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

Monday, October 1

The Russell Page garden at the Frick. Photo by Henk van der Eijk via Flickr.

1. “Landscape Design Portfolio Lecture Series: Charles Birnbaum” at the Scandinavia House

For the kickoff of its 20th annual landscape design portfolio lecture series, the New York Botanical Garden welcomes Charles Birnbaum, founder and CEO of the Cultural Landscape Foundation. He’ll talk about his work preserving historic landscapes in the face of constant urban change, including the fight to save the Russell Page Garden at New York’s Frick Collection.

Location: Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue at East 38th Street
Price: General admission, $26
Time: 6:30 p.m.–7:30 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Monday, October 1–Wednesday, October 31

Isabelita Virtual, Midnight Sunrise (2018). Courtesy of the artist.

2. “Isabelita Virtual: Midnight Sunrise” at Times Square Arts

Advertising creative director Isabel Martinez has over 680,000 followers on her Instagram account, IsabelitaVirtual. For this month’s Midnight Moment, as part of New York Advertising Week, she’s taking over the advertising screens of Times Square for three minutes each night with a virtual sunrise, a meditative piece in which a gradient of color changes from the deep blue of nighttime to the brightness of daybreak. In a statement, Martinez described the artwork as “a reflection on humanity’s deep need of quiet, paradoxically providing a moment of inner peace in the center of Times Square.”

Location: Times Square
Price: Free
Time: Nightly from 11:57 p.m.–midnight

—Caroline Goldstein

The Shed, under construction at Hudson Yards March 6, 2018, in New York. Image courtesy Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images.

3. Archtober 

New York City’s architecture and design month features a full slate of events, tours, and exhibitions. A small sampling: Get a preview of the new TWA Hotel at JFK airport—Eero Saarinen’s famed terminal—on October 6, attend a lecture with architect Gaetano Pesce Columbia University on October 15, or take a spin around Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s the Shed on October 26.

Location: Various locations
Price: Free
Time: Various events

—Sarah Cascone

Tuesday, October 2

Mary Weatherford, Bird of Paradise (2018). Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery.

4. “Phyllis Tuchman & Mary Weatherford: A Conversation about Painting, Abstraction, and Other Matters” at the New York Studio School

Timed to coincide with Mary Weatherford’s solo show at Gagosian gallery in Chelsea, historian and critic Phyllis Tuchman and the artist will be in conversation at the NYSS. Tuchman wrote the catalogue text for Weatherford’s solo show in 2017 at David Kordansky Gallery in California.

Location: New York Studio School, 8 West 8th Street
Price: Free
Time: 6:30 p.m.–7:30 p.m.

—Caroline Goldstein

Wednesday, October 3

Laurie Anderson performs at the LongHouse Reserve’s presentation of Laurie Anderson’s Concert for Dogs. Photo ©Patrick McMullan.

5. “Laurie Anderson with Sjón: Genre Bending” at the New York Public Library

Artist, filmmaker, musician, and composer Laurie Anderson comes to LIVE at the NYPL. She’ll talk about the interdisciplinary creative process with Icelandic poet and novelist, Sjón, whose novel, CoDex 1962, a trilogy 20 years in the making, has just been translated into English for the first time.

Location: The New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Celeste Bartos Forum, 42nd Street & 5th Avenue
Price: $40
Time: 7 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Thursday, October 4

eL Seed, Perception (2016). Photo courtesy of eL Seed.

6. eL Seed Book Signing at the Museum of Modern Art

Street artist eL Seed has released a new book, Perception, about his work with marginalized communities such as the garbage pickers of Cairo, his efforts to change perceptions of Islam through his use of Arabic lettering, and the artist’s realizations about his own willingness to prejudge others in much the same way he had experienced in his own life. Following an intimate conversation with MoMA director Glenn Lowry in the museum’s Founders Room, eL Seed will sign copies of the book at a reception.

Location: Museum of Modern Art Bookstore, 11 West 53rd Street
Price: Free
Time: 6 p.m.–7:30 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Thursday, October 4–Friday, October 5

The logo for the Vera List Center Forum. Image courtesy of the Vera List Center.

7. “Vera List Center Forum 2018: If Art Is Politics” at the Vera List Center

To kick off its new biennial focus, “If Art Is Politics,” which will guide its programming through 2020, the Vera List Center will hold its first annual forum. Artist and curator Jolene Rickard will deliver the keynote address. The event will also name the winner of the Vera List Center Prize.

Location: The New School, Tishman Auditorium, University Center, 63 Fifth Avenue, between West 13th and 14th Streets
Price: Free
Time: Thursday, 6:30 p.m.–8:30 p.m.; Friday, 6:30 p.m.–8 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Friday, October 5–Monday, February 4, 2019

Matti Braun, close-up cross section of Cut Evergreen Tree, Focus On Tree Rings (2018).
Courtesy of the artist and Rubin Museum of Art.

8. “A Lost Future: Shezad Dawood/The Otolith Group/Matti Braun” at the Rubin Museum of Art

Artist Matti Braun transforms the main gallery on the fifth floor into a lake that visitors can interact with via s series of tree discs. This is the third and final iteration of “A Lost Future,” the Rubin’s exhibition that delves into histories and speculative futures in Bengal and across cultures.

Location: Rubin Museum of Art, 150 West 17th Street
Price: Adults, $19; seniors, students, and visitors with disabilities $14; members and children 12 and under, free
Time: Monday and Thursday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.; Wednesday 11 a.m.–9 p.m.; Friday 11 a.m.–10 p.m; Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m

—Eileen Kinsella

Through Friday, October 12

Installation view of “A Passion for Collecting: Modern Works From the Pérez Simón Collection” at Di Donna. Photo courtesy of Di Donna.

9. “A Passion for Collecting: Modern Works From the Pérez Simón Collection” at Di Donna

Mexican art collector Pérez Simón is lending 18 works by an impressive selection of great modernists to this museum-quality group show. With works by Georges Braque, Paul Cézanne, Salvador Dalí, Paul Delvaux, Fernand Léger, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, and Mark Rothko, this is one you don’t want to miss.

Location: Di Donna, 744 Madison Avenue
Price: Free
Time: Monday–Friday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Saturday, October 20

10. “The Art of The Avengers and Other Heroes” at the Society of Illustrators

With New York Comic Con returning this week, it’s the perfect time to check out this exhibition of vintage Marvel Comics illustrations by the likes of Jack Kirby, who with Stan Lee created the X-Men, the Hulk, and the Fantastic Four; and Steve Ditko, who teamed up with Lee to bring us Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. With never-before-seen works, the show is being touted by the society as “the largest selection of vintage and modern original Marvel art that has ever been displayed in the world.”

Location: Society of Illustrators, 128 East 63rd Street
Price: $15 general admission
Time: Tuesday and Thursday, 10 a.m.–8 p.m.; Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Sunday, October 28

Installation view of “Rachel Monosov: The Blind Leader” (2018). Courtesy of Catinca Tabacaru.

11. “Rachel Monosov: The Blind Leader” at Catinca Tabacaru

A neon-lit collection of post-minimal structures makes up Rachel Monosov’s second exhibition with Catinca Tabacaru. While at first these works seem like harmless juxtapositions of everyday objects—cacti in copper tubing, a banana next to a wire fence—their presence becomes more sinister as nearby photographs reveal their suggested uses, many of which involve strange, invasive manipulations of the body.

Location: Catinca Tabacaru, 250 Broome Street
Price: Free
Time: Wednesday–Sunday, 11:00 am–7:00 pm

—Taylor Dafoe

Through Sunday, November 18

Oscar Muñoz, still from Línea del destino (2006). Image courtesy of the artist.

12. “A Void” at 601 Artspace

In 1988, art historian Kermit Champa showed his students a slide of Gustave Courbet’s The Stone Breakers (1849), a painting annihilated—along with 25,000 lives—in the Allies’ three-day bombing of Dresden in 1945. Thirty years later, celebrated artist Paul Ramirez Jonas, a student in Champa’s lecture hall that day, used that linkage between human and aesthetic destruction as a launch point to curate this group exhibition. It unites works by Michael Rakowitz, Oscar Muñoz, Emily Jacir, and others, to explore how catastrophic loss radiates out into the personal and the public alike.

Location: Artspace, 88 Eldridge Street
Price: Free
Time: Thursday–Sunday, 1 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Tim Schneider