Each week, we search for the most exciting and thought-provoking shows, screenings, and events. In light of the global health crisis, we are currently highlighting events and digitally, as well as in-person exhibitions open in the New York area. See our picks from around the world below. (Times are all EST unless otherwise noted.)

Monday, January 18

Michelangelo Lovelace, My Home Town ( 1998). Courtesy the Cleveland Museum of Art.

1. “Martin Luther King Day Program: Becoming a Beloved Community” at the Cleveland Museum of Art

This free online program explores Martin Luther King Jr.’s idea of a Beloved Community, one based on justice, equitable opportunity, and neighborly love. The event will springboard from Michelangelo Lovelace’s painting My Home Town (1998) to explore racial divides, opportunities for togetherness, and how to move forward in America. The event will include Reverend Dr. Jawanza Colvin; Cuyahoga County poet laureate Honey Bell-Bey; and the author and poet Orlando Watson.

Price: Free with registration
Time: 6 p.m.

—Nan Stewert

Tuesday, January 19

President Bill Clinton receives a bat from St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Famer Stan Musial, May 6, 1993. Photo courtesy of the Clinton Presidential Library & Museum.

2. “Meet the Presidents: A Look at the American Presidency” at the New-York Historical Society

Perfect for the week of the inauguration of President-Elect Joe Biden, this virtual tour of the museum’s ongoing “Meet the Presidents” exhibition highlights the actual bible upon which George Washington first took his oath of office in 1789.

Price: $10
Time: 4 p.m.–5:15 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Yoshitomo Nara, Schallplatten (2012). Collection of the artist, ©Yoshitomo Nara 2012, photo by Keizo Kioku, courtesy of the artist.

3. “Art & Conversation: Yoshitomo Nara | No longer just a girl with a knife: Art after Fukushima” at the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art

As part of the museum’s Yoshitomo Nara show, which is temporarily closed, LACMA is hosting a series of virtual talks by Yeewan Koon, chair of the department of art history at the University of Hong Kong and author of the artist’s new monograph. He’ll explore different phases of Nara’s career, from his early work to the influence on his art of the 2011 Japanese tsunami and ensuing nuclear disaster at Fukushima.

Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 6 p.m.–7 p.m. PT

—Sarah Cascone

Loretta Pettway Bennett, Work-clothes Strips (2003). Courtesy Souls Grown Deep Foundation and Alison Jacques Gallery, London. © Loretta Pettway Bennett / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS, London.

4. “Virtual Talk: The Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers” at Alison Jacques Gallery, London

In conjunction with the gallery’s current group exhibition highlighting works by three generations of Gee’s Bend women, Souls Grown Deep curator Raina Lampkins-Fielder will moderate a live Zoom conversation with Mary Margaret Pettway and Loretta Pettway Bennett, two artists from this vital quilting lineage (the latter is featured in the show). If you read this on Monday, January 18, you can also prep for the talk by viewing the documentary “The Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers” on the gallery’s website (at no cost) until the following day. Either or both will enrich your understanding of one of North America’s most important contemporary art traditions.

Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 12 p.m. 

—Tim Schneider

Thursday, January 21

Isolde Brielmaier, Culture as Catalyst. Courtesy of the Tang Teaching Museum.

5. “Book Event—Isolde Brielmaier: Culture as Catalyst”  at the International Center of Photography, New York

The Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College has turned a lecture series it hosted between 2017 and 2019 into a book, Culture as Catalyst, edited by Isolde Brielmaier, who organized the events. Speakers included Kimberly Drew, Eric Gottesman, and Lyle Ashton Harris, among others, discussing topics such as mass incarceration, feminism, and cultural appropriation. Brielmaier, now curator-at-large at ICP, is celebrating its release with—you guessed it—a virtual talk, featuring Our Body Politic host and author Farai Chideya and writer Tanya Selvaratnam.

Price: Free
Time: 5:30 p.m.–6:30 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Garrett Bradley, America (2019). Courtesy of the artist.

6. “Virtual Views: Garrett Bradley’s America, a Live Q&A” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York

Thelma Golden, director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, will lead a live Q&A with artist Garrett Bradley about her film America, currently on view at MoMA through March 21. The multi-channel video installation is inspired by the lost cinematic history of the US, and aims to recreate scenes from early 20th-century African American life, interspersing 12 black-and-white films by Bradley with scenes from Lime Kiln Club Field Day (1914), likely oldest surviving feature-length movie with an all-Black cast.

Price: Free
Time: 8 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Gillian Wearing’s statue of Dame Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London. Photo by David Mbiyu/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images.

7. “Representing Women in London’s Public Realm: with the East End Women’s Museum, London

The East End Women’s Museum is hosting an online discussion in collaboration with the head of London’s new commission for diversity in the public realm. The event will focus on how women are currently represented in London’s public statues, memorials, and street art installations.

Price: Free with registration
Time: 6 p.m.–8 p.m. GMT (1 p.m.–3 p.m. EST)

—Naomi Rea

Image courtesy Mass MoCA.

8. “In Session” at MASS MoCA 

This is the second event in a series of online panel discussions focused on anti-racist work in museums, and features Lisa Dent, executive director of Artspace New Haven; Tracy Moore, interim director of MASS MoCA; Cameron Shaw, deputy director and chief curator at the California African American Museum; and Eric Shiner, executive director of Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works. The talk will be moderated by Cecile Shellman, a DEI museum consultant.

Organizers note the discussion is deliberately designed to pose more questions than answers, with topics such as museums’ responsibilities toward BIPOC audiences when hosting challenging work concerning violence against Black and Brown bodies. It will also explore the issue of what role an art institution can play in providing context around a work of art. 

Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 6 p.m.

—Eileen Kinsella

Thursday, January 21–Saturday, February 27

Huma Bhabha, God of Some Things (2011) Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York. © Huma Bhabha

9. “Between the Earth and Sky” at Kasmin Gallery, New York

The show presents 21 monolithic sculptures ranging in date from 900 A.D. to 2019 that explore how stelae, herms, and columns have acted as markers of time and place across cultures. It includes works by artists such as Diana al-Hadid, Alma Allen, Huma Bhabha, JB Blunk, and James Lee Byars, as well as a selection of premodern sculptural objects from ancient civilizations around the world.

Location: Kasmin Gallery, 509 West 27th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday—Saturday 12 p.m.—5 p.m. by appointment. Sunday—Monday, closed.

—Eileen Kinsella

Friday, January 22

10. “A Closer Look” with Artnet Auctions

Join the leaders of the Artnet Auctions team for a discussion about the realities and possibilities of the online art market as they break down the trends they saw last year, and look forward to the next. Moderated by Colleen Cash, vice president of auctions, panelists include Johannes Vogt, head of contemporary art; Susanna Wenniger, head of photographs; and Conner Williams, head of prints and multiples. 

Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 11 a.m.

—Tanner West

Through, Friday, January 22

The BAM sign is hosting art by seven local artists for “Let Freedom Ring,” a public art project honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Photo courtesy of BAM.

11. “Let Freedom Ring” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music

For the 35th Annual Brooklyn Tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., BAM has turned over its giant video billboard to seven local artists—including Derrick Adams, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Hank Willis Thomas, and Lizania Cruz—for a week-long public art display curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah.

Location: Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Sunday, January 31

Sayre Gomez, Hilarity Ensues (2020).Courtesy of the Artist, François Ghebaly, Los Angeles, and Gagosian.

12. “The Future” Presented by Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch, New York

Continuing a regular tradition—this time virtually—gallerists Jeffrey Deitch and Gagosian have teamed up for their annual exhibition, this time inspired by Ed Ruscha’s 1999 work of the same name. Decades after it was made, the work is a jumping off point for a show reflecting “a global moment of uncertainty, anticipation, and hope regarding what might lie ahead.”

Location: Online
Price: Free

—Caroline Goldstein

Through Wednesday, February 3

Installation view of “\ ˈtəch \*,” at Marisa Newman Projects. Courtesy of Marisa Newman Projects.

13. “\ ˈtəch \*,” at Marisa Newman Projects, New York

“\ ˈtəch \*,” as this new exhibition at Marisa Newman Projects is called, is pronounced touch, but it’s no coincidence that the name reads at first glance like tech. Through the handmade work of seven women artists, the show asks what happens when we’re no longer able to feel our way through the world, and left, instead, to experience it mediated through the ever-glowing screen. The in-person exhibition is accompanied by a virtual component, too.   

Location: Marisa Newman Projects, 38 West 32nd Street, Suite 1602
Price: Free
Time: Monday–Wednesday, 1 p.m.–6 p.m

—Taylor Dafoe

Through Saturday, February 6

Jameson Green, Installation view of Fiends’ New Moon Ballet, 2021. Courtesy of Derek Eller Gallery.

14. “Jameson Green: Fiends’ New Moon Ballet” at Derek Eller Gallery, New York

Hunter College grad Jameson Green is having his first solo show at Derek Eller. Drawing inspiration from Old Masters, Picasso, and comic books, Green’s works are theatrical depictions of life and death. In A Young Dreamer’s Salute, a Christ-like figure is thrown into a river by a group of men in straw hats under fiery orange skies. While the styles of Post Impressionism and Cubism are clearly present, the artist’s punchy style is uniquely his own. The metal nails that appear in most of the paintings are loaded with Catholic symbolism yet also bring to mind the gruesome cartoon that were popular in the 1990s.

Location: Derek Eller Gallery, 300 Broome Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m. and by appointment

—Cristina Cruz

Alison Blickle, The Dance (2020). Courtesy of Kravets|Wehby.

15. “Alison Blickle: Time’s Up” at Kravets Wehby, New York

Alison Blickle’s paintings are at once romantic and feminine, powerful and witchy. Her latest works are inspired by Maenads of Greek mythology, followers of Dionysus who engaged in frenzied, ecstatic dances that would trigger a trance state—only here, in paintings set in present-day Hollywood, obsessive social media use is the fuel.

Location: Kravets Wehby Gallery, 521 West 21 Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Saturday, February 13

Deborah Brown, Melancholia (2020). Courtesy of Anna Zorina Gallery.

16. “Deborah Brown: Things As They Are” at Anna Zorina Gallery, New York

Deborah Brown’s evocative narrative scenes often unfold against lush green-and-blue outdoor backdrops. But in this, her first show with Anna Zorina, she has turned to life indoors, presenting a new body of work developed during quarantine that takes self-portraits and still lifes of the artist’s immediate surroundings as their focus. 

The exhibition title, “Things As They Are,” is derived from the 1937 Wallace Stevens poem “The Man with The Blue Guitar.” which goes: “Things as they are/ Are changed upon the blue guitar.” Here, Brown’s paintings take the place of the “blue guitar,” transforming the quotidian moments of her life at home into reflections on domestic space, femininity, and decoration. Looking at these paintings, the mind wanders far-and-wide, while considering the stories and histories behind the objects we keep in our homes. 

Location: Anna Zorina Gallery, 532 W 24th Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m. 

—Katie White

Through Saturday, February 20

Aurora Robson, Buckle Up Buttercup (2020). Courtesy of Hollis Taggert Gallery, New York.

17. “Remnant Romance, Environmental Works: Idelle Weber and Aurora Robson” at Hollis Taggart Gallery, New York

Hollis Taggart pairs the late Pop art painter Idelle Weber, who died last year at 88, with contemporary sculptor Aurora Robson. In the show, both women’s work celebrates the unexpected beauty of garbage, drawing inspiration from the remnants of other people’s lives—Weber in her photorealistic still lifes of debris piled up on littered streets, Robson in striking floral-looking sculptures made entirely from discarded plastic she’s rescued from trash bins.

Location: Hollis Taggart Gallery, 521 West 26th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone