Events and Parties
Editors’ Picks: 18 Things Not to Miss in New York’s Art World This Week
The latest picks include Basquiat and Oscar Oiwa shows, talks with Lisa Yuskavage and Carrie Mae Weems, and a new fair in Jersey City.
The latest picks include Basquiat and Oscar Oiwa shows, talks with Lisa Yuskavage and Carrie Mae Weems, and a new fair in Jersey City.
Sarah Cascone ShareShare This Article
Each week, we search New York City for the most exciting and thought-provoking, shows, screenings, and events. See them below.
1. “Art Production Fund: Printz and the Revolution Party” at the Seagram Building
The Art Production Fund is honoring Alice + Olivia CEO and creative director Stacey Bendet and artist Adam Pendleton at its annual gala. She’ll wear a custom dress inspired by Pendleton’s work, and he’s donating his first ceramic work, a set of bowls, for the night’s raffle prize. The artist has also designed special napkins for the event.
Location: Seagram Building, 375 Park Avenue between 52nd and 53rd streets
Price: $1,500
Time: 6:30 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
2. “A Livable New York: The Future of Community Green Space and Affordable Housing” at the New School
New York City plans to turn Soho’s Elizabeth Street Garden, an urban oasis filled with neoclassical statuary, into affordable housing for the elderly. Advocates of public green space have filed a lawsuit attempting to save the garden. The Cultural Landscape Foundation, which in November added the garden to its Landslide program aimed at preserving threatened landscapes, is hosting a panel discussion for community garden representatives, activists, and scholars to consider the needs for green space and public housing, and how both can be addressed by city planners.
Location: The New School, the Auditorium, Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street
Price: Free
Time: 7 p.m.–9 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
3. “Black and Light by Oscar Oiwa” at Cadillac House
These past few weeks Oscar Oiwa has been working tirelessly to transform the inside of an inflatable dome at Cadillac House, an initiative of the car company, into one of his hand-drawn, hyper-detailed black-and-white landscapes done entirely in felt-tipped pen. The 2,700-square-foot installation is Cadillac’s latest collaboration with Visionaire, and features the new characters by Oiwa, Light Rabbit and Shadow Cat, hidden in the graphic illustration.
Location: Cadillac House, 330 Hudson Street
Price: Free
Time: Monday–Friday, 8 a.m.–7 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.;
—Sarah Cascone
4. “Lisa Yuskavage in Conversation with Christian Viveros-Fauné” at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture
Painter Lisa Yuskavage and art critic Christian Viveros-Fauné will chat about art and politics, touching on her recent show at David Zwirner, “Babie Brood: Small Paintings 1985–2018,” and his new book, Social Forms: A Short History of Political Art.
Location: New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture Wooster Street, 8 West 8th Street
Price: Free
Time: 6:30 p.m.–7:30 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
5. “Jean-Michel Basquiat | Xerox” at Nahmad Contemporary
Can’t get tickets to the Jean-Michel Basquiat blockbuster at Peter Brant’s new private museum in the East Village? Then head uptown, where Basquiat scholar Dieter Buchhart has curated the first concentrated look at the artist’s Xerox photocopy-based work. More than 20 paintings from the series, many of them rarely exhibited in public, will be on view alongside early Xerox collages that Basquiat sold on the street as art postcards.
Location: Nahmad Contemporary, 980 Madison, 3rd floor
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Monday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
6. “Photographic Futures” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
See Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, Facebook engineer Ficus Kirkpatrick, and Planet vice president Andrew Zolli talk about new technological breakthroughs in the field of photography, and how the role of the camera in our society continues to change. The talk is timed to the exhibition “Monumental Journey: The Daguerreotypes of Girault de Prangey” (through May 12).
Location: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, 1000 Fifth Avenue
Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 6:30 p.m.–7:30 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
7. “Lou Reed Drones” at Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine
Recently minted Grammy winner Laurie Anderson is teaming up with her late husband’s guitar technician Stewart Hurwood on a performance featuring a selection Reed’s guitars. The installation will place the instruments against amplifiers installed throughout the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, creating a feedback loop that will echo throughout the massive structure. Depending on where you are standing in the church, the Doppler effect will dramatically change how the listener hears the piece.
Location: Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Avenue, 6:30–11:30 p.m.
Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 6:30 p.m.–11:30 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
8. “SC Conversations: Vile Days with Gary Indiana and Bruce Hainley” at SculptureCenter
Art critic Gary Indiana celebrates the publication of Vile Days, compiling the weekly arts columns he wrote for the Village Voice between 1985 and 1988, a tumultuous time defined in part by Reaganism and the AIDS crisis. Indiana will speak about this formative period of his career with the book’s editor, Bruce Hainley.
Location: SculptureCenter, 44-19 Purves Street
Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 7 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
9. “What Is It About Warhol That…?” at the Whitney Museum of American Art
How did Andrew Warhola, the son of Polish immigrants in Pittsburgh, become the global phenomenon that is Andy Warhol? Writer and cultural critic Lynne Tillman will ask art critic Elizabeth Schambelan and artists Cy Gavin, Justine Kurland, and Leigh Ledare to consider how the Pop art great became a cultural icon, and why his influence is still felt so strongly today. (And if you haven’t caught the Whitney’s current blockbuster “Warhol,” you have until March 31.)
Location: Whitney Museum of American, 99 Gansevoort Street
Price: $15
Time: 6:30 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
10. “Carrie Mae Weems Lecture” at Grace Farms
Acclaimed artist and photographer Carrie Mae Weems will give a lecture on her work, which routinely addresses issues of race, class, gun violence, and gender, at a non-profit center in Connecticut.
Location: Grace Farms, 365 Lukes Wood Road, New Canaan, Connecticut
Price: Free
Time: 7:30 p.m.–9 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
11. “City of Tomorrow: Real Estate, Architecture & Design Summit” at 92Y
Back for its third year, this two-day symposium looks to the future of New York, and how artist, architects, designers, and other leaders can ensure our city continues to thrive. The architecture keynote panel on Friday will be moderated by New York magazine’s Carl Swanson and feature architects Annabelle Selldorf, Rafael Viñoly, Daniel Sundlin (of Bjarke Ingles Group), and Chris Cooper (SOM). Other offerings include Saturday’s “The Place of Art in Placemaking” panel with Times Square Alliance president Tim Tompkins and artist Deborah Kass.
Location: 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue between East 91st and 92nd Streets
Price: $65
Time: Friday, 5 p.m.–8 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.–3:30 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
12. Art Fair 14c at the Hyatt Regency Jersey City
Most of us are still recovering from the double whammy of Armory Week and Daylight Saving Time. That hasn’t stopped the nonprofit Jersey City Arts Council from launching its first art fair, with 50 exhibiting artists, galleries, and organizations descending on the city’s Hyatt Regency Hotel. The fair—named after its turnpike exit—hopes to benefit smaller galleries and unrepresented artists, with the only costs a $35 application fee and the price of the hotel room.
Location: Hyatt Regency Jersey City, 2 Exchange Place, Jersey City
Price: General admission $20
Time: VIP opening, 4 p.m.–9 p.m.; Saturday, VIP hour 11 a.m.–12 p.m.; 12 p.m.–8 p.m.; Sunday, VIP hour 11 a.m.–12 p.m.; 12 p.m.–7 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
13. The Juniper Tree at Metrograph
Before she was an international musical sensation, 21-year-old Björk starred in her first feature film The Juniper Tree (1990). The Metrograph is now hosting New York City’s first theatrical run of the newly restored movie, a dark feminist fairy tale directed by Nietzchka Keene in the singer’s native Iceland.
Location: Metrograph, 7 Ludlow Street
Price: $15
Time: Friday, 1 p.m., 3 p.m.; 7 p.m., and 9 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 1 p.m., 3 p.m.; and 7 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
14. “Brett Wallace: Working Conditions” at NURTUREart
In his new solo exhibition, cross-disciplinary artist Brett Wallace continues his exploration of the increasingly dystopian impact of technology on the human workforce. Here he exhibits a series of “workstations” that double as sculptural installations and video essays on the grim daily realities of people trying to scrap together a living as Mechanical Turks, Amazon warehouse staff, and long-haul truckers hounded by their own employers’ surveillance technology. Together, the works provide a sobering counterpoint to Silicon Valley’s all-too-sunny marketing.
Location: NURTUREart, 56 Bogart Street, Brooklyn
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 7 p.m.–9 p.m.; Thursday–Sunday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.
—Tim Schneider
15. “I AM SHE: Imani Shanklin Roberts” at Weeksville Heritage Center
Giving birth to her daughter forced Imani Shanklin Roberts to reckon anew with her identity as a black woman in the 21st century. This exhibition of her new work, held on the Brooklyn site of one of the first communities of free African Americans in the US, is a bold feminist statement celebrating motherhood as a route toward self discovery.
Location: Weeksville Heritage Center, 158 Buffalo Avenue
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Friday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Wednesday, 10 a.m.–9 p.m.
—Nan Stewert
16. “Claire Sherman: New Pangaea” at DC Moore Gallery
Claire Sherman’s newest landscape paintings are as lush as her earlier works, but there’s also a sense of calamity that’s starting to creep in. The title of the show, “New Pangaea,” comes from the writings of Elizabeth Kolbert, who has focused on the environmental repercussions of global trade, which is rapidly “bringing all of the world’s flora and fauna together.” In Sherman’s paintings, plant life is no longer endemic to any one region; instead, as curator Melissa Messina writes, it’s at “every place at once or no place at all.”
Location: DC Moore Gallery, 535 West 22nd Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Pac Pobric
17. “Katie Bell: A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place” at Smack Mellon
Katie Bell’s work can look like a focused explosion, with colorful debris arranged in Tatlin-esque compositions. Her latest show takes advantage of a 24-foot wall to support found and manipulated objects (including hot tub fragments and faux marble) that look strangely unlike what they truly are. As is often the case with Bell’s work, a muted palette brings it all together. And while you’re at Smack Mellon, check out Austin Ballard’s concurrent exhibition, “Shadow Lake,” which draws on his childhood memories of North Carolina.
Location: Smack Mellon, 92 Plymouth Street, Brooklyn
Price: Free
Time: Wednesday–Sunday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.
—Pac Pobric
18. “The Power of Intention: Reinventing the Prayer Wheel” at the Rubin Museum
If you feel like you need a dose of inspiration during these winter doldrums, look no further than the Rubin Museum in Chelsea, which just opened a new exhibition that explores the power of intention, looking specifically at the history and traditions of the Tibetan prayer wheel. With an eclectic mix of historical and contemporary art, including some fascinating interactive works, the show delves into the relationship between intentions, commitments, and actions. Prayer wheels are ritual objects containing thousands, even millions of written prayers and mantras. The clockwise rotation of the wheels—set in motion by the power of a hand or the elements—is believed to release the positive energy of the prayers into the world, according to the museum.
Location: Rubin Museum, 150 West 17th Street
Price: Adults, $19; seniors, students, and visitors with disabilities $14; members and children 12 and under, free
Time: Monday and Thursday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.; Wednesday 11 a.m.–9 p.m.; Friday 11 a.m.–10 p.m; Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m
—Eileen Kinsella