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

Monday, January 29–April 2

Carissa Rodriguez’s The Maid, production still (2017). Courtesy of the artist.

1. “Carissa Rodriguez: The Maid” at SculptureCenter
Carissa Rodriguez’s first New York solo museum exhibition features a newly commissioned video work, that, according to the SculptureCenter, “examines the material and social conditions in which art is produced and reveals how the canonical figure of the artist is reflected in—and reproduced by—the products of her labor.”

Location: SculptureCenter, 44-19 Purves Street, Long Island City
Price: $5 suggested donation
Time: Thursday–Monday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Wednesday, January 31–Friday, March 16

Wayne Thiebaud’s Green River Lands (1998). Image courtesy of Acquavella Galleries, ©Wayne Thiebaud/Licensed by VAGA, New York.

2. “California Landscapes: Richard Diebenkorn | Wayne Thiebaud” at Acquavella Gallery
Aquavella Galleries taps into the friendship between Wayne Thiebaud and Richard Diebenkorn and their shared inspiration of the American West in this exhibition of vibrant, impasto-heavy landscape paintings. The two painters managed to convey the ethos of California’s geography and spirit within their canvases.

Location: Acquavella Gallery, 18 East 79th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Monday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

—Caroline Goldstein

Work by Chaya Babu, Camille Lee, Katherine Toukhy, and Christen Clifford. Image courtesy of Project for Empty Space.

3. “INCISION: Feminist in Residence Exhibition ” at Project for Empty Space
Catch the latest from Project for Empty Space’s 2017/2018 GRAB BACK: Feminist In Residence program, created by artists Chaya Babu, Christen Clifford, Camille Lee, and Katherine Toukhy since last fall. The unifying theme is the female body, and how it all too often becomes a site for violent acts.

Location: Project for Empty Space, 2 Gateway Center Gallery, Newark
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Monday–Friday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Wednesday, January 31

Ai Weiwei’s Arch (2017). Photo Jason Wyche, courtesy Public Art Fund.

4. Immigrants Are Our Neighbors at the Tenement Museum
As the Public Art Fund enters the final days of “Ai Weiwei: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors” (on view through February 11), the organization has teamed up with the Tenement Museum and the New York Immigration Coalition to bring together “a panel of experts to discuss the intersection of history, art, and activism,” according to the event description.

Location: The Tenement Museum, 103 Orchard Street
Price: Free
Time: Doors at 6 p.m., talk at 6:30 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Wednesday, January 31–Saturday, February 3

Max Berry’s Cut Fruit and Bowl (2017). Image courtesy of the artist.

5. “Group Show” at the Milk Studios
At the ripe old age of 28, Lucien Smith has largely stopped making work of his own, dramatically scaling back his production and dedicating his energies to a new nonprofit, STP. His latest endeavor is an open-call group show, featuring 43 works selected from over 800 submissions.

Location: Milk Studios, 450 West 15th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception 6 p.m.–9 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 9 a.m.–6 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.–7 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Wednesday, January 31–

Huang Yan’s 6 Body Shan-Shui (2001). Image courtesy of Ethan Cohen Fine Arts.

6. “The Fuck Off Generation: Chinese Art in the Post-Mao Era” at Ethan Cohen Fine Arts
A group show that places some of the most explicitly defiant artwork created in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Protests in 1989, which gave rise to a new generation of creatives who sought to harness the newly unleashed energy of artistic production.

Location: Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, 251 West 19th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Caroline Goldstein 

Thursday, February 1–June 18

Maria Lassnig’s Kopf (c. 1976), film still. Courtesy of the Maria Lassnig Foundation. ©2017 Maria Lassnig Foundation.

7. “Maria Lassnig: New York Films 1970–1980” at MoMA PS1
A series of experimental films made by Maria Lassnig in the New York back in the late ’70s finally have their world premiere, having been restored by the Maria Lassnig Foundation and the Austrian Film Museum. “These newly surfaced films,” writes MoMA PS1, “enrich and complicate our understandings of Lassnig’s approach to figuration and self-portraiture, as well as other key themes that she investigated throughout her career, including the social roles assigned to women, the tension between public engagement and private seclusion, and questions of technological advancement, especially of imaging technologies and shifts in the way images circulate.”

Location: MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Queens
Price: $10 suggested donation
Time: Thursday–Monday, 12 p.m.—6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Thursday, February 1

Images courtesy of Printed Matter, Inc. and Conveyor Editions.

8. “Once in a Blue Moon” at Printed Matter, Inc.
A book launch and reading celebrating the release of Magali Duzant’s Light Blue Desire: A Manual to the Color Blue, aptly taking place on the evening of the astronomical phenomenon of a blue moon. The book is an investigation into the connection between language and form, specifically the color blue and how it functions as a metaphor and an idiom in the broad cultural landscape.

Location: Printed Matter, Inc., 231 11th Avenue
Price: Free
Time: Book launch & reading: 6 p.m.–8 p.m.

—Caroline Goldstein

Friday, February 2

Installation view of “Solid Light Works: Anthony McCall.” Curated by Gabriel Florenz. Pioneer Works, New York, January 12–March 11, 2018. ©Dan Bradica.

9. “Four Simultaneous Soloists, organized by David Grubbs” at Pioneer Works
In this performance, four musicians will be spread out over Pioneer Works’ 130-foot main hall, each adjacent to a light piece in Anthony McCall’s current show at the Red Hook arts facility (through March 11). Listening to the performances will require moving around the hall; there’s no single experience, but rather varied ones by each listener. The artist has appeared in shows at venues from New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art to the Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, and the works cast a spell.

If you miss this one, there are others on February 16 and March 2 in a series organized by beloved composer David Grubbs, who’s been making music since his Louisville beginnings in punk band Squirrel Bait in the ’80s through Gastr del Sol in the ’90s and until today, when he’s got over 150 recordings to his credit.

Location: Pioneer Works, 159 Pioneer Street, Brooklyn
Price: $15
Time: Doors 7 p.m., performance 7:30 p.m.

—Brian Boucher

Friday, February 2–Sunday, June 3

George Kalinsky’s Patrick Ewing and the Knicks win the NBA Eastern Conference Championship, June 5, 1994. Photo courtesy of the New-York Historical Society.

10. “New York Through the Lens of George Kalinsky” at the New-York Historical Society
Fresh out of college, George Kalinsky, camera in hand, happened upon Muhammad Ali entering a gym in Miami. He talked his way into the training session. On the strength of the resulting roll of film, he landed a gig as the official photographer at Madison Square Garden—the very post he had lied about holding when he first met Ali’s team. The New-York Historical Society celebrates a half-century’s worth of iconic photographs taken by the artist at MSG with an exhibition featuring historic figures from Pope John Paul II  to Frank Sinatra to Knicks center Patrick Ewing.

Location: New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West at Richard Gilder Way (West 77th Street)
Price: $21
Time: Tuesday–Thursday, Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Friday, 10 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Friday, February 2–Monday, January 7, 2019

Padmasambhava as Orgyen Dorje Chang. Courtesy Rubin Museum of Art, New York

11. “The Second Buddha: Master of Time” at the Rubin Museum of Art
The exhibition tells the story of Padmasambhava, the Lotus Born, who Tibetans celebrate as “The Second Buddha.” They believe he was a key figure in converting the land and people of Tibet to Buddhism. His legend includes universal themes such as triumphing over obstacles, transformation, impermanence, and achieving liberation from life and death.

Location: Rubin Museum of Art, 150 West 17th Street
Price: $15 general admission, Free every Friday 6 p.m.–10 p.m., Free for seniors every first Monday
Time: Monday and Thursday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m; Tuesday Closed; Wednesday 11 a.m.–9 p.m.; Friday 11 a.m.–10 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday 11 a.m.–6 pm.

—Eileen Kinsella

Saturday, February 3–Wednesday, March 7

Patricia Voulgaris’s Clock Tower (2017). Image courtesy of the artist and Rubber Factory.

12. “Patricia Voulgaris: Nothing Can Stop” at the Rubber Factory
Patricia Voulgaris’s first solo show at Rubber Factory, opening February 3, brings together a selection of photos of impermanent, ad-hoc assemblages the artist created in her home studio, using found objects and her own body. Her work evokes a handful of art historical touchstones, from the black-and-white body studies of John Coplans to Josef Bauer’s “tactile poem” pictures to the rich history of sculptural photography. Ultimately, though, Patricia Voulgaris’s works look inward, operating more as fragmented self-portraits than anything else.

Location: Rubber Factory, 29c Ludlow Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Wednesday–Sunday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Taylor Dafoe

Saturday, February 3

Alan Shields’s My Roller Derby Queen (ca. 1974). Courtesy of Van Doren Waxter.

13. “Artist Talk: Alan Shields Project” at Van Doren Waxter
Van Doren Waxter’s Chrystie Street outpost presents an artist talk in conjunction with the current exhibition: “Alan Shields Project,” on view through February 24. Dan Byers will moderate a conversation between artists Cheryl Donegan, Martha Tuttle, and B. Wurtz; the contemporary artists are all working in a manner that evokes the practice of Alan Shields, whose multidisciplinary artwork defied categorization.

Location: Van Doren Waxter, 195 Chrystie Street
Price: Free
Time: 2 p.m.

—Caroline Goldstein

Through Sunday, February 10

Julius Eastman and Petr Kotik rehearse Eastman’s Trumpet (1970). Photo: Ron Hammond.

14. “Julius Eastman: A Recollection. Predicated” at the Kitchen
Dubbed an “American genius” by Pulitzer honoree Hilton Als, composer Julius Eastman is known, to the extent that he’s known, for innovative works penned in New York in the 1970s and ’80s, which bear provocative titles like Gay Guerrilla and Evil Nigger. African-American and gay, Eastman brought a political sensibility to a downtown music scene more deeply engaged with formal issues, Als points out. Works by no fewer than 14 artists—including Sondra Perry and Kameelah Janan Rasheed—accompany extensive selections of ephemera from various collections of Eastman friends and fans.

Location: The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday—Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Brian Boucher

Through Monday, April 7

Edvard Munch’s Edvard Munch and Rosa Meissner in
Warnemünde (1907). Courtesy of Munch Museum.

15. “The Experimental Self: Edvard Munch’s Photography” at Scandinavia House
I Scream, you Scream, we all Scream for—uh, the little-known, lens-based side practice of a great Norwegian modernist. Freshly extended through April 7, “The Experimental Self” explores Munch’s efforts to leverage the camera’s flaws and quirks into images that are sometimes haunting, sometimes lyrical, yet always novel for their time. Oslo’s Munch Museum loaned over 50 copy prints, as well as a loop of the artist’s complete forays into film, to supply the show’s foundation. A handful of private collectors contributed additional prints to flesh out the story. A weekly guided tour is available every Wednesday at 5:30 p.m.

Location: Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue
Price: Free
Time: Wednesday, 12 p.m.–7 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday,12 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Tim Schneider