Each week, we search New York City for the most exciting and thought-provoking shows, screenings, and events. See them below. 

Monday, December 16

Maria H. Loh, Titian’s Touch: Art, Magic and Philosophy (2019). Photo courtesy of Reaktion Books.

1. “Rewriting Old Master Narratives in Titian’s Touch” at NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo

Hunter College art history professor Maria H. Loh will speak with Ara H. Merjian of New York University and Jane Tylus of Yale University about her new book, Titian’s Touch: Art, Magic and Philosophy. The author considers the rumors that Titian began painting directly with his hands late in life, making the argument that the Old Master considered painting a synesthetic experience that tapped into all the senses.

Location: Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo, 24 West 12th Street
Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 6:30 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Tuesday, December 17

Guerrilla Girls, You’re Seeing Less Than Half The Picture (1989). ©Guerrilla Girls.

2. Less Than Half Launch Party at Pen & Brush

The art criticism website Less Than Half, which is dedicated to celebrating the work of women artists (its title comes from a 1989 Guerrilla Girls poster), is launching a new monthly email newsletter. Art critic Hall W. Rockefeller, who founded the online platform in 2017, is celebrating with a party at Pen + Brush.

Location: Pen & Brush, 29 East 22nd Street
Price: Free, RSVP encouraged
Time: 6 p.m.–9 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Photo courtesy of the International Studio & Curatorial Program.

3. Sonia Leimer Via San Gennaro Catalogue Launch at the International Studio and Curatorial Program

The International Studio and Curatorial Program is throwing a party to celebrate the publication of the catalogue for its current exhibition “Sonia Leimer: Via San Gennaro” (through January 3, 2020). Inspired by New York’s dwindling Little Italy neighborhood, the exhibition includes a video starring a medieval knight marionette named “Orlando Furioso,” produced in collaboration with filmmaker and puppeteer Tony de Nonno.

Location: International Studio & Curatorial Program, 1040 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn
Price: Free
Time: 6:30 p.m.–8 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Pull-out racks of art storage, with one rack pulled out to show works by Jean Dubuffet, Martin Barré, Wilfredo Lam, Willem de Kooning, David Hammons, Paul Wonner, Cecilia Vicuña, and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. Photo by David M. Heald, courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

4. “Reflections on Artistic License: Richard Prince” at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 

Appropriation artist Richard Prince is one of six artists who were tapped to put together the Guggenheim’s first-ever artist-curated exhibition, “Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection” (through January 12, 2020). In a talk at the museum, part of a series featuring all six artist-curators, Prince will reflect on his curatorial experience, explaining how he interpreted the museum’s collection for his part of the show.

Location: The Guggenheim, 1071 Fifth Avenue, between East 88th and 89th Streets
Price: Free
Time: 6:30 p.m.

—Tanner West

Wednesday, December 18

Crowds at an event at Storefront for Art and Architecture in 1982. Photo courtesy of Storefront for Art and Architecture.

5. Digital Archive Launch Party at Storefront for Art and Architecture

Take a deep dive into Storefront for Art and Architecture’s 37-year history at a holiday party celebrating the launch of its digital archive, a project that archive curator Chialin Chou has been working on since 2015. A curated selection of archive highlights will be on view during the party, selected by key figures from the organization, both past and present.

Location: Storefront for Art and Architecture, 97 Kenmare Street
Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 6 p.m.–8 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Miles Greenberg. Photo courtesy of Reena Spaulings Gallery.

6. “HAEMOTHERAPY (I): Miles Greenberg” at Reena Spaulings Fine Art

Emerging performance artist Miles Greenberg, born in 1997, is staging a one-day show at Reena Spaulings Fine Art. Having eschewed formal education at just 17, Greenberg has taken it upon himself to complete a four-year independent research project, crisscrossing the globe while considering issues of identity and displacement, particularly as they relate to the queer black body. At the gallery, Greenberg will present a durational piece—an outgrowth of his recent residency at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris—in which the artist becomes the art, posing as a sculpture for seven hours as gallery visitors come and go.

Location: Reena Spaulings Fine Art, 165 East Broadway
Price: Free
Time: 3 p.m.–9 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Friday, December 20

Rania Matar, Samira, 11 (2012). Photo courtesy of Richard Taittinger Gallery.

7. “The Female Lens” at Richard Taittinger Gallery

Lower East Side gallery Richard Taittinger is celebrating the International Center of Photography‘s impending move to the neighborhood with a group show of women who photograph women. The exhibition includes both major artists—such as Diane Arbus, Frances Goodman, Shirin Neshat—and more emerging figures, such as self-taught Nigerian documentary photographer Yagazie Emezi and the 28-year-old Swedish artist Arvida Bystrom.

Location: Richard Taittinger, 154 Ludlow Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Friday, 11 a.m.–7 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Saturday, December 21

Installation view of “Brent Wadden: Second Life” at Mitchell Innes and Nash. Courtesy of Mitchell Innes and Nash.

8. “Brent Wadden: Second Life” at Mitchell Innes and Nash

By calling his woven panels, created using traditional floor looms, paintings, Brent Wadden questions the hierarchical divide between mediums. As a male artist who counts both the quilters of Gee’s Bend and giants of Minimalism such as Josef Albers and Agnes Martin among his influences, Wadden, who began teaching himself weaving in 2004, ignores traditional gender binaries by freeing the art form from its perceived domestic confines.

Location: Mitchell Innes and Nash, 534 West 26th Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Tanner West

Opening Saturday, December 21

Kenji Nakahashi, Empire on Mirror (1998). Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.

9. “Collecting New York’s Stories: Stuyvesant to Sid Vicious” at the Museum of the City of New York

This exhibition celebrating the Museum of the City of New York’s recent acquisitions officially opens January 22, but the first half of the show actually begins this week. It promises stunning images of New York City taken by the likes of graffiti photographer Martha Cooper and Bruce Davidson, known for his street scenes of Harlem.

Location: The Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue at East 104th Street
Price: Suggested admission, $18
Time: Open daily, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Saturday, December 21

Choral ensemble the Crossing. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

10. “The Crossing: The Little Match Girl Passion” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Choral ensemble the Crossing, the two-time reigning Grammy winner for best choral performance, sings “The Little Match Girl Passion,” David Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning choral work based on Hans Christian Andersen’s tragic Christmas tale “The Little Match Girl.”

Location: The Met Cloisters, the Fuentidueña Chapel, 99 Margaret Corbin Drive, Fort Tryon Park
Price: General admission $65; up to three accompanying children $1 each
Time: 12:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m.

—Nan Stewert

Through Sunday, December 29

Installation view of Janet Ruttenberg: Beholder” at ArtYard. Photo courtesy of ArtYard.

11. “Janet Ruttenberg: Beholder” at ArtYard

Janet Ruttenberg, age 88, has been quietly been making art, much of it monumental, since her childhood, with no signs of slowing down. As the widow of a wealthy financier, she’s never needed—or wanted—to sell any of it, and she’s rarely shown it, outside of a 2013 show at the Museum of the City of New York. As seen at ArtYard, a community art center in Frenchtown, New Jersey—about an hour and a half’s drive from New York City—Ruttenberg’s massive 15-foot-wide watercolors are a revelation. Boldly colorful, verging on Impressionistic, the paintings are begun en plein air in Central Park, and completed at her nearby studio. Despite her advanced age, Ruttenberg is still experimenting. Two of the works are illuminated with green neon; others incorporate video projection or tiny video screens placed around the painting’s edge, featuring her footage of comings and goings in the park.

Location: ArtYard, 62A Trenton Avenue, Frenchtown, New Jersey
Price: Free
Time: Wednesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Saturday, January 4

Michael Corinne West, Untitled (Double-Sided), 1970–71. Courtesy of Hollis Taggart.

12. “Space Poetry: The Action Paintings of Michael West” at Hollis Taggart

Earlier this year, Hollis Taggart began representing the estate of Abstract Expressionist artist Michael West, who was born Corinne Michelle West. (The artist painted under a male pseudonym in order to be taken more seriously by the art world.) The gallery’s first show of her work is a survey covering the full arc of her career, including works made after West suffered a stroke in 1976 and largely withdrew from the art world.

Location: Hollis Taggart, 521 West 26th Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m. (check gallery website for holiday closures)

—Sarah Cascone

Through Friday, January 17

Zilia Sánchez, Sin título (de la serie Azul Azul) (2019). © Zilia Sánchez. Image courtesy of Galerie Lelong, New York.

13. “Zilia Sánchez: Eros” at Galerie Lelong 

To balance out the historical flavor of Zilia Sánchez’s “Soy Isla (I Am an Island),” the artist’s first-ever museum retrospective, on view through March 22 at El Museo del Barrio, Galerie Lelong & Co. presents an exhibition of roughly a dozen new and recent works by the long-underappreciated Cuban artist. While the offerings still include her signature shaped canvases, whose sensuous contours seem to slide between painting and sculpture before the viewer’s eyes, the show also includes Sánchez’s maiden voyage into marble. Remarkably (but perhaps not surprisingly), the artist and her team manage to chisel and smooth this most classical of materials into supple, freestanding monoliths that carry her forms forward and backward in time at once. 

Location: Galerie Lelong, 528 West 26th Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m. (check gallery website for holiday closures)

—Tim Schneider

Through Sunday, February 2, 2020

Work by Lila de Magalhaes. Courtesy of Deli Gallery.

14. “Lila de Magalhaes: Palace of Errors” at Deli Gallery

After a stunning booth by Lila de Magalhaes at NADA Miami, Deli Gallery is now presenting a solo show of the artist’s work at its Brooklyn gallery. The combination of materials Magalhaes uses—bed sheets, curtains, ceramics, and chalk—are just as interesting as her subject matter, which includes fairies engaged in erotic acts, snakes that look like poo, and teeth.

Location: Deli Gallery, 110 Waterbury Street, Brooklyn
Price: Free
Time: Friday–Saturday, 12 p.m.–5 p.m. and by appointment (check gallery website for holiday closures)

—Cristina Cruz 

Through Monday, March 30, 2020

Catherine Opie, Glenn (left), Kara (middle), Aggie (right) (2019). Photo courtesy of The Peninsula New York.

15. “Home” at the Peninsula New York

Earlier this year, the Peninsula New York partnered with Lehmann Maupin and private collectors to present a group exhibition titled “Home,” featuring original work by Do Ho Suh, Catherine Opie, Angel Otero, Heidi Bucher, and others. The works—dispersed throughout the hotel’s lobbies and public areas—collectively pay homage to “the notions of home, identity, and community,” highlighting art’s ability to make any space feel more familiar, lived-in, and welcoming. From Suh’s large-scale fabric reproduction of his former Berlin apartment to Opie’s photographs of notable art-world figures portrayed in the style of family portraits, the exhibition, available to the public and now extended through March 30, provides an intimate look at how these artists like to live with art, and, in so doing, how it makes them feel at home.

Location: The Peninsula New York, 700 5th Avenue
Price: Free
Time: Open daily, at all times

—Noor Brara