Each week, we search for the most exciting and thought-provoking shows, screenings, and events, both digitally and in-person in the New York area. See our picks from around the world below. (Times are all ET unless otherwise noted.)
Tuesday, October 26
Postcard Recovered from the World Trade Center site after September 11, 2001. Collection of 9/11 Memorial Museum, gift of Bronx Supreme Court, in memory of Capt. Harry Thompson, Sgt. Mitchel Wallace and Sgt. Thomas Jurgens.
1. “Malleable Memories and an Evolving History: Preserving the 9/11 Memorial Museum’s Collection” at NYU, Institute of Fine Arts, New York
For this year’s Walter W.S. Cook lecture, Lisa Conte, head of conservation at New York’s 9/11 Memorial Museum, will talk about the difficulties in maintaining both artifacts related to and the memory of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Presenting a public history of such a traumatic event is a highly sensitive matter, and many objects were gathered by a rapid-response collecting initiative in the days immediately following the tragedy, without knowing how they would fit into the day’s history and how it would be remembered.
Price: Free with registration
Time: 6:30 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
2. “The Sinking Ship: Alexis Rockman and Trevor Smith in Conversation on Art and the Environment” at the Art Students League, New York
Art Students League alum Alexis Rockman will talk with Trevor Smith, associate director at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, in a virtual conversation on how artists have tackled environmental concerns throughout art history, and how that theme recurs in Rockman’s practice.
Price: Free with registration
Time: 6 p.m.–7 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Thursday, October 28
3. “For Freedoms Fundraiser” at Palo Gallery, New York
Palo Gallery, a space for up-and-coming talent in Noho, is hosting a fundraising event for For Freedoms, the artist-run activist organization that is perhaps best known for mounting billboards across the U.S. during election years. Join for an art auction, drinks, and music by Bryndon Cook (a.k.a. Starchild and the New Romantic), and at the same time see the gallery’s current exhibition, “Primordial,” an immersive group show featuring 11 artists exploring the nature of primal instincts.
Location: Palo Gallery, 57 Bond Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
—Rachel Corbett
Gallery view, Nostalgia. Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
4. “The Atelier with Alina Cho: Tory Burch” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
After two virtual Atelier sessions, journalist Alina Cho is back to hosting her IRL conversations in the museum, this week welcoming American designer Tory Burch. Burch will discuss her career trajectory, which saw her eponymous line go from her kitchen table to hundreds of storefronts. One of the brand’s ensembles is on view now at the Met’s Costume Institute exhibition In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.
Location: The Met Fifth Avenue, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium1000 Fifth Avenue, New York
Price: Tickets start at $40 & the event will also be livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook
Time: 6:30–7:30 p.m.
—Caroline Goldstein
Through Friday, October 29
Installation view “”Bambou Gili: The Nonexistent Night” 2021. Courtesy of Arsenal Contemporary Art.
5. “Bambou Gili: The Nonexistent Night” at Arsenal Contemporary Art, New York
Brooklyn-based artist Bambou Gili’s debut solo exhibition is a painterly journey through one imagined night. Across 18 canvases, Gili carries viewers into a phosphorescent world of blue and greens, filled with both mundane and fantastical elements. A cat crawls across a kitchen counter. A woman reads, naked, on a couch, while she is illuminated by a sharp unseen light source, reminiscent of a Baroque tenebrism. In another a lone woman stands before a raging bonfire. The exhibition name’s is a twist on Italo Calvino’s book The Nonexistent Knight, which follows the travails of a medieval knight, Agilulf, who exists only as an empty suit of armor. Here, Gili seems to ask us to consider what is real and what merely dreamed.
Location: Arsenal Contemporary Art, 214 Bowery, New York
Price: Free
Time: Monday–Friday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Katie White
The Upper Pond in the Strolling Pond Garden at the Portland Japanese Garden. Photo by Michael Drewry, courtesy of the Portland Japanese Garden.
6. “The Luxurious Garden and the Gratification of Retreat” at Asia Week New York
This virtual talk from Asia Week New York will consider the Japanese and Chinese garden traditions, and how they function as spaces of retreat, providing emotional support and a setting for important events. The panelists are landscape architect Marc Peter Keane; Christie’s Chinese ceramics specialist Andrew M. Lueck; Katherine Martin of New York gallery Scholten Japanese Art; Portland Japanese Garden curator Sadafumi Uchiyama; Maxwell K. Hearn, the chairman of the Asian Art department at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Phillip E. Bloom, curator of the Chinese garden at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California.
Price: Free with registration
Time: 5 p.m.
—Tanner West
Friday, October 29 and Friday, November 5
Woodlawn Cemetery’s Illuminated Mausoleums Tour. Photo courtesy of Woodlawn Cemetery.
7. “Illuminated Mausoleums Night Tour” at Woodlawn Cemetery, the Bronx
Woodlawn’s mausoleums are works of art in their own right, featuring extravagant architecture and beautiful detail—the cemetery is home to works by sculptors such as Sally James Farnham, Robert Ingersoll Aiken, and Daniel Chester French. To get in the Halloween spirit, take a nighttime walking and trolley tour to see them all lit up.
Location: Woodlawn Cemetery, 4199 Webster Avenue, Bronx
Price: $25
Time: 6:45 p.m., 7:15 p.m., and 7:45 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Through Saturday, October 30
Amy Lincoln, Ursa Major (Mauve Waves), 2021 Courtesy of Sperone Westwater
8. “Amy Lincoln” at Sperone Westwater, New York
Don’t miss the last week’s of Amy Lincoln’s solo exhibition at Sperone Westwater. Lincoln paints dreamy, imaginary seascapes in this new body of work. The paintings are filled with natural elements such as waves, sunlight, stars, and rainbows, all painted to create symmetrical, sometimes monochromatic patterns. The result is an ethereal and serene set of works that imbue the viewer with a deep sense of calm. This is Lincoln’s first show at the gallery since her addition to its roster in July.
Location: Sperone Westwater, 257 Bowery, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m. and Monday by appointment
—Neha Jambhekar
Through Sunday, October 31
A piece by Sagarika Sundaram in “Elements” at the West Harlem Art Fund. Photo courtesy of the West Harlem Art Fund.
9. “Elements” at the West Harlem Art Fund
West Harlem Art Fund founder Savona Bailey-McClain has curated a stunning fall exhibition at the organization’s seasonal headquarters on Governors Island featuring four international women artists. The showstopper is Sagarika Sundaram’s massive hand-felted wool sculpture installed above the home’s fireplace, which she originally created as a performance costume. Drawings by Yalan Wen, delicate lamps covered in agar flowers by Yi Hsuan Sung, and Valerie Hallier’s canvases covered in colorful flower petals round out the show.
Location: West Harlem Art Fund, Nolan Park, Building 10B, Governors Island, New York
Time: Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Through Sunday, November 7
“The Great Jack-O’-Lantern Blaze.” Photo courtesy of Historic Hudson Valley.
10. “The Great Jack-O’-Lantern Blaze” at Old Bethpage Village Restoration, Old Bethpage, New York
For the second year in a row, Historic Hudson Valley’s beloved illuminated pumpkin art installation is taking place on Long Island. Tickets to the original location at Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton-on-Hudson, which launched in 2005, are already sold out for the month, but there is more availability in Bethpage. The nighttime, outdoor display features 7,000 hand-carved jack-o-lanterns, with tableaus including an 80-foot circus train and a sea monster. After the exhibition ends, the pumpkins, grown at Rock Camp Farm in Calverton, will be composted.
Location: Old Bethpage Village Restoration, 1303 Round Swamp Road, Old Bethpage, New York
Price: Adults $32, kids $24
Time: Wednesday and Thursday, 6 p.m.–9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 6 p.m.–10:30 p.m.; Sunday, 5 p.m.–9 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Through Friday, November 12
Polina Barskaya, Bath Ritual, 2021 Courtesy of Monya Rowe Gallery
11. “Polina Barskaya: Still” at Monya Rowe Gallery, New York
Polina Barskaya’s latest solo show at Monya Rowe Gallery consists of work that she made while living in Croatia and Italy during the pandemic in 2020. Awash in her signature gray tones, these paintings capture the new rituals that she adopted with her husband after the birth of their daughter. A master of visual texture, Barskaya fills these canvases with intricate touches that you see reflected in the tiles around a bathtub, crumpled sheets on a bed, or the dappled sunlight on a vine outside a house.
Location: Monya Rowe Gallery, 224 West 30th Street, No. 1005, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.
—Neha Jambhekar
Through Friday, December 31
Image courtesy Galerie Gmurzynska
12. “Christo: Nature/Environments” at Galerie Gmurzynska, New York
This selection of works by Christo is intended to be a celebration of New York and the late artist’s relationship to it. It includes works from 1968 to 2013, spanning decades of both the city’s history as well as Christo’s career. The show runs concurrently with one at the gallery’s Zurich branch of European works. Both shows pay homage to L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, which was recently presented in Paris (September 18 – October 3). It was the artist’s wish that this project, originally devised in 1961, be carried out posthumously.
Location: Galerie Gmurzynska, 43 East 78th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Monday–Friday 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Eileen Kinsella