Each week, we search for the most exciting and thought-provoking shows, screenings, and events, both digitally and in-person in the New York area. See our picks from around the world below. (Times are all ET unless otherwise noted.)

 

Wednesday, January 5 and Wednesday, January 12

1. “Approaches to Abstraction: Women Artists, 1930–1950” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

In conjunction with its exhibition “Labyrinth of Forms: Women and Abstraction, 1930–1950” (through March 13), the Whitney is offering a free two-part Zoom course about women’s role in the development of Abstract Expressionism, and the sexism women artists faced despite their innovative work. Instructors Sarah Humphreville, a senior curatorial assistant, and Clara Rojas-Sebesta, the museum’s conservator of works on paper, will focus on works on paper, showcasing drawing and prints by artists including Lee Krasner, Louise Nevelson, and June Wayne.

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

—Sarah Cascone

 

Thursday, January 6–Saturday, February 19

2. “Etel Adnan: Discovery of Immediacy” at Galerie Lelong and Co., New York

Lebanese-American artist Etel Adnan died on November 14, 2021, at age 96. Her first posthumous show, at Galerie Lelong, will feature her final works, completed over the last year of her life and colored by Adnan’s acceptance of her own imminent death. The show’s title is an acknowledgment of the urgency with which she continued to create, painting the view from her seaside apartment in Brittany, France, each day in a series she dubbed “leporellos.” The opening coincides with the final days of Adnan’s solo show, “Light’s New Measure,” at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (through January 10).

Location: Galerie Lelong and Co., 528 West 26th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, Thursday, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

 

Thursday, January 6–Saturday, February 26

3. “Stephanie Syjuco: Latent Images” at Ryan Lee, New York

Artist Stephanie Syjuco’s latest work is based on her recent research at the archives of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. She rephotographed historic photographs, documents, and ephemera, enlarged them into tiles, and printed and reassembled them. The resulting collages were photographed again and printed as high resolution, large-scale digital inkjet prints. Some works revisit ugly chapters in U.S. history, such as documents from a Ku Klux Klan chapter, while others, featuring records that have become damaged over the years, illustrate the imperfect nature of an archive and how details of history can never be perfectly preserved.

Location: Ryan Lee, 515 West 26th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, Thursday, 5:30 p.m.–7:30 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

 

Friday, January 7–Saturday, February 19

4. “Marks in Time: Howard Smith” at Jane Lombard Gallery, New York

Abstract painter Howard Smith has been working since the 1960s, and was part of New York’s Radical Painting group in the 1980s. His new paintings at Jane Lombard Gallery are single color compositions created almost exclusively under natural light, using an additive process that requires letting layers of lines, dots, and other marks dry before he applies additional paint.

Location: Jane Lombard Gallery, 58 White Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, Friday, 5 p.m.–7 p.m.; Tuesday–Friday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

 

Saturday, January 8–Saturday, February 26

5. “Jessie Edelman: Getaway” at Denny Dimin Gallery, New York

After nearly two years of limited travel, Jessie Edelman has turned her studio practice into a great escape, painting places from her imagination that she would like to visit. Each colorful canvas becomes a dreamlike getaway, framed with vibrant abstract and patterned borders.

Location: Denny Dimin Gallery, 39 Lispenard Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, Saturday, 2 p.m.–5 p.m.; Thursday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

 

Through Sunday, January 16

6. “Another Tradition: Drawings by Black Artists from the American South” at the Morgan Library and Museum, New York

In 2018, the Morgan acquired 11 woks from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, the nonprofit promoting Black Southern artists. The works in this show are drawings by eight artists including Thornton Dial, Nellie Mae Rowe, Henry Speller, Luster Willis, and Purvis Young. In this intimate exhibition, these recent additions to the Morgan’s holdings are augmented with loans of works by the likes of Sister Gertrude Morgan and Bill Traylor.

Location: The Morgan Library and Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, New York
Price: $22 general admission
Time: Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, 10:30 a.m.–5 p.m.; Friday from 10:30 a.m.–7 p.m.

—Nan Stewert

 

Through Saturday, January 22

7. “Vanitas” at Nathalie Karg, New York

During the Dutch Golden Age, vanitas paintings emerged as popular symbol-laden reminders of life’s transcience and the ephemerality of earthly pleasures. In our own strange time, the centuries-old genre feels newly relevant. This group show, curated by Hannah Chinn and Monica Hom, brings together a group of contemporary artists whose works are rooted in this tradition but with updated visual language. Artist Cathleen Clarke’s painting of a pink birthday cake filled with flickering candles, for instance, conjures up an odd sense of nostalgia and impending doom at once.

Location: Nathalie Karg, 291 Grand Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Katie White

 

Through Saturday, January 29, 2022 

8. “Entrainment” at Someday Gallery, New York

Entrainment is a synching process in which the motion or signal frequency of one system adjusts to that of another over time until the two are aligned. We see these processes at works in pendulum clocks, for instance, or in simply falling into step with another person. Entrainment can also take in the psycho-social realm—the phenomenon of groupthink being one example. Featuring works by Cameron Clayborn, Rachelle Dang, and Joel Dean, among others, this exhibition grapples with the idea of entrainment as it relates to the body, history, and nature. Tishan Hsu’s sculptural paintings, for instance, consider the ways in which technology and the human body are integrating, whereas Dang’s work considers the lasting effects of colonialism on natural ecosystems and these ecosystem’s continued recalibrations.

Location: Someday, 120 Walker Street #3R, New York
Price: Free
Time: Thursday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Katie White

 

Through Sunday, January 30

9. “Surrealism Beyond Borders” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

This fascinating exhibition explores the global reach of the Surrealist movement, moving beyond its Western European origins with sections dedicated to Surrealism’s spread to southeastern Africa, Colombia, and Japan, among other parts of the world. There are a significant number of works by female artists such as Brazil’s Tarsila do Amaral, Canada’s Françoise Sullivan, and Mexico’s Remedios Varo. Closing out the show is Ted Joans’s nearly 30-year-long exquisite corpse drawing Long Distance (1976–2005), which extends across most of one gallery, featuring additions by 132 artists including Bruce Conner, Allen Ginsberg, Dorothea Tanning, and Betye Saar. (The piece outlived Joans by two years.)

Location: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York
Price: $25 general admission
Time: Sunday–Tuesday and Thursday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m.–9 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone