Each week, we search New York City 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.)
Tuesday, July 21
Adam McEwen, Escape from New York (2014), still from Battery Tunnel. Courtesy of Gagosian, ©Adam McEwen.
1. Broadcast: Alternate Meanings in Film and Video: Chapter Four at Gagosian
The last chapter of Gagosian’s four-part online video series goes live on Tuesday. Working off of words of psychologist Timothy Leary “turn on, tune in, drop out,” this show “employs the innate immediacy of time-based art to spark reflection on the here and now.” The four artists in this chapter are Hannah Wilke, Richard Serra, Walter De Maria, and Chris Burden. This is an online exclusive.
Price: Free
Time: 10 a.m.
—Neha Jambhekar
Still from John Akomfrah, Handsworth Songs (1986). Courtesy of the artist.
2. Film Screenings & Online Discussion with John Akomfrah from the Africa Institute
In an effort to educate and encourage action surrounding the current protest movement against racism, viewers can now watch three of artist John Akomfrah’s films online: Handsworth Songs (1986), Martin Luther King and the March on Washington (2013), and The Stuart Hall Project (2013). The film screenings are courtesy of a collaboration between the Africa Institute, Sharjah Art Foundation, and the Royal College of Art. On Tuesday, Akomfrah will speak with Adrian Lahoud and Gilane Tewadros, with director of Sharjah Art Foundation Hoor Al-Qasimi moderating.
Price: Free with registration
Time: 7 p.m. GST
—Caroline Goldstein
Thursday, July 23
Michael Rakowitz’s grandmother, Renée Isaac David (Née Shamoon), center, with her sister Marcel, left, and her friend Leoni in Baghdad, Iraq, (circa 1940). Photo courtesy of the artist.
3. “Michael Rakowitz in Conversation With Regine Basha” at Jane Lombard Gallery, New York
Michael Rakowitz will chat with curator, writer, and educator Regine Basha over Zoom. The two previously worked together on Rakowitz’s 2013 project Dar al Sulh, opening a traditional Iraqi Jewish restaurant in Dubai, decades after that community had been forced to leave the Middle East in the 1940s. They’ll talk about that project, community building, and how food and music can serve as important tools in such work.
Price: Free with registration
Time: 11 a.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Thursday, July 23–Thursday, July 30
Courtesy of Kevin Darmanie and Paradice Palase
4. “Rainbow Country” at Paradice Palase, Brooklyn
“Rainbow Country” is a week-long solo pop-up show of works on paper by Newark-based artist Kevin Darmanie at Paradice Palase in Bushwick. Curated by M. Charlene Stevens, founder of Arcade Project Curatorial, the works chronicle the journey of artist’s alter-ego, Kedar, on the island of Chacachacare, as he makes his way to a public pool. The works consist of “tropes of graphic novels to re-examine Caribbean attitudes, social critique, and self-introspection,” serving as a nod to the artist’s Trinidadian roots. RSVP is highly recommended as the gallery is only allowing six guests at a time for a duration of 30 minutes each.
Address: Paradice Palase, 1260 Broadway, Brooklyn
Price: Free; RSVP recommended
Time: 6 p.m.–9 p.m.
—Neha Jambhekar
Thursday, July 23
Zhou Dongqing, The Pleasures of Fishes (1291). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
5. “Seen and Unseen” at Asia Week New York
Asia Week New York had the extreme misfortune of opening March 12, with most of the galleries that were able to participate opting to wind down operations by the weekend, days ahead of the planned March 19 end date. To make up for the interrupted event, Asia Week galleries are banding together for “SUMMER REDUX: Asia Week New York 2020,” a virtual exhibition running through July 31 that coincides with online Asian art auctions at Bonhams, Christie’s, Doyle, Heritage Auctions, iGavel, and Sotheby’s. Programming includes a talk from the curators of three major Asian art shows that were also forced to shutter this spring: “Chinese Painting and Calligraphy Up Close” at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, “The Cloth That Changed the World: India’s Painted and Printed Cottons” at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, and “Lost Luxuries: Ancient Chinese Gold” at Vermont’s Middlebury College Museum.
Price: Free with registration
Time: 5 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Friday, July 24
The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.
Photo via: Wikipedia
6. “Virtual Artful Conversations: Memory Objects and their Stories” at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
This hour-long session, geared towards children aged seven to 12, teaches the art of looking. Instead of spending a fleeting moment looking at a work of art, the lesson focuses on careful, patient observation. Each session is led by a museum educator and focuses on a single object from the museum’s treasured collection. Children must be accompanied by an adult.
Price: Free with registration
Time: 2 p.m.
—Nan Stewert
Through Sunday, July 26
Tony Cokes, Evil.80.Empathy? (still), 2020. Courtesy of the artist; Greene Naftali, New York; Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles; and Electronic Arts Intermix, New York.
7. “Tony Cokes: Evil.80.Empathy?” at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
Along with Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art and Brussels’s ARGOS Centre for Audiovisual Arts, Harvard is hosting the digital premier of a compact yet powerful new video work by pioneering American artist Tony Cokes. Evil.80.Empathy? (2020) blends recent thoughts on the struggle for racial justice from authors and academics Tina Campt and Saidiya Hartman, a throbbing backing track from British dubstep fixture DJ Caspa, and Cokes’s signature in-your-face text treatments into two minutes and 43 seconds of resonant real talk. It’s a valuable online taste of If UR Reading This It’s 2 Late Vol. 1–3, the Cokes exhibition that has been unfolding across these same three institutions since last fall (and the final leg of which will premier at ARGOS in September).
Price: Free
Time: On demand
—Tim Schneider