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 ET unless otherwise noted.)

Tuesday, December 14–Wednesday, December 15

Michele Pred, Bans Off Our Bodies (2021). Photo courtesy of the artist.

1. “Art Auction to Support Abortion Rights” on Instagram

In response to last Friday’s horrifying Supreme Court ruling upholding Texas’s new abortion law, which essentially bans all abortions, a quintet of feminist artists have banded together to auction their work off on Instagram with half the proceeds to benefit organizations supporting abortion rights, including Planned Parenthood and Fund Texas Choice. This is your chance to own a piece by Christen Clifford, Michelle Hartney, Aimee Gilmore, Shireen Liane, or Michele Pred, and to support women’s reproductive rights. Works on offer include one of Pred’s striking light-up purses, this one reading “Bans Off Our Bodies,” made in response to the Texas law.

Time: Ends at 6 p.m. on December 15

—Sarah Cascone

Through Thursday, December 16

Akilah Watts painting. Photo courtesy of ArtLeadHer.

2. “Fragmented Memoirs: Akilah Watts and Lanecia Rouse Tinsley” at LiveArt

Mashonda Tifrere, founder of ArtLeadHer, a foundation supporting women in the arts, has curated this online sale of work by artists Lanecia Rouse Tinsley, from Houston, and Akilah Watts, from Barbados. Tifrere hopes their figurative works featuring Black women will encourage viewers to “question how we recall the past, as well as the ability to create something new, transforming our own memories.”

Time: Online daily at all times

—Sarah Cascone

Through Saturday, December 18

Dread Scott, Slave Rebellion Reenactment Performance Still 2 (2019). Photo by Soul Brother, courtesy of Dread Scott.

3. “Dread Scott: We’re Going to End Slavery. Join Us!” at Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York

Dread Scott’s first solo gallery exhibition in 20 years documents Slave Rebellion Reenactment, his 2019 community-engaged performance project reenacting the German Coast Uprising of 1811, the largest rebellion of enslaved people in U.S. history. The show, which closes this week, features large-scale performance stills from piece, which featured hundreds of Black performers in 19th-century French colonial garments, as well as flags and banners that they carried, designed by Scott for the occasion.

Location: Cristin Tierney Gallery, 219 Bowery, Floor 2, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Friday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Saturday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Portia Zvavahera, Ndirikukuona (I can see you), 2021 Courtesy of David Zwirner

4. “Portia Zvavahera: Ndakaoneswa murima” at David Zwirner, New York

Spectral figures float throughout Portia Zvavahera artworks in “Ndakaoneswa murima,” the Zimbabwean artist’s New York debut at David Zwirner. Whether they come from the past or the future, this world or others, remains a mystery, but one of the exhibition’s central pieces, a nearly 10-foot-long linen from this year called Zvandakaoneswa (What I was made to see) offers some insights into the artist’s head. It depicts a recurring dream of Zvavahera’s, wherein a female figure offers up a ceramic pot to a coterie of spirits, or perhaps innominate animals, in a dark, watery cave. “Sometimes when we sleep, we don’t know where we are going or where we are traveling to,” the artist told us last year.

Location: David Zwirner, 525 West 19th Street, New York 
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Monday by appointment

—Taylor Dafoe

Barnett Cohen, july 14 2021 (2021). Courtesy of JDJ Tribeca.

5. “Barnett Cohen” at JDJ Tribeca, New York

Los Angeles artist Barnett Cohen’s cacophonous new paintings are actually made entirely from found stickers, dipped in acrylic liquid polymer, adhered to the canvas, and sealed with UV polycoat to create a slick, cohesive work combining all manner of logos, brands, and other assorted imagery.

Location: JDJ Tribeca, 373 Broadway, B11, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Tanner West

Paul Anagnostopoulos, Taste My Wine Courtesy of LatchKey Gallery

6. “QUE(e)RY” at LatchKey Gallery, New York

LatchKey Gallery presents “QUE(e)RY”, a group show of seven male-identifying queer artists. Through different mediums, the artists explore the notion on masculinity “through the lens of gender performance, societal expectation, and stereotype” in order to challenge the viewer’s pre-existing ideas of maleness. The participating artists are Paul Anagnostopoulos, Damien Davis, Ben Eden, Daniel Morowitz, Cupid Ojala, Albert Peguero, and Borris Torres.

Location: LatchKey Gallery, 323 Canal Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Thursday–Saturday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Neha Jambhekar

Ella Kruglyanskaya, The Rug and The Blinds, 2021 Courtesy of Bortolami

7. “Ella Kruglyanskaya: Keep Walking” at Bortolami, New York

For her first exhibition at Bortolami, Latvian-born artist Ella Kruglyanskaya’s new work expands her repertoire beyond just painting, and also beyond the confines that previously reigned in her subjects. Using tape to fix borders on her canvases, the artist is constantly setting new literal boundaries for her protagonists who are often wrestling with societal bounds of their own.

Location: Bortolami, 39 Walker Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 p.m.–6 p.m. and by appointment

—Caroline Goldstein

Through Sunday, December 19

Gloria Garfinkel, Secrets 6 (Government), 2004. Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art, Milwaukee. Photo by Adam Reich.

8. “Gloria Garfinkel: Secrets” at A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn

Now age 92, feminist artist Gloria Garfinkel is enjoying the largest New York City solo show of her 70-year-career, curated by Mara Williams, chief curator of Vermont’s Brattleboro Museum and Art Center. The six large-scale mixed media paintings on view at A.I.R. literally have hidden depths—Garfinkel has built in assemblage shadow boxes with hinged doors into the surface of each work. The viewer is invited to open these treasure troves, each a cabinet of curiosities with themes including beauty, vice, and religion.

Location: A.I.R. Gallery, 155 Plymouth Street, DUMBO, Brooklyn
Price: Free
Time: Wednesday–Sunday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m. by appointment

—Sarah Cascone

Ambrose Rhapsody Murray, Within Listening Distance of the Sea, 2021 Courtesy of Fridman Gallery

9. “Ambrose Rhapsody Murray: Within Listening Distance of the Sea…” at Fridman Gallery, New York

Ambrose Rhapsody Murray is a self-taught artist and seamstress who seeks to positively impact Black and brown communities through her work. In “Within Listening Distance of the Sea…”, her first solo exhibition in New York, Murray takes images of Black women and girls from the early 1900s taken by white photographers for postcards and used as pornography and tools of colonial propaganda, and swaths them in blue and purple organza. In doing so, she both offers care and protection for these figures and elevates them to a spiritual level. Along with these textile collages, the exhibition also has a film component, made in collaboration with filmmaker Logan Lynette and cultural organizer Heather Lee, “unveiling the hidden beauty of everyday lives of Black folks—their movements, clothing, hairstyles, and jewelry rhyming with elements of Ambrose’s textiles,” according to the gallery statement.

Location: Fridman Gallery, 169 Bowery, New York
Price: Free
Time: Wednesday–Sunday,11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Neha Jambhekar

Through Thursday, December 30

Grace Hartigan, Parson Brown(1962). ©Grace Hartigan courtesy of the Perry Collection.

10. “The Martha Jackson Gallery and Post-War Art” at Hollis Taggart, New York

Trailblazing collector and gallerist Martha Jackson operated her eponymous New York City gallery from 1953 to 1969, showcasing the likes of Grace Hartigan, Alfred Jensen, Willem de Kooning, and Louise Nevelson. Now, the late dealer is getting the first show dedicated to her career. Hollis Taggart unites some 20 works once exhibited at the gallery, as well as exhibition catalogues, letters, photographs, and other archival materials.

Location: Hollis Taggart, 521 West 26th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Saturday, January 15, 2022

11. “Helen Pashgian: Spheres and Lenses” at Lehmann Maupin, New York, West 24th Street

A pioneer of the 1960s Light and Space movement in Southern California, Helen Pashigan is still working today, continuing to explore the interactions between light, color, and form. Her first New York gallery show in a stunning 50 years features new lens and sphere sculptures, many with semi-translucent surfaces made from cast resin that seem to glow from within. The artist also currently has a solo museum show at SITE Santa Fe (through March 27, 2022).

Location: Lehmann Maupin, 501 West 24th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; closed Friday, December 24–Tuesday, January 4, 2022

—Sarah Cascone