Each week, we search New York City for the most exciting, and thought-provoking, shows, screenings, and events. See them below.
Tuesday, December 5
Lissa Rivera, Motel, Virginia from the series “Beautiful Boy.” Courtesy of the artist.
1. Lissa Rivera Talk at the School of Visual Arts
As part of SVA’s i3: Images, Ideas, Inspiration lecture series, photographer Lissa Rivera talks about her work, specifically her series, “Beautiful Boy,” of images of her gender-queer romantic partner dressed in women’s clothes. A celebration of male displays of femininity, the images also reverse the traditional gender roles of artist and muse.
Location: School of Visual Arts, Room 418F, 136 West 21st Street
Price: Free
Time: 7 p.m.–8:30 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Wednesday, December 6
Jack Smith, Flaming Creatures (1963), still. Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.
2. “Warhol’s Factory Workers” at the Museum of the City of New York
Pegged to its exhibition “Mod New York: Fashion Takes a Trip,” MCNY presents two films from the 1960s underground: Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1963) and Andy Warhol’s Camp (1965). The screening will be followed by a discussion with Claire Henry, associate curator of the Andy Warhol Film Project, at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, and Tom Kalin, a film professor at New York’s Columbia University School of the Arts.
Location: The Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue at East 103rd Street
Price: $15
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Fernand Léger, Nature morte aux éléments mécaniques (1918). Courtesy Christie’s
3. “Machine Envy: Fernand Léger and the Machine Aesthetic, 1909-1955” at New York Studio School
Akili Tommasino, a curatorial assistant in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Modern Museum of Modern Art, delivers a lecture on the 20th-century avant-garde strain of the machine aesthetic often seen in the work of Cubists, Futurists, and Dadaists, including Fernand Léger.
Location: New York Studio School, 8 West 8th Street
Price: Free
Time: 6:30 p.m.–7:30 p.m.
—Hannah Pikaart
Wednesday, December 6
Leslie Hewitt’s Make it Plain (2006). Courtesy of the artist.
4. “Reimagining the Image: Leslie Hewitt” at the International Center of Photography School
Photographer Leslie Hewitt discusses her politically inspired images, and how the medium can be used to challenge traditional narratives and conventional ways of documenting history. She will discuss her most recent project, a collaborative film based on civil rights photography from Houston’s Menil Collection.
Location: International Center of Photography School, 1114 Avenue of the Americas
Price: Free
Time: 7 p.m.–9 p.m.
—Caroline Goldstein
Wednesday, December 6, 2017–Saturday, February 17, 2018
Dorry Hsu, Aesthetic of Fears (2014). Courtesy of the artist and Pratt Gallery. Photo by the artist.
5. “See Yourself E(x)ist” at Pratt Manhattan Gallery
Madeline Schwartzman, author of See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human Perception has put together an exhibition of the work of 18 artists. The interdisciplinary show—featuring painters, jewelry and clothing designers, and mixed media and installation artists—aims to present incidences of human interaction with the world. The show yields “extraordinary artifacts, engineered forms of hope, and objects of power.”
Location: Pratt Manhattan Gallery, 144 West 14th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening Reception, 6:00 p.m.–8:00 p.m.; Monday–Wednesday and Friday–Saturday, 11:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.; Thursday, 11:00 a.m–8:00 p.m.
—Hannah Pikaart
Thursday, December 7
A promotional poster for “Dance Extraordinary.” Courtesy of Artists & Fleas.
6. “Dance Extraordinary” at Artists & Fleas
BC+A and Artists & Fleas are collaborating to bring SoHo a night of dance, art, and fashion. The night will directly benefit BC+A’s first repertory performance “The Art of Loss.” “Dance Extraordinary” is set to include immersive a movement-based installations and live performances, as well as a silent auction.
Location: Artists & Fleas, 568 Broadway at Prince Street
Price: $12–35
Time: 7:00 p.m–10:00 p.m.
—Hannah Pikaart
Thursday, December 7–Sunday, December 10
Left: Franck de las Mercedes, Abstract All City (2015).
7. “City Limits: Inside, Above, Within” at El Barrio’s Art Space
The show presents urban scenes from cities including Medellin, Havana, New York, Chicago, Santiago de Chile, Paris, Mexico City, Managua, and Buenos Aires. It features the work of Nicaraguan, Washington Heights-based artist Franck de la Mercedes, whose paintings (above left) combine abstract figurations, journal entries, and text. Other artists, who hail from a variety of disciplines, have lived in different Latin American cities and currently reside in cities in Europe, North and South America. The show is aimed at encouraging audiences to think about urbanism in a broader context.
Location: PS 109, Lower Gallery, 215 E 99th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: 6:00 p.m–9 p.m.
—Eileen Kinsella
Thursday, December 7–Saturday, January 27, 2018
8. “You an Orchestra You a Bomb” at Robert Mann Gallery
A new collection of works by the Maine-based photographer Cig Harvey is timed to coincide with the release of her new monograph of the same name. The photographs take ordinary themes of everyday life and infuse them with surreal calmness, sharply contrasted colors, and challenging perspectives.
Location: Robert Mann Gallery, 525 West 26th Street
Price: Free
Time: 6 p.m.–8 p.m.
—Caroline Goldstein
Friday, December 8
Michelangelo Antonioni Superstizione (Superstitions), 1949, still. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.
9. “Reinventing Neorealism: Antonioni’s Documentaries of the 1940s and ’50s” at the Museum of Modern Art
MoMA presents a selection of Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni’s early work from the 1940s and ’50s, neorealist semi-documentary work that does not fit any one genre and makes pioneering use of tracking and panning. Featured short films include “N.U. (Nettezza Urbana) (Sanitation Department)” (1948), a portrait of Roman street cleaners; and “La funivia del Faloria (The Funicular of Mount Faloria)” (1950), featuring the dramatically scenic journey of a cable car ride over the Dolomites.
Location: Museum of Modern Art, Theater 1, 11 West 53rd Street
Price: $12
Time: 4:30 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Friday, December 8 and Saturday, December 9
10. La Dolce Morte at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
This 2015 MetLiveArts commission from Suzanne Ferrin, with a libretto derived from Michelangelo’s love letters to the Roman noble Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, returns to the Met after a sold-out run in 2016, just in time for the blockbuster exhibition “Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer” (through February 12, 2018). The piece was specifically designed for the museum’s Vélez Blanco Patio, an intimate space dating to 16th-century Spain.
Location: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gallery 534, Vélez Blanco Patio, 1000 Fifth Avenue
Price: $95
Time: Friday, 7 p.m.; Saturday, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Saturday, December 9
Lucy McRae, The Institute of Isolation (2017), still. Photo courtesy of Julian Love.
11. “In Our Time: A Year of Architecture in a Day” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Met promises to discuss “the most exciting and critical spatial projects of 2017” at this day-long symposium which identifies the “Projects of the Year” by international architects, artists, curators, theorists, and filmmakers. Among those on hand to present their work will be Julie Mehretu, David Adjaye, and Iwan Baan.
Location: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, 1000 Fifth Avenue
Price: Free with general admission
Time: 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone