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

Wednesday, February 20

Party decorations by David Stark Design at the Jewish Museum’s Purim Ball. Courtesy of the Jewish Museum, @ Julie Skarratt

1. The Jewish Museum’s Annual Purim Ball at the Park Avenue Armory

Enjoy dinner and dancing underneath a 45-foot-tall Ferris wheel at the Jewish Museum’s masked ball, which will feature classic carnival games, like the bottle toss, as well as aerialists and stilt walkers. The evening’s honorees are Robert and Tracey Pruzan, and artist attendees will include Kikki Smith, Rachel Feinstein and John Currin, Jonathan Horowitz, Joan Jonas, Maira Kalman, and Deborah Kass. Stay the whole night, or just swing by the after party for the open bar.

Location: Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue
Price: Email for dinner ticket information, after party tickets $125/$150 at the door
Time: Cocktails begin at 6:30 p.m.; after party starts 9:30 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Thursday, February 21–Saturday, March 30

Richard Kalina, Register 3 (2018). Courtesy of Lennon, Weinberg, Inc.

2. “Richard Kalina: Future Perfect” at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc. 

In his 12th show with Lennon, Weinberg, Richard Kalina continues with his architecturally inspired canvases, but returns to pure oil painting for the first time since the early 1980s. Featuring overlapping and interlocking geometric shapes in a variety of bright colors, the works create the illusion of three-dimensional space through the artist’s use of color theory—different shades that seemingly retreat or advance from view.

Location: Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., 514 West 25th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Rosalyn Drexler, Woman Sawed in Half (1989). ©2019 Rosalyn Drexler/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York.

3. “Rosalyn Drexler: The Greatest Show on Earth” at Garth Greenan Gallery

The nonagenarian Rosalyn Drexler gets her third show with Garth Greenan, and the first dedicated to her paintings from the 1980s and ’90s. Drexler got her start as a sculptor and went on to have an exceptionally productive career that spanned novels, plays, and professional wrestling. But she is best known for her 1960s-era Pop art. After transitioning to works on canvas, she cleverly overcame her lack of drawing skills by developing a unique collage-based practice, painting over cut outs from magazines. Drexler’s compositions are often verging on the surreal, like this painting of a magician sawing his female assistant in half.

Location: Garth Greenan Gallery, 545 West 20th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Thursday, February 21–Sunday, June 2

Siah Armajani, Wall (1958). Collection Kristi and Dean Jernigan, courtesy of the artist.

4. “Siah Armajani: Follow This Line” at the Met Breuer

It’s a big week for Siah Armajani, is recreating his radical 1970 public art installation Bridge Over Tree in Brooklyn Bridge Park, opening on February 20. The work, commissioned by the Public Art Fund, coincides with the debut of Armajani’s first-ever US retrospective, at the Met Breuer. The Iranian artist and activist will also be present on February 22 for an event at the Met Fifth Avenue featuring a shared meal and discussion in the museum auditorium.

Location: The Met Breuer, 945 Madison Avenue
Price: General admission $25
Time: Tuesday–Thursday and Sunday,10 a.m.–5:30 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m.–9 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Thursday, February 21–Friday, April 5

Still from Alicia Mersy’s WISDOM FERTILIZER (2018). Courtesy of the artist and Abrons Arts Center.

5. “Alicia Mersy: Wisdom Fertilizer” at Abrons Arts Center

New media artist Alicia Mersy uses the Internet as her medium, collecting images, clips, graphics, and still frames that together make up an incomplete but endlessly fascinating view of the world. In her new series WISDOM FERTILIZER, Mersy reflects how deeply fractured the global economy really is and gives insight into the crises at borders around the world.

Location: Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street (at Pitt St.)
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; daily, 10 a.m.–9 p.m.

—Caroline Goldstein

Friday, February 22

Poster for Velvet Buzzsaw. Image courtesy Netflix.

6. Velvet Buzzsaw Screening at the Art Students League

See Velvet Buzzsaw, the new art world thriller directed by Dan Gilroy and starring Jake Gyllenhaal that everyone is talking about! Admission is free and movie snacks will be served.

Location: Art Students League, the Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery Wooster Street
Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Friday, February 22–Friday, March 22

A painting by Wang Ziping. Courtesy of J. Yuan & Associates LLC.

7. “Daydreaming: Wang Ziping New Paintings” at J. Yuan & Associates LLC

Chinese abstract painter Wang Ziping is having her first solo exhibition with J. Yuan & Associates. Each canvas is conceived as the visualization of a conversation and the various linguistic formulations people use to communicate. She’s most interested in “conversations that sound ‘proper and appropriate’ but in reality are superficial or evasive in their content,” according to the artist’s statement.

Location: J. Yuan & Associates LLC., 163 East 92nd Street, Suite 4
Price: Free, RSVP for salon
Time: Opening reception, 4 p.m.–8 p.m.; salon hours February 23 and 24, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; otherwise by appointment

—Nan Stewert

Saturday, February 23–Saturday, March 23

Sarah Charlesworth, Rider (1983-84). Courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery.

8. “Sarah Charlesworth” at Paula Cooper Gallery

The late Pictures Generation photographer Sarah Charlesworth gets her first show with Paula Cooper. The exhibition will feature rarely exhibited work from the late 1970s and early ’80s, including works from her series “Red Collages” (1983-84), glossy Cibachrome images that reproduce film transparencies on photographic paper, such as Rider, an image of Natalie Wood cropped into the silhouette of a man on a rearing horse.

Location: Paula Cooper Gallery, 524 West 26th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening, 10 a.m.–4:30 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Saturday, February 23

Sara Jimenez, Urduja (3), 2017. Photo courtesy of Project for Empty Space.

9. Brunch with the Feminists in Residence at the Project for Empty Space

Meet the 2019 Feminists in Residence at the Project for Empty Space at this bubbly brunch and studio tour of the non-profit gallery’s Feminist Incubator Space, dedicated to promoting women’s empowerment. The artists are Aimee Gilmore, Sara Jimenez, Katrina Majkut, Julie Marie Seibert, fayemi shakur, and Sophia Wallace. (Full disclosure: this event is being held in conjunction with the networking group Young Women in the Arts, which I co-founded.)

Location: Project for Empty Space, 2 Gateway Center, Newark, New Jersey
Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 12 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Saturday, February 23–Saturday, April 6

Hans Op de Beeck, The Manor House, (2019). Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen. © Hans Op de Beeck. Photo: Studio Hans Op de Beeck.

10. “Hans Op de Beeck” at Marianne Boesky Gallery

On Saturday, Brussels-based artist Hans Op de Beeck’s film Staging Silence (3) makes its world premiere, and will mark the final installment of the artist’s “Staging Silence” series. The film will be shown in the gallery alongside a life-size sculpture that echos themes and images from the film, as well as a suite of smaller sculptural installations that appear to be set pieces from the film.

Location: Marianne Boesky Gallery, 509 West 24th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Caroline Goldstein

Saturday, February 23–Saturday, June 9 

Thomas Gainsborough, Mary and Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist’s Daughters, Playing with a Cat (ca. 1760-61). ©The National Gallery, London.

11. “Gainsborough’s Family Album” at the Princeton University Art Museum

Crossing the pond from London’s National Portrait Gallery, this exhibition showcases not the portraits that Thomas Gainsborough painted of the wealthy aristocracy and royalty that made him famous, but his intimate depictions of his family and household, including servants and pets as well as his wife, father, sisters, and daughters. Together, these works offer a surprisingly insightful window into the family values of the early modern age.

Location: Princeton University Art Museum, Elm Drive, Princeton, New Jersey
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday–Sunday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m.–9 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Saturday, February 23

Jorge Méndez Blake, Amerika (2019). Photo courtesy of James Cohan.

12. “Borders” at James Cohan

Featuring the work of artists including Yael Bartana, Sol LeWitt, Teresa Margolles, Dread Scott, Yinka Shonibare, Fred Tomaselli, and Hank Willis Thomas, this group show addresses the concept of borders just as President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency to build a wall between the US and Mexico. Works on view will include Byron Kim’s Sky Blue Flag, originally installed near the Korean Demilitarized Zone checkpoint, and an actual brick-wall installation by Jorge Méndez Blake. Co-curator Audrée Anid will offer a free tour, with RSVP, on February 21, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.

Location: James Cohan, 533 West 26th Street and 291 Grand Street
Price: Free
Time: Chelsea hours Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Lower East Side hours Wednesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m and Sunday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m

—Sarah Cascone

Sunday, February 24

Wendy Red Star, of the Apsáalooke (Crow) tribe Alaxchiiaahush/Many War Achievements/Plenty Coups (2014). Artist-manipulated photograph by C.M. Bell, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. Brooklyn Museum; Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, gift of Loren G. Lipson. Photo by Jonathan Dorado, Brooklyn Museum.

13. “Artist Talk: Wendy Red Star” at the Brooklyn Museum

Work by artist Wendy Red Star, a Native American who grew up on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation in Montana, is one of the highlights of the Brooklyn Museum’s groundbreaking exhibition “Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection,” on view through March 31. She’ll speak at the museum about her work in photography, sculpture, video, fiber arts, and performance, and how it addresses both Native American tradition and the colonialist structures that define contemporary American society. The artist also has a solo show, “Wendy Red Star: A Scratch on the Earth,” opening at the Newark Museum on Saturday, February 23.

Location: The Brooklyn Museum, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Fourth Floor, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn
Price: $16
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Camel Collective, La distancia entre Pontresina y Zermatt es la misma que la de Zermatt a Pontresina (The Distance from Pontresina to Zermatt is the Same as from Zermatt to Pontresina). Still courtesy of the Queens Museum.

14. Queens International 2018 Closing Events at the Queens Museum

For the last day of “Queens International 2018: Volumes,” the museum has arranged a full day of programming including artist talks, performances, and a film screening. The day will end with a reception celebrating the release of the 2018 Carnegie International catalogue. The museum is running a free shuttle back and forth to the Mets-Willets Point 7 train stop for the occasion.

Location: The Queens Museum, New York City Building, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens
Price: Free with museum entry, suggested admission $8
Time: 12:30 p.m.–6:30 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Sunday, February 24

Installation view of “Iceberg ATOMIC3 and Appareil Architecture” at the Garment District Plaza. Photo courtesy of the Garment District Plaza.

15. “Iceberg ATOMIC3 and Appareil Architecture” at the Garment District Plaza

This wintery public art show is actually an environmentally minded interactive installation warning against the dangers of climate change. The piece represents the stages in the life of an iceberg, from calving off a massive ice sheet to melting into the ocean. As you walk through the metallic tunnel, the sculpture emits light and sound, the occasional thunderous crash representing the birth of a new iceberg.

Location: The Garment District Plaza, Broadway between 41st Street and 36th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Thursday, April 18

Ethan James Green, Gogo and Ser (2015). Photo courtesy of Aperture.

16. “Aperture Photographs” at the Aperture Foundation

Aperture’s display of photos taken over the last half century for its limited-edition print program opened on Valentine’s Day, but the opening reception has been pushed back until this Thursday, February 21. Stop by between 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. for your chance to see prints by founding Aperture photographers such as Edward Weston and Dorothea Lange as well as contemporary artists including Tyler Mitchell, who last year became the first Black photographer to shoot the cover for American Vogue.

Location: Aperture Foundation, 547 West 27th Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone