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 EST unless otherwise noted.)
Wednesday, June 15
1. “Art Law Lunch Talk: Some Like It Digital” at the Center for Art Law, Brooklyn
Attendees of this virtual panel can expect an insightful dive into the history of domain names through the lens of the art world, by looking at specific examples. Guests will include Kurt Pritz, a former executive at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers; Anne Gundelfinger, general counsel for the Unicode Consortium; and the Center for Art Law’s founder Irina Tarsis. They will discuss the art and (political) science behind domain names and registrations.
Price: General admission $10; students and artists $5. Tickets can be purchased here
Time: 12 p.m.
—Eileen Kinsella
A view of Chateau de Versailles in France. Photo by Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images.
2. “At Home with the King” at the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin
On the occasion of the exhibition “Fantastically French! Design and Architecture in 16th-to 18th-Century Prints” (through August 14), the Blanton Museum of Art welcomes art historian Jamie Kwan for the latest in its “Curated Conversation” series. She’ll take viewers on a virtual tour of royal residences that illustrate the wealth and decadence of French kings and their royal courts, including the Galerie François I at Fontainebleau and the palace of Versailles.
Price: Free
Time: 1 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Wednesday, June 15–Friday, July 15
Daisy Parris, I’d Rather Get No Sleep Next To You Than Sleep Alone (2022). Photo courtesy of James Fuentes, New York.
3. “Daisy Parris: The Warm Glow” James Fuentes, New York
This is the first New York solo show for London-based artist Daisy Parris, who makes colorful emotional paintings that grapple with loss and pain, but seek to imbue the viewer with a sense of hope. “The work is about being cradled and held by the things you’re scared of and doing the same for them in return. I’m trying to find some form of peace or beauty in the brutal,” Parris said in an artist statement.
Location: James Fuentes, 55 Delancey Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Friday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Saturday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Wednesday, June 15–Sunday, September 18
Wolfgang Hieronymus Von Bömmel, Lion and Hare Composed of Ornamental Leaf-Work (1698). Courtesy of the Drawing Center, New York.
4. “The Clamor of Ornament: Exchange, Power, and Joy from the 15th Century to the Present” at the Drawing Center, New York
This show explores the intricacy and exactitude of “ornament in architecture, art, and design through the lens of drawing.” Luckily, It also captures the frenetic chaos of artifice. A kaleidoscope of disparate sources (Islamic monuments, whalebones etched with fashion designs, Kashmir shawls) blend into ornate psychedelia. The result is like flipping the channels between cultures and centuries, and revealing far more than just surface commonalities.
Location: The Drawing Center, 35 Wooster Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception 6 p.m.–8 p.m., Wednesday–Sunday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.
—William Van Meter
Friday, June 17
Melissa McGill, Red Regatta (2019), a performance staged in Venice. Photo by Marco Valmarana.
5. “Melissa McGill: Red Regatta” at Magazzino Italian Art, Cold Spring, New York
In 2019, Melissa McGill staged an ambitious public art performance in the Venetian lagoon during the Venice Biennale, enlisting local sailors to rig their traditional vela al terzo boats with hand-painted red sails. The entire project was documented by Venetian filmmaker Giovanni Pellegrini in Melissa McGill: Red Regatta, which is screening for the first event this year in Magazzino’s annual Cinema in Piazza series. The evening also marks the launch of an accompanying book published by Marsilio, also titled Red Regatta, and featuring 250 color photographs.
Location: Magazzino Italian Art, 2700 Route 9, Cold Spring, New York
Price: General admission $10
Time: 7 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Friday, June 17—Sunday, October 16
Timothy J. Clark, Gryphons, Azores (2005) Image courtesy Hispanic Society Museum and Library
6. “American Travelers: A Watercolor Journey Through Spain, Portugal, and Mexico” at the Hispanic Society Museum and Library, New York
This show presents major watercolors by American artists that were created in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America, alongside related decorative objects in the Hispanic Society collections. It includes a suite of contemporary paintings by California artist Timothy J. Clark, whi is best known for his large watercolor paintings. Other works include historic pieces by Childe Hassam, Max Kuehne, George Wharton Edwards, Ernest Clifford Peixotto, Florence Vincent Robinson, Orville Houghton Peets, and Milan Petrovic.
Location: Hispanic Society Museum and Library (East Building Gallery, 1st Floor) 613 West 155th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Thursday–Sunday 12 p.m.–6 p.m.
—Eileen Kinsella
Friday, June 17 and Saturday, June 18
Kembra Pfahler. Photo by Steven Harwick, courtesy of Pioneer Works.
7. “Kembra Pfahler: On the Record Off the Record: Volume Two” at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn
Kembra Pfahler’s new performance piece On the Record Off the Record: Volume 2 stars the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, the band she started with Samoa Moriki in 1990. The performance art group, known for their dramatic costumes with black teeth, body paint, stiletto boots, and over-the-top wigs, will play music that activates a spinning sculpture of a monumental black vinyl record, turning it into a musical instrument.
Location: Pioneer Works at Red Hook Labs, 135 Imlay Street, Brooklyn
Price: $25
Time: 7:30 p.m. doors, 8 p.m. performance
—Sarah Cascone
Through Sunday, June 19
8. The Tribeca Film Festival
New York’s most high-profile film festival is on view all week, with films including Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel, about developers’ controversial push to renovate the artist enclave that is the Chelsea Hotel—despite the wishes of longtime bohemian residents who have had to live inside a construction nightmare for years. (It’s directed by Amélie van Elmbt and Maya Duverdier, with Martin Scorsese as executive producer.) The festival is also pushing the boundaries of traditional film with a number of augmented and virtual reality projects in Tribeca Immersive, including Nancy Baker Cahill’s Mushroom Cloud NYC/RISE. The site-specific AR experience, which has an accompanying NFT video work, explodes a mushroom cloud over New York’s Hudson River.
Location: Various venues
Price: $26 for evening and weekend screenings
Time: Times vary
—Sarah Cascone
Steven Pestana, Dawning (2022). Photo courtesy of Peep Space, Tarrytown, New York.
9. “Steven Pestana: Dawning” at PeepSpace, Tarrytown, New York
Steven Pestana’s mixed-media installation at Peep Space combines light, shadow, projection, and reflection, inviting visitors to walk through three large arches adorned with layers of silk, glass, and mirror-polished metal. To celebrate the exhibition’s closing, Pestana and artist Sophia Sobers will hold a live sound art performance in the space on Sunday, June 19.
Location: PeepSpace, 92 Central Avenue, Tarrytown, New York
Price: Free
Time: Friday, 5 p.m.–9 p.m.;Saturday, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.; Sunday, 12 p.m.–4 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Through Saturday, July 2
A contribution to Diana Weymar’s Interwoven Stories. Photo courtesy of the artist.
10. “Interwoven Stories: The Final Chapter” at the Arts Council of Princeton, New Jersey
Diana Weymar, who enlisted hundreds of volunteers to immortalize the worst quotes from the Trump administration in her “Tiny Pricks Project,” a collaborative needlework effort, is back with another community-based work. The artist started “Interwoven Stories” in 2016 as an artist in residence at the Art Council of Princeton. Hundreds have since contributed to the narrative, with Weymar soliciting participants—sometimes from first-time sewers—from San Francisco, Zurich, Belfast, Bogotá, Nantucket, Damascus, and beyond. Each individual piece is stitched on a piece of fabric designed to resemble a sheet of three-hole looseleaf, and tells a unique story. The current show at Princeton, which marks the end of the now six-year project, features some 300 “pages.”
Location: Arts Council of Princeton, Paul Robeson Center for the Arts, 102 Witherspoon Street, Princeton, New Jersey
Price: Free
Time: Monday–Thursday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m.–4 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Through Sunday, July 10
Vincent Stracquadanio, To Spread Wide My Hands…. Photo courtesy of the artist.
11. “The Heat Goes On” at Good Naked, New York
This three-person show pairs highly detailed color pencil drawings by Drew Miller and ink jet print collages by Jamie Mirabella with haunting oil on panel paintings—as well as a mural running the full length of the gallery—by Vincent Stracquadanio.
Location: Good Naked, 72 Allen, New York
Price: Free
Time: Sunday–Friday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Through Friday, July 29
Installation view of “The Ecstasy of Saint Britney” (2022). Photo courtesy of Ceysson and Bénétière.
12. “The Ecstasy of Saint Britney” at Ceysson and Bénétière, New York
Ornament has been much maligned in the age of Modernism and has come to be associated with superficiality, indulgence, and feminine fecklessness. But for many centuries adornment was esteemed; in the Renaissance, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s ecstatic sculptures were regarded as the height of artistic creation while the 18th-century splendor of Versailles was thought to mirror the majesty of divinity.
“The Ecstasy of Saint Britney,” curated by Francesca Pessarelli, brings together the work of contemporary artists Anna Cone, Ali Hval, Yvette Mayorga, and Rachael Tarravechia. Working across a range of media, the artists reposition excess as a virtue, each in their own way engaging ornament as a means of healing in a culture where famous women—such as the exhibition’s patron saint, Britney Spears—have routinely been ridiculed, for the very femininity culture nevertheless promotes.
Location: Ceysson and Bénétière, 956 Madison Avenue, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Katie White
Through Saturday, August 20
Rico Gatson, Untitled (Flag VII) (2020). Courtesy of the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum, New York.
13. “Geometries” at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Storytelling, New York
This group show featuring Chris Bogia, Rico Gatson, Marisol Martinez, and Tariku Shiferaw is designed to help children understand spacial relationships, color, form, and line by looking at geometry, one of the fundamental building blocks of art. “As a museum that prides itself on letting kids drive the story, it’s only fitting that we build an exhibition around the foundations of language building,” artist and curator Damien Davis said in a statement.
Location: The Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Storytelling, 898 St. Nicholas Avenue at 155th Street, New York
Price: $7 general admission
Time: Saturday, 10 a.m.–3 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone