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 E.S.T. unless otherwise noted.)
Tuesday, February 15
Nicolas Poussin, A Bacchanalian Revel before a Term (ca. 1632–33), detail. Collection of the National Gallery, London.
1. “Dancing With Poussin” at the Getty Center, Los Angeles
Nicolas Poussin is remembered today as the father of French Classicism and a painter who influenced artists ranging from Charles Le Brun to Cézanne. The pictures that Poussin painted later in life strike some viewers as severe, while those he produced during his early years—the 1620s and 1630s—are full of drunken revelry, violence, and passion. This lecture from Emily Beeny, curator of European paintings at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, will explore Poussin’s dancing pictures, their reception, and their legacy, as illustrated in the new exhibition “Poussin and the Dance” (February 15–May 8, 2022).
Price: Free with registration
Time: 11 a.m. PT (2 p.m. ET)
—Eileen Kinsella
Wednesday, February 16
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and her Maidservant (ca. 1623-25) © The Detroit Institute of Arts.
2. “Happy Hour: Artemisia Gentileschi” at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
D.C. bartender A.J. Johnson has devised a specialty cocktail called If It Ain’t Baroque, Don’t Fix It for a virtual happy hour celebrating everyone’s favorite proto-feminist artist Artemisia Gentileschi. The recipe calls for Malfy blood orange gin, Amaro Averna, and honey-cinnamon milk, garnished with grated nutmeg and orange peel, and it sounds delightful. Eve Straussman-Pflanzer, curator and head of Italian and Spanish paintings at the National Gallery of Art, will join museum staff to talk about the painter’s life and work.
Price: Free with registration
Time: 5:30 p.m.–6:30 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Josephine Nivison Hopper, Self Portrait. Courtesy of the Edward Hopper House, Nyack, New York.
3. “Cocktails and Music with Jo and John” at the Edward Hopper House, Nyack
Josephine “Jo” Nivison Hopper and Edward Hopper may have had a tumultuous marriage, but the Edward Hopper House is still belatedly celebrating Valentine’s Day with a musical cocktail hour featuring popular tunes from throughout their relationship. Singer and guitarist John Malino performs and there will be sparkling rosé cocktails for guests. The evening coincides with “Josephine Nivison Hopper: Edward’s Muse” (through March 20), an exhibition of Jo Hopper’s watercolors curated by Elizabeth Thompson Colleary that highlights her role in her husband’s artistic success.
Location: Edward Hopper House, 82 North Broadway, Nyack, New York
Price: $30 ($25 for members), capacity 25 guests
Time: 6 p.m.
—Nan Stewert
Cauleen Smith, Light Up Your Life (For Sandra Bland), 2019 Courtesy of Blanton Museum of Art
4. “Artist Talk: Cauleen Smith” at Blanton Museum of Art, Austin
As part of the Blanton Museum of Art’s Zoom series “Curated Conversations,” artist Cauleen Smith will speak with the Modern and contemporary art curator Veronica Roberts about the exhibition “Assembly: New Acquisitions by Contemporary Black Artists” (on view through May 8). Smith explores themes of Black identity in “quasi-surreal” ways. Light Up Your Life (For Sandra Bland), a large-scale neon sculpture with exposed wires is a commentary on the words “I will light you up,” which were shouted at Sandra Bland by her arresting officer. “I wanted to play with this threat, ‘I will light you up,’ by finding a response that neutralized it,” Smith has said, “And so, this flashing neon is a dance off, a sing-a-thon, a battle, a protest, a memento mori that collectivizes Sandra Bland’s resistance, reclaims her sovereignty, and reifies the ways in which Black culture is inextricably woven into national identities and cultures.”
Price: Free with registration
Time: 1 p.m.
—Neha Jambhekar
Thursday, February 17
Carol Szymanski, Orb Innings (2021). Courtesy of the artist and Signs and Symbols.
5. “Carol Szymanski: You Pair How” opening at Signs and Symbols, New York
Carol Szymanski’s recent match-making performance The Go-Between is at the center of the artist’s latest show at Signs and Symbols gallery. After pairing her participants off for dates (based on their responses to an absurd questionnaire adapted from Harold and Maude), Szymanski video-recorded the encounters and isolated particular phrases, hand movements, and other gestures. She then translated them into a series of Polaroid photos, sound works, and a wall painting with neon, all of which will be on view in the show. And there’s still time to participate—just email thego-between@emergencyeyewash.org.
Location: Signs and Symbols, 249 East Houston Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
—Rachel Corbett
Thursday, February 17–Saturday, March 26
David Driskell, Mystery of the Masks (2005). Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery.
6. “David Driskell: Mystery of the Masks” at DC Moore Gallery, New York
African-American artist, art historian, and curator David Driskell was widely recognized as an authority on the subject of African-American art. The body of work exhibited in this exhibition marries modernist elements with Driskell’s personal history. Driskell took inspiration from African masks from his trip to the continent in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Self-portraits were also a recurrent theme in his work since his days at Howard University in the 1950s, used by the artist as a means of self-exploration.
Location: DC Moore Gallery, 535 West 22nd Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Neha Jambhekar
Thursday, February 17–Sunday, April 17
Hermen Anglada Camarasa, Girls of Burriana (Falleras) 1910–11. Collection of the Hispanic Society of America, New York.
7. “Nuestra Casa: Rediscovering the Treasures of the Hispanic Society Museum and Library” at Hispanic Museum and Library, New York
The Hispanic Society is home to some 750,000 objects from the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world—and almost none of them have been on view at the museum since it closed for renovations at the end of 2016. While work in the main halls continues, a new lower-level gallery that once housed the Museum of the American Indian debuted last year, hosting a stunning show of polychrome religious statuary from Spain and the New World. For the institution’s follow up, in the newly reopened east building galleries, curator and art historian Madeleine Haddon has sought out “hidden gems” from the collection, beyond the El Greco, Goya, and Sorolla works for which it is best known. So yes, you can once again enjoy masterpieces like Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of a Little Girl, but Haddon also hopes to introduce you to less familar Latin American artists, such as José Augustín Arrieta and José Campeche y Jordán.
Location: Hispanic Museum and Library, New York
Price: Free
Time: Thursday–Sunday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Thursday, February 17–Sunday, May 8
Carlos Villa, Third Coat. Photo courtsey of the Newark Museum of Art.
8. “Carlos Villa: Worlds In Collision” at the Newark Museum of Art
Filipino American artist and activist Carlos Villa (1936–2013) gets his first major museum retrospective, co-organized by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and the artist’s alma mater, the San Francisco Art Institute. When a teacher there told him “there is no Filipino art history,” it set Villa off on a path to find his cultural roots, a search that led him to showcase elements of non-Western art and culture in his multimedia works. The 36-piece show includes sculptures, drawings, paintings, photographs, and performance art, all created between 1959 and 2011.
Location: Newark Museum of Art, 49 Washington Street, Newark
Price: $10 general admission
Time: Thursday–Sunday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.; member hours 10 a.m.–11 a.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Friday, February 18–Thursday, March 3
Deborah Brown, Purple House, 2022 Courtesy of the artist and The Journal Gallery
9. “Deborah Brown: Shadowlands” at the Journal Gallery, New York
The Journal Gallery presents a solo exhibition of New York-based artist Deborah Brown. The paintings are made up of subject matter often seen in Brown’s work, the everyday landscape of East Williamsburg. The viewer sees the shadow of Brown and her dog in each work, never seeing the painter herself. The storefronts, apartment buildings, and streets are made beautiful with eye-popping color, all the while, though their emptiness, reminding the viewer of the loneliness felt during the past two years.
Location: The Journal Gallery, 45 White Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Friday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Saturday,11 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Neha Jambhekar
Through Saturday, February 26
10. “Famakan Magassa: Soifs” at Albertz Benda, New York
Malian artist Famakan Magassa, age 24, makes his U.S. debut with his series “SOIFS,” or “thirsts,” the idea for which came to him while stuck in a traffic jam in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. The paintings aren’t about a literal need for water—although that is a pressing issue in Mali—but about the many less tangible things that society teaches us to value, such as power and freedom. Inspired by the conflicting forces of 21st-century global culture and traditional ways of life in Mali, Magassa sees himself as a modern-day griot, a West Africa traveling poet, musician, and storyteller who guards the tradition of oral history.
Location: Albertz Benda, 515 West 26th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Monday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
“Gosha Levochkin: Last Element” at the Hole, New York. Photo courtesy of the Hole, New York.
11. “Gosha Levochkin: Last Element” at the Hole, New York
Moscow-born, Brooklyn-based Gosha Levochkin’s first job was at an animation studio, and his paintings, with their Russian constructivist shapes and bold colors, still look poised to come to life. His first New York solo show also includes a multi-screen, site-specific audiovisual installation that does just that, animated by Jonny Lee, a New York motion graphic artist from South Korea.
Location: The Hole, 312 Bowery, New York
Price: Free
Time: Wednesday–Sunday, 12 p.m.–7 p.m.
—Tanner West
Through Saturday, March 5
Leon Kossoff, Portrait of Rosalind No. 1 (1973). Courtesy of Mitchell Innes and Nash, New York.
12. “Leon Kossoff: A Life in Painting” at Mitchell-Innes and Nash, New York
A survey of paintings by the celebrated postwar British artist Leon Kossoff, who died in 2019, is timed to the publication of the Leon Kossoff: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings. On view are 16 paintings, ranging in date from the late 1950s to 2016. Kossoff was part of the “School of London,” a postwar movement that included artists such as Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Frank Auerbach. The show includes Kossoff’s main themes—family members, nudes, and London landscapes—which are at once poignant and mundane. The Mitchell-Innes and Nash show is part of a three-gallery effort and is the first posthumous and largest exhibition of Kossoff’s paintings in a commercial setting to date. Annely Juda organized a show in London in September, and L.A. Louver in Los Angeles has a concurrent exhibition through March 26.
Location: Mitchell-Innes and Nash, 534 West 26th Street.
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Katya Kazakina
Through Sunday, March 13
Anastasiya Tarasenko, And Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep (2021). Courtesy of Monya Rowe Gallery.
13. “Recipes for Romance” at Hudson House, Hudson, New York
If you happen to be going on any romantic weekend excursions upstate in the coming weeks, make your way to picturesque Hudson to check out this group show curated by Nick Payne. Billed as an erotic art show, the exhibition brings together an exciting mix of artists whose works range from the sensual to the amusingly bawdy. Particularly striking are artist Ever Baldwin’s paintings, abstract but oddly fetishistic abstract forms on charred wood as well as Anastasiya Tarasenko’s memorably bizarre painting And Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, which pictures an anthropomorphized pig/woman tussled in bedsheets, her hooves shaped like high heels. Odd enough at first glance, a second look and we realize the entire scene takes place in a green monster-like creature’s cavernous mouth.
Location: Hudson House, 824 Warren Street, Hudson, New York
Price: Free
Time: Saturday–Sunday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.
—Katie White