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.)
Launching Monday, September 20
Muhammad Ali and Elliott Arkin. Photo courtesy of the Muhammad Ali Center.
1. “Strength and Resistance” sale for the Muhammad Ali Center, Louisville, Kentucky
In 1998, the sculptor Elliott Arkin made plaster casts of boxer Muhammad Ali’s iconic fists and later turned them into bronze and marble sculptures titled Strength and Resistance. Now, just in time for the release of Ken Burns’s new PBS documentary on the boxer, the edition of 20 works is being sold for $25,000 each to benefit UNICEF and the Muhammad Ali Foundation. “These fists are not a shrine or an altar to [Ali’s] prophetic life,” writes critic Rob Storr in an essay on the project’s website, “such idolatry had no place in his own religious observances—but they will concentrate anyone who looks at them on the firmly grounded yet in all other respects unfettered and superlative human being of which they are emblematic.”
Price: Free ($25,000 to purchase)
—Tanner West
Wednesday, September 22
NYU Abu Dhabi. Photo courtesy of NYU Abu Dhabi.
2. “NYUAD and the Art of Change” at NYU Abu Dhabi
NYU Abu Dhabi is celebrating 10 years with two days of virtual programming, including a talk on how art institutions around the world have been forced to embrace digital programming during the pandemic. The conversation will feature Noura Al Kaabi, UAE minister of culture and knowledge development; Manuel Rabate, director of the Louvre Abu Dhabi; Maya Allison, executive director of the NYUAD Art Gallery; and Bill Bragin, executive artistic director of the Arts Center at NYUAD. Art historian Mariët Westermann, the school’s vice chancellor, will moderate.
Price: Free with registration
Time: 10 a.m.
—Tanner West
Kris Graves, George Floyd Projection, Richmond, Virginia, from American Monuments (2020). Photo courtesy of the artist, ©Kris Graves.
3. “Art Break: Re-envisioning American Monuments” at the Getty Center, Los Angeles
As part of the programming for the exhibition “In Focus: Protest” (through October 10), the Getty is staging a virtual conversation with curator LeRonn Brooks and artist Kris Graves, who spent much of 2020 photographing Civil War monuments that had been defaced during the Black Lives Matter protests. The two will talk about how art can be used to confront social problems, and how we can reimagine, rather than destroy, historic monuments that have become problematic.
Price: Free with registration
Time: 12 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Wednesday, September 22–Sunday, September 26
Josh Harlan, Spectrum Fragment 3D (2017). Photo courtesy of the artist.
4. “The Affordable Art Fair” at the Metropolitan Pavilion, New York
The Affordable Art Fair returns to New York with 70 dealers offering pieces from over 400 artists, with all works priced between $100 and $10,000.
Location: Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, New York
Price: $30–80
Time: Wednesday private view, 6 p.m.–9 p.m.; Thursday, 12 p.m.–9 p.m.; Friday, 12 p.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sunday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
—Nan Stewert
Thursday, September 23
Conclave performing at the Met Cloisters’s Fuentidueña Chapel. Photo by Paula Lobo, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
5. “Sonic Cloisters: Conclave” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Met Cloisters, New York
Live performance has returned to the Met with “Sonic Cloisters,” a series of site-specific electronic music performances at the Cloister’s Fuentidueña Chapel. Tune in on the Met’s Facebook, Twitch, or YouTube channels to hear Conclave’s unique blend of various musical genres, perhaps best described as Afro-Latin-Jazz-House fusion.
Price: Free
Time: 9 p.m.–10 p.m.
—Tanner West
The Silence Project. Photo by Dmitris Chalkiadakis.
6. “Communal Readings In Silence” at Jefferson Market Garden, New York
Non-profit Greece in USA has organized an evening of performance curated by Sozita Goudouna in conjunction with the online group exhibition “The Right to Breathe,” which features 100 Greek artists. The organization previously hosted a similar event at what was once Seneca Village, Central Park’s displaced 19th-century community of free African Americans. On the site of a former jail, market, and women’s detention center that is Jefferson Market Garden, Jenny Marketou and nine participants will give a series of public readings reflecting on the uprisings that have taken place there over the years, with the hope of inspiring collective mourning and healing.
Location: Jefferson Market Garden, 10 Greenwich Ave, New York
Price: Free
Time: 6:30 p.m.
—Nan Stewert
Thursday, September 23–Saturday, October 24
Work by Mike Perry. Courtesy of Richard Taittinger Gallery, New York.
7. “Mike Perry: Impetuous Meetings With Myself; Dancing With Ducklegangers” at Richard Taittinger Gallery, New York
The talented artist Mike Perry, who rose to fame with his wildly colorful animations that opened the hit Comedy Central show Broad City, is back with a body of new work that he says was “born out of the strange communal isolation of our current time.” The artist describes the new show as a “continuous expansion of a hypercolored world of exploratory wonder that has become synonymous with the studio.”
Location: Richard Taittinger Gallery, 154 Ludlow Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–9 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–7 p.m.
—Eileen Kinsella
Thursday, September 23-Saturday, October 30
Aiza Ahmed, Where’s The Cake?, 2021, Courtesy of Aicon Contemporary
8. “Judith Has Arrived: Aiza Ahmed, Sanie Bokhari, Maya Varadaraj” at Aicon Contemporary, New York
Aiza Ahmed, Sanie Bokhari, and Maya Varadaraj come together in a group show that challenges the patriarchal structures in modern society. The works are full of imagery influenced by the artists’ South-Asian backgrounds and convey messages of female empowerment. The three distinct styles of these artists, as well as the bright, youthful energy of their works, make this exhibition the one not to miss this week.
Location: Aicon Contemporary, 35 Great Jones Street, New York
Price: Free (RSVP to attend opening)
Time: Opening reception 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; daily, 10 a.m.–6 p.m
—Neha Jambhekar
Saturday, September 25
Judy Chicago, The Flowering: The Autobiography of Judy Chicago. Photo courtesy of Thames and Hudson.
9. “Artist Talk: Judy Chicago” at the Brooklyn Museum
It’s a big moment for pioneering feminist artist Judy Chicago, who published a new memoir, The Flowering: The Autobiography Judy Chicago, in July, and just debuted her career retrospective at the de Young Museum in San Francisco (through January 9, 2022). She’ll talk about all that at the Brooklyn Museum, which just so happens to be home to her magnum opus, the history-making installation The Dinner Party, with museum director Anne Pasternak and Catherine Morris, senior curator at the institution’s Elizabeth A Sackler Center for Feminist Art.
Location: Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York
Price: $25
Time: 2 p.m.–4 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Through Thursday, October 3
“Upstairs: Bernadette Despujols, the Vast Ocean in Which the Woman Swims” at Rachel Uffner, New York. Photo courtesy of Rachel Uffner, New York.
10. “Upstairs: Bernadette Despujols, the Vast Ocean in Which the Woman Swims” at Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York
In this solo show curated by Ché Morales, Bernadette Despujols paints women at all stages of their lives, from girlhood to motherhood to old age, calling into question societal expectations about the roles of women. The canvases are paired with sculptures from her “Inflatable Love Dolls” series, made from torsos of blow-up sex dolls filled with concrete. Despujols has left the original pink plastic in place to mark the sexual orifices, but the soft, yielding female forms are now impenetrable.
Location: Rachel Uffner Gallery, 170 Suffolk Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Monday–Friday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Through Thursday, October 7
Ani Gurashvili, Optical Illusion, 2021. Courtesy of Real Pain.
11. “Ani Gurashvili: The Soft Breeze of Mortality” at Real Pain, New York
The paintings by Georgian artist Ani Gurashvili on view at Real Pain gallery use a unique folding and stapling method. The resulting “lumps” in the canvas add a new kind of texture to the surfaces of the works. As for the subject matter, Gurashvili depicts surreal scenes that tell a story, inserting the viewer into a dazzling, jewel-toned world where magic lamps, portals, and villainous pet sidekicks exist.
Location: Real Pain, 30 Orchard Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Sunday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.
—Cristina Cruz