cityArts January 11, 2011

JAN. 12-JAN. 25, 2011 Volume 3, Issue 1

IN THIS ISSUE: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

The Met’s La traviata has JAY NORDLINGER seeing Decker.

JOEL LOBENTHAL refutes Black Swan backstage behavior.

Marina Poplavskaya starring in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of La Traviata.

LANCE ESPLUND praises Noguchi renovation & show.

THE JUILLIARD SCHOOL | 27TH ANNUAL FOCUS! FESTIVAL | JOEL SACHS, Director

F cus! 2011 POLISH MODERN

7 Museums

LANCE ESPLUND praises Noguchi Museum’s renovation and its current exhibit of the artist’s collaborations with his contemporaries.

8 Jazz

HOWARD MANDEL on how Keith Jarrett has matured as a pianist.

NEW DIRECTIONS IN POLISH MUSIC SINCE 1945

9 Theater

6 FREE CONCERTS | 2 PRE-CONCERT EVENTS | JAN 22-28

No spark for MARK PEIKERT at Playwrights Horizons’ production of A Small Fire.

Sample the remarkable post-war flowering of Polish composition, including wellknown composers Górecki, Lutosławski, Penderecki, and works by almost 40 others

SAT, JAN 22 AT 8 • ALICE TULLY HALL

WED, JAN 26 • PAUL HALL

NEW JUILLIARD ENSEMBLE JOEL SACHS, Founding Director and Conductor ANDREW ARCECI, Viola da gamba DOUGLAS BALLIETT, Double Bass SHEN YIWEN, Piano GRAZ˙ YNA BACEWICZ Contradizione (1966) TADEUSZ WIELECKI The Time of Stones (2002)* WOJCIECH KILAR Choral Prelude (1988)* ZYGMUNT KRAUZE Terra Incognita (1994)* ELZ˙ BIETA SIKORA Canzona (1995)*

7 PM Polish Electronic Music and Film Music: A Brief View With a conversation between Łukasz Szałankiewicz and Joel Sachs KRZYSZTOF KNITTEL The Conqueror Worm (1976)* MATEUSZ BIEN´ Turdidae (1992)* MAREK CHOŁONIEWSKI Physical Modeling (2004)* DAVID BICKERSTAFF and ŁUKASZ SZAŁANKIEWICZ Film: The Henge: In Search of the Nazi Bell (2010)

MON, JAN 24 AT 8 • PAUL HALL KRZYSZTOF PENDERECKI Capriccio for Siegfried Palm for cello (1966) TOMASZ SIKORSKI Euphonia for piano (1982)* KAZIMIERZ SEROCKI Swinging Music for clarinet, double bass, trombone, and piano (1970)* MARIAN SAWA Ecce Lignum Crucis for organ (1986) WOJCIECH ZIEMOWIT ZYCH Selections from Homage a György Kurtág for violin and bass clarinet (2005-06) MARTA PTASZYN´ SKA Six Bagatelles for harp (1979)** WOJCIECH BŁAZ˙ EJCZYK Interlunium for guitar (2007)* MAREK STACHOWSKI Musica Festeggiante for string quartet (1995)*

TUES, JAN 25 • PAUL HALL 7 PM Panel Discussion: Contemporary Music in Poland Composers ELZ˙BIETA SIKORA, ŁUKASZ SZAŁANKIEWICZ, & TADEUSZ WIELECKI Director, Warsaw Autumn Festival) and ANDRZEJ KOSOWSKI (Editor-in-Chief, PWM Polish Music Publishing Company/Program Director, Polish Music Festival) Joel Sachs, Moderator 8 PM Concert PAWEŁ MYKIETYN Sonata for Cello (2006) HANNA KULENTY Brass No. 4 for tuba solo (2007) † ALEKSANDER LASON´ String Quartet No. 7 (2007) PAWEŁ SZYMAN´ SKI Through the Looking Glass III, for harpsichord (1994) MARCEL CHYRZYN´ SKI ForMS for cello (2001) WITOLD SZALONEK Toccata and Chorale for organ (1990 version for piano*)

FREE FOCUS! 2011 tickets available at the Juilliard Box Office 155 West 65th Street Monday – Friday, 11 AM - 6 PM (212) 769-7406 www.juilliard.edu/focus

8 PM Concert ANDRZEJ KRZANOWSKI Relief V for cello (1986)* ALEKSANDRA GRYKA Oxygen, No. 369.1 for piano and electronic sound (2000)* ALEKSANDER NOWAK June-December (2005)* JAKUB CIUPIN´ SKI Edo for violin and electronic sounds (2010) HENRYK MIKOŁAJ GÓRECKI String Quartet No. 1, “Already It Is Dusk” (1986) BOGUSŁAW SCHAEFFER “February” from The Four Seasons, for organ (1986)*

THUR, JAN 27 AT 8 • PAUL HALL EUGENIUSZ KNAPIK Filo d’Arianna for cello (2005) JOANNA BRUZDOWICZ Erotiques for piano (1966)* TADEUSZ BAIRD Play for string quartet (1971) STANISŁAW MORYTO Five Songs on Texts by Elias Rajzman for mezzo-soprano and piano (2002)* AGATA ZUBEL Ludia I Fu (1999) JERZY KORNOWICZ The Shapes of the Elements, for harpsichord and tape (2006.2011) + AUGUSTYN BLOCH Geige und Orgel for violin and organ (1988)

FRI, JAN 28 AT 8 • ALICE TULLY HALL JUILLIARD ORCHESTRA JEFFREY MILARSKY, Conductor JAY CAMPBELL, Cello ARIANNA WARSAW-FAN, Violin A Portrait of Witold Lutosławski Overture for Strings (1949) Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (1969-70) Partita for Violin and Orchestra (1988) Symphony No. 4 (1991-92) † * ** +

World Premiere Western Hemisphere Premiere New York Premiere World Premiere of revised version

Programs subject to change FOCUS! 2011 is presented in collaboration with the Polish Cultural Institute in New York.

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InthisIssue

City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com

10 At the Galleries

Reviews: Lawrence Weiner at Marian Goodman Gallery; Pavers at Schroeder Romero & Shredder; Joseph O. Holmes at Jen Bekman Gallery; Winter Salon: 2010-2011 at Denise Bibro Fine Art; Wijnanda Deroo at Robert Mann Gallery; Lee Krasner at Robert Miller Gallery.

12 Classical

JAY NORDLINGER wants more Verdi and less Decker in his Traviata; plus Manhattan School of Music performs a Hoiby opera.

13 Uncorked

JOSH PERILO demystifies German white wine labels and winemaking techniques.

14 Dance

JOEL LOBENTHAL recalls Jennet Zerbe & Hilary Ryan solo performances that didn’t become Black Swan backstage behavior.

15 Arts Agenda

Galleries, Art Events, Museums, Classical Music, Opera, Theater, Out of Town.

19 Paint the Town by Amanda Gordon EDITOR Jerry Portwood jportwood@manhattanmedia.com MANAGING EDITOR Adam Rathe arathe@ manhattanmedia.com ASSISTANT EDITOR

Christine Werthman ART DIRECTOR Jessica Balaschak CONTRIBUTING ART DIRECTOR

Wendy Hu

SENIOR ART CRITIC Lance Esplund SENIOR MUSIC CRITIC

Jay Nordlinger

SENIOR DANCE CRITIC

Joel Lobenthal

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS:

Valerie Gladstone, John Goodrich, Amanda Gordon, Howard Mandel, Maureen Mullarkey, Mario Naves

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InBrief

Wonge Bergmann

art books

Jan Fabre’s Prometheus - Landscape II.

Fire In His Belly Jan Fabre’s visual art often involves

More Than One Africa It’s difficult to know what to make of the sprawling The Global Africa Project at the Museum of Arts & Design. The exhibition presents over 100 artists working in almost

Courtesy of Museum of Arts and Design

dead things—green shiny-backed beetle bodies, skulls, feathers, slices of human bone—transformed into an unsettling blend of eroticism and death. It’s the sort of thing that appeals to an audience willing to be assaulted, offended and challenged. His performance pieces are no less combative on the senses.

Although Fabre is celebrated in Europe for his avant-garde nature (he was once promoted as “Belgium’s answer to Pina Bausch, Laurie Anderson, Peter Brook and Robert Wilson”), he’s little known outside of those globetrotting, experimental art circles. That’s why the decision to host the world premiere of his latest work, Prometheus – Landscape II, as part of Peak Performances at the Montclair State University for 10 days (Jan. 20-30) is such an unlikely choice, especially since his last American production hasn’t been since the 1980s at The Kitchen.

The well-trodden story of Prometheus, who stole fire from Zeus, gave it to mortals and then was punished for eternity, has inspired many artists. In Fabre’s production—which he co-wrote and directed, as well as designed the sets— Prometheus can be viewed as the half-naked man bound and suspended above the stage for the entirety of its 90-minute duration. A cast of 10 international dancers and actors, including the American choreographer and actor Lawrence Goldhuber, will convey the suffering of the mythic figure. Just be ready for the shockwaves. [Molly Garcia]

every medium imaginable, with traditional baskets next to sleek molded plastic coffee tables, and an architectural model next to a pit-fired hand-built ceramic vessel.

It’s an overwhelming amount of work not made easier to navigate by a chaotic and crowded installation. But amid the chaos can be found great beauty. There are some transcendental objects as well as pieces that make finely honed political points.

Co-curators Lowery Stokes Sims and Leslie King-Hammond have set out to “challenge conventional notions of a singular African aesthetic and identity...”

And they have traveled the world to find artists that, I presume, identify with Africa in their work, but don’t necessarily claim an “African” aesthetic or literal African heritage.

I’m not quite sure how this curatorial framework includes the work of both Keith Haring and Robert Mapplethorpe while

“The Hope Throne,” (2008) by Gonçalo Mabunda.

excluding the likes of artists such as Martin Puryear, Alfredo Jaar, Willie Cole and Wangechi Mutu—to name just a few. It appears to be an attempt to refute claims that Africa has one aesthetic. Of course, Africa encapsulates a plurality of them, since there are a plurality of countries and cultures on the continent as well as within the worldwide Diaspora.

Gonçalo Mabunda has welded “The Hope Throne,” a massive throne made of decommissioned weapons topped off with an old leather army boot. It is brutal and beautiful; its oversized proportions make an apt comment about the power of both war and peace. Nick Cave has contributed one of his gorgeous “sound suits.” The huge costume made from found and fabricated objects comes alive in the accompanying video, which shows a variety of these “suits” in wild swirling motion. Here is an artist whose riff on African traditions merges with a distinctly modern sensibility.

The result is sublime.

One of the best pieces in the show, which continues through May 15, unites politics, traditional craftsmanship and contemporary art. This huge 8-by-10-foot wall hanging is a three-way collaboration between American artist Algernon Miller, Ugandan designer Sanaa Gateja and the Kwetu Afrika Woman’s association, which fabricated the piece. It comprises hundreds of small paper beads, each made out of Obama campaign literature. President Obama’s face peeks in and out of the fabric of the hanging, along with the hopeful refrain “change.” It is a terrific and potent piece of political art, as well as being downright beautiful. [Melissa Stern]

Chosen Film To bring out the Jewish in January, the

folks at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Jewish Museum have chosen the best of the Chosen to appear alongside eight films celebrating Jewish history and culture.

Shrug on your schmata and brush off your Yiddish to enjoy the 20th anniversary of the New York Jewish Film Festival Jan. 13-24.

As with any Jewish gathering of a certain size, the Grammy award-winning Klezmatics make an appearance with documentarian Erik Greenberg Anjou to discuss the festival’s Jan. 13 opening night screening of The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground. Alternatively, attend the screening of The “Socalled” Movie (Jan. 22) to enjoy the fearless sound of klezmar hip-hop artist Josh Dolgin and singer Katie Moore post-screening.

Jan. 15 heralds the New York premier of Red Shirley, Lou Reed’s adorably affectionate portrayal of his century-old unionist cousin. Reed wrote original music for the film, and photographer Ralph Gibson will be on hand to discuss the film.

A restored print of Ján Kádar’s Academy Award-nominated Lies My Father Told

Berthe Morisot

By Jean-Dominique Rey

“I love only extreme novelty or the things of the past,” could easily be a sentiment overheard in a hip Brooklyn art gallery, but it was voiced in the late 19th century by the French painter Berthe Morisot. Born of the wrong gender and the wrong class, the female painter’s bourgeois upbringing made fine art an unlikely choice of profession, but Morisot’s work now sits among the ranks of Monet and Renoir. Jean-Dominique Rey’s weighty new hardcover thoroughly chronicles— through paintings, correspondence (including copies of handwritten letters), well-selected quotes and photos from and of the artist and her contemporaries—the life and work of this oft under-appreciated first league impressionist.

Denys Wortman’s New York: Portrait of The City in the 1930s and 1940s Edited by James Sturm and Brandon Elston

You thought you were so original, flinging off your shoes and jumping into the Washington Square Park fountain on a hot summer day. Tastes and technology change, and gentrification all too swiftly masks bits and pieces of history, but we haven’t really strayed all that far from the New York of the 1930s and ’40s. Denys Wortman’s painstakingly detailed sketches craft a familiar picture of life as it was, and so often still is, in the city: Impromptu pool parties in Washington Square, crosstown traffic (complete with horse-drawn carriages) trudging toward Broadway, one man accidentally stepping on the back of a woman’s high-heel, and another unconscious at a nightclub at 4 a.m. Wortman’s drawings, and their captions, paint a picture that jumps from humorous to heartbreaking to totally banal, but always maintains its eerie realism and modernday relevance.

On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century

By Cornelia Butler & Catherine de Zegher

While the current MoMA exhibit that this book accompanies is mind-blowing in its curation—including everything from Russian Constructivists to modern dance from Trisha Brown—the book is one of those essential resources for anyone interested in the most basic human act of making a mark. While it does include nearly 250 works by 100 artists—including Aleksandr Rodchenko, Alexander Calder, Karel Malich and Eva Hesse—it’s the essays by the curators that draw connections between drawing and dance and the manipulation of the line by the avant-garde that are truly worth reading and returning to for reference.

January 12, 2011 | City Arts

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Courtesy of Paul Taylor Dance Company

InBrief

The Paul Taylor Dance Company, which Charles Reinhart managed.

Michael K. Yamaoka

Encounters: A Crystallization of Inner Imagery Reflection of the Empire State Building in a Puddle After a Thunderstorm, Digital Print 30” x 40”

January 4 through January 29, 2011 • 12-6 PM, Tuesday-Saturday

135 W 29th, Suite 601 New York, New York 10001 212 219 3183 • contact@atlanticgallery.org www.atlanticgallery.org

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City Arts | www.cityarts.info

Me screens Jan. 16, and post-screening, producer Harry Gulkin and actress Marilyn Lightstone reminisce about the classic 1975 film. That night, Eve Annenberg brings some mishegas to the Bard’s tale in Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish, and director, cast and composer dissect the result.

George Marshall’s cinematic interpretation of Harry Houdini augments the Jewish Museum’s exhibition Jan. 17.

Following the film, Josh Rand will attempt to rival the magician’s historic craft. Jewish Soldiers in Blue and Gray, a groundbreaking documentary exposing Jewish Americans’ struggles during the Civil War, has its world premiere on Jan. 19, followed by a discussion with director Jonathan Gruber and Brandeis professor Dr. Jonathan Sarna. Whether it’s deadly romance (oy vey!) or lively debate with a tribal filmmaker, January is for the Jews. [Leslie Stonebraker]

Managing Expectations In 1955, a law student took a temp work assignment in the office of Richard Pleasant and Isadora Bennett, influential managers and press agents in the fields of dance and theater. It was there—typing envelopes and running the mimeograph machine—that Charles Reinhart found his true calling, eventually becoming one of the most important and influential behind-thescenes figures in modern dance. Marking his 80th birthday, he will be saluted with a celebratory program Jan. 14 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Reinhart can be credited with inventing the position of dance company manager, taking on that role for a fledgling troupe of Paul Taylor dancers in the early 1960s.

He was working part-time in the PleasantBennett office, allotted his own “closet” as

his workspace, when the choreographer showed up one day. “He asked Izzy, ‘I need a manager for my company; I can’t do it. Do you know anybody?’ and she said, ‘Check the kid in the closet,’” Reinhart explains. Taylor came over (“He’s much more talkative now than he was then,” Reinhart notes) and invited him to see his work. “They did Aureole and my mouth fell open,” he says, his voice quavering.

“Sorry, even now it’s a little emotional for me!” He became the manager, guiding the company through its development into one of the nation’s most acclaimed troupes, keeping things going while operating on a shoestring. The two men bonded quickly.

“We’re both born in the same year and are children of the Depression,” Reinhart says. “So there’s an extraordinary unspoken understanding of how things should work— because there was no money.”

He soon had his own office, Charles Reinhart Management. “It just took off from there. I began handling other artists as well, though Paul was obviously the main thing.” The National Endowment for the Arts was formed, and it hired him to develop its groundbreaking projects: the Dance Touring Program, Artists in the Schools. He worked with Norman Singer on Broadway seasons that brought modern dance companies to a new level of visibility. “It was a glorious time. We had performances going on all over the place, not only in theaters, but in the parks, in the plazas on Sixth Avenue.”

In 1968, Reinhart became director of the American Dance Festival, then based at Connecticut College. He guided its 1978 move to Duke University and has been there ever since. With his late wife Stephanie Reinhart as co-director, the festival greatly expanded its international

Tristan Cook

InBrief

Craig Wedren, former frontman of Shudder To Think, performs with ACME. profile and reach, and offered performances by established companies while it also commissioned developing choreographers.

Reinhart has announced his retirement after the 2011 ADF. The BAM event includes companies Reinhart has nurtured—and often commissioned—at ADF that will salute his singular career. Taylor’s troupe will be there, of course (performing Brandenburgs), as will Pilobolus, Eiko & Koma, Shen Wei and Mark Dendy (who will offer “a surprise”).

“I look at the condition of the major companies today and compare it to what it was,” Reinhart says. “We have come so far, and we don’t realize it.” [Susan Reiter]

New Sounds It’s being billed as The Ecstatic Music Festival, but it might be more apt to call it a euphoric marathon. Running Jan. 16-March 28 at Merkin Concert Hall at the Kaufman Center and featuring 150 composers, songwriters and performers

Buke & Gass.

working together, this celebration of the area between classical and popular music is nothing if not sprawling. According to festival curator Judd Greenstein, co-director of New Amsterdam Records and managing director of NOW Ensemble, there’s no better way to make a splash.

“People don’t know what to expect from this kind of show,” Greenstein explains.

“My hope is that as we move along, people will realize that these are shows that are vital and bringing something completely new to the already flooded New York music scene, the later shows will benefit from the success of the earlier ones.”

Though to be fair, the line-up is impressive the entire way through, from the seven-hour concert Jan. 17 featuring Brooklyn’s own Buke & Gass and the American premiere of a new work by John Matthias, Adrian Corker and Andrew Prior, to a March 9 collaboration between Nadia Sirota, Thomas “Doveman” Bartlett and Owen Pallett.

It’s Greenstein’s commitment to new partnerships and attention to the intersections of different types of music that made him a strong candidate to run what promises to becoming a pillar of the Kaufman Center’s programming.

“The focus of the festival should not just be on music in that border area between genres but should center on collaborations between people working in slightly different spheres,” he explains.

“It was a matter of finding people who wanted to do things that they weren’t being given an opportunity to do. What’s interesting for me as a curator is to provide a forum for something authentically new to happen… to find a way to give them that opportunity.” [Ivan Costello] January 12, 2011 | City Arts

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N E W L O C AT I O N

ArtsNews

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THE NEW YEAR AT

MARCH 6 — JUNE 19

The first exhibition to examine Warhol’s enduring fascination with cars as products of American consumer society spanning his career from 1946 to 1986.

Also upcoming Will Barnet: A Centennial Celebration (February 4 – July 17) Features 10 new works by Will Barnet on the occasion of his 100th birthday.

Robert Mapplethorpe Flowers: Selections from the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection (February 4 – July 17) Features 10 photographs exemplifying the same meticulous approach of Mapplethorpe to all of his subjects.

30 minutes from Manhattan: Visit montclairartmuseum.org for directions.

3 South Mountain Ave., Montclair, NJ 07042 | 973-746-5555

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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com

Members of eighth blackbird.

As part of Asia Week New York, 32 members of Asian Art Dealers New York (AADNY) will offer exhibitions in locations throughout Manhattan from March 18 through 26. The exhibits will include a broad array of mediums from both the ancient and contemporary Asian art world… Madison Square Park Conservancy’s MAD. SQ. ART will present ECHO, the New York public art debut of Barcelona-based sculptor Jaume Plensa, from May 5 through Aug. 14…

Carnegie Hall will be celebrating its 120th anniversary with a gala concert hosted by singer James Taylor. The April 12 homage to the famed concert hall’s tremendous history will also feature special guests Barbara Cook, Steve Martin, Bette Midler, Sting and members of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus… Lyons Wier Gallery’s inaugural exhibition for its new West 24th Street location, entitled Here and Now, opened Jan. 8 and includes a wide range of artistic styles and mediums by select gallery artists who will have solo shows in 2011. Coinciding with the new location opening, Lyons Wier Gallery will launch a new project space, Lyons Wier Limited. The space, which has less of a fine-art focus than its counterpart, will feature two upcoming art bazaars, an opencall opportunity for emerging, unrepresented artists… Pioneering street artist Kenny Scharf will debut a new series of paintings in addition to more than 30 of his iconic donut works at the Paul Kasmin Gallery. The show, which will run from Jan. 27 to Feb. 26, will fill both of the gallery’s Chelsea locations…

The Park Avenue Armory will present the Tune-In Music Festival from Feb. 16 through 20. Curated by Grammy Award-winning group eighth blackbird, the festival will feature leading contemporary ensembles and musicians from across the country… The spring 2011 public art program for High Line Art will include a series of new installation, sound and

performance pieces by Kim Beck, Julianne Swartz and the Trisha Brown Dance Company, among others. Complementing the opening of the newest section of the park, the exhibitions will encompass the landscape and surrounding area of the park as a means to enthrall visitors in the art experience… The Dumbo Arts Center has announced the appointment of Karl Erickson as executive director. Erickson previously worked a slew of contemporary art-related jobs in California, and his most recent experience comes from the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art here in New York… Throughout the month of February, Gowanus’ ISSUE Project Room is set to host an expansive hodgepodge of chamber music ensembles dedicated to reinventing the genre and straddling the line between chamber and rock, folk and improvisational music… New York Philharmonic Music Director Alan Gilbert will lead the Thurnauer Symphony Orchestra (of the Thurnauer School of Music in Tenafly, N.J.) Feb. 9, at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood, N.J. Gilbert and the orchestra will be joined by a roster of leading Philharmonic musicians… On Jan. 21, The Martin E. Segal Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center will host a free, open-to-the-public book party celebrating the publication of author David Manning’s novel Dead Letters.

Detail of “Vivagua,” by Kenny Scharf.

MUSEUM

Noguchi Heaven

A diverse exhibition at the Noguchi Museum focuses on collaboration and provides us with a portrait of the Japanese-American master

BY Lance Esplund he sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904-88) was so unique, prolific and profound, so broad an artist—he sculpted in stone, wood, marble, bronze, steel, clay, paper and plaster, and he was also an architect and a designer of theater and dance sets, playgrounds, monuments, landscapes, fountains, furniture and fixtures—that nearly every thematic show of his work provides fresh and expansive insights into the man and his art. This is especially true at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City where, right now, you can see On Becoming an Artist: Isamu Noguchi and His Contemporaries, 1922-1960, a splendid, concentrated, catch-all exhibition that explores Noguchi’s diversity and roots, and places him, through seminal collaborations with some 40 key figures, at the eclectic and creative center of the 20th century.

The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum opened in 1985 and was the first museum in America to be established by a living artist in his or her lifetime. Located in a former photo-engraving plant, it was repurposed and originally installed by the artist. Its extensive permanent collection of Noguchi’s sculpture—which veers from East to West; primitive to refined; figurative to abstract— is an ideal setting and context, an extended universe that furthers and enhances special exhibitions devoted to the JapaneseAmerican master. What makes this even more pertinent now is that the museum, in recognition of its 25th anniversary, has re-created Noguchi’s original installation of 200 works from the permanent collection.

You can see Noguchi as he saw himself.

Noguchi, it seems, is a boundless source. Recent exhibitions at the Noguchi Museum have explored the artist’s work on specific architectural projects; his involvement with landscape, lighting and furniture design; his travel photographs; his sculptural process; the art and objects he collected; the early abstractions he created in Paris when he was an apprentice to Brancusi; as well as his working relationships with Martha Graham and R. Buckminster Fuller. A highlight in 2006 was the museum’s recreation of The Imagery of Chess, a 1944 exhibition of artistdesigned chess sets, originally organized

by Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst. This coming May, the museum will devote a show to Noguchi’s animal drawings.

Organized by Amy Wolf, in coordination with Noguchi Museum curator Bonnie Rychlak, On Becoming an Artist revisits many of these former exhibitions and touches (though only lightly so) on nearly every aspect of Noguchi. And it does so under new-and-improved conditions. While other

Kevin Noble

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“My Arizona,” (1943) by Isamu Noguchi. museums, under the guise of stewardship and public service, are hiring starchitects and expanding out the wazoo, the Noguchi Museum is improving on what it already has. A recent, nearly seamless renovation (including improvements in climate control) brought the plant up to current museum code, which allows it to borrow works from other institutions—an essential aspect of specialized exhibitions and which has been duly explored in On Becoming an Artist.

Loaned works by Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, Frida Kahlo and Alexander Calder, among others, bear this out.

Well-organized, far-ranging and tightly packed, On Becoming an Artist comprises a little bit of this and a little bit of that, moving at a quick pace from sculpture and painting to theater design, to furniture and, finally, architecture. Equally fleshed out with artworks, models and ephemera, including photographs, brochures and documentary materials, the small exhibition is informative yet airy. It does not pretend to be a fulldress retrospective; rather it provides an introductory portrait of the artist.

The show begins at the beginning, with a nod to Noguchi’s early academic figurative training as an apprentice to the Italian-American sculptor Onorio Rutolo, known as the “Rodin of Little Italy.” Then it leaps forward to Noguchi’s sojourn to Paris, in 1927-28, where he assisted Brancusi (an assistant to Rodin) and met Alexander Calder, the two most influential European sculptors for Noguchi. Included here are three marble masterworks by Brancusi—

“Prometheus” (1911), “Newborn [I]” (1912) and “Sculpture for the Blind [I]” (1920)—all on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The understated Brancusis are placed near Noguchi’s “Leda” (c. 1928), a gorgeous gold-plated brass and marble sculpture suggesting a female nude, ripple, cloud, sailboat and swan. Brancusi, Calder and Noguchi are all sculptors who arrive in their work at abstract (or, in the case of Brancusi, nearly abstract) distillations—essences—yet each has a voice completely his own.

What is so remarkable about this refined exhibition is that the curators’ choices—and the juxtapositions and associations brought about through the placement of Noguchi’s work among that of other artists—are just enough to get the visual gears in your mind click-click-clicking. As soon as you have taken in the relationships between Noguchi and Brancusi—including a rich glimpse of what the former artist absorbed from the latter—other surprising and unusual forces announce themselves. Walking through this exhibition (even after having seen many Noguchi shows before), is like swinging from tower to tower on a trapeze.

Part of this has to do with the sheer range of works and artists—including Marcel Breuer, Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, Louis Kahn, Man Ray, Diego Rivera, Ginger Rogers, Alfred Stieglitz and Josef von Sternberg— represented here. Part, also, has to do with the fact that this show is focused on collaborations.

For example, in the drawing “Hitler

Invades Poland” (September 1, 1939), the unlikely bedfellows Noguchi, Arshile Gorky and De Hirsh Margulies join forces. You can feel Noguchi’s totemic, architectonic forms giving structure to Gorky’s free-floating Surrealism. A revelation regarding Noguchi’s range of invention is evident in the juxtaposition of the sculptor’s freestanding, rough-hewn, interlocking driftwood sculpture “My Pacific (Polynesian culture)” (1942) with his “My Arizona” (1943), an abstract white fiberglass landscape attached to the wall.

A soft square divided into four sections, each of which peaks as pyramid, orifice, breast-with-hook and breast-with-nipple, respectively, “My Arizona” merges figure, face and desert. Mounted over the abstract breast-with-nipple is a square piece of bright pink Plexiglas, an artificial hue that provides both a distillation of natural desert-sunset-rose and—suggesting a large monocle—creates comic relief to offset the sculpture’s blatantly erotic forms.

Near a wiry drawing of a tightrope walker by Calder is Noguchi’s large, formidable figurative sculpture “Death (Lynched Figure)” (1934). The relationship between Calder’s muscular though lithe circus performer and Noguchi’s hanged man, in his death throes, is uncanny. Both inform and extend each other into new and unforeseen territory. Stand behind Noguchi’s figure and you’ll notice that the shoulders, arms and head of the man suggest the legs and hindquarters of a galloping horse—as if Death had mounted and was riding the man.

On Becoming an Artist brings together a wonderful cast of characters, artworks and forms that, with Noguchi at the center, all make sense in concert—and in concert with the permanent collection of the Noguchi Museum. In one area of the exhibit are the lyres Noguchi designed for George Balanchine’s “Orpheus.” The instruments are beautiful, primal, erotic and oddly figurative: weapon- and bonelike. They are great works of sculpture, but they are also theater props that resemble objects from a Flintstones episode. Near the instruments hangs a photograph depicting Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein dressed in black tie, posing and strumming the lyres. This merging of the classical and primordial shouldn’t work. But Balanchine, Kirstein and Noguchi pull it off. It’s a match made perfect, and possible, here in Noguchi Heaven.< On Becoming an Artist: Isamu Noguchi and His Contemporaries, 1922-1960.

Through April 24, 2011, The Noguchi Museum, 32-37 Vernon Blvd. (at 33rd Road), Queens, 718-204-7088.

January 12, 2011 | City Arts

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Automatic for the People

Keith Jarrett returns to Carnegie with his singular piano improvisations

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Jazz

by Howard Mandel eith Jarrett’s advertised program for his Jan. 16 Carnegie Hall concert is pretty basic: Keith Jarrett, piano.

That’s all there is and all you need to know—because if you’ve heard (or heard of) Jarrett, it means a lot. Few instrumentalists today limit their promises and so define their audiences’ expectations to the simple fact they will engage with their instruments. Jarrett is the most famous and popular of those who do.

At age 65, he is a rhapsodist extraordinaire, arguably a 19th-century role, but one for which he’s long been aiming.

Next November is the 40th anniversary of the recording of Facing You, Jarrett’s first mostly improvised solo album, which cut the path he’s traveled ever since.

Back in ’71, Facing You established the slight but intensely physical Pennsylvanian, whose cloud of frizzy hair confused audiences about his Scots-Hungarian ancestry, as a romanticist with a fine touch. Jarrett uniquely corralled unplanned sequences of gospel chords, wandering bass lines and perfectly articulated chromatic runs into highly personal statements that were as unpredictably plotted as dreams, but ached with longing and resolved in release.

The album was studiously non-commercial, yet quite the success. It founded the fortunes of then-tiny ECM Records, which has subsequently released 65 albums by Keith Jarrett.

His sound, beautifully recorded, was a far cry from the breakthrough pianism of those days, characterized by the crashing, splashing fourths of McCoy Tyner, the majestic atonal assaults of Cecil Taylor and the multi-keyboard electronics of Joe Zawinul, Sun Ra and Jan Hammer. It was more akin to what grand piano virtuosi Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea were doing, and Jarrett came from their same finishing school, run by talent scout Miles Davis.

He’d attended Berklee College of Music, tinkled in cocktail lounges, worked in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and forged a friendship with drummer Jack DeJohnette that led him into saxophonist Charles Lloyd’s quartet, where his fervent flow of ideas had won him considerable notice.

Under Davis’ direction, Jarrett was relegated to electric piano or organ. He’d duetted (or dueled) with Hancock and Corea, all using goosed-up gear, on Live-Evil. On the DVD Miles Electric: Another Kind of Blue, Corea and Jarrett sit on opposite sides of the stage, while Davis whinnies through “Call

It Anything,” a 38-minute virtually free improv that stoked the estimated 600,000 listeners at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival.

Corea looks thoughtful, but Jarrett scrunches up his face as if in pain. He’s famously expressive while playing, sometimes rising from his bench to stomp or sway, often vocalizing under his breath along with his finger work. Over the past four decades, he’s performed and recorded on organ, clavichord and harpsichord, essayed compositions by Bach, Mozart, Gurdjieff and Lou Harrison, been accompanied by and written for orchestra, brass and string ensembles and led acclaimed American and European jazz quartets. But he’s never returned to electric instruments.

Despite Jarrett’s larger efforts, his “classical” compositions, his book of original jazz songs, ongoing trio performances of standards and gorgeous duet album Jasmine with bassist Charlie Haden issued last year, it’s his solo, allimprovised concerts—like the one planned for Carnegie Hall—that are his greatest art. As he told me during a 2009 interview “Someone I was talking to said, ‘Those are hard things, right? Why are you doing them?’ I said, ‘I don’t understand the question. Yes, they’re hard. I almost die sometimes doing them. But why am I doing them? This is what I do. This is who I am.’”

As he went on to explain: “It’s a ritual that I sort of invented, and also a bio-feedback mechanism for me. I don’t actually know how I’m doing sometimes until I hear what just came out from my hands, and then I realize I shouldn’t stop…

Recently, it seems I open my concerts with something abstract because I don’t want to play a sound I know. I want my hands to play something and I want to be surprised.

The very first sound has to be surprising.

Wherever that goes, I’m monitoring the situation but don’t try to control it much…

The music itself suggests to me there’s more to do, each time. An ending may sound like it’s invented ahead of time, but it hasn’t been. It happens all by itself.”

Not quite. Paris/London: Testament, Jarrett’s most recent solo live document of concerts from fall ’08, comprises more complexity, density, fleetness and contrasts than earlier outings. His artistry has matured; he’s earned it and lets it show.

Which is what people come to experience: a musician of enormous scope, starting with nothing, making it up in the moment. Call it Keith Jarrett, piano.

Theater

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Victor Williams and Michele Pawk in a scene from A Small Fire.

Sensing Disaster

By Molière Translated into English verse by Richard Wilbur Directed by Joseph Hanreddy Performances begin January 14, 2011

A woman afflicted with multiple health problems never comes to life

S

By Mark Peikert omething odd happens during Adam Bock’s slight new play, A Small Fire, currently being given the usual sleek Playwrights Horizons’ production.

As wife and mother Emily Bridges begins losing her senses, one by one, we in the audience find her unnamed condition catching: Gradually, we lose our empathy, sympathy and interest.

At a mere 80 minutes, perhaps it’s not as shocking as it seems that A Small Fire is often abrupt. After a gradual build to the revelation that Emily has lost her sense of smell, her other senses vanish with an offputting suddenness. Fine one moment, the next she’s blind. Then deaf. Through it all, her husband and daughter fret and glower, respectively, as this complicated woman is reduced to a mere shell.

Unfortunately, the lack of buildup to these losses can make them seem inappropriately amusing. Matters are not helped by the loose direction from Trip Cullman, who seems as unsure of the material as his cast. Michele Pawk, usually a top-grade stage actress, is far from her wheelhouse here as the tough-talking owner of a construction company. Bock has written a very specific character, one whose speech belies her well-to-do status.

But dropping the g’s off of her words and employing a hoarse staccato cackle, Pawk (looking remarkably patrician with her silver mane) comes across less like a no-nonsense broad and more like a parody of one.

Likewise, Celia Keenan-Bolger, as Emily’s daughter Jenny, seems uncertain about her under-written character. Emily and Jenny have a tense relationship (Emily has a tense relationship with everyone but her employee Billy, played by Victor

Williams), but their backstory is never sufficiently fleshed out for audiences to understand why. As a result, Jenny’s ambivalence about her mother makes the character seem bitchier than she should.

Actually, the only actors giving fully realized performances are Reed Birney, as Emily’s husband John, and Williams.

Birney conveys the emotional fallout of being the family “good guy” when things go horribly wrong for the usual bad guy. And until a requisite, late-in-the-show speech about AIDS, Fontaine crafts a pleasant performance as the hard-working and loyal Billy, who refuses to abandon Emily when all she’s left with is her sense of touch and her voice (though why her voice levels change appropriately when she’s deaf is a question best left to Cullman and Bock).

There are tough moments in Bock’s script that hint at a show that could have been. At their daughter’s wedding reception, the now-blind Emily turns to John and says, “I didn’t love you. But I do now.” Too often, though, the sanding off of Emily’s rough edges seems entirely too easy. After repeatedly complaining about Jenny’s fiancé, Emily has a sudden about-face regarding their marriage, presumably because her afflictions have convinced her that life is too short. Just once, how luxurious it would be to revel in someone remaining resolutely cranky in the face of illness. Instead, we get a modern version of a woman’s weepie, in which the heroine is humbled by circumstances out of her control, finding true, fade-out-on-it love in the process.

A Small Fire Through Jan. 23, Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St. (betw. 9th & 10th Aves), 212279-4200; $70.

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January 12, 2011 | City Arts

9

AttheGALLERIES Superficially, the brown, yellow and red “Flowering Limb” resembles drip paintings of her husband Jackson Pollock but on closer inspection, the resemblance fades as one discerns the curving shapes and delicate, almost calligraphic markings inside them. More vigorous and violent, “Seeded,” painted in only shades of brown, explodes with movement, letters scrawled here and there like primitive signs. An ink on paper drawing appears almost representational, as a fragmented figure—body in one place, twisted heads in another—floats against a black backdrop, like a character in a Goya painting. She opens up her soul here, proving, as if proof were necessary, just how deeply she mined her experiences to create her art. [Valerie Gladstone] Through Jan. 29, Robert Miller Gallery, 524 W. 26th St., 212-366-4774.

Lawrence Weiner: Gyroscopically Speaking “Company of Three Players,” by David Barnett.

Winter Salon: 2010-2011

The weeks between mid-December and early January are a slow news time in the galleries. That makes it a very good time to introduce artists whom galleries are interested in taking aboard or ones they simply like but cannot accommodate on the roster. Denise Bibro’s Winter Salon is a lively sampler of 21 artists, six of them invited guests.

Recognition comes slowly to artists like David Barnett, sui generis and not readily pigeonholed in a particular movement or line of descent. His fey, delicately crafted collages are among the most satisfying works on the contemporary scene. Fragments of found materials are conjured into collages and intricate three-dimensional machines that combine Victorian-era botany, vintage anatomy plates and medieval saints into darkly imagined hybrids. Fragile nightmares, really. Barnett’s “Company of Three Players,” is a stage set with figures made of calipers, springs and a medley of figures, both the likable and the unlovely. It is a good introduction to his pictorial wit.

Deborah Winiarski entered three luminous encaustic abstractions. She handles the medium’s material translucence with great refinement. Fine papers appear under and within veils of beeswax, pigmented and thinly applied. A pendant pair on 12-inch panels are in the main room. A somewhat larger and particularly interesting one in the office includes a page of text, visible as if through glass. A diaphanous ensemble, the three leave me mulling the mystery of why this ancient, intrinsically beautiful medium has so few disciples among contemporary artists.

For those of you who believe in the existence of that little brat called an “inner child,” there is Dusty Boynton’s gestural “Garden.” I have as much faith in these inner tykes as in fairies, but you can

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believe if you like. Donald Kuspit does. He wrote that the improvised childlike look of Boynton’s art conveys “the tragicomic moods and perspective of the child.” Has Kuspit ever known real kids? Tragicomedy is an adult projection onto the child’s domain. Boynton’s bold scrawls, with their brash vigor, owe much to Dubuffet, who never got childhood quite right.

Jerry Meyer’s “Hollywood Time Share” is a lightboxed collage that approaches its subject with a more flamboyant variant of Barnett’s humor. Its symmetrical arrangement is in sly contradiction to the wacky family album it purports to be.

Old headshots of family members are superimposed on vintage postcards of Hedy Lamarr’s Hollywood mansion. If you can remember who Hedy was, then you might be too old for this work. It is a delightful tour de force, impossible to describe.

Picture it this way: If Magritte had made jukeboxes, they would look like this.

Iona Fromboluti’s “Drifting Away,” an 8-foot-long diptych, sets a long shelf low against a clouded sky. A spare arrangement of oyster shells, a string of pears and a broken conch dot the horizontal expanse.

Fromboluti is a good painter with a particular gift for intimate, lyric measures. She is better represented by her small canticle to a dead bird—also set against sky—that hangs in the office. Her intimist vision is out of sync with the epic ambition of the diptych.

While you are in the office, be sure to see Christopher Reiger’s strange and wonderful composition of three darkling sparrows. One of them sends a full-throated song—a threnody by the look of it—into the air, its black notes a stream of tiny birds winging upward. [Maureen Mullarkey] Through Jan. 29, Denise Bibro Fine Art, 529 W. 20th St., 212-647-7030.

Lee Krasner Paintings 1959-1965

This revelatory show offers a glimpse into a rarely seen side of painter Lee Krasner.

While best known as a lyrical colorist, she went through a long period of using subdued colors when suffering from chronic insomnia. Painting in the middle of the night with only artificial light, she didn’t trust herself with brighter hues. Disturbed and restless, she exposed her dark emotions in these tempestuous canvases, most of them painted in the barn at her house in Springs, N.Y., and in the city. She explained that they were a result of her descent into things that weren’t easy or pleasant, which seems like an understatement after viewing the works.

Using a palette primarily consisting of cream, burnt umber and white, she created sweeping storms of paint, fragmented and swirling lines, like clashing tides. It would be hard to find works that more fully convey the mental chaos that accompanies depression.

“Flowering Limb,” by Lee Krasner.

Lawrence Weiner, a central figure in the formation of conceptual art in the 1960s, continues to explore the relationship between human beings and objects, using language as a critical element and link. Driven by the belief that by using language he frees viewers to interpret his works according to their perceptions and needs, he emphasizes the interaction of punctuation, shapes and color.

His best-known text works exist as gallery artworks as well as in film, video, CDs and books. In this exciting show, five works are presented floating on a curvilinear constructed wall in the north gallery, and a single large work is spread out in the floor in the south gallery. In the north gallery viewing room, there is a new drawing series on paper and DVD cartoon, titled Gyroscopically Speaking.

His works speak to you with a physical force. By placing letters in certain positions in relation to one another, by using different colors and by presenting some of the works on curved surfaces, he conveys so much more meaning than more elaborate and ostensibly more complex art. Engulfing and tantalizing, they resemble poems as much as installations, distant relations to the poetry of e.e. cummings. The first part of “Taken From the Wind & Bolted to the Ground” looks windblown, the second half anchored, with the words printed in black capital letters on the long, large curved wall. The first four are underlined in blue and sail in space while the last four are squarely centered and insistent.

“Pushed Forward/Close By/Pushed Aside/Close By/With Graceful Haste” is even more vigorously physical, a swirling green line linking the boxed in the phrases “Pushed Forward” and “Pushed Aside,” graceful and seemingly done with haste. And it’s not only words that grab you in his pieces but also the juxtaposition of shapes, each one complete in itself and yet dependent on the others. You also get a chance to step right into one of his works. “Impacted to the Point of Fusing Sand Into Glass” fills an entire gallery, with the title painted in black

letters on the floor and two orange-red pillars serving as a frame. An s-shaped line links the two parts of the phrase. It’s both astounding and satisfying to be so moved by such simple elements. [VG] Through Jan. 21, Marian Goodman Gallery, 24 W. 57th St., 212-977-7160.

Pavers

Last year Schroeder Romero & Shredder acquired a new space and a new mission to mix decorative art into its offerings of contemporary art. This quirky combination of fine and applied arts perfectly suits the tenor of the times, but gallery-goers hankering for “high” art will still be rewarded by Pavers, an illuminating selection of modernist and contemporary works by women, currently installed in the gallery’s three smaller rooms.

Nodding only occasionally to postmodernism and feminism, the two dozen painters and sculptors “pave the way” by confronting the original challenges of modernism. A sturdy canvas from 1950

by Nell Blaine catches this accomplished colorist’s transition from abstraction to representation. The limpid hues of Lee Krasner’s watercolor intriguingly expand the standard vocabulary of AbstractExpressionism. Next to it, the gestures of a small Joan Mitchell drawing—four scribbles in each of four colors—radiate a kind of forceful indetermination. Four Cubist sculptures of figures and animals produced by Louise Nevelson in the mid-’40s are a surprise; though not groundbreaking stylistically, they are full of original plastic vigor. Most startling of all is her very early painting, which depicts in glowing tones a nude woman standing improbably before sailboats.

Among contemporary works, two

“Les Demoiselles D’Avignon,” by Dorothy Morang.

small paintings from 2010 by Susanna Coffey—one a nest of swirling, colorful lines—suggest a continuing evolution of her self-portraits. An early painting by Melissa Meyer, looser and meatier than recent work, measures out the height of a large canvas in turgid, swirling reds. Evoking trees and sky, the earthy greens and silvery blues of Evelyn Twitchell’s canvas exude a meditative luminosity.

The more derivative works here seem content to repave. Hilla Rebay’s small, undated watercolor recapitulates the usual elements of biomorphic surrealism; Loren MacIver’s painting of the coy counterplay between a railing, rainbow and vine barely surmounts the decorative.

The most striking works are also among the smallest. These are two 1979 Louisa Matthíasdóttir watercolors, tiny cityscapes that are the very embodiment of spirited visual experience. With authoritative strokes, her drawing conveys the bold horizontal marches of stone bridges and the countering flagpoles and lampposts; her hues—the expanding warmth of green peering over a bridge’s pale yellows, the absorbent deep blue-green of water beneath—weight these rhythms with the dynamism of a specific light.

Two sumptuous vases have been installed on either side of these watercolors, their iridescent hues intended, perhaps, to complement the painter’s observations.

This highlights the awkward dilemma of the installation: Are the accompanying objets d’art—the vases, Art-Deco ottomans with gilded legs, Louis XV-style chairs fashioned in transparent polycarbonate—intended to accessorize the earnest pursuit of modernism on the walls? Only the weaker paintings here speak the same decorative language that evokes through style rather than the

“North of the Tennis House,” by Joseph O. Holmes.

lyrical force of form. Next to the stronger works here, the chairs and vases seem like—well, furniture. [John Goodrich] Through Jan. 22, Schroeder Romero & Shredder, 531 W. 26th St., 212-6300722.

Wijnanda Deroo: Inside New York Eateries Devoid of people, Wijnanda Deroo’s photographs maintain a solemn calmness, even when set amid the bustle of everyday life. Inside New York Eateries, the Dutch-born, New York-based artist’s new show at Robert Mann Gallery, continues her career-long exploration of empty interior spaces.

In the exhibition, iconic culinary destinations of our city (The Russian Tea Room, Yonah Schimmel’s Knishes) mingle with the everyday (Papaya Dog, Lexington Candy Shop). Their morgue-like stillness is occasionally appropriate and almost reverential in “Tavern on the Green, Central Park, 2009” and “Relish, 225 Wythe Avenue, Brooklyn, 2009,” both of which shut their doors last year.

Deroo’s sense of balance is evident in the photographs, though predictable. While no picture is exactly symmetrical, each element is balanced right to left in tone and weight. Shot with close attention to ornament and style, each picture enhances the mood of its subject. Her compositional technique is flawless, but lacking in emotion and depth. The depiction of places to eat and a typically centered vanishing point beg comparison to Leonardo’s “The Last Supper.”

The photographs operate successfully as documents of a cultural heritage. Dining out is essentially a communal experience, and by portraying these regularly busy establishments bereft of human interaction, Deroo offers a meditation on the city at a moment in which our future remains uncertain.

These documents depict the gamut of culinary institutions—from Delmonico’s to a

back-lit-waterfall Chinese place called Panda on Ninth Avenue. The eateries are empty, but strangely inviting. These are cultural touchstones of New York, and staring back at us silently from the pictures they seem to implore occupancy— a warm reassurance that they will be full again. [Nicholas Wells] Through Jan. 29, Robert Mann Gallery, 210 11th Ave., 212-989-7600.

Joseph O. Holmes: The Urban Wilderness

Joseph O. Holmes is a genius at making the familiar new. Any one of the 12 photographs here warrants many hours of viewing, subtle illuminating details only becoming apparent over time. Having spent his childhood in Pennsylvania often walking in the hills, farms and fields, he discovers similarities to that landscape here in the city.

Shooting in a snowy Prospect Park, he sees things the rest of us would probably overlook.

In a series where each photograph is more beautiful than the next, “Nethermeadow” is especially glorious, where people with their dogs look like sentinels in the snowy field, their animals like statues. In the distance, snow creates a cloud-like mist in the delicate branches of the trees.

In “The Sledding Hill,” the people are mere dots in the white, specs of color clamoring up the hill or sliding down. The gray sky blends with the snow and they seem just transitory and insignificant disturbances in the wild. Nothing human interferes with “The Lake,” where light showers from a thick layer of gray clouds onto the still and frozen lake. Almost ominous, “Entering the Nethermeadow” shows a lone figure in the landscape, with no points of reference.

He or she might as well be in the wildest, most remote regions of Canada. Ingeniously exposed and thoughtfully composed, his works transport the viewer not only into another world but also into another state of consciousness. [VG] Through Jan. 23, Jen Bekman Gallery, 6 Spring St., 212-219-0166.

January 12, 2011 | City Arts

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ClassicalMUSIC&Opera

A Verdi Opera in Arty Hands The Met does La traviata, and the Manhattan School does a Hoiby opera, plus other sleepers

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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com

Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

T

By Jay Nordlinger he Metropolitan Opera has a new production of La traviata, though it is not really new: It is simply new to New York. This production, by the German director Willy Decker, debuted in Salzburg in 2005. The principal singers were Anna Netrebko (Violetta), Rolando Villazón (Alfredo) and Thomas Hampson (Germont). It was the sensation of the summer, maybe even the sensation of the year. The following summer, someone involved in that production said to me, “There was an awful lot of hype surrounding that show, wasn’t there?” I said, “Maybe. But I have to tell you: I have never been more moved in a theater.”

At the time, I wrote enthusiastically about the production, as well as about the singers. But perhaps I was grading on a curve: In Salzburg, when you don’t see out-and-out trash, you’re grateful. The production is modern, in that the stage is largely bare and the clothing the latest fashions. (Not that I’m up on the latest fashions.) It is modern in this way, too: Decker toys with the opera, making it his own. This means that it is less Verdi’s.

Sometimes, Decker’s action doesn’t match the libretto, is at odds with the story. Also, the production has a few gimmicks, a few tricks. They are quite interesting on first viewing. But on the second viewing, after you know them…

At the Met, the principal singers are Marina Poplavskaya, Matthew Polenzani and Andrzej Dobber. Poplavskaya is a “genuine singing actress,” to use a cliché.

She proved this earlier in the season in another Verdi opera, Don Carlo. The night I heard her as Violetta, she suffered many technical imperfections. Her pitch was approximate, often sharp (in the tradition of Russian singers, singing in languages other than their own). Also, the voice was a little small for Violetta. A phrase like “Amami, Alfredo”—not that there are many like that—requires much more sound.

But smaller voices have pride of place these days. Last month, the New York Philharmonic had Ian Bostridge, the light English tenor, sing in Mahler’s Knaben Wunderhorn. Go figure.

In any case, Poplavskaya’s sheer musical and dramatic ability overcame all imperfections. From her portrayal emerged something like truth. Still, I think Decker has her doing too much: too much running around, too much acting. His Violetta is so busy. Sometimes, it’s OK for a performer in an opera simply to stop a little and sing.

Matthew Polenzani can certainly sing.

How long will his voice retain its youthful sweetness and freshness? Forever? And the voice is not only sweet and fresh,

Marina Poplavskaya in a scene from the Met’s La traviata. it can ring out. We heard this in Don Pasquale last fall, and we heard it again in Traviata. Polenzani’s lyric instrument can turn into a lyric trumpet (or at least a cornet). And I will offer one detail, related to technique and suppleness: Polenzani’s diminuendos in Alfredo’s music were uncommon and superb. As for the Germont of Andrzej Dobber, it was stern, tender and noble. Dobber, a Pole, is full of operatic savvy, and he has a special affinity for Verdi.

So does Gianandrea Noseda, the conductor on this evening. He led the opera with a sure hand, keeping Verdi’s pulse, following his thread, doing nothing too obvious, and nothing too subtle, either. This was both learned and stylish conducting.

From the orchestra, I wish to single out the principal clarinet, Stephen Williamson. His playing was gorgeous, nimble, searing— what Verdi asks for.

It seems that the Met has ditched Franco Zeffirelli’s production of Traviata, as it is ditching his productions in general.

This pleases most critics, who find him elephantine, conservative and embarrassing.

I’ll tell you this, however: When I saw the Zeffirelli production of Traviata—which I did maybe seven times—I did not see Zeffirelli. I saw only Verdi, only the opera.

When I see the Decker production, I see Decker. I’ve seen this production only twice, six years apart. But I’m already sick of it. One of the problems with artiness is

that it lacks staying power.

In any event, the Decker Traviata runs through January 29. I recommend that you see it. The first time, no doubt, it packs a wallop. And, despite my griping, there’s wallop the second time, too.

A Conservatory Contributes The Manhattan School of Music makes a contribution to opera in this town. They educate students, of course. They also give the public a chance to see operas that otherwise might remain out of view. Last year, they did Fauré’s Pénélope. And the school has been quite kind to Lee Hoiby.

He has been quite kind to it, too: His operas are a treat to sing, play, see and hear.

Hoiby was born in Wisconsin in 1926.

He now lives in Long Eddy, N.Y., about 130 miles from Manhattan, on a pretty property with a waterfall. He is a very good pianist—trained by Egon Petri, no less—but he has made his name in vocal music: as a composer of operas, choruses and, especially, songs. On meeting him, Dalton Baldwin, the accompanist, said, “Your songs are for the ages.” In 2004, the Manhattan School staged the Hoiby opera A Month in the Country, which is based on the Turgenev play. Last month, they staged Summer and Smoke, based on Tennessee Williams.

In 1964, Williams asked Hoiby whether he would like to set one of his plays. “Sure,” said Hoiby, “which one?” Williams said,

“Take your pick, sweetheart.” Hoiby considered A Streetcar Named Desire, of course, but ultimately passed over it. For one thing, he couldn’t figure out how you would give music to Stanley’s bellowing of “Stella!” Some 35 years later, André Previn set Streetcar—and simply had Stanley bellow it, rather than sing it. Hoiby remarked in an interview with me, “That’s a perfect solution.”

With Summer and Smoke, the Manhattan School did a commendable job.

Still, it would be nice to experience this opera, and A Month in the Country, sung and played by pros. In the meantime, the Manhattan School will do us the favor of showcasing little-staged works. This spring, they will present Nina, by Paisiello, and La vida breve, by Falla. Some orchestral excerpts from the latter are very well-known.

The opera itself, hardly at all.

Hoiby’s latest opera is Romeo and Juliet—based on whose play, again? The name escapes me. Anyway, this piece is still awaiting its debut. The composer is not especially worried. First, he comes from a long-lived family—a great-aunt recently died at 108. Second, he knows the important thing is to have written the piece. It exists. Posterity will do what it will. Hoiby told me, “If I never hear certain pieces performed, I have written them, which is something wonderful. I have had the thrill of writing music.” There’s a real musician. <

UNCORKED

Ice on the Vine

Demystifying German white labels and the wine-making techniques

I

By Josh Perilo f you were to walk out into the frosty chill of a winter morning onto the steep side of a wind-swept mountain, most likely the last thought on your mind would be the harvesting of grapes for wine.

That is exactly what happens, however, throughout the height of the frigid winter months in many of the wine-growing regions of Germany. These select grapes, that stand alone on the decimated vineyards, are picked by gloved hands before sunrise, in order to keep the grapes from thawing.

They are then crushed while frozen and the ice is separated from the sugary juice that sinks to the bottom.

This is the beginning of what we come to know as Eiswein, or as we call it here in the States, Icewine.

Because this is the time of year when the production of this rare, beautiful—and costly—product goes into full swing, it’s an excellent opportunity to pay homage to Germany, the country that invented such a wonderful concoction.

There are so many strata to the classification of German wine that many consumers forgo buying anything from the country altogether to avoid confusion. This is unfortunate since some of the greatest complex white wines of the world hail from Deutschland.

If you look at a German wine label, the most important thing you want to look for, other than the grape varietal, is the ripeness/ quality category that the wine falls into. In Germany, because the growing season is so limited, ripeness and quality go hand in hand. The longer the grape has stayed on the vine, the riper it is and, in theory, the higher quality the wine. If you know what each of these categories implies, it will help you better navigate your German winebuying experience: Kabinett: This simple, solid wine was made from grapes picked during the regular harvest time, usually late August or early September.

Spatlese: The word literally translates to “late harvest.” The grapes in these wines are picked weeks after the Kabinett grapes, so they are likely to be from heartier bunches of grapes that were healthier and lasted longer.

These wines tend to have more intensity.

Auslese: The word means “select harvest,” and that is exactly what these grapes are. When the pickers go down the rows looking at grapes to harvest for Spatlese, they may find a handful of grape bunches that are continuing to thrive, especially if the weather that season is uncommonly good. These will be left even longer and harvested as select bunches and made into very small batches of extremely dense, sweet wine.

Beerenauslese (or BA): Going even a step further, there are occasions where the pickers may find individual berries that they decide to leave. By the time they are picked, these berries will have dried somewhat and produce a very small amount of intense, sugary nectar.

Trockenbeerenauslese (or TBA): TBA wines are made sometimes only once a decade. The berries are basically raisins when picked, and it takes so many grapes to produce wine from these shriveled fruits that it is not unusual for a half bottle of TBA to sell for over $500.

And, of course, there is Eiswein, which is harvested later than any other wine on the planet.

If you’re looking for a couple local spots to flex your new German wine smarts, Café Sabarsky at Neue Gallery (1048 Fifth Ave., at East 86th Street) and Café d’Alsace (1695 Second Ave., at East 88th Street) provide wine lists that give you many options from several of the aforementioned categories.

So the next time you take a sip of that German Riesling in the comfort of your heated apartment, think of the tireless German vineyard workers who may be picking grapes for next year’s dessert wine at that very moment.

www.santacarolina.cl

January 12, 2011 | City Arts

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DANCE

Dance Distortions

FAY LANSNER

1921-2010 A Memorial Exhibition

Ballet may be in pop culture for the moment—but it deserves more respect

January 6 - 30, 2011 The Pen and Brush 16 East 10th Street New York, NY (212) 475-3669 www.penandbrush.org

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Gallery Hours: Thursday & Friday 4 - 7 pm Saturday & Sunday 1 - 5 pm

Closed to the public Sunday, January 9th For more information, visit www.faylansner.com

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January 12 - February 20, 2011 Gallery 1: Deborah Brown: The Bushwick Paintings Gallery 2: Fractured Earth: Theresa Hackett Nicola López Lothar Osterburg Fran Siegel

Deborah Brown, Dick Chicken #1, 2010, oil on canvas, 78” x 96”

54 Orchard Street NY, NY 10002 212 410 6120 lesleyheller.com gallery hours: wed-sat 11am-6pm, Sun 12-6pm

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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com

By Joel Lobenthal world. During the 1980s, I watched many irector Darren Aronofsky may be bold rehearsals at American Ballet Theatre, and indie, but in his latest film Black principally because I was friends with coach Swan, which has been heaped with Elena Tchernichova. The painstaking, critical praise, he opportunistically serious-minded pursuit of perfection that and rather heartlessly recycles one cliché went on in her rehearsals gave me another after another about ballet and ballet dancers. view altogether of balletic process than what Overall, it seems Hollywood may be in Aronofsky presents. I thought of this when worse trouble, artistically, than ballet itself at I talked with former-ABT dancer Jennet the moment.

Zerbe just about the time I watched Black Aronofsky is equally reliant on received Swan. Zerbe now teaches at the Alberta tropes—visual, audio, narrative—from the Ballet school in Calgary. I told her about psycho-horror, identity-fissure playbook. the way that many of the most memorable Like virtually every ballet movie, Black performances I’ve seen were not done by the Swan constructs parallel narratives between top-ranked people. Zerbe is a case in point: the storylines the dancers move to and what She was in ABT’s corps when I witnessed goes on in their private lives. Here, Swan her and Hilary Ryan, another corps dancer, Lake’s magisterial dual role Odette/Odile debut in the same solo from Paquita at turns into fodder for psycho chicks clawing Sunday matinee and evening performances at each other like the gargoyles Hawn and given by ABT in December 1984 at the Streep played in Death Becomes Her. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. It’s wrong to say that one movie speaks for an entire culture, but since not Most of the commercial mass only Hollywood, but most media now pay so little attention of the commercial mass media now pay so little to professional dance, I don’t attention to professional think it’s rash to assume that the dance, I don’t think it’s rash to assume that the film reflects an industry-wide film reflects an industrycondescension, if not outright wide condescension, if not outright contempt contempt for ballet. for ballet. What’s most insidious is the way that the filmmaker presents us with the trappings of real-life ballet Each young woman—they were both (yes, it is nice to see featured some actual around 20—was very tall and striking. Each, professionals), and therefore the film may in her own way, performed with the refined deceive many in the general public into and poetic style wherein celebration of the thinking that this is what it’s actually self goes hand in hand with celebration of like. Because Aronofsky’s film presents a something bigger, and elegance becomes a particular ballet world that is sick doesn’t metaphor for graciousness of spirit. Either of necessarily mean he’s proposing a sweeping the dancers could have become a ballerina; statement about all ballet worlds. But ballet neither did, for a variety of reasons. Nor, has become so excluded from the mainstream in fact, did they ever dance that solo again media conversation that the distorted part at ABT. While Ryan was given virtually will tend to stand in for the whole. no other solos to dance, over the halfMost glaringly, balletic beauty is just decade following Paquita, Zerbe performed not present in the film. The performance a number of other solo roles before injury segments aren’t particularly well danced or forced her to stop dancing well before she well filmed. Rather, what is on exhibit is was 30. I haven’t seen or spoken to Ryan every kind of abusive and unprofessional since she left ABT at the end of the 1980s, behavior. No doubt, these things do go on but since running into Zerbe again several in ballet, but Aronofsky seems to have no years ago, I’ve encouraged her to write about interest in acknowledging any degree of ballet. Despite its vicissitudes, she loves it as craft or artistic depth by anyone working in much as ever and looks at it insightfully the field. When they discuss the art form, and analytically. when they work in the studio, the artistic Casting policies back in the 1980s staff in the film broadcast ponderous and were no less problematic than they often simplistic inanities. Yes, ballet is a cruel and are today. But on that Sunday, Ryan ruthlessly competitive field, but it deserves and Zerbe did give me a demonstration to be taken seriously. of ballet’s full expressive possibilities— Seeing the film, I could only reflect on something that Black Swan does not do for my own experience of ballet’s backstage a single moment.

ArtsAGENDA Exhibition Openings Ana Cristea Gallery: Ulf Puder: “Silence.” Opens

Jan. 13, 521 W. 26th St., 212-904-1100.

apexart: “Change the Channel: WCVB-TV

1972-1982.” Opens Jan. 12, 291 Church St., 212-431-5270.

Bold Hype Gallery: “Fracture.” Opens Jan. 13, 547 W. 27th St., 5th Fl., 212-868-2322.

Bonni Benrubi Gallery: Karine Laval: “Mise En Abyme.” Opens Jan. 13, 41 E. 57th St., 13th Fl., 212-888-6007.

Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery: Ben Rubin: “Vectors.”

Opens Jan. 14, 505 W. 24th St., 212-243-8830.

Forum Gallery: Brian Rutenberg: “Low Dense.”

Opens Jan. 13, 730 5th Ave., 212-355-4545.

Gallery 300: “Apollo & Other Bronze Gods.” Opens Jan. 22, 300 W. 22nd St., 917-327-5714.

Gallery 307: Eva Deutsch: “Paintings: 1950-2010.”

Opens Jan. 20, 307 7th Ave., Ste. 1401, 646400-5254.

International Print Center New York: “New Prints 2011/Winter.” Opens Jan. 13, 508 W. 26th St., Rm. 5A, 212-989-5090.

June Kelly Gallery: Victor Kord: “Hiding in Plain Sight.” Opens Jan. 21, 166 Mercer St., 212-2261660.

Lesley Heller Workspace: Deborah Brown: “The Bushwick Paintings.” Opens Jan. 12. “Fractured Earth.”

Opens Jan. 12, 54 Orchard St., 212-410-6120.

Marvelli Gallery: John Finneran: “If I Had My Way In This Wicked World.” Opens Jan. 13, 526 W. 26th St., 2nd Fl., 212-627-3363.

Mike Weiss Gallery: Christian Vincent: “Tunnel Vision.” Opens Jan. 13, 520 W. 24th St., 212691-6899.

Miyako Yoshinaga Art Prospects: José Luis Fariñas: “Skirting the Apocalypse.” Opens Jan. 20, 547 W. 27th St., 2nd Fl., 212-268-7132.

Noho Gallery: Jessica Fromm. Opens Jan. 18, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., 212-367-7063.

The Pace Gallery: Jennifer Bartlett. Opens Jan. 12, 545 W. 22nd St., 212-989-4258.

The Pace Gallery: Tony Feher. Opens Jan. 14, 534 W. 25th St., 212-929-7000.

Pace/MacGill Gallery: “Hai Bo.” Opens Jan. 20, 32 E. 57th St., 212-759-7999.

Pandemic Gallery: “Trespass.” Opens Jan. 15, 37 Broadway, Brooklyn, 917-727-3466.

Perry Rubenstein Gallery: Yves Oppenheim. Opens Jan. 13, 527 W. 23rd St., 212-627-8000.

Postmasters Gallery: Jennifer & Kevin McCoy: “Abu Dhabi Is Love Forever.” Opens Jan. 15, 459 W. 19th St., 212-727-3323.

Purumé Gallery: “Renewal.” Opens Jan. 19, 11 E. 13th St., 212-206-0411.

Raandesk Gallery of Art: Jennifer Murray: “Displaced Fables/Damaged Dreams.” Opens Jan. 13, 16 W. 23rd St., 4th Fl., 212-696-7432.

Salmagundi Club: The Annual Black & White Exhibition. Opens Jan. 24, 47 5th Ave., 212255-7740.

Smack Mellon: “SITE 92: Work Permit Approved.”

Opens Jan. 15, 92 Plymouth St., Brooklyn, 718834-8761.

Team Gallery: Brice Dellsperger: “Refreshing Fassbinder...& others.” Opens Jan. 13, 83 Grand St., 212-279-9219.

Tyler Rollins Fine Art: Tracey Moffatt. Opens Jan. 13, 529 W. 20th St., 10W, 212-229-9100.

Von Lintel Gallery: Allyson Strafella: “Worksight.”

Opens Jan. 13, 520 W. 23rd St., 212-242-0599.

Exhibition Closings ACA Galleries: “Small & Everlasting.” Ends Jan.

29. John Dobbs: “Equilibrium/Disequilibrium.”

“Body Double 22 (After Eyes Wide Shut),” by Brice Dellsperger at Team Gallery.

Ends Jan. 29, 529 W. 20th St., 5th Fl., 212206-8080.

Amador Gallery: Arnold Odermatt: “On Duty.”

Ends Jan. 22, 41 E. 57th St., 6th Fl., 212-7596740.

ArtGate Gallery: “New Wave of Asia.” Ends Jan. 26, 520 W. 27th St., #101, 646-455-0986.

Bis.Co.Latte: Susan Wallach Fino: “Then & Now: I Was So Much Older Then, I’m Younger Than That Now.” Ends Jan. 16, 667 10th Ave., 212581-3900.

Causey Contemporary: Elise Freda: “Where Earth Meets Sky.” Ends Jan. 24. Carri Skoczek: “Las Matadoras.” Ends Jan. 24, 92 Wythe Ave., Brooklyn, 718-218-8939.

Edwynn Houk Gallery: Lalla Essaydi. Ends Jan. 22, 745 5th Ave., 212-750-7070.

Feature Inc.: Todd Knopke: “CEC (Change Everything Carefully).” Ends Jan. 16, 131 Allen St., 212-675-7772.

Frederico Sève Gallery: Tony Bechara: “Minima Visibilia.” Ends Jan. 13, 37 W. 57th St., 4th Fl., 212-334-7813.

Gabarron Foundation: Jorge Rando: “Prostitutes.”

Ends Jan. 14, 149 E. 38th St., 212-573-6968.

Gagosian Gallery: Robert Rauschenberg. Ends Jan. 15, 522 W. 21st St., 212-741-1717.

Gary Snyder Project Space: Sven Lukin: “Paintings, 1960-1971.” Ends Jan. 29, 250 W. 26th St., 212-929-1351.

Half Gallery: Hermann Amann: “Fluorescence.”

Ends Jan. 22, 208 Forsyth St., no phone.

Hasted Kraeutler: Nathan Harger. Ends Jan. 29, 537 W. 24th St., 212-627-0006.

Henry Gregg Gallery: Judith Nilson: “Paintings/ Drawings.” Ends Jan. 16, 111 Front St., Ste. 226, Brooklyn, 718-408-1090.

Icosahedron Gallery: “Into the Void.” Ends Jan. 29, 606 W. 26th St., 212-966-3897.

Jason McCoy Inc.: “Galaxy & Cosmos.” Ends Jan. 15, 41 E. 57th St., 11th Fl., 212-310-1996.

June Kelly Gallery: Rebecca Welz: “Steel Nets.”

Ends Jan. 18, 166 Mercer St., 212-226-1660.

Leslie Feely Fine Art: Julie Olitski & Anthony Caro: “Making Art As Naked As Possible.” Ends Jan. 15, 33 E. 68th St., 212-988-0040.

Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation: Carlo Pittore.

Ends Jan. 22, 26 Wooster St., 212-431-2609.

Luise Ross Gallery: Victor Faccinto: “Three Decades.” Ends Jan. 15, 511 W. 25th St., #307, 212-343-2161.

Lyons Wier Gallery: “Here & Now.” Ends Jan. 29, 542 W. 24th St., 212-242-6220.

Michael Mut Gallery: “Animated Objects.” Ends Jan. 15, 97 Ave. C, 212-677-7868.

Nohra Haime Gallery: Eve Sonneman: “Sight/ Sound.” Ends Jan. 29, 730 5th Ave., Ste. 701, 212-888-3550.

Onishi Gallery: Ayako Wakahara. Ends Jan. 19, 521 W. 26th St., 212-695-8035.

Peter Blum Chelsea: Huma Bhabha: “Drawings.”

Ends Jan. 15, 526 W. 29th St., 212-244-6055.

Peter Blum Soho: David Rabinowitch: “Birth of

Romanticism: New Works on Paper.” Ends Jan. 22, 99 Wooster St., 212-343-0441.

Rubelle & Norman Schafler Gallery: “Schafler@25.”

Ends Jan. 21, Pratt Institute, 200 Willoughby Ave., Brooklyn, 718-636-3517.

Salon 94: Hanna Liden & Nate Lowman: “Come As You Are Again.” Ends Jan. 12, 12 E. 94th St., 646-672-9212.

Skoto Gallery: Tesfaye Tessema: “Symphony in Colors.” Ends Jan. 22, 529 W. 20th St., 5th Fl., 212-352-8058.

Soho Photo Gallery: Norman H. Gershman: “Besa: Muslims Who Saved Jews During World War II.” Ends Jan. 29, 15 White St., 212-226-8571.

Sous Les Etoiles Gallery: Ichigo Sugawara: “The Bright Forest.” Ends Jan. 29, 560 Broadway, Ste. 205, 212-966-0796.

Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects: Kurt Knobelsdorf: “Postcard From Florida.” Ends Jan. 15, 24 E. 73rd St., #2F, 917-861-7312.

Susan Eley Fine Art: “Burlesque: New York to Hollywood.” Ends Jan. 21, 46 W. 90th St., 2nd Fl., 917-952-7641.

Swiss Institute: Rita Ackermann & Harmony Korine: “Shadow Fux.” Ends Jan. 22, 495 Broadway, 3rd Fl., 212-925-2035.

Talwar Gallery: Sheila Makhijani: “Toss.” Ends

January 12, 2011 | City Arts

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ArtsAGENDA Jan. 15, 108 E. 16th St., 212-673-3096.

Tria Gallery: Casey Vogt & daniel Baltzer: “Back-

ground Noise.” Ends Jan. 22, 531 W. 25th St., Ground Floor, 212-695-0021.

Woodward Gallery: Robert Indiana: “Now.” Ends Jan. 22, 133 Eldridge St., 212-966-3411.

Museums American Folk Art Museum: “Perspectives: Forming

the Figure.” Ends Aug. 2011. “Quilts: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum.”

Ends Oct. 16, 45 W. 53rd St., 212-265-1040.

American Museum of Natural History: “Brain: The Inside Story.” Ends Aug. 14, Central Park West at West 79th Street, 212-769-5100.

Art Gallery: “60 from the ’60s.” Ends Feb. 28, 1285 Avenue of the Americas, no phone.

Brooklyn Historical Society: “Home Base: Memories of the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field.”

Ends Apr. 24. “It Happened in Brooklyn.”

Ongoing, 128 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn, 718-2224111.

Brooklyn Museum: “Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera.” Ends Apr. 10. Sam Taylor-Wood: “Ghosts.” Ends Aug. 14, 200 Eastern Pkwy., Brooklyn, 718-638-5000.

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum: “Set in Style: The Jewelry of Van Cleef & Arpels.” Feb. 18-June 5, 2 E. 91st St., 212-849-8400.

Discovery Times Square Exposition: “King Tut NYC: Return of the King.” Ends Jan. 17, 226 W. 44th St., no phone.

The Drawing Center: “Day Job.” Ends Feb. 3, 35 Wooster St., 212-219-2166.

Frick Collection: “The King at War: Velázquez’s Portrait of Philip IV.” Ends Jan. 23, 1 E. 70th St., 212-288-0700.

International Center of Photography: “Wang Qingsong: When Worlds Collide.” Jan. 21-May 8. “Jasper, Texas: The Community Photographs of Alonzo Jordan.” Jan. 21-May 8. “Take Me to the Water: Photographs of River Baptisms.” Jan. 21-May 8, 1133 6th Ave., 212-857-0000.

Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum: “27 Seconds.”

Ends Jan. 16, Pier 86, West 46th Street & 12th Avenue, 212-245-0072.

Japan Society: Max Gimblett & Lewis Hyde: “oxherding.” Ends Jan. 16, 333 E. 47th St., 212832-1155.

Jewish Museum: “A Hanukkah Project: Daniel Libeskind’s Line of Fire.” Ends Jan. 30. “Shifting the Gaze: Painting & Feminism.” Ends Jan. 30.

“Houdini: Art & Magic.” Ends March 27, 1109 5th Ave., 212-423-3200.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: “Miró: The Dutch Interiors.” Ends Jan. 17. “Man, Myth & Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance.” Ends Jan. 17. “The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs.”

Ends Jan. 23. “Katrin Sigurdardottir at the Met.” Ends March 6. “The Roman Mosaic from Lod, Israel.” Ends Apr. 3. “Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand.” Ends Apr. 10. “Haremhab, The General Who Became King.” Ends July 4, 1000 5th Ave., 212-535-7710.

The Morgan Library & Museum: “The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives.” Jan. 21-May 22.

“Mannerism & Modernism: The Kasper Collection of Drawings & Photographs.” Jan. 21-May 1. “Degas: Drawings & Sketchbooks.”

Ends Jan. 23. “The Changing Face of William Shakespeare.” Feb. 4-May 1, 225 Madison Ave., 212-685-0008.

El Museo del Barrio: “Luis Camnitzer.” Feb. 2-May 29, 1230 5th Ave., 212-831-7272.

Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology: “Japan Fashion Now.” Ends Apr. 2, Seventh Avenue at West 27th Street, 212-217-4558.

Museum of American Finance: “America’s First IPO.”

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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com

Ends March 2011. “Scandal! Financial Crime, Chicanery & Corruption That Rocked America.”

Ends April 2011. “Tracking the Credit Crisis.”

Ongoing, 48 Wall St., 212-908-4110.

Museum of Arts & Design: Patrick Jouin: “Design & Gesture.” Ends Feb. 6. “Eat Drink Art Design.”

Ends March 27. “The Global Africa Project.”

Ends May 15, 2 Columbus Cir., 212-299-7777.

Museum of Jewish Heritage: “Project Mah Jongg.”

Ends Feb. 27. “Last Folio: Remnants of Jewish Life in Slovakia.” Opens March 25. “Fire in My Heart: The Story of Hannah Senesh.” Ends Aug. 7. “The Morgenthaus: A Legacy of Service.”

Ends Sept. 5, 36 Battery Pl., 646-437-4200.

Museum of Modern Art: “Projects 93: Dinh Q. Lê.”

Ends Jan. 24. “Action! Design Over Time.”

Ends Jan. 31. “On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century.” Ends Feb. 7. “Weimar Cinema, 1919-1933: Daydreams & Nightmares.”

Ends March 7. “Counter Space: Design & the Modern Kitchen.” Ends March 14. “Abstract Expressionist New York.” Ends Apr. 25, 11 W. 53rd St., 212-708-9400.

New Museum: “Voice & Wind: Haegue Yang.” Ends Jan. 23. “Free.” Ends Jan. 23. “David Wojnarowicz: A Fire in My Belly, A Work in Progress (1986-87).” Ends Jan. 23. “George Condo: Mental States.” Jan. 26-May 15. “Lynda Benglis.”

Feb. 9-July 13, 235 Bowery, 212-219-1222.

New York Public Library: “Three Faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam.” Ends Feb. 27, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Print Gallery & Stokes Gallery, East 42nd Street & Fifth Avenue, 917275-6975.

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts: “Alwin Nikolais’ Total Theater of Motion.” Ends Jan. 15. “On Stage in Fashion: Design for Theater, Opera & Dance.” Ends Jan. 22, 40 Lincoln Center Plz., 212-870-1630.

Noguchi Museum: “On Becoming An Artist: Isamu Noguchi & His Contemporaries, 1922-1960.”

Ends Apr. 24, 33rd Road at Vernon Boulevard, Queens, 718-721-2308.

Rubin Museum of Art: “Body Language: The Yogis of India & Nepal.” Jan. 28-May 30. “Embodying the Holy: Icons in Eastern Orthodox Christianity & Tibetan Buddhism.” Ends March 7. “Grain of Emptiness: Buddhism-Inspired Contemporary Art.” Ends Apr. 11. “The Nepalese Legacy in Tibetan Painting.” Ends May 23, 150 W. 17th St., 212-620-5000.

Society of Illustrators: “Artist As Brand.” Ends Jan. 23. “Illustrators 53: Book & Editorial Exhibit.” Jan. 26-Feb. 19, 128 E. 63rd St., 212838-2560.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: “Vox Populi: Posters of the Interwar Years.” Ends Jan. 18. “The Great Upheaval: Modern Art from the Guggenheim Collection, 1910-1918.” Feb. 4-June 1.

“Kandinsky at the Bauhaus, 1922-1933.” Ongoing, 1071 5th Ave., 212-423-3500.

Studio Museum: “VideoStudio: Changing Same.”

Ends March 13. “The Production of Space.”

Ends March 13. “StudioSound: Matana Roberts.” Ends March 13. “Harlem Postcards: Fall/ Winter 2010-11.” Ends March 13. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: “Any Number of Preoccupations.”

Ends March 13. Mark Bradford: “Alphabet.”

Ends March 13, 144 W. 125th St., 212-864-4500.

Whitney Museum of American Art: Slater Bradley & Ed Lachman: “Shadow.” Ends Jan. 23. Charles LeDray: “workworkworkworkwork.” Ends Feb. 13. “Modern Life: Edward Hopper & His Time.” Ends Apr. 10, 945 Madison Ave., 212570-3600.

Auctions Christie’s: Christie’s Interiors. Jan. 12, 10 a.m. &

Out of Town EVENTS & ATTRACTIONS THE ALDRICH CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM: The

Aldrich presents a commissioned & controversial work by Shimon Attie, “MetroPAL. IS.” The high-definition video focuses on the hybrid identities of New York City’s Israeli & Palestinian populations. Opens Jan. 30, 258 Main St., Ridgefield, Conn., 203-438-4519, www.aldrichart.org.

BERKSHIRE MUSEUM: “Henry Klimowicz: Paper &

Light” is a site-specific installation utilizing natural light & used cardboard to resemble the ephemeral & delicate work of insects. Ongoing, 39 South St., Pittsfield, Mass., 413-4437171, www.berkshiremuseum.org.

BRUCE MUSEUM: Spanning two thousand years, “Hu-

man Connections: Figural Art from the Bruce Museum Collection” presents approximately 40 paintings, sculptures, photographs & works on paper depicting the human body. Opens Feb. 15, 1 Museum Dr., Greenwich, Conn., 203869-0376, www.brucemuseum.org.

ELAYNE P. BERNSTEIN THEATRE: “The Mystery of

Irma Vep,” by Charles Ludlam & directed by Kevin G. Coleman, features two actors in eight roles, spanning all storytelling genres to create a hilarious romp that will leave you falling out of your seat with laughter. Performed by Shakespeare & Co. Opens Feb. 4, Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, 70 Kemble St., Lenox,

3. Native American Art. Jan. 18, 2. Important American Silver Including Magnificent Tiffany.

Jan. 20, 10 a.m. Important American Furniture, Folk Art, English Pottery, Rugs & Prints. Jan. 21, 10 a.m. & 2. Syd Levethan: The Longridge Collection. Jan. 24, 2. Chinese Export Art. Jan. 25, 10 a.m. & 2. Old Master & 19th-Century Paintings, Drawings & Watercolors Part I. Jan. 26, 10 a.m. Part II. Jan. 26, 2 & 4:30, 20 Rockefeller Plz., 212-636-2000.

Doyle New York: Doyle at Home. Jan. 12, 10 a.m., 175 E. 87th St., 212-427-2730.

Noho Gallery: The gallery hosts its sixth annual auction. Bid online at www.nohogallery.com or in person at the gallery. Final live bids will occur at the gallery Jan. 15, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., 212-367-7063.

ROGALLERY.com: Fine art buyers & sellers in online live art auctions. 800-888-1063, www.rogallery. com.

Swann Auction Galleries: Shelf Sale. Jan. 20, 2, 104 E. 25th St., 212-254-4710.

Art Events Chelsea Art Gallery Tour: Come to the world’s

center for contemporary art for a guided tour of the week’s top seven gallery exhibits. Jan. 15, 526 W. 26th St., www.nygallerytours.com; 1 & 3:45, $20.

Master Drawings New York: The event, now in its fifth year, returns to New York City’s Upper East Side to provide collectors with a rare opportunity to spend one week visiting more than 20 galleries that specialize in drawings & fine art. Preview held Jan. 21. Jan. 22-29, locations vary, 212-7558500, www.masterdrawingsinnewyork.com.

New York Ceramics Fair: The 12th year of the event once again brings a select group of worldrenowned galleries & dealers specializing in pottery, glass & porcelain, only this time, it welcomes viewers to a new location. Ticketed

Mass., 413-637-3353, www.shakespeare.org.

NORMAN ROCKWELL MUSEUM: “Looking Back: The

Problem We All Live With” returns to 1964 with Norman Rockwell’s depiction of Ruby Bridges taking her first steps toward integrating a public school. The installation focuses on Rockwell’s art, reference photographs & reactionary letters from the public. Ends Jan 31, 9 Rte. 183, Stockbridge, Mass., 413-2984100, www.nrm.org.

MONTCLAIR ART MUSEUM: “Engaging Nature:

American & Native American Artists (A.D. 1200-2004)” is the Museum’s first attempt to integrate American & Native American art from the collection around a central theme.

The pieces span from prehistoric ceramics to 19th-century landscape paintings. Ends Sept.

25, 3 S. Mountain Ave., Montclair, N.J., 973746-5555, www.montclair-art.com.

YALE CENTER FOR BRITISH ART: After spending six

years living & working in Japan as a ceramist, Rebecca Salter returned to England & took up drawing, woodblock printing & painting.

The retrospective “‘into the light of things’: Rebecca Salter works, 1981-2010” creates a dialogue between Western & Japanese aesthetics, artistic practice & architecture. Opens Feb. 3, 1080 Chapel St.‚ New Haven‚ Conn., 203-432-2800, www.ycba.yale.edu. preview held Jan. 18. Jan. 19-23, Bohemian National Hall, 321 E. 73rd St.; times vary, $20+.

Music & Opera BAMcafé Live: As part of its 24th annual Brooklyn

tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., BAM presents Blitz the Ambassador & Earthman Experience. Jan. 14 & 15, 30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn, 718-636-4129; 9, free.

Juilliard: Listen to a lively lineup of Polish music since World War II at Juilliard’s FOCUS! 2011 festival. Jan. 22, 24-28, locations vary, 212-7697406; times vary, free.

Merkin Concert Hall: Icelandic violin virtuoso Hlif Sigurjonsdottir performs. Jan. 15, 129 W. 67th St., 212-501-3330; 8, $15+.

Merkin Concert Hall: Kaufman Center, in association with New Amsterdam Records, presents the 2011 Ecstatic Music Festival, a showcase of collaborate performances between 150 composers, songwriters & performers. The event opens with a free seven-hour music marathon and continues with 13 additional concerts. Jan. 17-March 28, 129 W. 67th St., 212-501-3330; times vary, $15+.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Pacifica Quartet performs Shostakovich. Feb. 19, 1000 5th Ave., 212-535-7710; 7, $45.

Metropolitan Opera: “Carmen.” Ends Jan. 13. “Don Pasquale.” Ends Feb. 19. “La Bohème.” Ends Feb. 25. “Il Trovatore.” Ends Apr. 30, West 62nd Street, betw. Columbus & Amsterdam Aves., 212-362-6000; times vary, $25+.

Peter Jay Sharp Theatre: Conductor Daniel Harding leads a live broadcast from La Scala of Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” & Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci.” Jan. 20, Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, 212-864-5400; 2, $27.

Stern Auditorium: Pianist Jonathan Biss makes his Carnegie Hall recital debut. Jan. 21, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800; 8, $15.50+.

Stern Auditorium: James Levine leads the MET

Orchestra in the first of three Carnegie Hall Concerts this season. Jan. 23, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800; 3, $26+.

Weill Recital Hall: Violinist Quinton I. Morris performs with special guest soprano Indra Thomas.

Jan. 15, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-2477800; 2, $20+.

WMP Concert Hall: Violinist Sean Lee & pianist Edvinas Minkstimas perform works by Beethoven, Stravinsky & Wieniawski. Jan. 12.

Violinist Francesca Anderegg & pianist Brent Funderburk perform works by Mozart, Schubert, Perle & Schoenberg. Jan. 14, 31 E. 28th St., 212582-7536; times vary, $10.

Zankel Hall: Uruguayan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler performs a blend of traditional Uruguayan music, bossa nova, pop & electronica. Jan. 22, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800; 10, $38+.

Zankel Hall: Acclaimed pianist Brad Mehldau continues his residency with a solo recital of original compositions & pieces by Bach, Brahms & Fauré. Jan. 26, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800; 7:30, $46+.

Dance preview a new work to music by Philip Glass.

Jan. 23, Peridance In-House Theater, Peridance Capezio Center, 126 E. 13th St., 212-877-3399; 7:30, free.

Manhattan Movement & Arts Center: The center presents “Aerial Showcase,” featuring a wide variety of aerial acts, including fabric, lyra & trapeze.

Jan. 15, 248 W. 60th St., 212-787-1178; 7, $20.

New York City Ballet: The company performs “The Magic Flute,” the comedic tale for all ages, set to a score by Riccardo Drigo. Feb. 2, 4, 6 & 8, David H. Koch Theater, 20 Lincoln Center, 212721-6500; times vary, $20+.

Parsons Dance: Parsons Dance returns to the Joyce with three programs featuring two world premiere dances. Jan. 25-Feb. 6, The Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave., 212-242-0800; times vary, $10+.

Sidra Bell Dance New York & Gallim Dance: Sidra Bell Dance makes its DTW debut with “POOL,” while choreographer Andrea Miller leads Gallim Dance in a new work. Jan. 18-22, Dance Theater Workshop, 219 W. 19th St., 212691-6500; 7:30, $20.

Tango Fire: Ten dancers explore the evolution of tango in “Tango Inferno.” Ends Jan. 23, The Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave., 212-242-0800; times vary, $10+.

Trisha Brown Dance Company: MoMA presents the company as part of its Performance Exhibition Series, a program of live performance & dance in conjunction with the group exhibition “On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century.” Jan. 12, 15 & 16, Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd St., 212-708-9400; times vary, $12+.

Jazz The Allen Room: Vocalists Mary Stallings & Jane

Monheit, with music director & pianist Eric Reed & his trio, sing the music of the legendary Sarah Vaughan. Jan. 21 & 22, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at West 60th Street, 212-721-6500; times vary, $55+.

Cornelia Street Cafe: Soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom performs to celebrate the release of her new album, “Wingwalker.” Jan. 23, 29 Cornelia St., 212-989-9319; 8:30, $10+.

Iridium Jazz Club: Composer, singer & keyboardist Phoebe Legere performs her new show “Ooh la la Coq Tail” with her quartet on the third

Ros Kavanagh

Lydia Johnson Dance: Johnson & her company

Marty Ray and Fiona Show in John Gabriel Borkman at The Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Tuesday of the month. Jan. 18-March 15, 1650 Broadway, 212-582-2121; times vary, $35+.

Jazz Standard: Davell Crawford & the Davell Crawford Singers perform gospel, R&B & pop material. Jan. 12. The Tomasz Stanko Quartet performs with special guest tenor saxophonist Chris Potter. Jan. 13-16. The Mingus Big Band plays tunes from its “Blues & Politics” album.

Jan. 17. The Wayne Escoffery Quartet performs.

Jan. 25 & 26, 116 E. 27th St., 212-576-2232; times vary, $20+.

National Jazz Museum in Harlem: Trumpeter Steven Bernstein performs. Jan. 13, NJMH Visitors Center, 104 E. 126th St., Ste. 2C, 212-348-8300; 6:30, free.

The Players: Etienne Charles, trumpet & percussion, performs alongside pianist Sullivan Fortner Jr. & bassist Ben Williams. Jan. 12, 16 Gramercy Park S., 212-475-6116; 7, $20.

Rose Theater: Chick Corea performs with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis.

Jan. 20-22, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at West 60th Street, 212-721-6500; 8, $10+.

Smoke: Bill Stewart Quartet. Jan. 14 & 15. The Jimmy Cobb Quartet. Jan. 21 & 22. Eric Alexander Quartet. Jan. 28 & 29, 2751 Broadway, 212-864-6662; times vary, $30.

The Stone: Trumpet player Brian Groder performs his six-movement “Cartologia Suite” for jazz ensemble with pianist Angelica Sanchez, bassist Sean Conly & drummer Newman Baker. Jan. 13, Avenue C at East Second Street; 8, $10.

White Wave: White Wave presents the 2011 Cool New York Dance Festival, a winter dance showcase of about 60 contemporary companies & choreographers. Jan. 27-Feb. 6, John Ryan Theater, 25 Jay St., Brooklyn, 718-855-8822;

times vary, free.

Zinc Bar: Trumpet & trombone player Mac Golle-

hon performs in celebration of his new album, “Straight Ahead.” Jan. 18, 82 W. 3rd St., 212477-9462; times vary, $10.

Theater Billy Elliot: This Tony-winning adaptation of the

2000 film chronicles a young British boy’s desire to dance ballet in a poverty-choked, coal-mining town. Open run, Imperial Theatre, 249 W. 45th St., 212-239-6200.

The Bremen Town Musicians: The family-friendly musical is adapted from the Soviet cartoon based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale. The production will be performed in Russian without an English language translation. Jan. 21 & 22, Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts, 2900 Campus Rd., Brooklyn, 718-951-4500.

La Casa de Bernarda Alba: Tyrannical mother Bernarda Alba attempts to dominate her five unmarried daughters, all of whom harbor a secret passion for the same man. Ends May 27, Repertorio Español, 138 E. 27th St., 212-225-9999.

Chicago: The long-running revival of Kander & Ebb’s musical about sex, murder & celebrity continues to razzle-dazzle. Open run, Ambassador Theatre, 219 W. 49th St., 212-239-6200.

Danny & Sylvia - The Danny Kaye Musical: This musical love story depicts the relationship between Danny Kaye & his wife & creative partner, Sylvia Fine, who wrote many of Kaye’s most famous songs. Open run, St. Luke’s Theatre, 308 W. 46th St., 212-239-6200.

Driving Miss Daisy: James Earl Jones & Vanessa Redgrave star in Alfred Uhry’s play. Ends Apr. 9, Golden Theatre, 252 W. 45th St., 212-239-

6200.

Fuerza Bruta - Look Up: A visual dance-rave, techno-

ride, Latino walking-on-the-ceiling fiesta from Buenos Aires. Open run, Daryl Roth Theatre, 101 E. 15th St., 212-239-2600.

Gentrifusion: Six playwrights explore the gentrification of New York’s neighborhoods. Jan. 27-Feb. 13, The LABA Theatre at the 14th Street Y, 344 E. 14th St., 866-811-4111.

John Gabriel Borkman: Irish poet Frank McGuinness presents a new version of Henrik Ibsen’s play, starring Fiona Shaw, Alan Rickman & Lindsay Duncan. Ends Feb. 6, BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St., 718-636-4100.

Knickerbocker Holiday: The Collegiate Chorale presents Kurt Weill’s romantic comedy, first performed in 1938. Jan. 25 & 26, Alice Tully Hall, 1941 Broadway, 646-202-9623.

Memphis - A New Musical: Set in the titular city during the segregated 1950s, this musical charts the romance between a white DJ & a black singer as rock-and-roll begins to emerge. Open run, Shubert Theatre, 225 W. 44th St., 212-239-6200.

Next to Normal: A woman & her family struggle to cope with her bipolar disorder in this emotional, Tony-winning musical. Ends Jan. 16, Booth Theatre, 222 W. 45th St., 212-239-6200.

Spider-Man - Turn Off the Dark: Julie Taymor directs while Bono & The Edge provide the score as the comic-book classic hits Broadway. Opens Feb., Foxwoods Theatre, 213 W. 42nd St., 877-2502929.

Way to Heaven: Matthew Earnest directs Juan Mayorga’s depiction of the fake Jewish settlement of Theresienstadt, used by the Nazis during the Holocaust to convince outsiders that its camps were humane. Ends Jan. 27, Gramercy Arts Theater, 138 E. 27th St., 212-225-9999.

January 12, 2011 | City Arts

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PainttheTOWN

By Amanda Gordon

A Look Ahead

Rachel Zoe arrives at a Lanvin party. Ah, the red—or confetti—carpets.

David Monn decorated The New York Public Library’s Rose Reading Room for a fall gala. In May, the Library is celebrating its flagship building’s centennial.

Photos by Amanda Gordon Dinner is served, sometimes on tabletops decorated by Ron Wendt.

Here is a 2011 guide for going out, inspiring youth, nurturing science, making merry, supporting artists and ideas, exploring hotel ballrooms, fighting poverty, meeting new people, defending human rights and helping people in need.

Jan. 20: At the opening night party for the Winter Antiques Show, gape over precious tapestries and beds of kings, and say hello to Sallie Krawcheck, the chair of the event and the president of global wealth and investment management at Bank of America. The party benefits the East Side House Settlement, which services the South Bronx.

Feb. 3: The Armitage Gone! Dance gala involves site-specific “Exquisite Corpse happenings” by the Armitage Company, drag artist Richard Move and Dance Theatre of Harlem. The event includes a Chinese banquet in honor of the Chinese New Year.

Feb. 5: New York Human Rights Campaign holds a fund-raiser at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel honoring Julianne Moore and Credit Suisse. The cast of Broadway’s Priscilla Queen of the Desert will perform scenes from the musical.

March 4: ISSUE Project Room holds its first fund-raiser in its future home at 110 Livingston in Downtown Brooklyn. On the bill: A tribute to composer and multiinstrumentalist Elliott Sharp; schmoozing with Jo Andres and Steve Buscemi, the party’s hosts.

March 9: The AVENUE Antiques & Art at the Armory Show kicks off with a VIP preview, including a New York School of Interior Design Benefit honoring Mario Buatta.

March 10: The ladies in charge of The Frick Collection’s Young Fellows Ball have chosen “Chinoiserie” as the party’s theme, drawing inspiration from the Eastern-inspired objects in the museum’s decorative arts collections.

March 24: South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and Avenue Q’s Robert Lopez give Broadway The Book of Mormon. We can’t wait for the opening night party.

April 12: James Taylor performs a concert to benefit Carnegie Hall, with an eclectic guest artist slate including Sting, Steve Martin and Barbara Cook.

April 20: Opening night of the Tribeca Film Festival.

April 21: Stephen Schwartz, the composer of Wicked, Pippin and Godspell, to name a few, gets a tribute with scheduled performances by Kristin Chenoweth, Raúl Esparza, Victor Garber and Brian Stokes Mitchell. The host and beneficiary is New York City Opera.

May 4: Lizzie Tisch is a chairman this year of the Central Park hat lunch, and even if her husband won’t be able to see her under her very fancy brim, we know he’s behind her.

He recently shared with us that Central Park is his favorite New York City landmark. The event, organized by the Women’s Committee of the Central Park Conservancy, raises millions and takes place outdoors in the beautiful Conservatory Gardens.

May 23: The New York Public Library’s Centennial Gala celebrates 100 years of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at West 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.

May 24: The Whitney Museum of American Art breaks ground on a new building in the Meatpacking District.

May 26: El Museo del Barrio’s gala honors photographer Mario Testino, so the celebrity quotient will rise exponentially, against a backdrop of Latin elegance. Don’t let the scene distract you from the art projects on display, a collaboration between Isabel and Ruben Toledo and children at the museum.

June 22: This event wins a spot by name alone. The New York Philharmonic presents The Cunning Little Vixen, an opera about “the cycle of life in a European forest.”

July 6: Royal Shakespeare Company opens a five-week engagement at the Park Avenue Armory as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. The first offering is As You Like It. Aug. 30: Billie Jean King and John McEnroe host a party at the U.S. Open to raise money for free tennis instruction for youth around the city.

Sept. 18: MoMA opens De Kooning: A Retrospective, organized by John Elderfield, chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture.

Nov. 2: The Avon Foundation for Women holds a gala presenting the winners of an international singing talent contest for women.

Dec. 31: Merce Cunningham Dance Company presents its final performance at Park Avenue Armory, while The Enchanted Island, a modern, Baroque pastiche opens at the Metropolitan Opera, featuring Plácido Domingo.

For more party coverage, visit www.cityarts.info. To contact the author or purchase photos, email Amanda.Gordon@rocketmail.com; bit.ly/agphotos.

January 12, 2011 | City Arts

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