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

Tuesday, December 10

Installation view of “Nicolas Party: Pastel” at the FLAG Art Foundation, 2019. Photo by Steven Probert.

1. “Louis Fratino, Loie Hollowell, Nicolas Party, Billy Sullivan, and Robin F. Williams in Conversation,” hosted by the FLAG Art Foundation

FLAG Art Foundation’s founder Glenn Fuhrman will moderate a panel with some of the most buzzed-about artists working today. All of the artists are included in FLAG’s current exhibition, “Nicolas Party: Pastel” (through February 15, 2020), which juxtaposes pastel works by a range of artists, dating from the 18th century to 2019, with Party’s own soft-hued murals.

Location: Hauser & Wirth Bookshop, 548 West 22nd Street
Price: Free
Time: 6 p.m.–8 p.m.

—Caroline Goldstein

Wednesday, December 11

The Registrar of the Year Awards are this Wednesday.

2. The First Annual Registrar of the Year Awards

Registrars are the unsung heroes of the art world—they know where the art is, where it’s headed, and are often pulling the most important strings from behind their computer screens. A new award sponsored by logistics company Atelier 4 seeks to honor these quiet warriors with a $5,000 cash prize for the “Registrar of the Year,” chosen from among almost 40 nominees. 

Location: Artists Space, 11 Cortlandt Alley
Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

—Julia Halperin

Suzy Lake, Imitations of the Self (Study #2) 1973/2012. Photo courtesy of Arsenal Contemporary.

3. “Talk With Suzy Lake and Laurie Simmons” at Arsenal Contemporary

Despite a career spanning five decades, artist Suzy Lake is only now getting her first New York solo show. To mark the occasion, she’ll speak with fellow photographer Laurie Simmons about her work, which considers the ways in which society responds and relates to the female body.

Location: Arsenal Contemporary, 214 Bowery
Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 7 p.m.

—Nan Stewert

Thursday, December 12

MoMA union workers protest at the Museum of Modern Art on Monday, August 6, 2018. Photo by Sarah Cascone.

4. “Art Work: Whose Labor?” at Abrons Art Center

For the 17th year, the ICP-Bard Program in Advanced Photographic Studies is holding a symposium on labor in the art world—an especially timely subject given recent union disputes at institutions including New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles, which shut down rather than allow guest services employees to organize. Panelists including Dana Kopel, who helped lead this year’s successful unionizing effort at New York’s New Museum; Hyperallergic’s Jasmine Weber; artist Marina Berio; and Artnet News national art critic Ben Davis will consider the huge disparities of wealth in the art world, and how underpaid cultural workers keep this multi-billion-dollar industry running.

Location: Abrons Art Center, 466 Grand Street
Price: Free with registration
Time: Doors at 6 p.m.; discussion at 6:30 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Saturday, December 14

Meegan Barnes, Booty Boots (2019), featured in “Body Beautiful” at the Untitled Space Gallery, New York. Courtesy of the Untitled Space Gallery, New York.

5. “BODY BEAUTIFUL Artist Talk” at the Untitled Space

A number of the 50 artists included in the gallery’s current exhibition, “BODY BEAUTIFUL” (on view through December 20), will talk about how their work celebrates body positivity for a wide range of body types and ages, across gender and race.

Location: The Untitled Space, 45 Lispenard Street
Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 2 p.m.–5 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Sunday, December 15–Thursday, January 9

SuperReal by the Moment Factory and Cipriani. Photo by Zack Franciose.

6. “SuperReal” at Cipriani

When it took over Cipriani over the summer, SuperReal was an unexpectedly impressive entry into the current pop-up museum craze, with a 45-minute site-specific video that transformed the ritzy Italian restaurant’s cathedral-like dining room into five surreal worlds. The Moment Factory, which specializes in interactive projection mapping, has brought the project back to the space for a limited engagement over the holidays, with a special “Super Classic Experience” that includes Cipriani’s famous peach bellini cocktail on December 20, 21, 27, and 28.

Location: Cipriani, 25 Broadway
Price: $28 general admission, $18 children under 13, $55 Super Classic Tickets (ages 21 and up)
Time: Monday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sunday, 10 a.m.–7 p.m. Closed December 25.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Friday, December 20

Installation view of “Anish Kapoor” at Lisson Gallery, New York. Photo courtesy of Lisson Gallery.

7. “Anish Kapoor” at Lisson Gallery

The latest offering from Anish Kapoor continues the British Indian artist’s exploration of shiny, reflective surfaces with two new large-scale stainless steel works, titled Tsunami (2018) and Newborn (2019).

Location: Lisson Gallery, 504 West 24th Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Tanner West

Through Friday, December 20 and Sunday, December 22

Installation view of “Nicole Cherubini: Stacked” at Marisa Newman Projects, 2019. Courtesy of Marisa Newman Projects.

8. Nicole Cherubini at Marisa Newman Projects and Derek Eller Gallery

Nicole Cherubini flexes different aspects of her practice in two concurrent solo shows. In “Stacked” at Marisa Newman Projects, the artist showcases an uncharacteristic series of wall-mounted and custom-framed photographs, each depicting stacked china or interiors in an empty home. Atop some, she’s installed fragmented earthenware sculptures—a meditation on forms and perspective. Meanwhile, in “Full Moon” at Derek Eller Gallery, Cherubini reverts back to the layered vessels for which she’s best known, bringing into the fold earthen objects based on Eames chairs.

Location: Marisa Newman Projects, 38 West 32nd Street, Suite 1602; Derek Eller Gallery, 300 Broome Street
Price: Free
Time: Marisa Newman Projects: Wednesday–Friday, 1 p.m.–6 p.m; Derek Eller Gallery, Wednesday–Sunday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Taylor Dafoe

Through Saturday, December 21

Installation view of “Albert Oehlen: Spiegelbilder” at Nahmad Contemporary, New York. Photo courtesy of Nahmad Contemporary.

9. “Albert Oehlen: Spiegelbilder” at Nahmad Contemporary

This is the first show dedicated to Albert Oehlen’s “Spiegelbilder” or “Mirror Paintings” series, made between 1982 and 1990. (The exhibition was paired with a concurrent show at Galerie Max Hetzler in London that closed last month.) The canvases incorporate actual mirrored panes, collaged onto the surface and expanding the field of the work to include the viewer.

Location: Nahmad Contemporary, 980 Madison Avenue, third floor
Price: Free
Time: Monday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Installation view of “Ruby Neri” at Salon 94, New York. Courtesy of Salon 94.

10. “Ruby Neri” at Salon 94 Bowery

California artist Ruby Neri is finally getting her first New York solo show. Salon 94 is presenting a series of the artist’s colorful ceramic vases, shaped from boldly naked, cartoon-like female figures, and pastels on paper. The large-scale sculptures recall the pioneering female ceramicist Viola Frey, and evoke powerful women on the brink of losing control. In Neri’s words, the sculptures have a “self-imploding pressure—they are self-destructing in front of our eyes.”

Location: Salon 94 Bowery, 243 Bowery
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Installation view of “Robert De Niro, Sr. – Intensity in Paint: Installation of Six Works” at DC Moore Gallery. Photo courtesy of DC Moore Gallery.

11. “Robert De Niro, Sr. – Intensity in Paint: Installation of Six Works” at DC Moore Gallery

Timed to the release of a new monograph of his work, the late Robert De Niro, Sr., a long-overlooked contemporary of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko and father to actor Robert De Niro, has a show of his landscape paintings at DC Moore.

Location: DC Moore Gallery, 535 West 22nd Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Saturday, January 4

Daniel Richter, “pUnser die zukunft,” 2019, installation view. Courtesy of GRIMM.

12. “pUnser die Zukufnt” at GRIMM

Make sure to see German artist Daniel Richter’s first New York solo show with GRIMM this holiday season. Richter plays with the boundary between the abstract and the figurative in his large-scale canvases. These dynamic works evoke a sense of figures in conflict while at the same time captivating the viewer through the vibrant use of color.

Location: GRIMM, 202 Bowery
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Neha Jambhekar

Through Saturday, January 11

Sarah Palmer, installation view of “Outs and Ins” at Mrs., New York. Courtesy of Mrs.

13. “Sarah Palmer: Outs and Ins” at Mrs.

If you missed Mrs.’s booth at NADA Miami this year, head over to its permanent space in Maspeth to drink in the photo-based work of 2011 Aperture Portfolio Prize winner Sarah Palmer. Palmer makes each of her visually rich pieces in camera by meticulously layering images from source materials as disparate as decades-old Sears catalogs, rape-prevention manuals, and a rare 17th-century manuscript combining actual zoology with a taxonomy of imagined beasts. The results adorn dye-sublimation prints on aluminum, silk tapestries, and even artist-designed wallpaper. Each piece seems to tell a lush yet unsettling meta-narrative about human vulnerability, and none quite look like traditional photography.  

Location: Mrs., 60–40 56th Drive, Maspeth, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Friday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.; Saturday, noon–5 p.m.

—Tim Schneider

Through Saturday, January 11

Installation view of “Double Trouble,” 2019. Courtesy of ross+kramer gallery.

14. “Double Trouble: February James & John Rivas” at ross+kramer gallery

Curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah, until recently the senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and now part of the curatorial team for the 7th Athens Biennale, this exhibition includes both new individual as well as collaborative works by James and John Rivas, two artists known for punch-to-the-gut figurative works exploring trauma and identity. Their approaches are visually distinct, however, with Newark-based Rivas operating with energetic brushstrokes, and often incorporating three-dimensional elements into his canvases, while James’s tender watercolor portraits possess a dreamy sense of melancholy. A special feature of the exhibition are a series of works on paper that the artists created collaboratively by sending them back and forth in the mail. 

Location: ross+kramer gallery, 14 East 63rd Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday,  11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Katie White