Each week, we search New York City for the most exciting and thought-provoking shows, screenings, and events. See them below.
Tuesday, February 20–Monday, February 26
Film still from George (2017). Directed by Jeffrey Perkins. Courtesy of Jeffrey Perkins.
1. World Premiere of George and Carolee, Barbara, and Gunbor at the Museum of Modern Art
George, Jeffrey Perkins’s documentary about the rise of the avant-garde Fluxus art movement in the 1960s, led by Lithuanian American artist George Maciunas, gets a week-long run at MoMA, accompanied by Lynne Sachs’s short film documenting visiting with artists Carolee Schneemann, Barbara Hammer, and Gunvor Nelson. Three of the days will feature post-screening discussions, with Perkins and George editor Jesse Stead on February 20 and 25, and with Perkins, Sachs, and Schneemann on February 21. Other screenings will feature live performances: Yoshi Wada’s Lament for Maciunas (2018) on February 20, Alison Knowles’s Shoes of Your Choice (1963) on February 21, and Weronika Trojańska’s Maciunas laughter (choir edition) (2018) on February 26.
Location: The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street
Price: $12
Time: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, 4 p.m.; Wednesday, Monday, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, 7 p.m.; Sunday, 1:30 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Thursday, February 22
Donna Haraway: Storytelling for Earthly Surviva (film still). Courtesy of Fabrizio Terranova.
2. Donna Haraway: Storytelling for Earthly Survival at Anthology Film Archives
Fabrizio Terranova’s new documentary film about the feminist thinker Donna Haraway, known for her groundbreaking writings about technology and inter-species relationships, has its New York premiere. (It’s the latest event in the Swiss Institute’s new series “Objects in Mirror Might Be Closer Than They Appear,” ahead of the opening of its new building on St. Mark’s Place.) Terranova will be present for the screening, introducing the film and presenting a series of YouTube videos he selected with Haraway.
Location: Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue
Price: $11
Time: 7:30 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Thursday, February 22–Saturday, April 14
Bill Viola’s The Sleepers (1992). Photo by Louis Lussier, courtesy of Bill Viola Studio and James Cohan, New York.
3. “Bill Viola: Moving Stillness” at James Cohan Gallery
The exhibition features two large-scale installations from one of the most important and influential video artists of all time. Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier 1979 (1979) and The Sleepers (1992) both use the element of water as a metaphor for human consciousness and reexamine our understanding of the natural world. Moving Stillness is the artist’s eighth solo exhibition at James Cohan.
Location: James Cohan Gallery, 533 West 26th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Eileen Kinsella
Eduardo Terrazas’ 1.1.298 (2018). Courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor Gallery.
4. “Eduardo Terrazas: Cosmos Within a Cosmos” at Timothy Taylor Gallery
This exhibition of new work by Mexican artist Eduardo Terrazas is his first in New York since 1974. Terrazas is considered a founding member of the contemporary Mexican art scene, having worked across architecture, urban planning, design, and museology. The 16 works in the show reflect the continuing thread throughout his work of generating integrated environments. The mathematical processes he applies to his forms mimic the design process of nature.
Location: Timothy Taylor Gallery, 515 West 19th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Eileen Kinsella
Wednesday, February 21–Saturday, April 21
Sue Williams’ Black and White and Red All Over (1998). Courtesy of the artist, 303 Gallery, and Skarstedt.
5. “Sue Williams: Paintings 1997–98” at Skartsedt Gallery
This exhibition, the first of Sue Williams’ work at Skarstedt (in collaboration with 303 Gallery, which represents her), revisits works created over a two-year period early in her career. The oil and acrylic works appear to be abstract at first glance, but facial features and other body parts lie hidden among her colorful swirls.
Location: Skarstedt Gallery, 20 East 79th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Friday, 9:30 a.m.–6 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Robert Gober’s Apple/Lilacs (2006–2017). © Robert Gober. Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery.
6. “Robert Gober: Tick Gober Tock” at Matthew Marks
Gober returns to New York for the first time since his acclaimed 2014 MoMA retrospective, “The Heart Is Not a Metaphor,” with this show breaking out classic examples of his iconography across multiple media. A selection of wall-mounted sculptures and works on paper form the exhibition’s core, but its crown may be the inaugural stateside presentation of a basement-door sculpture debuted in the 2001 Venice Biennale. As the show’s title reminds us, with Gober the clock is always ticking. Stop in before time runs out.
Location: Matthew Marks, 523 West 24th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Tim Schneider
Friday, February 23–Saturday, July 28
Rachel Lee Hovnanian’s Part I: (Ray Lee Project Vol. 1) NDD Immersion Room (2017). Courtesy of the artist and VICTORI + MO.
7. “Rachel Lee Hovnanian: The Women’s Trilogy Project” at Leila Heller Gallery
Rachel Lee Hovnanian is debuting the first of three installments of “The Trilogy Project,” which is based on themes of addiction, gender roles, and technology in contemporary culture, and uses photography, sculpture, video, and installation to create an immersive and sprawling experience.
Location: Leila Heller Gallery, 568 West 25th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Caroline Goldstein
Saturday, February 24–Monday, April 30
Milton Avery’s Untitled (Beach Reading) (ca. 1930s). Courtesy of Yares Art.
8. “Milton Avery: Early Works on Paper and Late Paintings” at Yares Art
Drawing from both public and private collections, this Milton Avery exhibition features over 20 large-scale oil paintings as well as 50 never-before-seen works on paper from the 1930s. Don’t miss Hills and Sunset Sky (1964), the artist’s last major work.
Location: Yares Art, 745 Fifth Avenue
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Friday, 9:30 a.m.–6 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Sunday, February 25–Sunday, June 24
Excavating Henryk Ross’s buried box of negatives and documents in the ghetto March 1945. Photography by Ian Lefebvre. Courtesy Museum of Jewish Heritage.
9. “Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross” at the Museum of Jewish Heritage
Henryk Ross was confined to the Lodz Ghetto in Poland in 1940, where he was put to work by the Nazis as a bureaucratic photographer. For the next four years he used his position as a cover, while he covertly documented the harsh conditions of the more than 160,000 Jews trapped there. When the Nazis started liquidating the ghetto—the second largest such ghetto in Europe—Ross buried thousands of negatives in the ground near his home. Ross survived and returned in 1945 to unearth the work. Nearly 3,000 negatives survived the severe Polish winter. The show reveals more than 200 of Ross’s photographs, accompanied by artifacts and testimony.
Location: Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, Edmond J. Safra Plaza, 36 Battery Place, New York
Price: Adults, $12; Seniors $10; Students $7; members and children 12 and under free
Time: Sunday–Tuesday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Wednesday and Thursday 10 a.m.–8 p.m.; Friday 10 a.m.–3 p.m./10 a.m.–5 p.m DST
—Eileen Kinsella
Sunday, February 25
William Beebe in the bathysphere. ©Wildlife Conservation Society.
10. “Of the Deep: Films by the Department of Tropical Research” at the Museum of the Moving Image
If you caught the Drawing Center’s 2017 show of the fabulous scientific illustrations from the archives of the Department of Tropical Research, you’ll want to see this incredible footage of lead researcher William Beebe exploring the depths of the ocean in a steel-walled bathysphere. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Fabien Cousteau, grandson of pioneering oceanographic explorer and filmmaker Jacques Cousteau, and conservation biologist and whale researcher Howard Rosenbaum.
Location: Museum of the Moving Image, Redstone Theater, 36-01 35 Ave, Astoria, Queens
Price: $15
Time: 2 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Through Saturday, March 3
Louise Nevelson’s Untitled (Sky Cathedral) (1964). © Estate of Louise Nevelson/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo Kerry Ryan McFate, courtesy Pace Gallery.
11. “Louise Nevelson: Black and White” at Pace
This show of Nevelson’s trademark painted wood sculptures and installations marks the 27th show of the artist’s work art at the gallery since 1963.
Location: Pace, 537 West 24th Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Caroline Goldstein
Song Xin’s Subconscious Experience Series 01-04 (2018). Courtesy of the artist.
12. “Blurred Boundaries: Recent Works by Chinese Artists in New York” at the New York School of Interior Design
This group exhibition features Chinese artists who have lived for decades in New York, and whose work blurs the boundaries between the East and the West, such as Song Xin’s unique take on the traditional Chinese craft of paper cutting. Curated by Zhijian Qian, the show is one of several mounted by China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts as part of its “Fantastic China 2018” initiative, celebrating the Lunar New Year.
Location: New York School of Interior Design, 161 East 69th Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Through Saturday, March 10
A local boy outside the new Gallery 8 New York. Courtesy of James Carman.
13. “All That You Have Is Your Soul” at Gallery 8 New York
London’s Gallery 8 has expanded across the Atlantic, touching down in Harlem with a group exhibition inspired by the Cuban diaspora. A celebration of diversity that draws on the 17 participating artists’ shared Cuban heritage, the show is organized by the FACTION Art Projects collective.
Location: Gallery 8 New York, 2602 Frederick Douglass Blvd.
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Through Sunday, March 25
ITWÉ Collective, Manifestipi (2016). Courtesy of ITWÉ and Collection Majudia. Photo by Joshua Voda, NMAI.
14. Manifestipi at the National Museum of the American Indian
What does a tipi look like in 2018? It’s made of colorful frosted Plexiglas and glows in neon colors, at least in the hands of the ITWÉ Collective, who have created a futuristic encampment surrounded by video projections of Native imagery. The installation is part of the National Museum of the American Indian’s current exhibition, “Transformer: Native Art in Light and Sound,” on view through January 6, 2019.
Location: National Museum of the American Indian, 1 Bowling Green
Price: Free
Time: Friday–Wednesday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m.–8 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone