Sometimes it seems like Chelsea galleries get all the attention, deservedly, perhaps, but there are plenty more enticing shows on view on the Upper East Side. If you’re planning a visit to the ADAA Art Show on Park Avenue and 67th Street this weekend—and especially if you rarely make it this far north on your gallery expeditions—make it a point to get to these nearby shows while you’re in the neighborhood.

1. Martin Kippenberger “The Raft of Medusa” at Skarstedt

20 East 79th Street

Inspired by Theodore Géricault’s 1819 La Radeau de la Méduse, Kippenberger’s 1996 “The Raft of Medusa” series of paintings, drawings, photographs and mixed media works explores his conflicted relationship with art history. The show occupies three floors of Skarstedt’s elegant townhouse gallery on 79th Street, steps away from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Kippenberger’s works in all media are not just masterfully executed they are deeply personal and affecting.

2. Damian Loeb “Sol d”

Acquavella Galleries

18 East 79th Street

In Damian Loeb’s third solo show at the gallery, the artist presents hyperreal landscapes depicting the earth and celestial scenes re-imagined from photographs. The show features 11 paintings and five oil sketches which, in the words of the artist, “aim to portray a certain balance and serenity…Individually their effect eschews the sublime, capturing instead the vast and accidental.”

3. Mira Schendel

Hauser & Wirth

32 East 69th Street

This is Hauser & Wirth’s first exhibition of works by the Brazilian artist, widely considered one of the most significant Latin American artists of the 20th century. The show spans two decades of Schendel’s career, from the 1960s to the 1980s, and follows a much-lauded exhibition at Tate Modern last fall. It was conceived and organized by private dealer Olivier Renaud-Clement. Works on view range from her pensive “monotypes” – drawings on Japanese rice paper that are encased in glass— to her masterpiece, Still Waves of Probability, first presented at the 10th Sao Paulo biennial in 1969. Reinstalled on the second level of the gallery, thousands of delicate nylon threads are suspended from the ceiling and reach to the floor.  Lovely, in a word.

4. “Germaine Richier”

Dominique Lévy  / Galerie Perrotin

909 Madison Avenue

This exhibition, jointly presented by Dominique Lévy and Galerie Perrotin marks the first American exhibition in 50 years devoted to the work of seminal Postwar French artist Germaine Richier. There are more than forty sculptures on view, ranging from early torsos and figures to the imaginative hybrid creatures (humans crossed with bats, toads, spiders, and vegetal organisms) that brought her well-deserved international recognition. The show includes a selection of photographs by her contemporary Brassaï, who documented the “magical chaos” of her studio.

Sculptures by Germaine Richier in her Paris studio.
Photo: Brassaï. Françoise Guiter Collection © Germaine Richier /
2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

5. “Portraits of America: Diane Arbus, Cady Noland”

Gagosian Gallery

976 Madison Avenue

Though separated by a generation, both of these pioneering artists used the power of the everyday to show the darker side of American culture and society. The show connects Arbus’s “unflinching photographs” of the 1960s and 70s with Noland’s “disjunctive sculptures and installations” from the 1980s and 1990s that explore a purported decline of moral values in American life.

6. “Highlights from the Collection”

Helly Nahmad Gallery

975 Madison Avenue

The lack of a thematic or single artist focus shouldn’t prevent anyone from enjoying this mini-survey of blue-chip artists up for sale, including works by Joan Miró, Fernand Léger, Alexander Calder, Rene Magritte, Jean Dubuffet, Franciso Bacon, Henri Matisse, and more.

7. “Black | White”

Mnuchin Gallery

45 East 78th Street

Another group show, this time with paintings, drawings and sculptures united by their monochromatic palette and spanning six decades of Postwar American and European art. Come spot the influences: for instance, Andy Warhol’s Flowers are echoed in a Christopher Wool painting; a monumental Concentric Square painting by Frank Stella echoes a large Donald Judd stack, or is it vice versa; and the surface in Alberto Burri’s Cretto finds its counterpoint in the crumbled asphalt bed of a David Hammons’ Basketball Drawing.  The show also features works by Alexander Calder, Philip Guston, Simon Hantaï, Conrad Marca-Relli, Robert Ryman, Cy Twombly, and Günther Uecker.

8. “Helen Frankenthaler: Paintings”

Bernard Jacobson Gallery

17 East 71st Street

Helen Frankenthaler was widely known as a second-generation Abstract Expressionist but her innovative technique of staining pigment into raw canvas sparked an influential movement in the 20th century and helped her become one of the most revered artists of her generation. Here, the gallery presents three large paintings from the 1980s and four ceramic tile paintings, all titled Thanksgiving Day, that were part of a group of works she created in 1973 on a visit to a ceramic studio in upstate New York.

9. “The Dean of American Printers: Theodore Low De Vinne and The Art Preservative of All Arts”

The Grolier Club

47 East 60th Street

DeVinne (1828-1914), a founding member of the cultist Grolier Club, is considered one of the most important American figures of the 19th century book world. He was responsible for pretty much all of the important Grolier works published during his lifetime. The exhibition includes more than 150 books, manuscripts, letters, photographs and other objects exploring his life.

A poster for Century Magazine, July 1898 issue. De Vinne was the printer and devised the typeface “Century” that is still used today.Loaned by Irene Tichenor
Photo: Robert Lorenzson