Each week, we search New York City for the most exciting, and thought-provoking, shows, screenings, and events. See them below.
Tuesday, March 10
Katherine Bradford, Night-Clock 60. Courtesy of New York Studio School.
1. “Katherine Bradford: Answering The Most Often Asked Questions About Her Work” at the New York Studio School
Painter Katherine Bradford, who mixes abstract and figurative elements in her colorful paintings, is giving a talk at the New York Studio School.
Location: New York Studio School, 8 West 8th Street
Price: Free
Time: 6:30 p.m.–7:30 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Tuesday, March 10–Sunday, April 5, 2020
Robert Indiana, EAT Image courtesy of Galerie Gmurzynska
2. “Robert Indiana: LOVE is in the Air” at Galerie Gmurzynska
Having mounted several major exhibitions of the artist’s work, now the gallery is presenting a career-spanning show of notable and rarely seen pieces, ranging from 1959 to 2007 and highlighting Indiana’s expansive and multi-faceted career. The gallery was instrumental in lending significant works to “Beyond Love,” the seminal 2013 exhibition at the Whitney Museum, curated by Barbara Haskell.
Location: Galerie Gmurzynska, 3 East 78th Street, 3rd Floor, Suite 301
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Eileen Kinsella
Wednesday, March 11–Sunday, April 19
Jennifer Bolande, Image Tomb (with skeletons) (2014). Courtesy of the artist and Magenta Plains.
3. “Jennifer Bolande: The Composition of Decomposition” at Magenta Plains
The press release for Jennifer Bolande’s upcoming show reads simply “News becomes history. Beneath the surface things assume a different kind of order.” These facts are taken literally in Bolande’s work The Composition of Decomposition opening at Magenta Plains, marking her first solo show in New York since 2008. Newspapers are the physical material that make up the bulk of Bolande’s show. In the work Image Tomb, for example, she cut through a two-year stack of New York Times newspapers, “excavating” the printed matter, and revealing hidden images and words beneath the front page—in this case, a historical photograph of skeletal remains found in London. Bolande’s decades-long practice probes how news becomes history and the ever-increasing speed of that process with internet outlets proliferating.
Location: Magenta Plains, 94 Allen Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Wednesday–Sunday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m. UPDATE – Due to coronavirus, the gallery is open by appointment only as of March 13.
—Caroline Goldstein
Alex Webb, Vinegar Hill (2016). Photo courtesy of the artist.
4. “The City Within: Brooklyn Photographs by Alex Webb & Rebecca Norris Webb” at the Museum of the City of New York
Brooklyn, before it became part of New York, was the country’s fourth biggest city all on its own. After living in the borough for 20 years, artists Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb began a new photography series documenting Kings County in its entirety in 2014. The MCNY has pared down the duo’s images to a selection of just over 30 images that illustrate its lasting diversity and concerns of immigration, nature, and community.
Location: Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street
Price: Suggested admission, $18
Time: Open daily, 10 a.m.–6 p.m. UPDATE – Due to coronavirus, the museum is closed as of March 13.
—Nan Stewert
Thursday, March 12–Thursday, March 19
Anonymous. A Blue and White Dragon Jar, Korea (late 18th century), porcelain. Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s New York.
Despite the growing coronavirus pandemic, and the postponement of the Asia Week sales at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Bonhams, Heritage, and Doyle until mid June, Asia Week New York touches down on Thursday. In tow are 34 international dealers (down from 48 at last year’s 10th anniversary edition) specializing in Asian art, from ancient to contemporary, and from the Himalayas to Japan. New York’s Kang Collection is highlighting a blue and white 18th-century Korean dragon jar, recently snapped up for $75,000 at Sotheby’s New York, while Akar Prakar of New Dehli brings recent work by Ganesh Haloi, who paints gouache on handmade Nepali paper.
There are fewer events than in years past. Thanks to low ticket sales prompted by COVID-19 concerns, for instance, the Rubin Museum has cancelled its annual party. Still, there’s a 75th anniversary gala at Staten Island’s Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art on Friday. Other exhibitions across the metropolitan area include “The Private World of Surimono” at the Yale University Art Gallery in Connecticut and “MINHWA & minhwa: Korean Folk Paintings in Dialogue with the Contemporary” at the Korean Cultural Center New York—although the opening reception for the show has been cancelled.
Location: Various galleries on the Upper East Side and other institutions across the city
Price: Free
Time: Hours vary by venue
—Sarah Cascone
Thursday, March 12–Wednesday, April 8
Cory Arcangel, F1 Racer Mod (aka Japanese Driving Game), 2004. Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali.
6. “Overwrite” at Greene Naftali
This group exhibition unites a set of artists concerned with arguably the central tension of 21st-century life in the developed world: How exactly do we reconcile humanity’s finite capacities for engagement with the ever-rising tides of information (and expectation) produced by our digitally networked, always-on lifestyle? Cory Arcangel, Julie Becker, Tony Conrad, Jacqueline Humphries, and Guyton \ Walker (a collaboration between Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker) suss out answers through an array of new and traditional media, each hinting at possibilities for respite, or at least endurance, in the nonstop blitz that is the attention economy.
Location: Greene Naftali, 508 West 26th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception: Thursday, March 12, 4 p.m.–6 p.m. Normal gallery hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Tim Schneider
Saturday, March 15
Guests at the Wikipedia
Edit-a-thon: Art + Feminism at MoMA. Photo by Manuel Molina Martagon, courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.
7. “2020 Wikipedia Edit-a-thon: Art + Feminism” at the Museum of Modern Art
It’s Women’s History Month, and MoMA is once again joining Art+Feminism‘s efforts to close the gender gap on Wikipedia with its seventh annual Edit-a-thon event. There will be communal editing tables hosted by AfroCROWD, POWarts, and Wiki Loves Pride, and, for first time editors, there will be introductory training sessions throughout the day. At the day’s end, 2020 theme Art + Activism, featuring artist Carolyn Lazard and artist and Chinatown Art Brigade cofounder Betty Yu will speak on the year’s theme of “Art + Activism” in a conversation moderated by Michelle Millar Fisher, curator of contemporary decorative arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and cofounder of Art + Museum Transparency. The event will also feature complimentary lunch and a Wikimedia Photobooth hosted by Black Lunch Table.
Location: Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, Floor 1, education, library, and school group Entrance
Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 10 a.m.–6 p.m. UPDATE – Due to coronavirus, the museum is closed as of March 12. There will be a virtual edit-a-thon with a dedicated Slack channel for support.
—Sarah Cascone
Through Sunday, March 15
Fatima Chafaa, My Father’s Painting: Fatma d’Arc or Jeanna N’soumer (2019). Photo courtesy the artist
8. “Waiting for Omar Gatlato: Contemporary Art from Algeria and its Diaspora” at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University
This look at contemporary Algerian art from 26 artists takes its title from a 1979 publication about early Algerian film that references both Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot and Merzak Allouache’s Algerian film Omar Gatlato (1976). The exhibition considers how Algeria’s unique history and cultural identity—its long colonial relationship with France, its minority community of non-Arab Muslim Berbers, and the early rise of militant Islam in the 1990s—has effected its artists and their cultural production.
Location: The Wallach Art Gallery, Lenfest Center for the Arts, Columbia University, 615 West 129th Street
Price: Free
Time: Wednesday and Friday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.; Thursday 12 p.m.–8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m. UPDATE: Due to coronavirus, the museum is closed as of March 14.
—Tanner West
Sunday, March 15–Sunday, June 14
Bisa Butler, The Princess (2019). Courtesy of the Love, Luck & Faith Foundation.
9. “Bisa Butler: Portraits” at the Katonah Museum of Art
It’s the first museum solo for Bisa Butler, whose incredible quilted portraits look more akin to oil paintings than handmade bedspreads, blurring the divide between craft and high art. The African American artist, drawing on her Ghananian heritage and African textiles, is something of an heir to Faith Ringgold, celebrating an artform traditionally viewed as women’s work. Her compositions, based on historical photographs, are also on view at a solo show, “The Storm, the Whirlwind and the Earthquake,” at Claire Oliver Gallery’s new Harlem flagship through April 25.
Location: Katonah Museum, 134 Jay Street, Katonah, New York
Price: $5 general admission
Time: Sunday, 12 p.m.–5 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. UPDATE – Due to coronavirus, the museum is closed as of March 13.
—Sarah Cascone
Through Sunday, April 19
Haley Josephs, One and Many Are the Same (2020). Courtesy of the artist and Jack Barrett.
10. “Haley Josephs: Paintings and Drawings for Childhood’s End” at Jack Barrett
For her second solo show at Jack Barrett, Haley Josephs zeros in on that brief moment when girlhood ends and womanhood begins. It’s a period when both death and birth co-exist, and as such, Josephs’s imagery tends toward the allegorical. It’s also phantasmic and even a little bit unsettling: one child is engulfed in flames while another is transfigured into a yawning flower. The paintings are hung on blotchy, pastel-pink walls, which the artist painted herself using sanitary pads.
Location: Jack Barrett, 173 Henry Street
Price: Free
Time: Wednesday–Sunday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m. UPDATE: Due to coronavirus, the gallery is open by appointment only as of March 13.
—Taylor Dafoe
Through Sunday, April 26
An installation view of Farah Al Qasimi’s new show at Helena Anrather. Courtesy of Helena Anrather.
11. “Farah Al Qasimi: Funhouse” at Helena Anrather
Call it theater of the everyday. Photographer Farah Al Qasimi has a touch for capturing moments from daily life that hint at everyday extravagance. “Funhouse” is an apt title for an exhibition; the images are like a fun-house mirror of reality filled with pastel domestic interiors, glamorous women in headscarves, and intricately carved melon. Her works are also currently on view in “Back and Forth Disco” a Public Art Fund exhibition at bus shelters throughout the city.
Location: Helena Anrather, 28 Elizabeth Street
Price: Free
Time: Wednesday–Sunday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m. UPDATE: Due to coronavirus, the gallery is open by appointment only as of March 13.
—Katie White