Each week, we search New York City for the most exciting and thought-provoking shows, screenings, and events. In light of the global health situation, we are currently highlighting digital events as well as in-person happenings in the New York area. See our picks from below. (Times are all EST unless otherwise noted.)
Opening Tuesday, September 8
Rendering of “Art in Focus: Genevieve Gaignard” at Rockefeller Center. Photo courtesy of Art Production Fund.
1. “Art in Focus: Genevieve Gaignard” at Rockefeller Center, New York
Art Production Fund once again takes over vacant advertising space at Rockefeller Center, this time with Genevieve Gaignard’s colorfully feminine yet bitingly incisive reflections on the intricacies of race, class, and gender. If you made it to Frieze LA—remember art fairs?—you probably caught her sold-out booth from Vielmetter Los Angeles. At Rock Center, she’s installed photography, collages, and neon imagery on light boxes, window vitrines, and vinyl mural spaces throughout the complex.
Location: Rockefeller Center between West 48th and 51st Streets and Fifth and Sixth Avenues
Price: Free
Time: Open daily at all times
—Sarah Cascone
Tuesday, September 8
Courtesy Garage Museum of Contemporary Art.
2. “A Beautiful Night for All the People: 2nd Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art”
International audiences are invited to attend this virtual preview of the second Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art with curators Valentin Diaconov and Anastasia Mityushina. Called “A Beautiful Night for All the People,” the show has taken an unorthodox approach by inviting the artists who took part in the inaugural triennial in 2017 to choose the participating artists for the exhibition and to collaborate with them on a new work.
Location: Live virtual preview online
Price: Free with registration
Time: 7 p.m. MST (12 p.m. EST)
—Naomi Rea
Wednesday, September 9
The current New York City subway map, based on John Tauranac’s 1978 design. Courtesy of the MTA.
3. “Evening In: a Subway Ride From Past to Present” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York
It may have been a while since you’ve taken the subway regularly, but members of the Museum of Modern Art can gain insight into the history of New York City’s iconic subway map as part of a new monthly online activity series. The designers of the map’s latest iteration, Yoshiki Waterhouse and Beatriz Cifuentes, will discuss the challenges of modernizing the classic 1967 map. If you want to try your hand at transportation mapping through an interactive activity, BYO colored pencils.
Location: Online
Price: Free for MoMA members with registration
Time: 7:30 p.m.–8:30 p.m.
—Julia Halperin
Wednesday, September 9–Sunday, September 13
Polly Apfelbaum, 6″ ball of color (2016).
4. 100 Artists for the Orchid Foundation
The nonprofit Orchid Foundation, founded by actress and art collector Nichole Galicia, provides college scholarships for high school girls who excel in academics but come from underserved socioeconomic backgrounds. Starting this Wednesday, the organization will host a virtual art auction, curated by artists Beatrice Scaccia and Virginia Inés Vergara, to raise funds for its scholarships. The sale features works by 100 artists, including Leonardo Drew, Alfredo Jaar, Polly Apfelbaum, Jessie Edelman, and others.
Location: Online at VU Galleries
Price: Free
Time: 24/7
—Rachel Corbett
Wednesday, September 9–Sunday, October 4
Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Zero (2020). Video still courtesy of the artist.
5. “Tenet” at the Swiss Institute, New York
There’s no seeing Christopher Nolan’s hotly anticipated film Tenet in New York yet, since movie theaters are still on lockdown. But the time inversion-themed film—specifically the delay of its release—has served to inspire a presentation of video works by Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Moyra Davey, Yu Honglei, and Steffani Jemison at the Swiss Institute, which reopens this week. Like Tenet, each of these pieces features the manipulation of time, with the artists rewinding, speeding up, slowing down, or otherwise editing their footage to alter the normal sequence. Each work will be on view at the institution for one week during the show’s run.
Location: Swiss Institute, 38 St Marks Place, New York
Price: Free
Time: Wednesday–Friday, 2 p.m.–8 p.m.; Saturday, 12 p.m.–8 p.m.; Sunday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Thursday, September 10
6. “Cricket Concert with Adam Chad Brody and Jude Tallichet” at Smack Mellon
Adam Chad Brody and Jude Tallichet are the artists behind Party Crickets, a multidisciplinary project that involves a cricket farm they started in 2016 and which now includes hundreds of thousands of live critters. The artists, who both have extensive farming experience, founded the project to explore questions of entomophagy and micro-agriculture. For the concert, the pair will perform alongside a group of crickets “to explore how insects can become kin, housemates, collaborators, and entertainers,” according to a statement.
Location: Online
Price: Free
Time: 7 p.m.
—Tanner West
Thursday, September 10–Saturday, October 17
Kyle Dunn, Dirt God, 2020 Courtesy of P.P.O.W. and the artist
7. “Kyle Dunn: Into Open Air” at P.P.O.W.
Dunn’s first solo exhibition at the gallery showcases new work that draws on influences including Italian cinema, horror, and science fiction novels. Dunn’s luscious paintings with sculptural elements explode with texture, depicting male bodies, usually nude, undertaking everyday tasks. The contorted figures, set against dramatic, theatrical backdrops “ache with emotional and physical desire” and “describe the painful romance of overcoming loss before beginning anew,” according to a statement from the gallery. With a combination of humor and vibrancy, this show is the perfect antidote to dark times.
Location: P.P.O.W., 535 West 22nd Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening Thursday, September 11, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.; Tuesday—Saturday 12 p.m.–6 p.m. (Special hours on Saturday September 12, 11 a.m.—7 p.m.); appointments encouraged but walk-ins can be accommodated if there is room.
—Eileen Kinsella and Neha Jambhekar
Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2020. © Harold Ancart / SABAM, Brussels. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner. Photo: JSP Art Photography
8. “Harold Ancart: Traveling Light” at David Zwirner
Since Harold Ancart had his first solo show with David Zwirner in summer 2018, presenting images of abstracted icebergs, he has become one of the gallery’s most exciting young artists. (His Titanic-stoppers also appeared with regularity at the world’s grandest fairs.) In 2020, he was in his New York studio working on his fall show at David Zwirner’s Chelsea cathedral when… well, you know. But he made the most of quarantine by holing up in Los Angeles in a makeshift studio crafting a suite of new paintings of the trees he saw outside, the figurative branches bleeding into abstraction. These will fill half of the show, with two multi-canvas landscapes in the other half. It opens Thursday—and, alas, the Manhattan ban on large groups won’t let Ancart have the packed sweaty blockbuster September opening this most certainly would have been a year ago. But then again, the show sounds like it’ll be lovely to see in a socially distanced gallery, giving the paintings plenty of space to breathe.
Location: David Zwirner, 525 & 533 West 19th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening September 10, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m. Click here to schedule an appointment for a visit.
—Nate Freeman
Thursday, September 10–Saturday, October 24
Tobias Pils, Triptych Nr 1(2020). ©Tobias Pils. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich / New York. Photo by Jorit Aust.
9. “Tobias Pils” at Galerie Eva Presenhuber
After a spring and summer absent of openings, Galerie Eva Presenhuber New York is holding an all-day event to mark Austrian artist Tobias Pils’s fifth show with the gallery. The exhibition is centered around a triptych based on three different spaces, as well as drawings that Pils executed on century-old paper. Come for the calming nature of Pils’s grayscale works, stay for the depth revealed in their intricacies.
Location: Galerie Eva Presenhuber, 39 Great Jones Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening September 10, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
—Katie Rothstein
Friday, September 11
Artist Jean-Michel paints in 1983 in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Photo by Lee Jaffe/Getty Images.
10. “Sounding the Visual: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Early Hip-Hop” at the Nevada Museum of Art
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s name is synonymous with street culture of 1980s New York, when his colorful tags became a sensation for their unique blend of pop culture, irony, and innate figurative artistry. Basquiat’s ability to flit between styles is due in part to his musical acumen, which could be compared to jazz riffs or hip-hop rhymes: off the cuff and poetic. As part of the Nevada Museum of Art’s “Art Bite” lecture series, Ruthie Meadows, assistant professor of ethnomusicology at University of Nevada, Reno, will weigh in on Basquiat’s work and its resonance with music.
Location: Online via Zoom, register for the link
Price: $10 general, free for members
Time: 12 p.m.–1 p.m.
—Caroline Goldstein
Saturday, September 12–Sunday, October 18
Eden Seifu, “Many Have Found Their Answer”. Courtesy of Deli Gallery.
11. “Eden Seifu: The Seasons to be Spirited Away Is Forever” at Deli Gallery
Seattle-based artist Eden Seifu presents her first solo show at Deli Gallery. After an outing in a group show at the same gallery in 2019, Seifu will exhibit more of her unique fairy tales on DMT style. Loaded with emotion, bold lines, and vibrant color, Seifu’s works emit a sacred, relic-like aura, transporting the viewer into a spiritual realm. “My work takes an interest in depictions of the fantastical and surreal as mediums for one to become intimate with the psychology of oneself and of others,” the artist has said. “In featuring people of color, especially Black people, as my subjects, I wish to combat the historically exclusive painting tradition’s tendency to depict only a small percentage of people as receptors of the most poignant and riveting of human emotions.”
Location: Deli Gallery, 110 Waterbury St, Brooklyn, New York
Price: Free
Time: Friday–Sunday: 12 p.m.–5 p.m.
—Cristina Cruz
Sunday, September 13–Friday, October 30
12. “Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers'” at Queens County Farm Museum, New York
This summer, Queens County Farm hosted its first-ever public art installation, with Aaron Asis carving social distance-minded pathways through fields of sweet peas, rye, and other grains and vegetables for his piece Cover Crop. As a follow up, the museum has gone artsy with its annual fall corn maze—the only one in the city. The “Amazing Maize Maze,” which has widened pathways to accommodate social distancing, has based its design from Vincent van Gogh’s famed sunflower paintings, the full scope of which can be seen from the vantage point of the farm’s Victory Bridge. In case you’re wondering, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is fully on board with the unconventional interpretation of the artist’s masterpieces—“We at the Van Gogh Museum are always delighted to see how Vincent’s art continues to delight and inspire. This new maze is a marvelous and original demonstration of that,” director Emilie Gordenker said in a statement.
Location: Queens County Farm Museum, 73-50 Little Neck Parkway, Floral Park, New York
Price: $12 (advance tickets only)
Time: Friday–Sunday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; plus Monday, October 12, 11 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
—Sarah Cascone
Through Friday, October 10
14. “Hiba Schahbaz: Dreaming” De Buck Gallery, New York
For her non-virtual first solo show at De Buck—her debut was in the gallery’s online viewing room in May—Hiba Schahbaz presents her first large-scale oil paintings. Nude self portraits dominate her bold and colorful canvases, the figures peaceful and serene in a world of vibrant femininity. The Brooklyn-based artist, who was born in Pakistan, considers each painting to be a healing object, a portal into the sanctuary that she herself finds at work in the studio.
Location: De Buck Gallery, 505 West 27th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Visits by appointment
—Sarah Cascone
Through October 11, 2020
Rosa Loy, Versuch (Attempt) (2000). Courtesy of Lyles & King.
13. “I WANT TO FEEL ALIVE AGAIN” at Lyles & King
Inaugurating Lyles & King’s new gallery space, “I WANT TO FEEL ALIVE AGAIN” is a powerful jumpstart to life in this strange quasi-lockdown state and what it means to exist so precariously within a body. A group show takes “skin” as its central theme and includes works by Jenna Gribbon, Rosa Loy, Jessie Makinson, and Ariana Papademetropoulous, among other leading contemporary figurative artists.
Location: Lyles & King, 21 Catherine Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
—Katie White