Caecilia Tripp, video still from “‘Music for (prepared) Bicycles,’ Score Two New York, Brooklyn/Spanish Harlem/The Bronx” (2013), HD video, 14 min (image courtesy the artist)
Welcome to Hyperallergic’s first ever New York Art Guide for fall 2015. We’ve compiled your list of must-see, fun, insightful, and very New York art exhibitions and events this season. It’s online here for you to enjoy, but also available in print (PDF, 1.4MB) — so keep an eye out for it in galleries, bookstores, and other spaces around the city. And if you own or work at one of those spaces and want to stock some, then get in touch by emailing info@hyperallergic.com. Let the art begin!
September
¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York
When: Through October 18 at the Bronx Museum; through October 17 at El Museo del Barrio; through October 10 at Loisaida Inc.
Where: Bronx Museum of the Arts (1040 Grand Concourse, Concourse, Bronx); El Museo del Barrio (1230 Fifth Avenue, East Harlem, Manhattan); Loisaida Inc. (710 East 9th Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan)
We’re living in an activist present, but there’s much still missing from our knowledge of the activist past. This exhibition spread across three institutions offers a unique opportunity to learn about a deeply influential and underrecognized organization, the Young Lords. Each show focuses on different aspects of the Puerto Rican social activist group, from its founding on the Lower East Side to its exploits in East Harlem, including gathering all the neighborhood garbage in the streets to force the city to send sanitation trucks. It worked.
Governors Island Art Fair
When: Every weekend in September (5–27)
Where: Governors Island
Back for its eighth edition, the Governors Island Art Fair boasts more than 100 artists this year, each invited to exhibit in a room on Colonels’ Row. If past years are anything to go by, many will be making immersive and interactive installations. And while you’re on the island, be sure to check out the International Center of Photography’s pop-up show of Mary Ellen Mark’s photos from New Orleans and the Center for Holographic Arts’ summer show, both in Nolan Park.
Hermann Nitsch
When: September 9–October 18
Where: Marc Straus Gallery (299 Grand Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan)
Hermann Nitsch’s pagan-inspired, “Dionysian” performances often involve nudity, entrails, blood, animal cadavers, and dancing — practices that, naturally, are not without controversy. This show, for which the artist will display red and black paintings bearing the marks of his sacrificial performances, is your chance to see some of what he’s up to.
Sally Edelstein, “How Old is Old?” (2012) (image courtesy the artist) (click to enlarge)
Who’s Afraid of Feminism?
When: September 10–October 11
Where: A.I.R. Gallery (155 Plymouth Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn)
Organized by Catherine Morris, curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, this exhibition takes stock of feminism’s enduring influence on contemporary art with a selection of works engaging themes of gender, equality, and empowerment. That includes a range of media and styles, from nude photography and messy textile sculpture to kaleidoscopic collage and, for good measure, a sculpture of a drone wearing a sweater (Coco Hall’s “Pretty Predator Drone,” 2015).
Dana Schutz: Fight in an Elevator
When: September 10–October 24
Where: Petzel Gallery (456 West 18th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
Dana Schutz is our era’s master painter of awkwardness and discomfort, and her second solo show at Petzel amps up the queasy-making closeness with its exclusive focus on scenes of people stuck in claustrophobic spaces. Some are more realistic, like a tense elevator ride that’s erupted into a fistfight, while others take a more fanciful approach — a lion tamer cradled in his co-performer’s jaw. In all instances she deploys her trademark style of whimsical, geometry-inflected figuration.
Mike Kelley
Mike Kelley , “City 17” (2011), tinted urethane resin on illuminated base, 84 × 16 1/2 (diam.) in (213.4 × 41.9 [diam.] cm) (© Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, all rights reserved/licensed by VAGA, New York, NY, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, photo by Fredrik Nilsen)
When: September 10–October 24
Where: Hauser & Wirth (511 West 18th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
Superman held a special place in Mike Kelley’s twisted and idiosyncratic, yet weirdly all-American, cosmology. That place is rather literally embodied in his Kandors series, shown here within a sprawling installation for the first time in the US. The glowing, crystalline, and otherworldly sculptures are named for and portray the capital city of the Man of Steel’s home planet, Krypton.
Handmade Abstract
When: September 10–October 25
Where: BRIC House (647 Fulton Street, Downtown Brooklyn)
By now you’re familiar with this refrain: it’s so easy to have artworks fabricated—be it with a 3D printer or by an actual fabricator — that there’s been a resurgence of interest in and appreciation for all things handmade and tactile. This 13-artist show focuses on abstract work of a tangibly bespoke sort, across all media, from the likes of Michelle Forsyth, LoVid, Courtney Puckett, Mary Schwab, and more.
Clifford Owens
When: September 11–October 3
Where: Invisible-Exports (89 Eldridge Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan)
Clifford Owens has incredible charisma, which helps offset the unnerving prospect of attending one of his performances — he often solicits written “scores” from others, sets of instructions that have led him to kiss and grope audience members and to masturbate on command (though out of sight). This exhibition will include a few chances to see him live, as well as works on paper made with coffee and Vaseline during a series of private performances.
Libby Hartle/Kristen Jensen
When: September 11–October 4
Where: Outlet Brooklyn (253 Wilson Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn)
Two emerging artists with formal sensibilities and a love of materials will show off their interest in pattern, form, and experimentation. After layering graphite mark upon mark, Hartle cuts and reassembles each drawing into a prepared matrix, while Jensen will present new video work accompanied by a ceramic viewing bench.
Yevgeniy Fiks, “Pleshkas of the Revolution (Sverdlov Square 2)” (2013), oil on canvas, 30 x 40 in (image courtesy Momenta Art)
Really, Socialism?
When: September 11–November 9
Where: Momenta Art (56 Bogart Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn)
This thematic exhibition takes a broad look at the “aesthetic legacies of socialism,” studying movements like Maoist Revolutionary Romanticism and Yugoslav Abstract Modernism as a means of helping us understand and critique society today. The focus on collective practices seems particularly pertinent in our age of artist as entrepreneur and brand.
Philippine Gold: Treasures of Forgotten Kingdoms
When: September 11–January 3, 2016
Where: Asia Society (725 Park Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
In 1981, archaeologists discovered over 1,000 gold objects on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. One hundred of those objects, dating from the 10–13th centuries, are now travelling outside the Philippines for the first time. The show will highlight the history of trade in the Asia-Pacific region in what’s bound to be a brilliant display of goblets, masks, weapons, and more.
Gabriele Evertz: The Gray Question
When: September 12–October 31
Where: Minus Space (16 Main Street, Suite A, Dumbo, Brooklyn)
True to Minus Space’s devotion to abstract, geometric painting, the gallery’s first fall exhibition showcases the Op art compositions of German-born, Brooklyn-based artist Gabriele Evertz. Drawing on color theory, she creates paintings that manipulate the 12 tones of the color circle, as well as shades of black, white, and gray, to create disorienting and destabilizing visual effects.
A.K. Burns, still from “A Smeary Spot” (opening episode of ‘Negative Space’) (image courtesy the artist)
A.K. Burns: A Smeary Spot (opening episode of Negative Space)
When: September 13–October 18
Where: Participant Inc. (253 East Houston Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan)
This exhibition marks the official launch of an ongoing, epic project for artist A.K. Burns: a kind of fictional, speculative documentary, of which the work at Participant Inc. represents one chapter. The centerpiece will be a video installation that follows performers/dancers making their way across publicly owned desert land, interwoven with scenes in a black-box theater — a continuation of Burns’s explorations of trans-feminist and queer bodies and how they exist in the world.
Picasso Sculpture
When: September 14–February 7, 2016
Where: Museum of Modern Art (11 West 53rd Street, Midtown West, Manhattan)
Yes, another Picasso show. But this survey might hold some surprises, as it will display the artist’s sculptures — works that he often kept hidden from view in the privacy of his own home. Made from bronze, tree branches, and clay, the works also incorporate found materials like bones and pebbles, and will be accompanied by photographs and drawings.
Queer New York International Arts Festival
Mmakgosi Kgabi, “Shades of a Queen” (photo by Thomas Aurin) (click to enlarge)
When: September 16–26
Where: Festival hub, Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan)
The Queer New York International Arts Festival comes perfectly timed, right in the middle of the month, when you might need a jolt of energy. This edition brings together artists from the US, Bulgaria, Morocco, and beyond to celebrate queer performance and test its limits. Standouts include an experiment with live theater and Facebook and a chance to rub “Manhattan’s planetary clitoris.”
NY Art Book Fair
When: September 18–20
Where: MoMA PS1 (22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens)
Start making space on your bookshelves (and in your budget) for this weekend-long celebration of all things printed, bound, xeroxed, stapled, stitched, and otherwise published. From zines, comics, posters, limited editions, and original artworks to artists’ books, exhibition catalogues, magazines, art theory and history tomes, and much more —not to mention a packed schedule of talks, panels, and performances — the NYABF is as fun as it is overwhelming. As you stave off sensory overstimulation, keep your eyes peeled for Hyperallergic’s special zines.
Gabriel Dawe: The Shape of Light
When: September 19–January 10, 2016
Where: Newark Museum (49 Washington Street, Newark, New Jersey)
Gabriel Dawe has been making colorful thread installations since before they were trendy. For this solo show, the Mexico City–born, Dallas-based artist will fill the Newark Museum’s main galleries with large-scale chromatic installations conceived specifically for the space. They’ll be accompanied by sculptural works in which Dawe fashions everyday clothing into expressive and unexpected shapes.
Anthea Hamilton: Lichen! Libido! Chastity!
When: September 20–January 4, 2016
Where: SculptureCenter (44-19 Purves Street, Long Island City, Queens)
Anthea Hamilton has a knack for creating colorful and absurd spaces, and the centerpiece of this show, “Project for a door,” certainly fits the bill. The sculpture was inspired by a 1972 model that Italian designer Gaetano Pesce created for a doorway to a Manhattan high-rise: shaped like a man’s naked butt, it would have required visitors to walk between the figure’s legs. That commission was abandoned, but Hamilton will reimagine it.
Alexander Rodchenko, “Stairs” (1929–30), gelatin silver print, 7 1/2 × 11 1/2 in, Sepherot Foundation, Vaduz, Liechtenstein (artwork © Estate of Alexander Rodchenko [A. Rodchenko and V. Stepanova Archive]/RAO, Moscow/VAGA, New York, image courtesy the Sepherot Foundation)
The Power of Pictures: Early Soviet Photography, Early Soviet Film
When: September 25–February 7, 2016
Where: Jewish Museum (1109 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
Today we tend to think of art and propaganda as distinct, almost opposing entities, but that hasn’t always been the case. With this exhibition, the Jewish Museum promises to break down the barriers we’ve erected between the two, demonstrating the ways in which early-20th-century Soviet avant-garde artists (including big names like Alexander Rodchenko and Sergei Eisenstein) worked in the service of both their politics and their art.
October
Hotel Wars
When: October 4–November 1
Where: Flux Factory and surrounding area (39-31 29th Street, Long Island City, Queens)
With New York welcoming more visitors than ever before, hotels have sprouted in Long Island City, giving the neighborhood a strange vibe of industrial-tinged tourism. Come fall, the artists at Flux Factory will tackle this phenomenon in the way they do best: a madcap, participatory, creative experiment. Think reality TV show meets social practice art — that’s Hotel Wars.
Rashid Johnson: Anxious Men
Rashid Johnson, “Untitled Anxious Men” (2015), white ceramic tile, black soap, wax, 47 1/2 × 34 1/2 × 2 in (© Rashid Johnson. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, photo by Martin Parsekian) (click to enlarge)
When: October 2–December 20
Where: The Drawing Center (35 Wooster Street, Soho, Manhattan)
Branching out from his more conceptual work in photography, film, and sculpture, Rashid Johnson will show a series of figurative drawings depicting, in his words, “anxious men.” But in lieu of pencil on paper, Johnson carves into black soap and wax on tile, so that jagged mouths and other shaky features emerge out of the negative space. In keeping with his investigations of black history, race, and identity, the installation will also feature a photograph of the artist’s father wallpapered around the space.
Impressionism and the Caribbean: Francisco Oller and His Transatlantic World
When: October 2–January 3, 2016
Where: Brooklyn Museum (200 Eastern Parkway, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn)
The story of Francisco Oller’s artistic career is not unusual in the history of Caribbean and Latin American modernism: male, born into a well-to-do family, he moved to Madrid, then Paris, to study painting. He acquainted himself with figures like Cézanne and Courbet, and was inspired by Impressionism and Realism while painting subject matter unique to his homeland: tropical fruits, landscapes, and local figures. Time spent with his paintings will surely shed light on both Caribbean and European modernism.
Andrea del Sarto: The Renaissance Workshop in Action
When: October 7–January 10, 2016
Where: The Frick Collection (1 East 70th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
If you’ve never heard of Andrea del Sarto, don’t worry, it’s not a sign that your art historical knowledge is incomplete. Though his influence was unparalleled for 15 years in the early 16th century, by 1700 he had fallen into obscurity. This is his first major show ever in the US, with about 50 drawings and three paintings testifying to his enormous influence during the Renaissance. (A concurrent installation at the Metropolitan Museum, Andrea del Sarto’s Borgherini Holy Family, runs October 14–January 10, 2016 and features the titular painting alongside a smaller, related work, “Charity.”)
Jim Shaw: The End Is Here
When: October 7–January 10, 2016
Where: New Museum (235 Bowery, Lower East Side, Manhattan)
Art institutions seems to be engaged in a process of revising history at the moment, which could hardly be more welcome. Following in the footsteps of the RISD Museum’s What Nerve! show last fall, as well as the New Museum’s 2013 Llyn Foulkes retrospective, Michigan-born, California-based artist Jim Shaw will finally have his first comprehensive New York survey. The exhibition will include Shaw’s own spiritual and surreal work alongside some of his collected inspirations, including thrift store paintings and religious pedagogical materials.
Jim Shaw, “The Golden Book of Knowledge” (1989), gouache on board, 17 x 14 in (The Eileen Harris Norton Collection, image courtesy the New Museum)
Performancy Forum: Quinquennial
When: October 8–25
Where: Grace Exhibition Space (840 Broadway, Bushwick, Brooklyn); Panoply Performance Laboratory (104 Meserole Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn)
Brooklyn is one of the most important performance art hubs in the world, and this monthlong event is sure to prove why. From big-name artists to aspiring talents fresh out of art school, this will be your ticket to both the underground and emerging worlds of performance art. Attend with an open mind and expect surprises.
For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968–1979
When: October 9–January 10, 2016
Where: Japan Society (333 East 47th Street, Midtown, Manhattan); Grey Art Gallery (100 Washington Square, West Village, Manhattan)
In this stunning series of black-and-white photographs, the face of postwar Japan emerges. The 1960s and ’70s were marked by social uprisings, as tradition was being challenged and contradicted by modern life. From the scars of war to glimpses of urban landscapes and dwellers, together the works of Miyako Ishiuchi, Daidō Moriyama, Jirō Takamatsu, and Shōmei Tōmatsu make an honest and poetic portrait of the times.
Greater New York 2015
When: October 11–March 7, 2016
Where: MoMA PS1 (22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens)
The Whitney has its biennial, the New Museum has its triennial, and MoMA PS1 has that most elusive of recurring art extravaganzas: a quinquennial. As its title suggests, Greater New York brings together works by artists living and working in and around New York City— some preexisting, others made specifically for this show — and takes over every nook and cranny of the sprawling former schoolhouse.
Walid Raad
When: October 12–January 31, 2016
Where: Museum of Modern Art (11 West 53rd Street, Midtown West, Manhattan)
For at least 26 years, Walid Raad has been sifting through documents related to Lebanon’s recent history, particularly the Civil War — the climate in which Raad was raised. These documents form the basis for his project The Atlas Group, which is this exhibit’s focus, along with another long-term project in which Raad records the art histories and communities of Arab nations. This survey, which will include lecture-performances by the artist, attests to Raad’s unique approach to storytelling.
Pach Brothers, “Jacob Riis” (1903), Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Joseph Werner Reed
Jacob A. Riis: Revealing New York’s Other Half
When: October 14–March 20, 2016
Where: Museum of the City of New York (1220 Fifth Avenue, East Harlem, Manhattan)
Long before uprisings were being tweeted, before documentary photography filled our Instagram feeds, there was Jacob Riis. The journalist, photographer, and muckraker’s How the Other Half Lives (1890) changed our culture’s conception of what photography could be and do. The Museum of the City of New York owns the sole archive of Riis’s images and will unite it with the Library of Congress’s collection of Riis’s papers, making for a compellingly comprehensive exhibition.
Gowanus Open Studios 2015
When: October 16–18
Where: Various locations (Gowanus, Brooklyn)
The city’s second-biggest annual open studios event, Gowanus Open Studios is now in its 18th year and gives the public a chance to visit some 300 artists’ studios, stretching from the converted brownstone basements of Boerum Hill to repurposed former factories lining the canal and reaching down into Sunset Park. If the hundreds of offerings seem a little daunting, a range of thematic, self-guided itineraries and curator-led tours will be available throughout the weekend to help you make sense of it all.
Zhang Hongtu, “Kekou-Kele (Coca-Cola Six Pack)” (2002), porcelain (image courtesy the artist)
Zhang Hongtu
When: October 18–February 28, 2016
Where: Queens Museum (New York City Building, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens)
Before there was Yue Minjun, before there was Zhang Huan, and definitely before there was Ai Weiwei, Zhang Hongtu was making enormous artworks that challenged the iconography of Chinese tradition and state authority — so much so that in 1982 he left China in search of greater artistic freedom. Now based in Queens, he has earned an international reputation for his irreverent remixes and mashups, like a version of “The Last Supper” in which Jesus and his apostles have all been replaced by Mao Zedong.
Quebec Digital
When: October 22–24
Where: Knockdown Center (52-19 Flushing Avenue, Maspeth, Queens)
Kinetic sculptures and interactive installations are about as quintessentially Québecois as poutine and sugar shacks. Well, OK, not quite, but the eight artists featured in this one-weekend show are expert manipulators of mechanical objects, from Catherine Béchard and Sabin Hudon’s musical rig made of motorized fishing rods and glass containers to Lorraine Oades’s sliding video screens that respond to viewers’ movements.
Rico Gatson and Chris Larson: The Raft
When: October 23–December 13
Where: The Boiler (191 N 14th Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn)
In this video collaboration, Larson and Gatson, who went to art school together nearly 30 years ago, riff on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by sailing their own raft down a river of musical nostalgia. Standing atop a 10-square-foot moving platform in Larson’s studio, the pair play records from their personal collections, including music by Patsy Cline and Fats Domino. A chance to see a more personal, playful side of two artists known for their expertly crafted work.
Rico Gatson and Chris Larson, “The Raft,” video still (image courtesy the artists and The Boiler/Pierogi)
Sacred Spaces
When: October 23–March 27, 2017
Where: Rubin Museum (150 W 17th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
What makes a space sacred? Three installations might inspire different answers. The Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room surrounds visitors with private objects of worship, whereas Jaroslav Poncar’s panoramic photograph of the Nepalese Himalayas transports them to the site where Tibetan Buddhism was born. Finally, a video by Deidei von Schaewen offers the perspective of worshippers as they anoint a colossal stone sculpture in southern India.
Design for Eternity: Architectural Models from the Ancient Americas
When: October 26–September 18, 2016
Where: Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
A silver house in the shape of a bottle and a palace populated by musicians and mummies are just two of the architectural models that resided in the tombs of notable figures in the ancient Americas. Hailing from ancient Mesoamerican and Andean cultures, beginning with the first millennium BCE, these miniature structures — some of which were only very recently excavated — also serve as fascinating examples of architecture that no longer survives.
Scaffold Room
When: October 30–December 5
Where: The Kitchen (512 West 19th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
It’s not every day that one gets a chance to see a new work by choreographer and conceptualist Ralph Lemon — and one so ambitious and hard to pin down, at that. Scaffold Room is, in Lemon’s words, a “lecture-performance-musical,” and according to the Walker Art Center, which commissioned the piece, it “refracts ideas of contemporary performance through archetypal black female personae in American culture.” If that sounds a little heady, it sounds even more intriguing and exciting.
Rachel Rose, “Everything and More” (still, 2015), HD video (image courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London)
Rachel Rose: Everything and More
When: October 30–February 7, 2016
Where: Whitney Museum of American Art (99 Gansevoort Street, Meatpacking District, Manhattan)
You’ll probably end up at the Whitney to see its vast Frank Stella retrospective sometime this fall. While you’re there, be sure to take a break from all that colorful abstraction to spend some time with Rachel Rose’s new video project. Typically staged in sparse, carpeted installations, her shorts combine original video and found footage, all related in one way or another to the theme of death — light viewing, you know?
November
Performa 15
When: November 1–22
Where: Various locations
The performance art biennial turns 10 this year, and among this Renaissance-themed edition’s most intriguing commissions are a puppet show by Wyatt Kahn and a pop culture–inflected take on 16th-century pageantries by Pauline Curnier Jardin. Meanwhile, art market darling Oscar Murillo will create a new piece inspired, appropriately, by financial marketplaces and migration.
Bridget Riley
When: November 5–December 19
Where: David Zwirner (525 West 19th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
One of the most enduring practitioners of Op art, Bridget Riley will have her first exhibition with David Zwirner gallery, showcasing decades of her stripe paintings and other geometric compositions that confound viewers’ eyes. This year marks the 50th anniversary of MoMA’s seminal Op art survey The Responsive Eye, so expect plenty more shows examining the movement’s legacy and key artists (including The Illusive Eye, coming in 2016 to El Museo del Barrio).
Ilit Azoulay, “Shifting Degrees of Certainty” (2014), 99 × 355 in (image courtesy the artist and Andrea Meislin Gallery) (click to enlarge)
Ilit Azoulay, Implicit Manifestation: Seventh Option
When: November 5–December 19
Where: Andrea Meislin Gallery (534 West 24th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
Two years ago, Ilit Azoulay began researching the history of buildings across Germany. The resulting installation comprises 85 separate photographs, each representing something or someone she encountered along the way, each corresponding with an artistic audio guide that offers insight into its meaning. That nearly 30-foot-long rebus will go on view at MoMA this month, in the annual New Photography show, while at Meislin, Azoulay will display a new piece of the puzzle: a different, collage-like configuration of some of the original images.
Medium of Desire: An International Anthology of Photography and Video
When: November 6–January 17, 2016
Where: Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art (26 Wooster Street, Soho, Manhattan)
You’ve surely seen many photo and video shows with many a theme, but this one looks particularly good: desire. The exhibition brings together 14 artists from China, Greece, the US, and beyond, all meditating on lust and longing. Even if you don’t love the art, you’ll probably leave turned on.
Tomoko Kikuchi, “Lala, Zhangjie, Pandra, Sichuan province 2011” (2014), digital print on paper (courtesy the artist)
Martin Wong: Human Instamatic
When: November 5–February 14, 2016
Where: Bronx Museum of the Arts (1040 Grand Concourse, Concourse, Bronx)
The first retrospective devoted to the influential artist Martin Wong since he died in 1999 will bring together more than 100 paintings, along with archival materials chronicling his production in the countercultural San Francisco scene of the 1960s–70s and in Manhattan’s Lower East Side artist community of the 1980s–90s. The show will situate Wong’s arresting portraits and fanciful cityscape paintings in the lineage of Marsden Hartley and Alice Neel.
Ebony G. Patterson: Dead Treez
When: November 10–April 3, 2016
Where: Museum of Arts and Design (2 Columbus Circle, Midtown, Manhattan)
Ebony G. Patterson’s art is deceptively dazzling. Riotous colors and patterns, glitter and rhinestone embellishment make up the alluring surface of her deeply engaging work, which often probes black masculinity and the dance hall culture of the artist’s native Jamaica. Patterson will continue those investigations in her first solo show in New York, with tapestries in memoriam of murder victims and an installation of 10 male mannequins dressed in flamboyant fabrics.
Silicon City: Computer History Made in New York
When: November 13–April 17, 2016
Where: New-York Historical Society (170 Central Park West, Upper West Side, Manhattan)
For the 1964 World’s Fair, IBM commissioned architect Eero Saarinen to design and build a giant floating pavilion known as “the egg.” After audience members were lifted into the structure, they were shown a Charles Eames film about computer logic that included multiscreen projections, still and moving images, and live performances. This exhibition may not blow your mind quite as much, but it will use “the egg” as a starting point for exploring New York’s overlooked role in the computer revolution.
William Higinbotham, “Tennis for Two Electronic Game” (1958) (image courtesy Brookhaven National Laboratory)
Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861–2008
When: November 20–March 13, 2016
Where: Brooklyn Museum (200 Eastern Parkway, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn)
Coney Island is more than a place — it’s a myth (and these days, something of a memory). This wide-ranging show promises to examine Coney in its many states over the centuries, and from many perspectives, including Impressionist (William Merritt Chase), modernist (Joseph Stella), and photographic (Diane Arbus, Weegee). When it’s cold in November and you wish you were at the shore, head to the Brooklyn Museum and commune with the carousel animals.
Photo-Poetics: An Anthology
When: November 20–March 23, 2016
Where: Guggenheim Museum (1071 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
If you dig conceptual photographs whose central subjects are the history and conventions of photography itself, then Photo-Poetics will have you in photo-hysterics. The show brings together pieces by 10 of the medium’s foremost contemporary practitioners—including Leslie Hewitt, Elad Lassry, Lisa Oppenheim, and Sara VanDerBeek — who are working in the still-life tradition, often shooting historically charged objects, printed materials, or other photographs in studio settings.
December
Goldberg
When: December 7–19
Where: Park Avenue Armory (643 Park Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
Marina Abramović is back with her “method.” While it can feel like the artist is ordering us to have “mind-changing” experiences, a joint performance with Igor Levit might prevent her from stealing the show. Levit, an acclaimed Russian-German pianist, will interpret Bach’s Goldberg Variations while Abramović blurs the line between performer and observer, in an installation that’s cryptically described as a reflection “upon music, time, space, emptiness, and luminosity.”
Robert Ryman: Real Light, 1958–2007
When: December 9–June 8, 2016
Where: Dia:Chelsea (545 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
In an effort to revive programming in Manhattan, Dia Art Foundation will devote a solo show to Robert Ryman’s paintings spanning the 1950s to the 2000s — though dates, and titles for that matter, have never really mattered to the artist. Privileging the frame as much as the canvas, Ryman’s works incorporate aluminium, fiberglass, and even baked porcelain. Stay tuned for two symposia in March featuring artists, critics, and scholars discussing Ryman’s long career.
“Maestà”: Gaddi’s Triptych Reunited
When: December 11–March 20, 2016
Where: New-York Historical Society (170 Central Park West, Upper West Side, Manhattan)
After conservation work at the J. Paul Getty Museum, a glowing, gold-leafed panel from circa 1334 is seeing the light in a new guise. This exhibition will focus on the treatment of “Madonna and Child Enthroned with Ten Saints: Maestà,” painted by Taddeo Gaddi, one of Giotto’s most prominent disciples. The panel will be shown here for the first time with two wings that have recently been linked to it — they feature strikingly similar measurements, dates, and styles.
Encountering Vishnu: The Lion Avatar in Indian Temple Drama
When: December 19–June 5, 2016
Where: Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
At the center of this exhibit lies the lethal battle between a demon and the Hindu god Vishnu, incarnated as a man-lion. The story is one of many that are reenacted at religious festivals around southern India. Five exceptional masks, all carved from wood and dating to the late Indian medieval period, will depict the enemies, including Vishnu sitting in a meditative yogi pose, relishing in his victory.