Each week, we search New York City for the most exciting, and thought-provoking, shows, screenings, and events. This week, in light of the global health crisis, we are highlighting events and exhibitions available digitally. See our picks from around the world below.
Monday, March 16
Supplies in an artist’s studio. Photo by Stephane Grangier/Corbis/Getty Images.
1. Livestreaming Panel: Artists In a Time of Global Pandemic at Howlround Theatre Commons
It is a particularly scary time to be an artist right now—most are freelance workers with no health insurance or sick pay. That’s why Howlround Theatre Commons has organized a panel of experts to discuss how COVID-19 is having an impact on freelance artists from all disciplines, and where they can find support. Listen in for tips about how to take your work virtual, how to seek out emergency funding, and how to save smartly in a time of crisis. Panelists include Mark Rossier (director of grants at the New York Foundation for the Arts) and Avita Delerme (senior counsel at The Public Theater), among many others. The event will be livestreamed with ASL and captions.
Time: 8 p.m. EST
—Julia Halperin
Through Saturday, March 28
2. “Robert Morris: Voice 1974” at Castelli Gallery
The physical exhibition, which is open by appointment only, re-stages one of the artist’s rarely presented audio installations along with preparatory drawings and diagrams. By making sound a key element in Voice, the artist “challenges the expectation that a work of art must be material, visual, and actively created by the artist,” according to a statement. The gallery is also presenting video of a recent panel discussion of the show, moderated by Pepe Karmel with Mónica Amor, Christophe Cherix, and James Meyer.
Location: Castelli Gallery, 24 West 40th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: The gallery is open by appointment only. Panel discussion available on the Events page.
—Eileen Kinsella
Opening Wednesday, March 18
A man walks past a billboard for the Art Basel art fair in Hong Kong on March 13, 2015. Hong Kong’s biggest art fair, Art Basel, opened its doors with thousands of visitors expected over the next five days. Photo by Philippe Lopez courtesy of AFP/Getty Images.
3. Art Basel Online Viewing Rooms VIP Preview
In February, after more than a month of concerned letters from exhibitors and collectors, Art Basel cancelled its Hong Kong fair due to the novel respiratory illness that had ravaged the region for months. While a major disappointment for the fair’s parent company, it was seen as a necessary step, and one that could be offset with alternative buying platforms. Enter the Online Viewing Rooms, a series of portals accessible from your living room that would open the same week the Hong Kong fair was supposed to take place, with the galleries offering the exact same works they were had been planning to bring. Basel’s directors could not have imagined that their timing would be so tragically relevant: when the viewing rooms open to VIPs Wednesday, most of the collecting world will be in self-quarantine, and even if if they might not be in the mood for art shopping, they might be thirsty for a some sense of normalcy.
Time: Beginning 6 a.m. EST
—Nate Freeman
Thursday, March 19–Saturday, April 25
Ella Walker, The Inscription Over the Gate (2020). Courtesy of Huxley-Parlour.
4. “Ella Walker: Cosmati Floor and Wax Fruit” at Huxley-Parlour
A medieval, carnivalesque atmosphere suffuses the canvases of London-based painter Ella Walker. Rich with color and historical references—from Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath to Commedia dell’arte—these images collapse contemporary time into long-ago histories that seem bizarrely relevant today. See the suite of intriguing work online, here.
Time: 24/7
— Katie White
Through Saturday, April 4
Installation view of “Invisible City: Philadelphia and the Vernacular Avant-Garde” at the University of the Arts, 2020. Photography by Joseph Hu. Courtesy of University of the Arts.
5. “Invisible City: Philadelphia and the Vernacular Avant-Garde” at University of the Arts, Philadelphia
In conjunction with a physical exhibition that opened across four campus buildings on January 20, the University of the Arts has created a rich online resource that digs deeper into the story of Philadelphia’s cutting-edge contributions to visual art, music, architecture, and other disciplines between the years 1956 and 1976. In addition to images of the works themselves, the institution has compiled a dynamic chronology of events in Philly’s avant-garde community during that span, as well as more than a dozen video interviews with key players in the scene. Exploring any or all of the above gives new insights and fresh context to a city that, as the exhibition’s title indicates, is too often overlooked in the development of postwar American art.
Time: 24/7
—Tim Schneider
Through Sunday, April 19
Srijon Chowdhury, Pale Rider, 2019. Courtesy of Foxy Production.
6. “Srijon Chowdhury” at Foxy Production
Srijon Chowdhury’s first solo show in New York opened at Foxy Production during Armory Week, and despite the closures of galleries across the city, it was enough of a highlight that it’s worth catching it on the gallery website. Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Chowdhury’s saturated paintings of flowers are often framed with botanical or architectural elements. The result resembles religious tableaus or prayer cards, while the intensity in which Chowdhury applies color gives the canvas an almost fluorescent look. “Color affects a person viscerally and quickly,” the artist has said. “I think about the chakras which begins with crimson that roots us to this reality and this body.” Also included in the exhibition are portraits and scenes from parenthood and an enormous 16-foot-wide oil painting titled Pale Rider.
Time: 24/7
—Cristina Cruz
Through Sunday, April 26
Aki Kuroda, Space Magic (2019). Photo courtesy of Richard Taittinger Gallery.
7. “Aki Kuroda: Happy Boy in Manhattan” at Richard Taittinger
Aki Kuroda (1944–) has never had a solo show in New York before, but he’s renowned in his native Japan, where he became the youngest artist to get his own exhibition at Tokyo’s National Museum of Modern Art, in 1993. The curator, Yoyo Maeght has been friends with Kuroda for 40 years, since Kuroda’s first exhibition in France in 1980. The gallery is currently closed, but you can enjoy a virtual walk-through of the show from Eazel.
Time: 24/7
—Sarah Cascone
March 15, 2020-ongoing
8. “Savage Beauty” at Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture
A rural stretch of Ireland’s Connemara mountains were meant to be the site of “the largest site-specific light artwork ever created” as part of Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture program, and while the live event was cancelled, the show lives on thanks to the internet. Flemish artist Kari Kola’s installation is comprised of 20 kilometers worth of cables attached to 1,000 lanterns powered by some 16 generators, many of which were put into position via helicopter. Oscar Wilde once referred to the rugged terrain of Connemara as a “savage beauty,” inspiring the work’s title, and as pubs and bars close in Ireland (and far beyond) due to the global health crisis, we can all toast St. Patricks Day remotely while we take in the luminous video.
Time: 24/7
—Caroline Goldstein