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

Tuesday, May 28

Firelei Baez, Towards an unseen force (detail) (2019). Photo courtesy of James Cohan.

1. “Art, Migration, and Public Space: An Evening With the 2019 Soros Arts Fellows” at the Open Society Foundations

The Open Society Foundations recently announced the second class of Soros Art Fellows, a group of 11 artists, curators, researchers, and filmmakers who have been awarded $80,000 each for an upcoming project. At a reception celebrating their selection, fellows Firelei Baez, Tania El Khoury, Guadalupe Maravilla, and Nontsikelelo Mutiti will speak about art and migration.

Location: Open Society Foundations, 224 West 57th Street
Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 6 p.m.–8 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Sara Raza (left) and Ksenia Nouril (right) will sit down for a conversation about curatorial practice interacting with other disciplines.

2. “Decentralized Conversation: Ksenia Nouril and Sara Raza” at Mana Contemporary

Get your PATH train ticket ready for this final conversation in Mana Contemporary’s series on the intersection of curatorial practice with other disciplines. The evening brings together curators Sara Raza of the visual culture studio Punk Orientalism and Ksenia Nouril of the Print Center in Philadelphia (and formerly of MoMA) to discuss the distinct challenges faced by medium-specific institutions, as well as Nouril’s recent publication, Art and Theory of Post-1989 Central and Eastern Europe: A Critical Anthology. The event will be live streamed for those unable to attend.

Location: Mana Contemporary, 888 Newark Avenue, Jersey City
Price: Free
Time: 6 p.m.

—Katie White

Wednesday, May 29

Preproduction image of Tilda Swinton made by director Sally Potter to help secure funding for the film Orlando, spring 1988. Photo courtesy of Aperture.

3. “Tilda Swinton with B. Ruby Rich: Orlando” at the New York Public Library

Tilda Swinton has guest edited the new issue of Aperture magazine and curated the organization’s current exhibition (on view through July 11), a two-part celebration of gender fluidity inspired by Orlando, the 1928 Virginia Woolf novel about a poet who transitions from male to female and lives for three centuries. The actress, who starred in the 1992 film adaptation of the book, will speak with scholar and critic B. Ruby Rich about the story’s legacy and how it inspired the current issue of the magazine and exhibition.

Location: The New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Celeste Bartos Forum, 476 Fifth Avenue
Price: $40
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Thursday, May 30

“Richard Pousette-Dart: Works 1940–1992” installation view at Pace Gallery. Photo courtesy of Pace Gallery.

4. “A Panel Discussion on Richard Pousette-Dart” at Pace Gallery

As part of the programming for the exhibition “Richard Pousette-Dart: Works 1940–1992” (through June 22), Pace will present a discussion with the Richard Pousette-Dart Foundation. Joachim Homann, curator at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, will moderate; the speakers are Charles Duncan, director of the Richard Pousette-Dart Foundation; Pepe Karmel, professor of art history at New York University; Martica Sawin, art historian and critic; Richard Shiff, director of the Center for the Study of Modernism at the University of Texas at Austin; and writer and critic Lilly Wei.

Location: Pace Gallery, 32 East 57th Street
Price: Free
Time: 6 p.m.–8 p.m.

—Tanner West

Thursday, May 30–Saturday, June 22

Victor Ekpuk, Head of State (2011). Courtesy Aicon Gallery.

5. “Victor Ekpuk: Marks and Objects” at Aicon Gallery

As a respite from their roster of stellar Indian and Pakistani artists, Aicon Gallery is showing paintings, works on paper, and sculptures by Nigerian artist Victor Ekpuk. Ekpuk uses the traditional Nigerian writing form of “nsibidi” in his illustrative works to address social issues and the relationship between art and writing.

Location: 35 Great Jones Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Neha Jambhekar

Thursday, May 30–Sunday, June 30

A work by Mat Hansel. Courtesy of the Hole.

6. “Matthew Hansel: Giving Up the Ghost” at the Hole

A cartoon glove warps into a vanitas still-life. Anime-style eyes gaze upon a Classical marble bust. Matt Hansel’s paintings exist in various timelines and dimensions. A solo presentation of the artist’s work opens at The Hole this Thursday, featuring 11 new oil paintings.

Location: The Hole, 312 Bowery
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–9 p.m.; Wednesday–Sunday, 12 p.m.–7 p.m. and by appointment

—Cristina Cruz

Thursday, May 30–Sunday, August 25

The “Open Call” artists and the staff of the Shed. Photo by Scott Rudd Events.

7. “Open Call” at the Shed

In October, the Shed announced the 52 emerging New York City artists commissioned to make work for the inaugural “Open Call” program, selected from 900 applications. This week marks the opening of the first in a series of three separate presentations of their work. The first of the projects being staged in the Shed’s Griffin Theater is Richard Kennedy’s three-act opera about the rise of super-intelligent queer beings, performed May 30, May 31, and June 1 at 7:30 p.m.

Location: The Shed, 545 West 30th Street
Price: Free with reservations
Time: Times vary

—Sarah Cascone

Thursday, May 30–Sunday, November 17

Edmund de Waal, that pause of space (2019) at the Frick Collection. Photo by Christopher Burke, courtesy of the artist and the Frick Collection.

8. “Elective Affinities: Edmund de Waal at the Frick Collection” 

Contemporary art comes to the Frick as sculptor Edmund de Waal creates nine site-specific works in porcelain, steel, gold, alabaster, and glass to be displayed in the museum’s Gilded Age mansion alongside works from the permanent collection.

Location: The Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street
Price: $22 general admission
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Friday, May 31

Alexandra Bregman’s The Bouvier Affair.

9. The Bouvier Affair Book Launch at Aicon Gallery

Alexandra Bregman will read from her first book, The Bouvier Affair: A True Story, which centers on Leonardo da Vinci’s $450 million Salvator Mundi and the dispute between its former owner, Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, and freeport magnate Yves Bouvier, who sold to to him for a hefty profit. The book will be available for sale for $22.

Location: Aicon Gallery, 35 Great Jones Street
Price: Free
Time: 6 p.m., book reading at 7 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Friday, May 31–Wednesday, July 3

Janet Cooling, Apocalypse (1982). Courtesy Jack Hanley Gallery.

10. “Janet Cooling: 1978–1982” at Jack Hanley Gallery

This show, which is curated by Ashton Cooper, looks at a brief period in the career of Janet Cooling. The works in the show were made as Cooling was transitioning from Chicago, where she absorbed the influence of the Imagists, to New York, where her work fit into a new wave of queer art-making developed by artists such as Martin Wong, David Wojnarowicz, and Roger Brown. Against the backdrop of the “death of painting” and the emergence of the the AIDS crisis, Cooling held a “romantic sensibility of the artwork as an expression of personal feeling,” according to a release. Cooling was included in the US Pavilion at the 1984 Venice Biennale in a show organized by Marcia Tucker.

Location: Jack Hanley Gallery, 327 Broome Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Wednesday–Sunday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Pac Pobric

Saturday, June 1

Jean Shin, Allée Gathering (2019). Photo by Jerry L. Thompson, courtesy of the artist.

11. “Special Program: Outlooks, Jean Shin” at Storm King Art Center

For her current exhibition at Storm King, Jean King was inspired by the art center’s efforts to conserve its Maple Allée by replacing a stand of 24 dying maple trees with hardier black gum, or tupelo, trees. This weekend, Shin will speak with senior curator Nora Lawrence and director of facilities and conservation Mike Seaman about how she used wood from the old maples to create a monumental picnic table and how the project fits into the Storm King landscape. Following the talk, there will be a tasting of maple syrup produced by Storm King trees.

Location: Storm King Art Center, 1 Museum Road, New Windsor
Price: Free with $18 general admission
Time: 2 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

12. “Bosch Bash Summer Dance Party” by Project For Empty Space

For its second annual dance party and fundraiser, Project for Empty Space is taking its inspiration from Hieronymus Bosch’s delightfully bizarre painting The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490s). So get ready for an evening of drinks and dancing, with all the money going to support PES’s artist-in-residency program, which sustains artists working at the crossroads of social discourse and art.

Location: Project for Empty Space, 2 Gateway Center, Newark
Price: $50
Time: 7p.m

—Katie White

Saturday, June 1–Saturday, September 7

Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, Eggs (1985). ©2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat/licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris.

13. “Basquiat x Warhol” at Jack Shainman, the School

Jack Shainman showcases the relationship between Pop art great Andy Warhol and famed street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat through a series of collaborative paintings the two men made in 1984 and ’85. These works were reamed by the critics at the time, but the gallery is hoping for a reassessment.

Location: Jack Shainman, the School, 25 Broad Street, Kinderhook, New York
Price: Free, register for the opening
Time: Opening reception, 3 p.m.–7 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Saturday, June 1

Installation view of “Katarzyna Kozyra: Bipeds and Quadrupeds” at Postmasters. Courtesy of Postmasters.

14. “Katarzyna Kozyra: Bipeds and Quadrupeds” at Postmasters

For her sixth exhibition at Postmasters, cross-disciplinary Polish artist Katarzyna Kozyra presents a mini-survey of her prolific and controversial career, anchored by a new series of monumental photographs, Homo Quadrupeds. As in nearly all her work dating back to the landmark taxidermy-sculpture-and-slaughterhouse-exposé Pyramid of Animals (1993)—represented here by an archival C-print, alongside other important works from 2005 and 2018—Kozyra’s latest photos blur the often-artificial lines drawn to separate humankind from animals, and the powerful from the powerless. Homo Quadrupeds poses these challenges (and knowingly tempts accusations of cultural appropriation) by depicting women in burkas commanding men on literal leashes. The men are feral toward one another despite their willing subjugation to their female masters, and the viewer is left to sort through the many uncomfortable questions raised by these unorthodox relationships.

Location: Postmasters, 54 Franklin Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; hours extended to 8 p.m. Thursday

—Tim Schneider

Through Saturday, June 1

Mario Sironi, Venere dei porti (Venus of the Ports) (1919). Courtesy of the Casa Museo Boschi di Stefano, Milan, 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome.

15. “Metaphysical Masterpieces 1916–1920: Morandi, Sironi, and Carrà” at the Center for Italian Modern Art

The Center for Italian Modern Art teamed up with the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, for its first group show, which hones in on a critical moment in Italian Modern art, when it was inspired by Spanish Cubism, Italian Futurism, and the conflict of the First World War. The mysterious, eerie canvases of the Metaphysical movement are almost exclusively associated with the work of Giorgio de Chirico, but this exhibition includes Giorgio Morandi, Mario Sironi, and Carlo Carrà to show its broader impact.

Location: CIMA, 421 Broome Street, 4th Floor
Price: $10
Time: Friday and Saturday, 1 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Nan Stewert

Through Saturday, June 15

Andy Warhol, Dolly Parton (1985). © 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Tim Nighswander. Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy.

16. “Warhol Women” at Lévy Gorvy 

One doesn’t associate Upper East Side galleries with experiential, family-friendly exhibitions. But I was surprised to find that this show, which I visited with some out-of-towners last weekend, was exactly that. You are invited to scan a QR code (using free wifi provided by the gallery) to get a digital guide to the exhibition, as well as to download a Spotify playlist for each floor of the show. (Music also pipes through the galleries, a very underutilized mood-setter for art-viewing.) Guests can even take their own screen tests for free in a back room. It’s a good reminder that accessibility doesn’t have to mean sacrificing quality or succumbing to cheesiness.

Location: Lévy Gorvy, 909 Madison Avenue
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Julia Halperin