including Carolee Schneeman, Deborah Kass, and Sanford Biggers.
Location: Capitale, 130 Bowery, New York
Price: Tickets start at $650; tables start at $6,500
Time: Cocktails, 6:30 p.m.; dinner 7:30 p.m.; dessert 9 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest by Laura Raicovich. Photo by Michael Angelo; book cover courtesy Verso.
5. Laura Raicovich and Michael Hall on Culture Strike at the Art Students League, New York
Former Queens Museum director Laura Raicovich—who resigned from the post after a public dispute with museum board members—holds her first in-person talk for her 2021 book, Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest, about how our cultural institutions have become hotbeds for controversy in recent years. After reading passages from the text, she’ll speak with the league’s artistic executive director, Michael Hall, about how museums can respond to protests and work to become less colonial institutions.
Location: Art Students League, Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery, 215 West 57th Street, New York
Price: Free with registration
Time: 6 p.m.–7 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Installation view of “Chellis Baird: Touch of Red” at the National Arts Club. Photo courtesy of the artist.
6. “Chellis Baird: Touch of Red” at the National Arts Club, New York
In her current solo show, Chellis Baird indulges in her favorite color in a series of works exploring different shades of red and all its flirtatious, fiery, romantic, and angry connotations. Many of the wall-mounted works blur the boundary between painting and relief sculpture, with woven forms made from strips of canvas.
Location: The National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, New York
Price: Free
Time: 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Organizer, curator, and artist Carol Cole Levin. Photo courtesy of ArtTable.
7. ArtTable’s Annual Benefit at Capitale, New York
The art-world gala circuit is springing back into action. Women’s professional organization ArtTable always hosts an inspiring luncheon celebrating women’s leadership in the arts, and this year’s event, with remarks from Legacy Russell and honorees Carol Cole Levin and Nicole R. Fleetwood, promises to be no exception.
Location: Capitale, 130 Bowery, New York
Price: $485 and up
Time: 12 p.m.–3 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Raúl Cordero, THE POEM in Times Square (rendering). Image courtesy of the artist.
8. “Raúl Cordero: The Poem” at Times Square, New York
Cuban-born artist Raúl Cordero has created an unexpected oasis in the heart of Times Square, surrounding an illuminated poem by poet and art critic Barry Schwabsky with a 20-foot tower draped with mountain laurels. The piece is inspired by Reinaldo Arenas, a poet and Cuban exile who spent the last two years of his life in New York, dying by suicide in 1990 rather than his AIDS treatment. Cordero covered his installation with foliage in homage to the trees that Arenas climbed as child, where he wrote poems perched in the branches.
Location: Times Square, Duffy Square, Broadway at West 46th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: On view daily at all times
—Sarah Cascone
The centerpiece of the Macy’s Flower Show. Photo courtesy of Macy’s Herald Square.
9. “The Macy’s Flower Show” at Macy’s Herald Square, New York
One of the the city’s most charming spring traditions is the Macy’s Flower Show, which brings some 15,000 live plants into the famed Macy’s department store, in addition to covering the facade with fake blooms. This year’s display includes designs from students at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, as well as a number of local florists.
Location: Macy’s Herald Square, 151 West 34th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Sunday, 11 a.m.–9 p.m.; Monday–Thursday, 11 a.m.–9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m.–10 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
LeAndra LeSeur, There is no movement without rhythm. Photo courtesy of Marlborough Gallery, New York.
10. All Arts Artist in Residence Film Debuts at All Arts and the Shed, New York
For its 2022 Artist in Residence program in partnership with the Shed, All Arts, a free nationwide arts and culture streaming platform from the WNET Group, is debuting four new artist films. The last two, streaming as of this Sunday night, are outgrowths of projects staged last year at the Shed by LeAndra LeSeur (presenting There is no movement without rhythm) and DonChristian Jones (showing Volvo Truck and the Girls From Up the Hill.)
Price: Free
Time: 8 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Futures, Narratives, and Networks: Work from the More Art Fellowship. Courtesy of the Queens Museum.
11. “Futures, Narratives, and Networks: Work from the More Art Fellowship” at the Queens Museum
The Queens Museum hosts a day of workshops, performances, and conversations with More Art’s 2020 and 2021 fellows. Selected for their socially engaged work, the artists will discuss public art, technology and nature, and how personal work can serve for community-building. The participating fellows are Bryanna Bradley, Chantal Feitosa-Desouza, Andrew Freiband, Cody Ann Herrmann, Hyperlink Press, Mafe Izaguirre, Amy Khoshbin, Althea Rao, Amy Ritter, and Hanae Utamura.
Location: Queens Museum, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Building, Queens
Price: Free with registration
Time: 11 a.m.–5 p.m.
—Tanner West
Marcus Brutus, Struck by Color, 2021. Courtesy Harper’s, New York.
12. “Maiden Voyage” at Harper’s Chelsea 512, New York
Marcus Brutus’s newest works, which take inspiration from photographers William Eggleston and Birney Imes, are 22 canvases celebrating Black life in America at its most mundane: cooking, standing in the rain, stealing a moment for a cigarette. This is the self-taught artist’s fourth outing with the gallery, and his energetic, striking style of portraiture brings Harper’s flagship location to life. The gallery’s run continues at 534 West 22nd Street, with “Return to the Source,” a selection of books that are integral to Brutus’s practice.
Location: Harper’s Chelsea 512, 512 West 22nd Street and 534 West 22nd Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Annie Armstrong
