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, May 11
1. “Livestream Conversation: Tell Them We Were Here” at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Last week, the documentary Tell Them We Were Here, featuring Bay Areas artists, curators, and art dealers, premiered at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, where it is exclusively streaming for $12. Griff Williams, a local painter, publisher, and gallerist, directed the film with his son, Keelan Williams. Both will speak with one of their subjects, artist Nigel Poor, who is collaborating with the incarcerated men of San Quentin State Prison, in a Zoom conversation with BAMPFA director Julie Rodrigues Widholm.
Price: Free
Time: 9 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Wednesday, May 12
Richard Calvocoressi, Max Hollein, and Katy Siegel. Photos by Miriam Perez, by Eileen Travell courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and by Christopher Myers.
2. “Richard Calvocoressi, Max Hollein, and Katy Siegel on Georg Baselitz” at Gagosian, New York
Gagosian director Richard Calvocoressi, author of a new monograph from Thames and Hudson about Georg Baselitz, will discuss the German artist’s prolific career with Max Hollein, director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Katy Siegel, senior curator at the Baltimore Museum.
Price: Free with registration
Time: 1 p.m.
—Tanner West
Thursday, May 13
Dyani White Hawk. Photo by David Ellis.
3. “A Conversation with Dyani White Hawk and Carmen Hermo” at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City
To mark the closing days of “Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives” at the Kemper, the artist will speak with Carmen Hermo, associate curator at the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, about the show and her work.
Price: Free with registration
Time: 3 p.m.–4 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Friday, May 14–Sunday, May 16
Sara Lynne Lindsay, Taken Away (2021). Photo courtesy of Art in Odd Places.
4. “Art in Odd Places 2021: Normal” on 14th Street, New York
The long-running grassroots public art project Art in Odd Places returns with an edition curated by Furusho von Puttkammer that questions the idea of a return to “normal” after the pandemic with works critiquing U.S. politics and the mythos of the American Dream. Projects will range from the outlandish to the poignant. Lawyer-turned-artist Tootsie Warhol will be in character as ex-president Donald Trump to complain about Kehinde Wiley outsourcing the creation of Obama’s official portrait to China, and anonymous British street artist “Blanksy” will appear in a white spandex suit that passersby are invited to spray paint with provided aerosols, while Sara Lynne Lindsay will pay tribute to the victims of the last pandemic, the 1918 Spanish flu, by carrying a billowing white dress in which she’s written their names in wax down 14th Street.
Location: 14th Street between Avenue C and the Hudson River, New York
Price: Free
Time: Times for each participating artwork vary
—Sarah Cascone
Friday, May 14, 2021–Sunday, March 20, 2022
Derek Fordjour, Blue Horn (2017). Photo courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum gift of Tiffany Hott.
5. “The Slipstream: Reflection, Resilience, and Resistance in the Art of Our Time” at the Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum senior curator of contemporary art Eugenie Tsai responds to the events of 2020 with this exhibition of 60 artworks in the collection that speak to feelings of grief, rage, and isolation, as well as joy and love. The focus is on artists of color, including El Anatsui, Mel Chin, and Jeffrey Gibson, among others.
Location: Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn
Price: $16 general admission
Time: Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m.–8 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Saturday, May 15
Dorothy Dehner, Burst #5 (1953). Photo courtesy of Rosenberg and Co.
6. Madison Avenue Spring Gallery Walk on Madison Avenue, New York
Upper East Side galleries, including heavyweights Gagosian, Leila Heller, Acquavella, Lévy Gorvy, and Petzel Gallery, unite for a day of socially distant gallery hopping. Among the highlights will be Dorothy Dehner at Rosenberg and Co., where the gallery will present her abstract watercolors and her first sculptures from the 1950s, around the time she decided to leave her then-husband David Smith.
Location: Madison Avenue and its adjacent side streets from East 57th Street to East 86th Street
Price: Free with reservations
Time: Times vary per gallery, but most have hours 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Saturday, May 15 and Sunday, May 16
Ron Norsworthy, STEPFORD. Courtesy of Project for Empty Space, Newark.
7. “PES AIR: Ron Norsworthy Interactive Mural Project” at Project for Empty Space, Newark
Ahead of the opening of Ron Norsworthy’s solo show “Tell a Lie About Me, I’ll Tell The Truth About You” at Project for Empty Space on May 22, the artist is enlisting anyone and everyone to help paint a 30-foot rooftop mural at the Newark institution. Norsworthy’s work combines imagery from television and pop culture with scenes of Americana from art history in a reflection on intersectional identity.
Location: Project for Empty Space, 800 Broad Street, Newark
Price: Free with registration
Time: 11 a.m.–5 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Saturday, May 15–Wednesday, May 26
Josie Love Roebuck, No, I Don’t Speak Swahili (2020). Photo courtesy of Latchkey Gallery.
8. “Knotted Ties” at Christie’s New York
New York’s Frieze Week has come and gone, but without most its usual satellite fairs. This year’s New York edition of 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair will be virtual, running May 17 to 23, but there is an in-person component in the form of an exhibition of textile-based works at Christie’s New York. The featured artists—all women—include Igi Lola Ayedun, Joana Choumali, and Lidia Lisbôa, among others.
Location: Christie’s, 20 Rockefeller Plaza, New York
Price: Free with reservation
Time: Monday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Sunday, 1 p.m.–5 p.m.
—Nan Stewert
Through Saturday, June 5
Arghavan Khosravi, Four Elements (2021). Photo courtesy of Rachel Uffner.
9. “Arghavan Khosravi: In Between Places” at Rachel Uffner, New York
Iranian American artist Arghavan Khosravi’s unique shaped canvases incorporate sculptural elements and stacked perspective borrowed from Persian miniature painting. These new works, mostly made in isolation during the pandemic, are slightly unsettling in their surreal depictions of women seemingly pulled between competing realities, inspired in part by the separate realms of private and public life in Iran.
Location: Rachel Uffner Gallery, 170 Suffolk Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Erin M. Riley, Webcam 2 (2020). Photo courtesy of P.P.O.W.
10. “Erin M. Riley: The Consensual Reality of Healing Fantasies” at P.P.O.W., New York
Erin M. Riley made tapestries by hand during lockdown from wool sourced from shuttered textile mills. Known for her erotic and sex-positive feminist compositions, Riley’s latest works speak to her own difficulties coping with personal traumas in the face of isolation, addressing her family history of sexual assault and abuse in a quest for self-actualization.
Location: P.P.O.W., 392 Broadway, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Through June 19, 2021
Detail of Dominique Fung’s The Largest and Most Formal Meal of the Day (2021). Courtesy of Jeffrey Deitch.
11. “Dominique Fung: It’s Not Polite To Stare” at Jeffrey Deitch, New York
In “It’s Not Polite to Stare,” antique (or at least antique-looking) birdcages appear at intervals throughout gallery space alongside Fung’s surrealistic new paintings. Fung acquired the cages from various estate sales and online auctions throughout the US and sees her paintings as a collaboration with the anonymous artisans who crafted these objects. Within the paintings, the bird cages appear again alongside distorted vases, teapots, and figures that prod at the colonial and imperial histories linked to these objects and their relationships to fetishism. These paintings seem to reveal themselves in slow motion—Fung’s specific sense of distortion of reality and blurring of edges creates an underwater quality of motion and perspective similar to that seen in pioneering Surrealist Dorothea Tanning’s languorous, otherworldly visions.
Location: Jeffrey Deitch, 76 Grand Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 12–6 p.m.
—Katie White