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 in person 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, June 15

Emilio Sanchez Forever® stamps. Image courtesy of USPS.

1. “Emilio Sanchez Forever” at the Art Students League of New York

Cuban American artist Emilio Sanchez, who would have turned 100 this year, is being honored with a new stamp from the United States Postal Service. Critic and curator Christian Viveros-Fauné will host a virtual talk about his legacy at the Art Students League, where Sanchez studied for four years after arriving in New York. The panelists are Victor Deupi, senior lecturer at the University of Miami School of Architecture and author of Emilio Sanchez in New York and Latin America, and Erik Stapper, sole trustee of the Emilio Sanchez Foundation.

Price: Free with registration
Time: 6 p.m.–7 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Tuesday, June 15 and Wednesday, June 16

Jonathan Rosen, I WANT (2021). Courtesy of the artist.

2. “Jonathan Rosen: The Biggest Drop in Times Square (since New Years Eve)” at the Nasdaq Digital Tower, New York

Jonathan Rosen’s animated mirror installation have been a hit at New York’s Spring Break Art Show and Refinery29’s Instagram sensation 29Rooms. Each artwork features 1,000 possible phrases, such as “I want the answers,” “I want to purge,” or “I want unicorns,” typically captured at random in the viewer’s photographs. Now, he’s turning those pieces into NFTs, debuting this week on the curved three-story LED screen of the Nasdaq tower in Times Square. A chance-based mint will choose one single phrase for the NFT at random, giving the buyer a unique piece (each priced at .1 ether), or you can bid for the one-of-one editions featuring the full reel of options. Rosen offers the following warning before viewing: The NFT “may trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy or objection to colorful language. Eye candy euphoria for everyone else.”

Price: Free, with open bidding
Time: Tuesday, 1 p.m.–Wednesday, 1 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Wednesday, June 16

Yazmany Arboleda, The People’s Bus (2021) in Brooklyn. Photo courtesy the New York City Civic Engagement Commission and Department of Cultural Affairs.

3. “Yazmany Arboleda: The People’s Bus” at NYC’s Civic Engagement Commission

Ahead of the start of early voting in New York City primaries last Saturday—a new mayor is being elected, plus the comptroller, city council members, and the statewide district attorney—Yazmany Arboleda began crisscrossing the city in a retired New York City Department of Correction bus he is transforming into a community center on wheels to help get out the vote. He’s doing the project, which will have additional activations throughout the summer in the neighborhoods hit hardest by the pandemic, with the Department of Cultural Affairs as part of his residency at the city’s Civic Engagement Commission—the first artist in the role. The five-day start to the project is making one stop in each borough, giving visitors a chance to practice the new ranked choice voting.

Location: Tuesday, St. George Ferry Terminal, Staten Island; Wednesday, Union Square, Manhattan
Price: Free
Time: 5 p.m.–9 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Thursday, June 17 and Friday, June 18

Adriana Varejão, Three Diamonds (2019). Photo by Jamie Acioli, ©Adriana Varejão.

4. “Adriana Varejão in Conversation” at Gagosian, New York

Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão is doing back-to-back days of programming for her current show at Gagosian (through June 26). First, she’ll speak with Brazilian critic and curator Luisa Duarte, and then she’ll do a virtual walk through of the exhibition with curator Pedro Alonzo. Her new works compare the glazed terra-cotta azulejo tiles that migrated from Brazil from the Arabic world via Spain with the Mexican ceramic tradition of Talavera poblana.

Price: Free with registration (part two)
Time: 1 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Wednesday, June 16–Friday, July 16

Thornton Dial, Banded Up for Safety (1994). Photo courtesy of James Fuentes Gallery.

5. “Thornton Dial” at James Fuentes, New York

It is always the season for Thornton Dial. Last December, the Lower East Side dealer David Lewis—who represents the estate of Thornton Dial—staged a small but potent show of the magnificently innovative American artist. It was all of eight paintings, but included Dial World Part I: The Tiger that Flew Over New York City (1990), an epic depiction of the beast descending onto the famed skyline. In May, the Baltimore Museum of Art put on view a newly acquired Dial painting from 2002, a canvas that is the self-taught artist’s response to 9/11. And early this month, a Dial show opened at Sam Parker’s great Los Angeles space Parker Gallery, with curator Philip March Jones diving headfirst into Dial’s early work.

Enter downtown stalwart James Fuentes, who has teamed up with the Outsider Art behemoth that is the William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation and Family Collections to stage yet another show of Dial’s unforgettable works. These include Banded Up for Safety (1994), a large-scale installation fusing together old bed frames—a rare type of work from the canvas-first Dial). Making the show even more unmissable is the unfortunate, but understandable, situation going on in Mount Kisco: The Louis-Dreyfus Foundation is currently only giving virtual tours, and won’t be open for in-person visits until the fall.

Address: James Fuentes, 55 Delancey Street
Time: Opening reception 5 p.m.–8 p.m. (timed visits); Tuesday–Sunday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Cost: Free

—Nate Freeman

Thursday, June 17–Sunday, June 20

Julie Mehretu. Photo courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

6. “World Premiere – Julie Mehretu: Palimpsest” at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

A new feature documentary from the Checkerboard Film Foundation about painter Julie Mehretu preparing for her mid-career retrospective at the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art premieres at the Whitney, where the show is currently on view through August 8.

Price: Free with registration
Time: Premiering 8 p.m. Thursday, then screening on demand

—Sarah Cascone

Friday, June 18

Iván Argote, Au revoir – Joseph Gallieni, film still. Photo courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.

7. “Iván Argote: A Place For Us – Tour Bus” at Perrotin, New York

Iván Argote is renting out a double decker bus to recreate that most dreaded of tourist traps: the New York City bus tour. But in a decided twist on the form, the artist will team up with curator Julio César Morales to talk about some of the city’s more polarizing public monuments—a recent flashpoint in cities around the world—their history, and their potential future. Argote’s new show at the gallery, “A Place for Us” (June 17–August 13), offers proposals about what to do with controversial monuments here, as well as in his native Bogotá and his current home of Paris. A video imagines the removal of a statue of French colonial military leader Joseph Gallieni, who overthrew the monarchy in Madagascar.

Location: American Museum of Natural History, 200 Central Park West, New York; ending at Perrotin, 130 Orchard Street, New York
Price: Free with registration (space limited)
Time: 2 p.m.–4 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Friday, June 18–Friday, July 16

“Ann Agee: Madonnas and Hand Warmers” installation view. Photo courtesy of PPOW.

8. “Ann Agee: Madonnas and Hand Warmers” at PPOW, New York

For her third solo show at PPOW, Ann Agee offers works from the fictional “Agee Manufacturing Company”—all handmade ceramic wares that speak to the history of industrial production and factory labor. There are two series in the exhibition, “Madonnas of the Girl Child,” which recast the figure of Jesus in 17th- and 18th-century Italian folk art salt cellars as mother-daughter figurines; and “Hand Warmers,” another spin on traditional form of Italian folk pottery in the shape of women’s shoes that would have been filled with hot water to warm the hands during the winter months.

Location: PPOW, 392 Broadway, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Saturday, June 19

Good Company Bike Club on the Museum plaza, June 2020. Photo by Steve Jackson.

9. “Honoring Juneteenth” at the Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum will commemorate the end of legal slavery in the U.S. with music and remarks from local community leaders, followed by a Freedom Ride through the neighborhood with the Good Company Bike Club, stopping at Black-owned businesses and landmarks of Black history. Meet back at the museum in the evening for food served up by the Black Chef Movement and a sunset mindfulness meditation with Meditating for Black Lives.

Location: Brooklyn Museum Plaza, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn
Price: Free (tickets to the galleries are separate)
Time: 11 a.m. and 7 p.m.–8 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Saturday, June 19

Kathleen Ryan, Jackie (2021). Courtesy the artist and Karma, New York.

10. “Kathleen Ryan” at Karma, New York

In her first exhibition at Karma, Kathleen Ryan cranks up the scale of her bedazzled sculptures of decaying fruits to flirt with the gallery’s spatial limits. In the process, she also supersizes the tensions that give her practice its wit and wonder. Semiprecious stones stand in for bacterial growths and molds on the works’ craggy, mutated surfaces, making what should be their most repulsive aspects their most alluring.

Even when creating pieces that dwarf the average gallery-goer (Jackie, a monumental jack o’ lantern, and Bad Cherries, a steel cage packed with oversized representations of the rotting stone fruits, are highlights), the artist sacrifices none of the attention to detail that rewards close viewings of her domestic-sized works. Like investigating mysterious asteroids found smoking in some remote field, exploring their topographies forces you to let discomfort and fascination ride side-by-side in your mind.

Location: Karma, 188 and 172 East 2nd Street 
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Tim Schneider

Through Friday, July 31

Srijon Chowdhury, Moth on a Poppy (2021). Courtesy of Foxy Production.

11. “Srijon Chowdhury: Dandelion Song” at Foxy Production 

In Srijon Chowdhury’s paintings, dandelions, poppies, roses, and thistles possess a mystical allure, with these flowers seeming to enchant the humans, insects, and fantastical creatures that share these scenes. In his paintings, the flowers appear phosphorescent, glowing magically as though in a fable or fairytale. They call to mind these flowers’ real-life histories as the sources of poisons and elixirs alike. The color is sensitively used too, with vivid reds and blues juxtaposed to areas painted in grisaille. Of his color choices, Chowdhury has said, “color affects a person viscerally and quickly. I think about the chakras which begin with crimson that root us to this reality and this body.” 

Location: Foxy Production, 2 East Broadway, 200
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m

—Katie White