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.)
Thursday, January 7
Kameelah Janan Rasheed, A QUESTION IS A SENTENCE DESIGNED TO ELICIT A RESPONSE. TODAY, WE WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE SLOPPY FUTURE HOLDS (2018, detail). © Kameelah Janan Rasheed. Photo by Jonathan Dorado, courtesy of the artist.
1. “Art and Empathy: Community Care Through Art” at the Brooklyn Museum
After the many trials of 2020, start the new year off with some much-needed self-care through this online program with art therapist Sarah Pousty, museum educator Dalila Scruggs, and social-work intern Lula Zeray. You’ll take an in-depth look at a work of art before working on a creation of your own during an evening dedicated to exploring the ways art can help communities grow.
Price: Free with registration
Time: 6:30 p.m.–8 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Friday, January 8
Peter Paul Rubens, Mulay Ahmad (circa 1609). Photo © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
2. “Challenging Eurocentrism: Reimagining Paradigms of Presentation of Dutch and Flemish Art” at the Center for Netherlandish Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The second webinar in this series offers the perspectives of four curators on decentering Europe and restoring the stories of historically underrepresented people. Panelists include Andrea Myers Achi, an assistant curator in the department of Medieval art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Stephanie Schrader, a drawings curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, among others. Jessie Park, a curator of European art at the Yale University Art Gallery, will moderate. The webinar will also be recorded and posted to the Museum of Fine Arts’s YouTube channel.
Location: Zoom
Price: Free
Time: 1:30–2:45 p.m. EST (7:30-8:45 p.m. CET)
—Eileen Kinsella
The East Room of the Morgan Library and Museum, New York. Photography by Mike Peel. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
3. “Treasures from the Permanent Collection: An Interactive Highlight Tour” at the Morgan Library and Museum
Take a docent-led virtual tour of one of New York’s museum gems, the Morgan Library and Museum, which was founded in 1924 after J.P. Morgan’s son donated his father’s library to the public. The collection includes rare books, manuscripts, drawings, prints, and objects as disparate as a life mask of George Washington and an extensive collection of etchings by Rembrandt. The tour offers a peek into turn-of-the-century art collecting, as well as the Gilded Age mansion that houses the extraordinary artifacts.
Location: Zoom
Price: Free with registration
Time: 12:30 p.m.–1:30 p.m.
—Katie Rothstein
Friday, January 8
Make a Dream Log with Alexandra Beguez. Courtesy of the Believer.
4. “Friday Night Comics: Make a Dream Log with Alexandra Beguez” at the Believer, Las Vegas
The Believer magazine took a pause on its weekly virtual comic book workshops late in 2020, but they’re back to kick off the year with a class Alexandra Beguez, on drawing artistic inspiration from your dreams. These classes offer fascinating insights into the artistic process of each week’s instructor, and are also a great creative exercise, always ending with participants from around the world sharing what they’ve made.
Price: Free with registration
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Sunday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Friday, January 8–Sunday, February 7
Mira Schor, Intervention, New York Times cover, August 9, 2020 “Straight to Hell” (2020). Photo courtesy of Lyles & King.
5. “Mira Schor: Tipping Point” at Lyles & King, New York
Just days after the Donald Trump presidency draws to a close, Mira Schor will present a series of works created over the course of his term. Some are fueled by the US’s increasingly tribal politics (one is titled What kind of art will we make under facism?) while more recent works respond to the strange new reality of being stuck at home during lockdown this past year. The show will include the 70-year-old artist’s largest works to date, measuring a monumental 18 feet wide.
Location: Lyles & King, 21 Catherine Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Sunday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Through Friday, January 8–Saturday, February 13
Elizabeth Schwaiger, Palimpsest (2020). Courtesy of Jane Lombard Gallery. New York.
6. “Elizabeth Schwaiger: From the Dark Sea” at Jane Lombard Gallery, New York
At her first solo show with the gallery, Elizabeth Schwaiger presents richly colorful mysterious watercolors depicting a wide range of locations that seem almost unstuck in time: a crowded peace conference, an empty art museum, and even the depths of the sea, with a cache of silverware ominously resting on the ocean floor.
Location: Jane Lombard Gallery, New York, 58 White Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening, 1 p.m.–6 p.m.; Tuesday–Friday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Nan Stewert
Through Saturday, January 9
Installation view, “Futura 2000” at Eric Firestone Gallery.
8. “Futura 2000” at Eric Firestone Gallery
Born in New York City in 1955, Futura 2000 (Leonard Hilton McGurr) emerged as one of the pioneering graffiti artists of the 1970s, tagging subway cars and Bowery walls, and showing works alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring at the pivotal 1980 Times Square show. Now, after a career focused on abstract art (still inflected with spray-paint and graffiti-gestures) Futura 2000 is finally getting a long-awaited solo exhibition at Eric Firestone’s ground floor space. The show features more than 20 new paintings inspired by the artist’s fascination with science fiction and natural phenomena.
Location: Eric Firestone at 40 Great Jones Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m. reservations required
—Caroline Goldstein
Through Saturday, January 16
Emily Furr, LOL Nothing Matters (2020). Courtesy of Sargent’s Daughters, New York.
8. “Emily Furr: So Tough” at Sargent’s Daughters
In her second solo exhibition at this Lower East Side staple, Brooklyn-based artist Emily Furr presents an array of ominous new paintings and collages animated by two frictions that increasingly define contemporary life: the one between industrial society and Mother Nature, and the one between our thirst for control and the untameable randomness of the universe. Her still lifes equip heavy machinery with human tongues, aim galactically scaled-up gun barrels at unsuspecting planets, and cast the stars as a resource to be selectively churned out like the melody in a music box. The show gives New Yorkers a chance to get (re)acquainted with Furr’s unsettling yet magnetic work before she makes her institutional solo debut at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah in February.
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, noon–6 p.m.
—Tim Schneider
Through Saturday, January 16
Eleonore Koch, Interior with White Chair (1977). Courtesy of Mendes Wood DM.
9. “Eleonore Koch: The Essential Painter” at Mendes Wood DM, New York
The late German-Brazilian artist Eleanore Koch’s singular, spare style has made her something of an art-historical anomaly. Most frequently, she’s been associated with the celebrated painter Alfredo Volpi, with whom she studied for a period of three years in the early 1950s, and from whom she learned the traditional egg tempera that would predominate her career. This under-the-radar exhibition brings together works Koch made in London in the 1960s through to the years following her return to Sao Paulo in the 1990s. Rather than marking any drastic changes, the exhibition illustrates a refining of her elegant style over the decades, with the figuration of her delicate interiors and landscapes reduced to a minimum, vibrant colors applied with control and restraint, and her characteristic full-hearted embrace of empty space.
Location: Mendes Wood DM, 60 East 66th Street, 2nd Floor, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Katie White
Through Sunday, March 14
This Longing Vessel: Studio Museum Artists in Residence 2019–20, MoMA PS1 December 10, 2020–March 14, 2021. Photo: Kris Graves
10. “This Longing Vessel: The Studio Museum: Artists in Residence 2019–2020” at MoMA PS1, Queens
The Studio Museum presents its annual Artist-in-Residence exhibition at MoMA PS1 with new works by E. Jane, Naudline Pierre, and Elliot Reed. The show, curated by Glitch Feminism author Legacy Russell, examines the intersection between queerness and Blackness across new media, painting, and performance.
Location: MoMa PS1, 22-25 Jackson Ave., Queens
Price: $10 regular admission
Time: Monday–Thursday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.; Saturday, 12 p.m.–8 p.m.
—Cristina Cruz