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

Monday, November 4

Jerry Saltz. Photo by Celeste Sloman, courtesy of Jerry Saltz.

1. The Museum of Art and Design’s “MAD Ball”

New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz is master of ceremonies at this year’s annual benefit for the Museum of Arts and Design, the MAD Ball. The event honors the Haas Brothers with its Visionaries! Award, which was designed this year by artist Kiki Smith. Saltz will also announce the winner of this year’s $50,000 Burke Prize, which is given to a young contemporary artist who works with traditional craft materials.

Location: Cipriani 42nd Street, 110 East 42nd Street
Price: $750–2,500
Time: 6:30 p.m. cocktails and silent auction; 7:30 p.m. dinner; 9 p.m. dancing

—Rachel Corbett

Marilyn Minter. Photo by Nadya Wasylko.

2. “Badass Art Woman Awards” at Project for Empty Space 

The third annual Badass Art Woman Awards, from Newark nonprofit gallery and artist residency program Project for Empty Space, honors Brooklyn Museum associate curator Carmen Hermo, of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art; scholar and activist Salamishah Tillet, and legendary feminist artist Marilyn Minter. The party will feature surprise performances and a chance to see Amy Khoshbin’s current exhibition, “GHOSTS,” as well as cocktails and dinner.

Location: Project for Empty Space
Price: From $225
Time: 6 p.m.–10:30 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Wednesday, November 6–Thursday, November 21

Domenic Esposito, Opioid Spoon (2019). Photo courtesy of the artist.

3. The Opioid Spoon Project at Mountainside Chelsea

See the famous Opioid Spoon and hear artist/creator Domenic Esposito talk with Mountainside director of community development Dan Smith about how art, activism, and recovery intersect to achieve awareness about the opioid crisis.

Location: Mountainside Chelsea, 243 West 18 Street, New York
Price: Free (RSVP Here)
Time: Opening reception 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday – Friday 1:00 –2:30 p.m. and  5:00 –7:00 p.m. Saturday 12:00 –4:00 p.m.

—Eileen Kinsella

Wednesday, November 6–Sunday, May 24, 2020

Reconstructed panel of bricks with a striding lion. Neo-Babylonian Period (reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, circa 604–562 BC). Processional Way, El-Kasr Mound, Babylon (modern Hillah), Iraq. Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

4. “A Wonder to Behold: Craftsmanship and the Creation of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate” at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World

Experience the incredible beauty and craftsmenship of ancient Babylonian artifacts made from unremarkable materials clay bricks, glass, and stone in this exhibition of surviving fragments from the lost kingdom’s Ishtar Gate and Processional Way.

Location: Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, 15 East 84th Street
Price: Free
Time: Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m.–8 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Thursday, November 7

Boy Kong, Chasing Stripes from the Art for Tibet auction.

5. Art for Tibet Live Event and Auction

Students for a Free Tibet’s Art for Tibet fundraiser this year takes to a gallery up in Harlem, Faction Arts, for a week-long show. If you haven’t been yet, it’s more than worth heading uptown for the annual charity auction and get-together on Thursday. The good cause has attracted works-for-sale from the likes of Shepard Fairey and Cey Adams, better known as founding creative director of Def Jam (both are on the committee for the event). Other highlights range from a painting from Tibetan artist Pema Rinzin to a piece by NYC subway graffiti star Al Diaz. It’s all up in the online auction, taking bids now. A personal favorite may be the ukeyo-e-inspired inspired surrealist tiger by Boy Kong (above). Also expect a performance from Tibetan musician Tenzin Choegyal in the lead up to the auction during the evening’s festivities.

Location: Gallery 8, 2602 Frederick Douglass Boulevard
Price: free
Time: 6 p.m.–9 p.m.

—Ben Davis

Through Thursday, November 7

Boedi Widjaja, 等著你回來 (Waiting for You), 2016. Courtesy of Helwaser Gallery. © Boedi Widjaja. Photography by Cher Him Chua.

6. “Boedi Widjaja: Declaration of” at Helwaser Gallery

Since Singapore-based multidisciplinary artist Boedi Widjaja left Indonesia early in his youth, his experience of his home country has largely developed through media imagery and his own imagination. Now in the final days of its run at Helwaser Gallery, the artist’s exhibition “Declaration of” continues the aptly titled “Imaginary Homeland” series that he began in 2015 to explore the contours and complications of this long-distance relationship. The show focuses on large-scale drawings, photographs, and a newly commissioned installation, all based on press photos of Indonesia’s founding president, Sukarno, and his successor by purge, major general Suharto, who went on to rule the country for the next 31 years.

Location: Helwaser Gallery, 833 Madison Avenue, 3rd Floor
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Thursday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Tim Schneider

Thursday, November 7–Thursday, November 21

A “Canstruction” sculpture made from canned food donated to City Harvest. Photo courtesy of Brookfield Place.

7. “Canstruction” at Brookfield Place

For the 12th straight year, Brookfield Place is hosting a canned food sculpture design competition to benefit food charity City Harvest. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, the massive installations will be donated to the hungry following the exhibition’s end. There are awards for using the most cans, for structural integrity, for best design, and even for the cans that would make for the best meal.

Location: Brookfield Place, 230 Vesey Street
Price: Free, suggested donation of canned food
Time: 10 a.m.–8 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Thursday, November 7–Saturday, November 30

Diarmuid Kelley, Seville Oranges (2019). Courtesy of Offer Waterman.

8. “Diarmuid Kelley: Recent Paintings” at Offer Waterman Gallery

London’s Offer Waterman Gallery touches down in New York with a pop-up exhibition hosted by Stellan Holm Gallery, featuring large-scale portraits and still lifes by Diarmuid Kelley. The paintings, sometimes deliberately unfinished, draw on Renaissance art history while remaining decidedly contemporary.

Location: Stellan Holm Gallery, 1018 Madison Avenue
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Monday–Friday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Thursday, November 7–Saturday, December 21

Mary Corse, Untitled (White, Black, Red, Beveled), 2019. Photo ©Mary Corse, courtesy Kayne Griffin Corcoran.

9. “Mary Corse: Recent Paintings” at Pace Gallery 

Following the California light and space artist’s 2018 retrospective at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, Pace Gallery snapped up Mary Corse. Her first show with the gallery was in Hong Kong during that city’s Art Basel; this New York outing focuses on recent work that sees Corse, known for her deceptively plain black and white canvases studded with the tiny glass microspheres found in road paint, embrace color.

Location: Pace Gallery, 540 West 25th Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Thursday, November 7–Saturday, January 18, 2020

Lee Bul, Perdu XXII (2019). Photo courtesy of Lehmann Maupin.

10. “Lee Bul – Interlude: Perdu” at Lehmann Maupin 

Fresh off her inclusion in the international exhibition at this year’s Venice Biennale, Lee Bul presents a new show of mixed-media paintings that incorporate mother of pearl, velvet, and acrylic paint. The artist’s vaguely anthropomorphic figures are at once beautiful and disturbing, suggesting new bioengineered species born of a dystopian future.

Location: Lehmann Maupin, 536 West 22nd Street
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Friday, November 8 and Saturday, November 9

Diana Whitten, Vessel (2014), still. Photo courtesy of Diana Whitten.

11. “Reproductive Rights Film Festival” at the Brooklyn Museum

As more and more states pass legislation restricting women’s access to abortion, the Brooklyn Museum holds a two-day film festival celebrating the right for reproductive rights. Opening night will include a screening of Reversing Roe (2018), Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg’s documentary about the right’s long-term political campaign to overturn the landmark Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion nationwide. Screenings of Dawn Porter’s Trapped (2016); Tracy Droz’s Abortion: Stories Women Tell (2016); Alessandra Zeka and Holen Sabrina Kahn’s A Quiet Inquisition (2014); and Diana Whitten’s Vessel (2014) are scheduled for Saturday, along with a conversation between several of the filmmakers and Andrea Miller, president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health.

Location: The Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway
Price: $16 each day
Time: Friday, 7 p.m.–9:30 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Friday, November 8 and Sunday, November 10

Carol Szymanski, He Said I Thought (2019), still. Photo courtesy of Signs and Symbols.

12. Carol Szymanski’s He Said I Thought at signs and symbols

As part of Carol Szymanski’s exhibition at the Lower East Side gallery (on view through November 17), the artist is staging a series of performances inspired largely by the designer suits she wore while working a corporate job in the late 1990s to early 2000s. The hour-long performance reflects on the role of acquiescence in gender relations, as told through a series of abstracted memories that harken back to a distinctly pre-#MeToo era. The gallery is small, so RSVP is required for a seat at one of the final two performances, on November 8 and November 10.

Location: signs and symbols, 102 Forsyth Street
Price: Free, with RSVP
Time: 7 p.m.

—Rachel Corbett

Saturday, November 9

Photos by Maripol, courtesy of the artist.

13. Polaroid Photographer Maripol at Polaroid Pop-Up Lab NYC

Maripol, who styled Madonna and famously documented the 1980s downtown art scene, talks with Kelly Cutrone (the demanding boss from The Hills) about her photography.

Location: Polaroid Pop-Up Lab NYC, 138 Wooster Street
Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 3 p.m.–4:30 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Opening Saturday, November 9

Mel Bochner, Measurement Room (1969 at Heiner Friedrich’s Munich gallery. Photo courtesy of the artist.

14. “Mel Bochner” at Dia:Beacon

Conceptual and Postminimal artist Mel Bochner has created a new large-scale work in his “Measurement” series to mark the 50th anniversary of his first “Measurement Room,” which added measurement marks to the walls of Dia cofounder Heiner Friedrich’s Munich gallery. The artist also has a show at Peter Freeman, “Exasperations,” opening on November 5.

Location: Dia:Beacon, 3 Beekman Street, Beacon
Price: $15 general admission for adults; $12 for students and seniors
Time: Thursday–Monday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Saturday, November 16

15. “Amy Myers: Daughter Universes” at Malin Gallery

Malin Gallery—the former Burning in Water, rechristened after founder Barry Malin—presents the first show of large-scale oil paintings by Amy Myers. She’s known for her intricate drawings that are at once spiritual and scientific.

Location: Malin Gallery, 515 West 29th Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Nan Stewert

Through Friday, December 20

Film still from Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, This Is Heaven courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.

16. “Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg: One Last Trip to the Underworld” at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

The artist duo is presenting their first solo show since joining the gallery. Coming almost four years after their last presentation in New York, it features the debut of four new videos in which the artists create a surreal miniature world with intense musical scores, populated by little claymation figures that live out experiences of fear, sex, shame, and euphoria.

Location: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, 521 West 21st Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Caroline Goldstein

Through Saturday, December 21

Chen Fei, Painter and Family (2018). Courtesy of Perrotin.

17. “Chen Fei: Reunion” at Perrotin

Beijing-based artist Chen Fei makes his first major US debut in this spectacular exhibition of still lifes and portraiture that seamlessly synthesizes a range of visual references, from Dutch Golden Age painting to comic books. The star of the exhibition might be his monumental Painter and Family (2018), a vivid reinterpretation of Velázquez’s Las Meninas.

Location: Perrotin, 130 Orchard Street
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Katie White

Through Sunday, December 15

Alexander Harrison, Golden Hour (2019). Courtesy of Fisher Parrish Gallery.

18. “Sundown Town: Alexander Harrison” at Fisher Parrish Gallery

Do you know that feeling when your favorite artist finally posts a new work on Instagram? Do you know what feels better than that? When you find out they are debuting a solo show at a local gallery—in this case, Fisher Parrish Gallery in Bushwick. Hailing from South Carolina, Alexander Harrison paints scenes of black culture and the American South. By applying sharp bands and patches of paint on soft blended backgrounds, Harrison conveys both fragility and boldness in his flowers, fruits, and butterflies.

Location: Fisher Parrish Gallery, 238 Wilson Ave, Brooklyn
Price: Free
Time: Saturday and Sunday, 1 p.m.–6 p.m. or by appointment

—Cristina Cruz