Each week, we search New York City for the most exciting and thought-provoking shows, screenings, and events. See them below.

Tuesday, March 27

Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s Calyces of Held in the nucleus of the trapezoid body (1934). Courtesy of the Cajal Institute (CSIC), Madrid.

1. “Drawing Workshop: Picturing the Brain” at the Grey Art Gallery NYU
In their current exhibition, “The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal,” the Grey explores the pioneering artist and neuroscientist’s detailed hand renderings of our cerebral building blocks—depictions regarded as so enlightening that the modern medical community still studies them in 2018. In conjunction with the show, Heather McKellar of the Neuroscience Institute at NYU Langone Health will lead a participatory session that invites attendees to peer into the microscope to examine actual brain tissue samples, then channel their inner Ramón y Cajal by illustrating the cellular wonders they find. Space is limited, so listen to the left side of your brain and get there early.

Location: Grey Art Gallery, 100 Washington Square East
Price: Free
Time: 12:30 p.m.–1:30 p.m.; a limited number of timed tickets will be available at the Grey’s front desk at 12 p.m.

—Tim Schneider

Tuesday, March 27

Tacita Dean’s Merce Cunningham performs STILLNESS (in three movements) to John Cage’s composition 4’33” with Trevor Carlson (2008). © Tacita Dean, photo: Ken Goebel.

2. “Simon Starling on Tacita Dean on Merce Cunningham” at Dia Foundation
As part of the ongoing “Artists on Artists Lecture Series” at Dia, the Turner Prize-winning conceptual artist Simon Starling will discuss Tacita Dean’s interest in, and contemporary reading of the pioneering artist Merce Cunningham.

Location: Dia Foundation, 535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor
Price: $10 general admission; $6 students & seniors; free for Dia members
Time: 6:30 p.m.

—Caroline Goldstein

Amanda Ross-Ho, The Character and Shape of Illuminated Things (Facial Recognition) 2015, in “Image Object.” Photo by Liz Ligon, courtesy of the Public Art Fund/Mitchell Innes & Nash, New York.

3. Amanda Ross-Ho, Public Art Fund Talk” at the New School
Amanda Ross-Ho, who works in sculpture, painting, installation, and photography, talks about her public art installations, including, “Untitled Findings (ACCESS),” her contribution to Parcours at Art Basel 2017 that placed a series large-scale key sculptures across the city. She also had a social media-inspired piece in “Image Object,” the Public Art Fund’s 2015 show at City Hall Park.

Location: The New School Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street
Price: $10 general admission
Time: 6:30 p.m.–8 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Wednesday, March 28–Sunday, April 15

Isabel De Obaldía, La Cueva (The Cave) 2011. Courtesy of Mary Anne Martin Fine Art.

4. “Sympathetic Magic” at Westbeth Gallery
Curated by artist and writer Elisa Decker, this group show of painting, sculpture, and mixed media works, is tied together by manifestations of magic and the otherworldly. Expect references to shamanism and religious ritual, and works that celebrate “the alchemical process of their creation,” according to the exhibition description.

Location: Westbeth Gallery, 55 Bethune Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; poetry and music, April 8, 4 p.m.–6 p.m.; closing reception, April 15, 4 p.m.–6 p.m.; Wednesday–Sunday, 1 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Wednesday, March 28–Friday, May 11

John McLaughlin’s Maquette – Title #5 (1973). Courtesy of the artist and Van Doren Waxter.

5. “John McLaughlin: Constructions” at Van Doren Waxter
The West Coast artist John McLaughlin is best known as an abstract painter, but a series of never-before-seen works, “Constructions” are being unveiled at Van Doren Waxter’s Upper East Side gallery. Eight works on paper shed light on the artist’s process in planning and executing his works, and open up a new avenue for scholarly insight.

Location: Van Doren Waxter, 23 East 73rd Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Caroline Goldstein

Wednesday, March 28

Francisco de Zurbarán, Joseph (1640–45), from the series “Jacob and His 12 Sons.” ©The Auckland Project/Zurbarán Trust
Photo by Robert LaPrelle.

6. “Painting Jacob and His Twelve Sons: The Artist and His Studio,” by Claire Barry at the Frick Collection
In conjunction with the current exhibition “Zurbarán’s Jacob and His Twelve Sons: Paintings from Auckland Castle,” on view through April 22, Claire Barry of Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum examines the workshop of Spanish Golden Age painter Francisco de Zurbarán. What made it possible for him to complete such an ambitious series, the origins of which remain a mystery to this day?

Location: The Frick Collection, Music Room, 1 East 70th Street
Price: Free
Time: 6 p.m.–7 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Thursday, March 29–May 12

Hank Willis Thomas’s Freedom Now (red and gold) (no flash), 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery.

7. “Hank Willis Thomas: What We Ask Is Simple” at Jack Shainman Gallery
This is a body of work that simply must be seen in-person. Thomas has translated documentary style photography into painterly screenprints, and in this series, has taken photographic works taken with and without flash, and screen-printed them onto retroreflective vinyl—resulting in surreal, ghostly images that can only be seen in their true form by taking a flash photograph of the work.

Location: Jack Shainman Gallery, 513 West 20th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m. at 513 West 20th Street and 524 West 24th Street

—Caroline Goldstein

Thursday, March 29–May 13

Installation view of Cary Leibowitz at the Jewish Museum.

8. “Cary Leibowitz: I need to grow up and be taken seriously said the clown at the urinal” at Invisible Exports
The irreverent artist Cary Leibowitz is having a moment; in addition to a retrospective at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Arts that just ended, the solo-booth presentation at Invisible Exports’s Independent fair got artnet News’s seal of approval. Expect a similar spread of multi-disciplinary, colorful, expletive-riddled artworks for the latest show.

Location: Invisible Exports, 89 Eldridge Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Caroline Goldstein

Saturday, March 31–Sunday, June 24

Green-Wood Cemetery’s Fort Hamilton Gatehouse. Photo courtesy of the Morbid Anatomy Museum.

9. “The Power of Images: Life, Death, and Rebirth” at Green-Wood Cemetery 
Brooklyn’s late, lamented Morbid Anatomy Museum, which closed abruptly last year, is back, albeit with a pop-up exhibition at Green-Wood Cemetery’s Fort Hamilton Gatehouse. The space will temporarily house the museum library, and host parties, events, and other programs, as well as an exhibition of artworks, artifacts, and ephemera curated by Laetitia Barbier and Joanna Ebenstein.

Location: Green-Wood Cemetery, Fort Hamilton Gatehouse, 500 25th Street, Brooklyn
Price: Free
Time: Saturday and Sunday, 12 p.m.–5 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Saturday, March 31

Mildred Thomas, Magnetic Fields (1990). Courtesy of Galerie Lelong.

10. “Mildred Thomas: Radiation Explorations and Magnetic Fields” at Galerie Lelong
Galerie Lelong, which recently began representing the estate of Mildred Thompson (1936–2003), presents the artist’s first New York solo show. Her bold abstractions, each an explosion of color, draw on influences from philosophy, music, mathematics, and science.

Location: Galerie Lelong, 518 West 26th Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Baya Mahieddine, Femmes attablées (Women at table), 1947. Courtesy of the Grey Art Gallery, collection of Adrien Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France.

11. “Baya: Woman of Algiers” at Grey Art Gallery
It’s your last chance to catch the bold, surprisingly feminist paintings of self-taught Algerian artist Baya Mahieddine (1931–1998) in her first North American solo show. Discovered as a teenager by the postwar Parisian avant-garde, Baya, who went by a single moniker, made ceramics with Pablo Picasso and appeared in the pages of French Vogue before retiring to raise a family—only to return to her practice a decade later.

Location: Grey Art Gallery, 100 Washington Square East
Price: $5 suggested donation
Time: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; Wednesday, 11 a.m.–8 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

“Sex and the So-Called City,” Office for Political Innovation. Photo by Imagen Subliminal, courtesy of Storefront for Art and Architecture.

12. “Sex and the So-Called City” at Storefront for Art and Architecture
The Storefront for Art and Architecture marks the 20th anniversary of the debut of Sex in the City—”New York City’s most influential archisocial manifesto,” according to the exhibition description—with a collaboration between Andrés Jaque/Office for Political Innovation and Miguel de Guzmán/Imagen Subliminal. The show offers a forensic study of contemporary culture in New York and attempts to explore some of the series’s underlying themes, such as real estate development and, yes, sex, and how they relate to design and architecture.

Location: Storefront for Art and Architecture, 97 Kenmare Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Thursday, April 8

Installation view of “Shuta Hasunuma: Compositions” at Pioneer Works in Red Hook. Courtesy of the artist and Pioneer Works.

13. “Shuta Hasunuma: Compositions” at Pioneer Works
For his first solo exhibition in the United States, Japanese artist Shuta Hasunuma’s “Compositions” combines sculptures and video works that the artist created in Japan and during a local residency. The video Walking Score in Red Hook (2017) shows the artist as he walks through Brooklyn dragging a microphone, reprising performances that he made in Tokyo and Beijing, culminating in a work that reflects the ambient sights and sounds of a particular environment.

Location: Pioneer Works, 159 Pioneer Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn
Price: Free
Time: Wednesday–Sunday, 12–6 p.m.

—Caroline Goldstein

Through Sunday, April 22

Digital poster for “Horizon Eyes.” Courtesy of GRIMM.

14. “Letha Wilson: Horizon Eyes” at GRIMM
Letha Wilson makes imposing photo sculptures that combine landscape imagery with rugged industrial materials like concrete and steel. Many of the pieces in “Horizon Eyes,” her exhibition up now at GRIMM’s New York outpost, center around conversations between form and content: photos of jagged rock structures are impressed upon pleated concrete slabs, while pictures of sunsets are C-printed on smooth, curving sheets of steel—physically embodying the fading of light. Ultimately, Wilson’s work questions our changing relationships to nature and man-made space, and how photography mediates those relationships.

Location: GRIMM, 202 Bowery
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; Sunday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Taylor Dafoe