cityArts February 23, 2010

FEBRUARY 23, 2010 Volume 2, Issue 4

Focus on Museums:

Curators on Display

As museums continue to find their footing, a new fleet of decision makers ready themselves for the mission ahead

BY PADDY JOHNSON hat low hum of discontent you hear around the art world is over the quality of New York’s museum shows. Over the past few months, that persistent problem has started to clang and now resembles something like a car without a muffler. No one’s saying particularly good things about the state of museum curating in the city, but on the plus side, the fact that so many people seem more interested in the practice is elevating the discourse surrounding what it means to put on a show in New York City.

The past year has seen a significant amount of change occur in a short period of time, with established curators named directors at our city’s major institutions. The Metropolitan Museum, our gold standard, named Thomas Campbell as its new director (an accomplished curator with a specialty in European tapestry) and Klaus Biesenbach, a former curator known for mounting displays of performance and conceptual art, is now the director of P.S.1.

Although not typically in the same league, the overlooked Cooper-Hewitt even named an actual designer, Bill Moggridge, instead of another bureaucrat. Curators and practitioners, instead of showmen with big renovation and expansion plans but little functional experience, seem to be de rigeur.

Then there was the kerfuffle over the New Museum’s decision to show a selection of works from the collection of museum trustee Dakis Joannou, curated by superstar artist Jeff Koons. Led by James Wagner and Tyler Green, the soon-to-launch Skin Fruit exhibition troubled many, myself included, and erupted into heated blog posts denouncing the precedentsetting move. After all, the exhibition stands to increase the value of Joannou’s Athens-based

Abstraction in Folk art.

Kiki Smith makes her mark downtown.

Conceptualism in Harlem.

Mummy cases and more.

Plus: Paul Taylor Dance, great Jazz pianists, opera boot camp

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CONTINUED on page 9

Charles Ray’s “Puzzle Bottle” on view at the Whitney as part of the “Collecting Biennials” show, through Nov. 28.

InthisIssue 6

MUSEUM MATTERS Anish Kapoor at Gugg; “30 Seconds Off an Inch” at Studio Museum; Egyptian artifacts at Brooklyn Museum; “Approaching Abstraction” at Folk Art Museum.

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15 Kenneth Blom at Jason McCoy Gallery.

COLLECTIVE WORKS Visiting museums off the beaten path: Noguchi, Hispanic Society, Alice Austen House, Al Hirschfeld and more

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JAZZ The city’s mid-career jazz pianists

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AT THE GALLERIES Reviews: Janet Malcolm, Kenneth Blom, “Dialogues in Modernism,” Steve McQueen, Man Ray, “Solace,” Marc Dennis & “Double-Bill”

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ARTS AGENDA Gallery Openings, Jazz, Classical, Theater, Auction houses, Art Events and more

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PAINT THE TOWN Jennifer Holliday at Evidence Dance gala at the Plaza Hotel; Ghada Amer and Reza Farkhondeh learn wine; 52nd Street Project opens new space

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InBrief

Annmaria Mazzini, Michelle Fleet and Jeffrey Smith of the Paul Taylor Dance Company in Also Playing.

Anarchic, Angelic Bodies One of the particular pleasures of the Paul Taylor Dance Company’s annual season is the thrill of anticipation. Looking over the list of 18 dances on the schedule is like standing before a banquet table laden with delicacies— such temptation, such variety.

You could limit yourself to Baroque music alone, and have an abundance of terrific dances to watch: Taylor, 80 years old this year, has found unbounded inspiration in Bach and Handel, and always offers unique, heartfelt insight into these scores. There is the company’s ever-fresh, deeply human signature work,

Esplanade, and the subdued masterpiece Airs, with its eddying whirlpool patterns revealing the mastery of Taylor’s craftsmanship—look how much he can achieve with just seven dancers. There is the courtly majesty of Cascade, and the lustrous gamboling pleasures of Brandenburgs. It could be seen as Taylor’s updating of Apollo, with a heroic male encountering three frisky, athletic women—but then there are those five additional men darting around. Taylor is, happily, reviving Dandelion Wine, a work he created 10 years ago to an Italian Baroque composer, Pietro Locatelli. It was only in the rep fleetingly, but impressed as a festive pastoral divertissement, and it should be interesting to revisit it in light of the works Taylor has made in the intervening decade.

If you want to examine how Taylor deals with contemporary scores, there are plenty of opportunities. Two major works are set to 20th century masters: Beloved Renegade, a work of profundity and power inspired by Walt Whitman, is set to Poulenc’s Gloria. For Sunset, his eloquent, elegiac dance about soldiers encountering angelic women in a park, he astutely chose works for strings by Elgar. Several of his darker, more knotty—if not downright inscrutable—works are set to commissioned scores by his contemporaries. Scudorama (Clarence Jackson), Private Domain (John Herbert McDowell), Runes (Gerald Busby) and Syzygy (Donald York) fall into this category. Private Domain, a work seen infrequently, is among the significant revivals this season. Scudorama, a near-legendary, anarchic dance from the early 1960s, had not been seen for decades before returning last year for just two performances.

You can time-travel back to the 1960s through two dances set to music guaranteed to churn up lots of memories of that era. Making a most welcome return to the rep is A Field of Grass—a real charmer that makes imaginative use of Harry Nilsson songs to conjure up the hippie heyday. Changes, last year’s winning new work, is set to songs by The Mamas and Papas. It should be interesting to see and compare these two works, created 15 years apart.

As usual, Taylor has two premieres in the offing, so there is the extra frisson of the unknown—and the potential for yet another wondrous discovery. They certainly promise contrasting pleasures. Also Playing uses Donizetti’s ballet music as the springboard for an evocation of vaudeville. Brief Encounters is set to Debussy, from whom Taylor has drawn considerable inspiration in the past.

Taylor programs tend to be wonderfully balanced, giving you a rich sampling of his idiosyncratic imagination and wondrous gift for movement invention. So anytime you go, you’re bound to see something new and something old; a lyrical, optimistic dance next to a fierce, obstreperous one. Take a seat at the table of this rich smorgasbord, and enjoy.

(Susan Reiter) Paul Taylor Dance, Feb. 24-Mar. 14, City Center, 131 W. 55 St., 212-581-1212; $25-$135.

Tough It Out for Opera Having a reputation as the “highest form of art” might not do opera any favors, at least not if it makes the apex seem unattainable. And it’s not that reputation that the Metropolitan Opera Guild tries to dismantle with its ongoing Opera Boot Camp. According to Guild spokesman Jesse Cohen, they’re just trying to make it all a little more welcoming.

“It’s primarily a lecture series, although we try to use any word except ‘lecture’ because that tends to suggest one person speaking down to the audience,” Cohen explained. “We try to keep things very fun and light and casual.”

“Boot camp” might not be that much lighter a moniker than “lecture,” but the Guild seems to be doing something right in attracting new recruits. Due to a rise in demand from novice operagoers, the Guild is upping the four-lecture series from two sessions to three this year.

“I think there definitely is an increased interest in opera,” Cohen said. “People are looking for new ways into the art form. Especially if you live in the city, you hear about opera. And one thing we’ve seen with our audience is it’s pretty much a mix of ages. It’s not just the more seasoned operagoer that goes to our lectures.”

Interest has also been heightened by a Metropolitan Opera program broadcasting live high-definition performances to movie theaters, he added. The popularity of those broadcasts might be something of a recession special. While interest in the classes and the more modestly priced broadcasts is up, attendance to actual productions has been dropping.

“The Met is having a challenging year selling tickets to the house,” Cohen said. “But people are still looking for a way to get in to the art form.”

The new series begins Feb. 28, with a lecture titled “Vocal Verbiage and Vocabulary,” and continues over the following three Sundays, from 4 p.m. to 5:15 p.m., with discussions focused on staging an opera (March 7), and the history of opera from the 15th to 17th

February 23, 2010 | City Arts

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InBrief

A rendering of the proposed window at the Museum at Eldridge Street. centuries (March 14) and the 19th to the present day (March 21). Sessions are held at the Samuel B. & David Rose building at Lincoln Center, with a charge of $16 per class or $56 for all four. The Guild also offers more focused educational programs for graduates in its “Beyond Boot Camp” series. (Kurt Gottschalk) For more information, visit to www.metropolitanoperafamily.org or call 212-769-7028.

Window Treatment After 20 years and $18.5 million, the restoration of the Museum at Eldridge Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side is almost complete. The final, significant component to the restoration will be unveiled later this spring: The museum’s centerpiece east window, created by artists Kiki Smith and

ArtNews n Mar. 10, The Wooster Group will take up residence at The Baryshnikov Arts Center with a production of North Atlantic directed by Elizabeth LeCompte…

If we didn’t have enough college students of our own, beginning Mar. 4, Boston University will unveil its third annual InCite Arts Festival here in New York. Under the eye of Artistic Director Jim Petosa, the seven-day festival will feature new and experimental works including diventare, a new play that takes place in an imaginary underwater kingdom… Lincoln Center is making good use of its David Rubenstein Atrium, with free Thursday night concerts among the other events held there. Next month will feature singersongwriter Morley as well as Haitian percussionist Gaston “Bonga” Jean-Baptiste… New York Classical Theatre will stage its first indoor production beginning April 1 at World Financial Center. The group will perform a Hamlet that will sprawl over all 3.5 acres of the Battery Park adjacent space… This week, The 92nd Street Y kicks off its “Broadway Talks” series, hosted

by Jordan Roth, President of Jujamcyn Theaters. Each evening will feature Roth in conversation with a Broadway star; over the course of the series, Nathan Lane, Laura Linney, Liev Schreiber and Sean Hayes will be guests… On Sundays, Thom Bar at The Thompson Hotel is hosting Cuban fusion group Grupo Irék for a night of music as well as drink specials on mojitos and rum sangria… Terese Genecco & Her Little Big Band, billed as “New York City’s Longest Running Nightclub Act,” has extended its stay at Iridium Jazz Club for another year and will be playing on the last Tuesday of every month… On Feb. 26, Robert A.A. Lowe, the rocker from bands like 90 Day Men and Lichens, will celebrate the release of his new record with Rose Lazar at By and By Gallery in Brooklyn. The event will feature the duo’s artwork, and while there won’t be a live performance, the album, Eclipses, will be played… Thanks in part to the popularity of the Broadway show baring his name, over the next 18 months, Knitting Factory Records (yes, just like the club that recently moved from Tribeca to Williamsburg), will be re-releasing Fela Kuti’s entire catalogue. The venture kicked off on Feb. 17 with a party at the venue for the reissue of Kuti’s first nine albums… Creative Time has announced the next project for its space along The High Line: A Bell For Every Minute, a site-specific audio work

by Stephen Vitiello that features the sounds of different bells from across the City. The piece will open over the summer.

Got news? Email us at CityArts@ManhattanMedia.com.

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architect Deborah Gans.

“There was a great debate over whether or not the window should be done at all,” said Bonnie Dimun, the museum’s executive director. “We did not have the documentation of what the window originally looked like, so to do something new, it really had to resonate. It had to feel right.”

According to Dimun, a dozen artists submitted window designs to the board, and it was the collaborative design by Smith and Gans that resonated deepest. “All the designs were beautiful, but Kiki and Deborah’s design just belonged to the building,” Dimun said.

Cognizant that their design was coming into a building with so much history, Gans said she and Smith allowed the space in the synagogue to dictate their design. “We went and sat at the synagogue and talked about it,” Gans explained of her and Smith’s design process. “We decided as we were sitting there that the ceiling of the synagogue is a series of domes and those domes have stars painted on them, so it’s like a celestial dome, and at the

center of those domes is a Star of Israel. Basically what we’ve done is taken the domes in the synagogue and turned them 90 degrees.”

The end result is a “celestial” stained glass image of the Star of David centered within a myriad of golden stars against an oscillating blue backdrop. As Gans explained, to bring their design to fruition required creating a new glass-staining technique. It involves two layers of traditional hand-blown stained glass laminated on top of a support sheet of clear plate glass. Then acid is used to etch clear stars into the panes. Everything is then painted with yellow silver stain so the stars appear gold and the blue slightly greener to match the walls.

Currently Gans and Smith—who also has a solo exhibition titled Sojourn currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum—are in what Gans called the “bidding process.” Three glass and frame fabricators are creating proposals for the actual construction of the window, which Gans says is on track to be unveiled late spring or early summer. (Jordan Galloway)

Fair Game

Red Dot

Although many fairs have scaled back, the first week of March still promises to be an exciting time for collectors and voyeurs when the contemporary art scene shows its wares.

Here’s a quick guide to what to expect.

The fair exhibits painting, photography, sculpture and works on paper, and this year is partnering with MillionTreesNYC. Look for “Space Crystallization,” an art installation designed and created for the event by Ludwika Ogorzelec.

The Amory Show Piers 92 and 94 (12th Ave., betw. West 52nd & 55th Sts.), www.thearmoryshow.com

The largest and most prestigious of the international art fairs in town, Armory has commissioned British artist Susan Collis to provide images for this year’s fair and to produce special editions to benefit the Pat Hearn and Colin de Land Cancer Foundation. There’s a special focus on Berlin artists and galleries, a notable selection of galleries from the Lower East Side—including Lisa Cooley Fine Art, Eleven Rivington, Simon Preston Gallery, Rental and Rachel Uffner Gallery—are included.

Skyline NYC, 500 W. 36th St. (at 10th Ave.), www.reddotfair.com

ADAA: The Art Show Park Avenue Armory, Park Avenue at E. 67th St., www.artdealers.org

PULSE

The ADAA has changed the date of their show, America’s longest-running national fine art fair, to coincide with the other big fairs that traditionally take place during this time. The 70 selected exhibitions feature museum-quality works ranging from 19th and 20th century Old Master works to recently completed contemporary painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and multi-media. The panel for “A Committed Vision: Collecting in the New Economy” (March 6, 11 a.m.), which will focus on a variety of issues related to collecting art in different economic climates.

30 West St., (West Side Highway & W. Houston St.), www.pulse-art.com

SCOPE

Bridging the gap between alt and mainstream, PULSE’s program of large-scale sculptures and installations are featured throughout the fair in a new location: A former New York Central Railroad freight train terminal that housed five blocks of the original High Line.

“Ordinary Occurrences,” curated by Deborah Cullen, highlights recent work by artists of Caribbean and Latin American descent.

Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park (at W. 62nd St. & 10th Ave.), www.scope-art.com

Known to stray from the beaten path, the fair includes group shows presented alongside museum-quality programming, collector tours, screenings and special events. Look for “Political Revolution in my Basement,” curated by Martha Colburn; and a selection of Michael Nyman’s films in “Distractions.”

THE DRAWINGS OF

BRONZINO

Through April 18 Broadcast Sponsor of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in collaboration with the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi and the Polo Museale Fiorentino, Florence.

metmuseum.org The exhibition is made possible by the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund. Additional support is provided by Dinah Seiver and Thomas E. Foster. The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Agnolo Bronzino, Head of a Smiling Young Woman (detail), ca. 1542–43, Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques.

photo by Mathias Schormann

Museum Matters: Reviews of Four Current Shows

“Memory” by Anish Kapoor at Guggenheim.

Anish Kapoor: Memory Having several branches around the world can be an advantage for a museum. Since 1997, Deutsche Bank has commissioned over a dozen major artworks for the Guggenheim branch in Berlin. Now, for the first time, one of these works has traveled to the Guggenheim in New York, where it has been on view since November. Created by sculptor Anish Kapoor specifically for these two installations, the project may surprise visitors familiar with his work’s usual elegant exuberance.

Few artists combine tactile and optical seductions as intriguingly as Kapoor. His sculptures first gained attention in the early 1980s for evocative organic forms coated with deliciously powdery pigments. Recent works include large—often immense—pieces whose slippery forms are as much concealed as defined by taut and sometimes mirrored surfaces. Such works tease with a quality of wondrous self-generation. Though his roots may lie in Minimalism, Kapoor clearly deals more in the curiously voluptuous than in Donald Judd’s conceptual severity.

Memory suggests a different direction for the artist. Exploring the first corridor off the Guggenheim’s spiraling ramp, museumgoers will be confronted by an immense, rounding protrusion of rusty steel

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plates, bristling with bolts. Visitors must circle through the Thannhauser Gallery to obtain, from the opposite side, a more complete view of Kapoor’s remarkable 50-foot long construction. His first project in Cor-Ten steel, its 24-tons of plates and countless bolts could be a prop from a Jules Verne movie adaptation.

The casualness of its shape—a sagging egg or blunted football—clashes improbably with its conspicuously laborious facture, as well as its sheer scale: It comes within a quarter-inch of one wall, and gently swells to merge with another. With a little more scampering about, one finds, in yet another gallery, a rectangular opening cut into a wall allowing a view of Memory’s interior. This is so dark that, apart from a musty, metallic smell, one senses rather than measures its cavernous innards.

This optically impenetrable window typifies Kapoor’s exquisite play between surface and depth. Memory, however, exudes a coarse materiality and space-filling aggression—even an implied threat—that one would sooner expect of Richard Serra.

It certainly sticks in the mind. Wandering elsewhere through the museum, one thinks of this hulking vessel/barrier, buried within the Guggenheim’s walls.

As the wall text reminds us, Memory forces us to assemble an impression of its bulk from sequential experiences; this, in

turn, invites us to consider how we construct perceptions about the world at large. It’s an impressive installation, especially when encountered unexpectedly from the elevator.

But is it just a little too eager to choreograph our reactions? Some museumgoers may resist being edified on cue by such demonstrations of epic purpose. If you’re one of these, revisit the Thannhauser Gallery for an analogous experience, delivered in far more complex and less didactic fashion by Cézanne, who knew we see points of nature one at a time, and ceaselessly connect them in our minds.

—John Goodrich

second of an inch off.”

Hammons’ sociological insight, such as it is, seems an odd inspiration given that curator Naomi Beckwith undergoes contortions in the attempt to broaden the received wisdom on contemporary African-American art.

Writing in the catalog, she wonders what might happen “if we re-situate work by black artists within a history of art rather than a social history”? She frets that an emphasis on “overt political alliances and agendas” can scuttle aesthetic import. Beckwith is intent on pursuing the possibilities of art rather than limiting it to a “biopolitical ‘fact of blackness.’”

Not that she’s a fan of “color, line and form.” You have to wonder if Beckwith understands them at all, given how she links these attributes solely to abstraction—as if Raphael, Hiroshige and Barkley Hendricks had no truck with the stuff. Then again, Beckwith’s sense of history doesn’t encompass anything that can’t be lumped under the Conceptualist rubric; the Fluxus group, with its abiding belief that “anyone can make art,” is a recurring point of reference. In the end, Beckwith doesn’t escape the ideological straitjacket engendered by an aesthetic that encourages little more than heady selfaggrandizement.

The 42 artists featured at the Studio Museum are dependent, utterly and with numbing consistency, on the “social arena” Beckwith tries to elaborate upon, if not dispense with altogether. It has, she insists, been embedded within Simon Leigh’s plastic underpants, Jabu Arnell’s talking gas-mask and William Pope L’s blandishments about red and green people. But that assumes the artworks have a measure of autonomous getup-and-go. They don’t: Each piece coasts on the assumption that intent, both strident and not, forgives a paucity of formal invention.

So what we get is this, that and the other thing—most of it contrived from junk that

Memory, through Mar. 28. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Ave., 212423-3500.

30 Seconds Off an Inch 30 Seconds Off An Inch, a group exhibition at The Studio Museum in Harlem, takes its title from the artist David Hammons.

Speaking about the role of craftsmanship in the black community, Hammons observed how “nothing fits, but everything works. The door closes, it keeps everything from coming through. But it doesn’t have that neatness about it, the way white people put things together.” Everything African Americans put their hands to, Hammons concludes, “is a 30

Wayne Hodge’s “Untitled (Mohrenkopf)” (detail) at Studio Museum in Harlem

30 Seconds Off an Inch, through March 14. The Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 W. 125th St. , 212-864-4500.

To Live Forever Tragic self-consciousness is by no means a modern invention. Negotiating between the inescapable fact of death and the yearning for immortality was a crucial cultural task among

ancient Egyptians. To Live Forever draws upon the Brooklyn Museum’s world-class Egyptian collection to illustrate beliefs and rituals intended as talismans against personal extinction.

As the exhibition illustrates, contemporary Western conceptions of art did not exist among the early Egyptians. Certainly, they invested huge resources in a flourishing material culture of enduring beauty. Exquisite attention to craft and canons of proportion is evident everywhere, from coffin decoration to gravestone inscriptions. Yet theirs was primarily an applied art, created in anticipation of death and embedded in the drive to confront and defeat it. Everything on view— from dolls, knives and a game set to canopic jars and the mummy of a valued dog—had a defiant mortuary purpose. Viewing these in a museum context, estranged from their original function, we approach them as works of art.

But to fully grasp them, we have to see them as practical aids to living on, comfortably and with personality intact.

A frisson accompanies mummies and mummy cases that makes them perennially fascinating. The painted sarcophagus on view held the preserved body of a royal prince of Thebes nearly 3,000 years ago. Unlike a medieval Christian tomb, no somber skull or memento mori appears on this outer coffin.

Covered with characteristic glyphs, spells and symbolic images, the surface has a gaiety

Courtesy of The Brooklyn Museum

has been reclaimed but not transformed.

Racial and sexual politics are touched upon in ways that won’t surprise, convert or shock anyone. But what to make of Kianja Strobert’s wine-stained scrap of canvas, Jabu Arnell’s cardboard-and-duct tape “disco balls,” a video of Adel Abdessemed drawing while hanging from a helicopter and Clifford Owens’ musings on failure, writing-as-drawing, wet panties and fucking famous artists? Presumably they’re expanding the parameters of art.

Oh, you think, that again. The curator’s protestations notwithstanding, 30 Seconds Off An Inch is a run-of-the-mill array of Conceptualist bric-a-brac. Would that there was, pace David Hammons, something in the slightest bit off at the Studio Museum. But these self-congratulatory iterations of overintellectualized conceits are all right angles, snug joints and immaculate carpentry—and, as such, a bore.

— Mario Naves

Seated Statue of the Superintendent of the Granary Irukaptah. to it that bespeaks communal trust in the embalmer’s promises. As long as the body remained intact, the soul could live eternally.

Hence, the vital importance of preserving the body from damage or decay. (For grandees, mummification was a 70-day process. For lesser purses, it could be done in 30. For the majority, a day or two sufficed. Or simply burial in desert sand.)

The wrapped mummy of a man named Demetrios is a striking phenomenon. Here, illusionistic Greek portraiture is inserted onto a shroud in place of the three-dimensional

Egyptian funeral mask. An innovation of the later period of Roman occupation (c. 95-100 C.E.), the realism of the portrait became another pledge of survival for the dead.

Egyptian craftsmen excelled in the minor arts. A delicately worked gold amulet, placed over the eye of the dead, is a stunning example of Egyptian goldsmithing, renowned in biblical times. The loveliness of limestone figurines, intended for use in the netherworld, is undeniable. An alabaster cosmetic tube in the shape of fish reminds us that the Egyptians were accomplished fishermen, and angling a popular pastime. A wonderfully life-like faience hippopotamus assured the deceased good hunting.

The visual grace of this anonymous art seduces us into confusing the cultural tenor of pharaonic Egypt with its artifacts. The magic on view gives no clue to the despotism of the agrarian civilization that produced them. It was one sustained by slave labor—a universal institution of the times—in mines, in the army, in workshops and on royal estates.

Slaves counted among the grave goods of pre-dynastic kings. It is unclear when the practice of burying laborers along with other possessions came to an end. The exhibition skirts the issue by showcasing numerous shabtis, clay models made to stand bail for slaves in the afterlife. Overall impression is of genteel, symbolic servitude, more UpstairsDownstairs than what the historian Diodorus

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° /FX :PSL 5JNFT Major Funding provided by Brief Encounters photo by Tom Caravaglia

The SHS Foundation Official Tour Sponsor of the Paul Taylor Dance Company and Taylor 2

February 24 – March 14 Tix: $10 – $135 Celebrating Paul Taylor’s 80th Birthday; all tix for 3/6 matinee are $8 ptdc.org/nyc February 23, 2010 | City Arts

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observed of Egyptian quarries in the 1st century B.C.: “Vast numbers… are bound in fetters and compelled to work day and night without intermission and without the least hope of escape.”

To blunt the strangeness of the past, curatorial comment slips into mischievous anachronism with repeated reference to “the elite” and “the middle class.” There was no middle-class as we know it. There was a cosmically ordained royalty, a satellite caste of priests, lesser nobles and court functionaries, all served by a diversified peasantry and forced labor. Yet out of this culture came arts of great splendor, the bulk of it devoted to denying death the last word.

—Maureen Mullarkey To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum, through May 2. Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Pkwy., 716-638-5000.

Approaching Abstraction Traditionally, much of outsider art has been figurative. That’s in large part due to outsider art’s appeal to mainstream viewers: The work is a kind of skewed vision of the world as we know it. Like a funhouse mirror, the work of outsider artists portrays a world tweaked by the filters of madness, illiteracy, loneliness or any number of factors that renders someone “outside” of society.

The exhibition at The American Museum of Folk Art, however, attempts to show another aspect of outsider art, and it is one that relates the work much closer to modern and contemporary art. Approaching Abstraction showcases the work of 40 artists whose work tips over the line into “abstraction,” from those who obsess on numbers (Martin Thompson), materials (Judith Scott, Philadelphia Wireman, Mr. Imagination) or ritual (John Murray’s, Eugene Andolsek). These artists and others work in ways that belie the stereotyped forms of outsider art.

The exhibition is a little didactic, which appears to remain part of the mission of the American Folk Art Museum. I understand and respect this, but in some cases the work would be better served if it could just sing by itself, rather than be organized into categories such as “Obliterating Form” or “Distortion and Exaggeration.” The neat categories dampen the exuberant and original nature of the work a little; the explanation feels forced. But nothing can really hold it down. The pieces in Approaching Abstraction are as strong and worthwhile as anything that you will see in any museum in the city, with more than a few standout pieces.

William Hawkins is represented by a painting that is at once poetic and hilarious. The combination of corny collaged photographic images and Hawkins’ antic painting is fabulous. His black and white

AT AUCTION Mar 4

The Christopher Bou Collection of Ocean Liner & Aviation Memorabilia The Steamship Historical Society of America’s Chase Collection of Ocean Liner Posters Illustrated Catalogue (2 vol): $35

Mar 9 Pablo Picasso, Femme au fauteuil II: Dora Maar, aquatint, 1939, trial proof printed 1942.

Estimate $20,000 to $30,000. At auction Mar 9.

19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings Illustrated Catalogue: $40 U.S./$50 Elsewhere

Mar 18

Printed & Manuscript Americana Illustrated Catalogue: $35

Mar 23

Lewis Hine, Spinner, Cotton Mill, Augusta, Georgia, silver contact print, 1909. From the White Collection.

Estimate $12,000 to $18,000. At auction Mar 23.

Important Photographs from the Stephen White Collection Fine Photographs Illustrated Catalogue (2 vol): $35

Catalogue Orders and General Inquiries: 212 254 4710, ext 0.

104 East 25th Street • New York, NY 10010 View catalogues and bid online at www.swanngalleries.com

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“modernist” building captures without guile the attempts of modernism to be neat, at the same time the building is beginning to bubble over with color and energy.

“Untitled (Vehicle)” by Dwight Mackintosh is a perfect example of the point that the curators of this exhibition are trying to make. A wonderful mass of lines, both calligraphic and abstract, pours across the paper, a treatise in an unknown language.

At the bottom of the picture plane, perfectly placed, is a series of beautifully composed shapes that suggest the possibility of a vehicle. The balance of modernist color and tone—graphite, black and two great shades of yellow and orange—all combine to make this a terrific drawing, no other explanation needed.

I love the small wooden sculpture titled “Hens and Chicks With Rooster” by Leroy Person. Rough, but elegant forms are carved from wood and densely colored with crayon.

These shapes are both something and not something—both hens and also just shapes.

A lovely and vibrant show, the work in this exhibition and genre and would stand on its own as fascinating contemporary art— outside categorization.

—Melissa Stern “Untitled,” by Judith Scott

Approaching Abstraction, through Sept. 5.

American Folk Art Museum, 45 W. 53rd St. , 212-265-1040.

CONTINUED from page 1 collection quite a bit when it opens March 3, though Koons may throw a wrench into the proceedings: His inexperience at both viewing and curating contemporary art could very well yield poor results. It seems size, however, does matter: Joannou’s collection of contemporary art may well be the largest in the world, and the exhibit will include more than 100 works by 50 international artists. And less than a third of the show contains female artists.

Seeing as how Joannou’s trustee position yields significant influence within the museum, it’s hard not to interpret the exhibition as a dangerous example, even if it was the result of good intentions. Those who see Skin Fruit in a more positive light point to the fact that the exhibition is less expensive to launch (especially after the crazy expense of the recent Urs Fischer extravaganza), a necessity in an economic downturn. The loan is quite generous so long as everyone politely ignores the fact that Joannou’s financial gains may exceed his magnanimity.

Economic hardship does not affect all areas of museum programming, but the increasing willingness to launch blockbuster shows doesn’t help. Certainly MoMA’s Tim Burton exhibition typifies New York magazine critic Jerry Saltz’s recent Facebook rants about the boringness of museum programming. Burton’s films are better without the physical props, as his painting in particular is no more sophisticated than the average college sophomore’s. It was also a transparent way for the museum to receive funding from the SyFy channel and market Burton’s soon-to-be-released Alice in Wonderland adaptation as another auteur masterpiece.

Following up on that note, New York Times critic Roberta Smith’s recent harangue called the city’s curators on the carpet, urging them to step it up a notch. “Where’s the painting?

Where’s the emerging art? Where’s the emotion?” she asked. (Oh, and let’s not forget she’s married to Saltz and the two are currently packing a one-two-punch to the art establishment via their respective pulpits.) Smith doesn’t say who’s best poised to answer these questions, though Whitney Biennial curators Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari are obviously first up at bat.

Opening Feb. 23, the Whitney Biennial includes 55 artists—down from 81 in the 2008 iteration—and special attention is being paid to previously un-exhibited art. The curators have also included 18 painters, a possible indication that they too have observed an absence of paint-on-canvas on museum walls as of late.

In as much as it inspires confidence, the fact that both curators have a fair number of accolades under their belts also suggests a certain amount of sameness. CarrionMurayari, 29, is a curator born of the

“Sneakers 1, 2008” by Andro Wekua is included in Skin Fruit at the New Museum, beginning March 3. institutional system, beginning his career as the much-loved intern of superstar curator Chrissie Ilses before working his way up through the museum ranks. Perhaps that’s why it’s not so surprising that I’ve never heard anything come out of Carrion-Murayari’s mouth in anything less than PR-perfect pitch.

The same cannot be said of Bonami, who, at 54, is one of the most well-known curators in the world. I recently watched the Whitney press

The New Museum’s Massimiliano Gioni circumvents a few hoops himself... by working with a small staff of researchers, employed directly by him, not the Nu Mu team squirm as Bonami joked about a donor who likely “wanted to remain anonymous” because the Julian Schnabel on view at the museum was so awful. There may not be a world in which making disparaging remarks about museum donors isn’t a mistake, but it’s hard not to like Bonami better for it anyway. His honesty humanizes the process of curating, a point the corporate face of museums in this city would do well to scrutinize.

Of course, there’s a difference between uttering a few words you wish you hadn’t and failing to produce press releases for major

survey shows in a timely fashion. At the same press breakfast with Bonami, Artnet editor Walter Robinson, in an exasperated tone, offhandedly mentioned the lack of an artist list for P.S.1’s Greater New York show. He seemed to suggest all the rumors of mismanagement we’d been whispering about.

As of press time, the show’s curators—Klaus Biesenbach, Connie Butler and Neville Wakefield—still have not released the names of participating artists. I spoke to April Hunt, P.S.1’s press representative, who told me the museum would be scaling the exhibition back from its previous 160-plus artists.

Although Hunt explained that she was not able to confirm any numbers, she conceded it would be under 100. “More space will be given to the artists,” she clarified.

I was also curious how the P.S.1 Studio Visit registry had been used in the selection process. According to what Biesenbach piously told T Magazine last month: “We review every post.” With close to 700 hundred artists now on the site, that seems a bit lofty to me. That said, the website now runs with a disclaimer that work will be hosted on the site for at least one month, which suggests pruning may take place in the future. For better or worse, Biesenbach gives the impression that he’s built enough of a reputation to be able to do as he pleases at P.S.1, though it clearly helps that he’s the museum’s director. Now us art-world spectators wait for hubris to kick in.

Although not as far along in his career, the New Museum’s Massimiliano Gioni circumvents a few hoops himself, even if it means resorting to unconventional means. Clearly affected by the economic belt-tightening at the New Museum, Gioni currently works with a small staff of researchers, employed directly by him, not the Nu Mu. Coincidentally, just prior to hearing this from another curator, I met a woman at Andrea Rosen, who was leaving the gallery after several years of work to research part time for Gioni.

I have a hard time sincerely describing the New Museum as the New York institution with the greatest capacity for growth, although in truth, most museum programming is a reflection of the quality of curators they attract. With all the scandal and cutbacks at the New Museum, it’s hard to see the draw. On the other hand, given Gioni’s choices in the city, perhaps there isn’t a lateral move to be made in the field right now.

Even with all the changes, we’re still waiting for more this year. Who will fill Biesenbach’s vacated curatorial position at MoMA? And what will happen as Dia continues with its plans to re-enter the New York City artscape with a new space in Chelsea? If the cliché holds true, the times of financial difficulty we’re currently facing may have already begun to force innovation. No longer able to rely on gobs of money to put on epic exhibitions, curators and others begin to dream of new ways of doing things. At least, we hope so. < February 23, 2010 | City Arts

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MUSEUMS

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Collected Works If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve tired of the crowds at the major players, a slew of other lesser-known museums offer quirky and inspiring collections

BY MARK PEIKERT AT A CERTAIN point in every New Yorkerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life, he reaches a saturation level with tourist attractions. Either youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve done the things everyone is supposed to doâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the trips to the Empire State Building and the Metâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or entertained out-of-state guests with those same trips. But for anyone who thinks theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve seen it all, the city still has a lot to offerâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;especially when it comes to museums. Here are several worth checking out.

Alice Austen House Museum and Garden 2 Hylan Blvd. (at Edgewater St.), Staten Island, 718- 816-4506, www.aliceausten.org Specialty: The life and work of pioneering female photographer Alice Austen.

Why Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve Never Been: The 15-minute bus ride from the Staten Island ferry.

What youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll see: Austenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s startling black-andwhite images that reveal a ďŹ nely tuned eye for composition. Located on the edge of New York Harbor, the restored Victorian cottage also includes several exact reproductions of rooms as they were during Austenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life.

The management is a bit scattered (I had to wander from room to room before I found someone in charge), but the chance to see Staten Island as it was almost 200 years ago is a canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t-miss experience.

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The Morgan Library & Museum Madison Ave. at 36th St. themorgan.org This exhibition is underwritten by a major grant from the B. H. Breslauer Foundation. Additional support is generously provided by Mrs. Alexandre P. Rosenberg. Mouth of Hell (detail), Hours of Catherine of Cleves, in Latin, Netherlands, Utrecht, ca. 1440, illuminated by the Master of Catherine of Cleves.

Purchased on the Belle da Costa Greene Fund with the assistance of the Fellows, 1970; MS M.945, folio 168v. Image courtesy of Faksimile Verlag Luzern.

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City Arts | www.cityarts.info

The Forbes Galleries 60 5th Ave (at E. 12th St.), 212- 206-5548, www.forbesgalleries.com Specialty: The collections of a man with too much time and money.

Why Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve Never Been: The free museum is located in the Forbes Building on the ground ďŹ&#x201A;oor, which makes it unlikely for passers-by to pop in.

What youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll see: More tin soldiers in evocative, intricate dioramas than you could ever possibly imagine playing with; model boats; various versions of Monopoly; bizarre and fascinating historical artifacts.

Hispanic Society of America Audubon Terrace, Broadway, (betw. 155th & 156th Sts.), 212-989-5566, www.hispanicsociety.org Specialty: An excellent survey of Spanish painting, drawing and ceramics, plus a comprehensive research library, including manuscripts and maps from the 12th century to the present.

Why Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve Never Been: Had no clue Washington Heights had priceless art and artifacts (for free!).

What youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll see: Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll ďŹ nd Goyas, VelĂĄzquezes, El Grecos and more on display in this dark-wood museum that looks embalmed from Old New

The Noguchi Museum York. But in recent years Dia has collaborated with the Hispanic Society, renovating two gallery spaces and commissioning contemporary artists to install works in the refurbished spaces. Currently on view through April 18 is Dominique Gonzalez-Foersterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;chronotopes & dioramas.â&#x20AC;? The main museum has been closed for renovation during the winter months and is set to open March 2, with a new installation of paintings in the Main Court to include early 20th-century masterworks by Spanish artists, such as Sorollaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;Beaching the Boat,â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Sea Idylâ&#x20AC;? and â&#x20AC;&#x153;After the Bath.â&#x20AC;?

Al Hirschfeld Museum at Margo Feiden Galleries 15 E. 9th St., (betw. University Pl. & 5th Aves.)

212-677-5330, www.alhirschfeld.com Specialty: The drawings and caricatures of renowned artist Al Hirschfeld.

Why Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve Never Been: The art is available to view by appointment only.

What Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll See: Hirschfeldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s instantly recognizable portraits of a whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s who of 20th-centuy celebrities, everyone from Dorothy Parker to Halle Berry. Making an appointment to view the collection may seem intimidating, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s deďŹ nitely worth it for the chance to see one-manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vision of the history of pop culture in the 20th century.

Skyscraper Museum 39 Battery Pl., (at Little West St.) 212-968-1961, www.skyscraper.org Specialty: The history and future of towering, glittering buildings.

Why Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve Never Been: The Battery Park City location, coupled with a less-thancompelling specialty.

What Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll See: A history of the skyscraper as both an artistic and business enterprise, plus plenty of information about the current

state of tall buildings, including the future of Shanghai, poised to become the epitome of the 21st-century skyscraper city. On the opposite end of the spectrum, an exhibit featuring original work papers and day-to-day construction notebooks for the Empire State Building is a rare and fascinating glimpse into the building that defines NYC. Merchant’s House Museum 29 E. 4th St. (at Bowery), 212- 777-1089, www.merchantshouse.com Specialty: Life in 19th-century New York Why You’ve Never Been: Named for the occupation of most of the residents in the area during the Tredwell Family’s time, Merchant’s House sounds more like a museum dedicated to salesmen than life in Edith Wharton–era NY. What you’ll see: Equipped with instructional guidebooks, visitors wander from room to room, where they can examine the original furniture and learn about the customs of the period. A breathtaking drawing room, crammed with Duncan Phyfe chairs and ornate gilt mirrors, is the centerpiece, but all the rooms are so rich with juicy period details that one can almost smell the sewage in the street. It’s also allegedly the most haunted house in New York City, so sneak in a Ouija board and try your luck.

Teddy’s life and career—including the shirt he was wearing when he was shot and the 20-page speech that saved his life.

Museum of American Finance 48 Wall St. (at William St.), 212-908-4110, www.moaf.org Specialty: Money and its tangled relationship with America and American history.

Why You’ve Never Been: Why go to a museum to look at money?

What You’ll See: A thorough history of money and banking in America. The museum also currently hosts the exhibit Women of Wall

Street, which examines the pioneering women who forced their way into the world of finance at a time when women weren’t allowed access to their own money, along with today’s top female business executives talking about the changes they are still witnessing in the business world. There is also an 8-foot-by-20-foot graphical wall tracing the current credit crisis.

The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts 80 Hanson Pl. (at S. Portland Ave.), Brooklyn, 718-230-0492, www.mocada.org Specialty: Visual arts that explore more deeply

the issues that disproportionately affect the people of the African diaspora.

Why You’ve Never Been: The museum’s name seems painfully academic.

What You’ll See There: Currently running until May 16, The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks examines the changes and problems that urban planning and real estate development are causing in Brooklyn neighborhoods—and how those being affected are reacting. Gentrification is always a tense topic, but few people have turned to art to express their feelings about it. Now, they have, and the results demand to be seen.

The Noguchi Museum 32-37 Vernon Blvd. (at 10th St.), Queens, 718-207-7088, www.noguchi.org Specialty: The work of sculptor Isamu Noguchi Why You’ve Never Been: The trip to Queens seems daunting, but there’s a weekend shuttle bus from Manhattan—and Costco is just across the street.

What you’ll see: Everything from Noguchi’s towering sculptures to never-realized designs for city parks—many shot down by a hostile Robert Moses. The abstract works that greet you in the first room of the sprawling warehouse can be off-putting, but models for the various unrealized public spaces he almost obsessively designed over and over again quickly draw in visitors.

Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace Museum 28 E. 20th St. (at Broadway), 212-260-1616, www.nps.gov/thrb Specialty: The 26th President of the U.S. Why You’ve Never Been:Without a hearty interest in the man who inspired teddy bears, there’s little reason to bypass Gramercy Tavern for a trip through Roosevelt’s life.

What you’ll see: Guided tours take visitors through the second and third floors of Roosevelt’s rebuilt birthplace, filled with a few original pieces and a lot of period filler. My guide not only forgot what year Teddy was born, but also claimed that he became president when McKinley was stabbed to death in Buffalo.

Reconstructed from blueprints and missing most of the original furniture, the rooms are interesting but never fully alive. Much better is the first floor gallery, filled with artifacts from February 23, 2010 | City Arts

11

JAZZ

I Love a Piano, New York Edition The list of excellent jazz pianists continues to grow

BY HOWARD MANDEL recent New York Times Magazine feature about pianist Fred Hersch, by my esteemed colleague David Hajdu, observed a recent “new movement in jazz [of] highly expressive music more concerned with emotion than craft or virtuosity; a genre-blind music that casually mingles strains of pop, classical and folk musics from many cultures; an informal elastic music unyielding to rigid conceptions of what jazz is supposed to be.” Hersch, who has been on the New York jazz scene for 33 years—recording more than 45 albums of his own work since 1991—is described as a trailblazing, “largely unsung innovator of this borderless, individualistic music—a jazz for the 21st century.”

Gee: Unsung? A glance at the press quotes at FredHersch.com provides raves from the New Yorker, New York magazine, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, the Times (“…a solo concept second to none”) and the major jazz magazines. He’s been on Terry Gross’ Fresh Air, Kurt Anderson’s Studio 360 and NPR’s

All Things Considered. A trailblazing innovator?

Hersch is a highly talented, accomplished determined and, yes, an “individualistic” pianist/composer. But he is not alone or (to my mind, anyway) leading the field.

I’m afraid the accolades are partly due to extra-musical considerations. Hersch has discussed and acted politically on his hellacious health issues candidly since being diagnosed in the early 1990s with HIV, which developed into full-blown AIDS and has resulted in numerous debilitating complications. Through it all, he has indeed produced a distinguished, admirable and remarkable ouevre, marked by broad variety, and a recognizable if to my ears somewhat brittle touch and consistently penetrating expression. On Fred Hersch Plays Jobim, released last summer, he presses the great Brazilian bossa novist’s well- and lesserknown songs for their ineffable sadness, “casually” improvising Bach-worthy counterpoint, letting his fingers spin through balletic runs that arrive at sambas, ruminating darkly and softly as deepest night. Each rendition has drama, and

Newark Museum presents

Constructive Spirit Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920 -50 ON VIEW THROUGH :

S

05.23.2010

S

Abstraction in the Americas More than 90 works explore connections between abstract artists from Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Uruguay and Venezuela. Featuring Alexander Calder, Joaquín Torres-García, Jesús Rafael Soto, Arshile Gorky and Lygia Clark, and a commissioned installation by Paul Henry Ramirez.

Visit newarkmuseum.org for related programs and events.

newarkmuseum.org web

Major support for Constructive Spirit provided by: Media Sponsor: CONSOLATE GENERAL OF BRAZIL IN NEW YORK

Anatol Wladyslaw (Brazilian, born Poland, 1913-2004), Composição (Composition) (detail), 1951, Oil on canvas; 27¹⁄5 × 27¹⁄5 in. Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo, Brazil, © Blanka Wladyslaw

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City Arts | www.cityarts.info

Connie Crothers.

“Greensleeves” in a uniquely spidery way.

His forays seem alternately random and willful but also genuinely post-modern; he deconstructs, satirizes and rumbles deadpan through clichés. His next local performances are with trio and dancers at the 14th Street Y on March 5 (Vision Collaborations Festival) and guitarist Joe Morris March 27 at B.B. King’s (New England Conservatory’s 40th anniversary celebration).

Geri Allen, more resourceful, respectful of tradition and yet daringly creative, plays beautifully with Trio 3 (drummer Andrew Cyrille, bassist Reggie Workman, saxophonist Oliver Lake) on At This Time. She concertizes March 2 at the Shomburg Museum, and March 4 in the Celebration of AfricanAmerican Cultural Legacy, curated by Jessye Norman at Carnegie Hall.

Armen Donelian is an elegant composer, soloist, bandleader and educator with classical chops and 35 years of top-notch jazz experience. He also draws from his Armenian musical heritage. He performs in town next with his quintet at Cornelia Street Café April 9.

Connie Crothers has been a freethinking improviser since debuting under Lennie Tristano’s auspices in 1972. Session at 475 Kent, her duo with bassist Michael Bisio, is an intimate recital of open-form romanticism. She and her quartet play at Galapagos in Brooklyn March 28.

Hersch’s every voicing is colorful and crystal clear. Hersch creates heartfelt, original, yet not unconventional music. He has a solo concert March 31 at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall.

But New York City has been the epicenter of expressive, genre-expanding, personalized keyboardism since the 1920s, when Willie the Lion Smith, Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson and George Gershwin New York City has been the epicenter ruled. Ellington, Waller, of expressive, genre-expanding, Tatum, Monk, Mary personalized keyboardism since the Lou Williams, Bud Powell, Bill Evans, 1920s, when Willie the Lion Smith, Herbie Hancock, Andrew Eubie Blake, James P. Johnson and Hill, Cecil Taylor and George Gershwin ruled. hundreds of others have held forth here. Hajdu cites Brad Mehldau, Vijay Iyer, Jason Moran, Frank Kimbrough possesses sweetly Ethan Iverson as exemplifying 21st-century subtle lyricism and generous adaptability, music, keyboard division. These men rave about whether solo, with Maria Schneider’s Hersch, but their own current projects are just Orchestra, Ted Nash’s quintet (for six nights as arresting. And at least a couple of dozen other at Dizzy’s Club in May) or, as on March 26 at even more unsung keyboardists are establishing 55 Bar, with singer Kendra Shank. their distinctions throughout Manhattan.

Arturo O’Farrill’s pianistic finesse Not to cite veterans—Hank Jones, might be overlooked within the smooth, hot Keith Jarrett, Kenny Barron, Muhal Richard synchronicity of the Chico O’Farrill AfroAbrams, et al.—here are some very worthy, Cuban Jazz Orchestra (named for his late mid-career NYC pianists: father), heard every Sunday in March at Matt Shipp, though 50, is an enfant Birdland. But it shouldn’t be. terrible, boldly claiming his primacy Who else? Cyrus Chestnut, of bounding and harshly judging others (see recent swing. Steve Colson, an infrequent presence. interviews in Jazz Times and Signal To Bill Charlap can do anything. John Blum Noise). On his new solo 4D, Shipp delivers employs dynamic clusters. Craig Taborn. originals, standards, “Frere Jacques” and Jason Lindner. Marc Cary. The list is long! <

AttheGALLERIES

A still from Redmond Entwistle’s Monuments.

Double-Bill It has been 42 years since Robert Smithson took an Inter-City Transportation Company Bus at the Port Authority to Passaic, N.J. In his ambulatory meditations, Smithson cheekily compared the wrecked landscape to ancient Rome. His vision was cinematic, it delineated a new way of artistic interaction with the urban environment in tension with the suburban one, and it became a founding document of minimalism.

Through Mar. 20, Smithson’s work, and that of his contemporaries Dan Graham and Gordon Matta-Clark, gets a reworking at Double-Bill, an enlivening show at Art in General.

The centerpiece of the show is a movie about the journey the three of them take back to New Jersey. The old sites of their Monuments have grown derelict, wrecked by industrial decline in a way unforeseen to the artists when they began their careers five decades ago. The house that Matta-Clark once sawed in two has become an office park. Skateboarders zoom by. When one falls and cuts himself, Matta-Clark comically explores the “rupture.”

“Surfaces,” he says, looking at the wound, “are too easily accepted as limits.”

Minimalism and post-minimalism have had a longer life in the seminar room than in the gallery, and the characters in Monuments are as much theories as artists; they travel through the area staring impassively at places where once they projected their art and reveling in their theories of art and urbanism.

“The museum and the city and the same,” intones Dan Graham. “My work has always been about the relationship between the city and the suburb.”

The film has a deliberate clacking, B-movie aesthetic, which Redmond Entwistle, the director and curator of the show, no doubt thought lent an air of 1960s art-documentary verisimilitude, but which rings hollow now.

Still, the film, which plays twice daily, is worth catching, as the rest of the show feels slight. The show also features paintings, by Mary Billyou of stenciled words stacked closely together on whitewashed canvases, works that seem more profound than they probably are. Suzanne Goldenberg has tiny, ephemeral sculptures made out of cardboard and other pieces of urban trash,

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City Arts | www.cityarts.info

which are charming in their delicacy. The strongest of the remaining pieces is Rafael Sanchez and Kathleen White’s “BOOKS RECORDS TAPES.” It is a long table featuring stacks of for-sale books, sheet music, chapbooks and magazines of the kind found all over the city where vendors are still given reign. The ventures of Smithson et al matter because they expanded the definition of art and pointed out new ways of seeing, Sanchez and White’s seemingly dashed together collections of detritus come closest to re-realizing that vision.

(David Freedlander)

Malcolm collected the leaves of the burdock plant over three summers in New England. Lacking curb appeal, burdock is a common weed that grows along roadsides, in empty lots and around abandoned buildings. The deep green leaves are coarse and large (some a full two feet tall), heartshaped toward the base, paddle-shaped as the plant rises. Twenty-five of them, each chosen for patterns of blight or decay, are on view. These are the photographs from which the plates were made for Burdock, a book published by Yale University Press in 2008.

Malcolm is her own best interpreter. She describes herself as drawn to these “uncelebrated leaves” on which “life has left its mark.” It is an oblique admission that this suite of photographs is, in essence, a memento mori. The subject of these austere images is mortality itself. In place of the dust and worms of age-old ascetic meditation, Malcolm dwells on the burdock.

Each leaf disintegrates in its own way; dies its own death. Botanical charm fades, translucent membranes separate and the skeletal tracery of veins breaks. The lineaments of decay create compelling abstract arrangements. Photographed against an unshadowed white wall in a clinical light, the ensemble carries a hint of the autopsy table. Malcolm’s camera observes the entrails of an organic life, insensible but not inert, and offers them as emblems of transience.

Best known as a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of several books, Malcolm began her career in journalism with articles on interior decoration, design and photography. The visual has informed her working life from the

Through Mar. 20. Art in General, 79 Walker St., 212-219-0473.

Janet Malcolm: Photographs/Burdock Sensibility is not a word we hear much these days, perhaps because it is difficult to define. Yet sensibility is at the heart of anything that matters in art. Davis & Langdale, with its longstanding sympathy for art that conveys certain qualities of humane sophistication, is a fitting venue for Janet Malcolm’s suite of photographs—portraits, really— of individual burdock leaves.

“Burdock,” by Janet Malcolm.

“Orange Cross” by Hilla Rebay.

start. She brings to visual art the same attention to nuance, the same passion for exactitude that informs her writing. What becomes apparent in this exhibition is that the same nerve that excites pictorial intelligence quickens a writer’s eye for telling details. The aim of both is to get it right.

(Maureen Mullarkey) Through Feb. 27. Davis & Langdale Company, 231 E. 60th St., 212-838-0333.

Non-Objective or Not: Dialogues in Modernism On Feb. 5, Laguna Beach’s Wendt Gallery opened its newest location in the landmark Fuller Building on East 57th Street.

The inaugural collection offers a glimpse at the pieces of some monumental artists whose work, due to circumstance, had fallen off the radar. At the Wendt, under curator Steven Lowy of Portico New York, the works get a much-deserved second look.

“Everyone in this show who is dead was really famous at one time,” explains Lowy, who will oversee the gallery’s modern program from now on.

An example would be the paintings of Hilla Rebay, Solomon Guggenheim’s art advisor and the impetus behind the Guggenheim Museum. Rebay’s abstract paintings are joined in the collection by other works by artists whose legacies fell on hard times.

Some, like Xanti Schawinsky, earn a special designation.

“What I think is more interesting is the concept that there is historic work that is first-tier—what I call ‘first-tier, screwed,’” says Lowy.

cloistered air of dehumanization recalls Francis Bacon and the chilly, second-hand remove, Gerhard Richter; a soupcon of Neo Rauch supplies a frisson of historical dread. Flesh, photography and alienation, then, determine Blom’s pictorial and thematic tics. If the resulting paintings don’t offer fresh insights, they do reiterate them with clean efficiency. “Summer” and “Leave,” in particular, denature their romantic impulses with brisk, assembly-line precision. (MN) Through Mar. 6. Jason McCoy Galllery, 41 E. 57th St., 212-319-1996.

Man Ray

A still from Steve McQueen’s “Giardini.”

Schawinsky, Lowy says, has works tied up by litigation, locked in a bank vault in Switzerland, the result of a real estate deal gone bad for a purchaser who used them as collateral.

According to press materials, the gallery “hopes to bring special focus to the influence that early modern artists have played on the art of today.” This is accomplished in the current exhibit through Schawinsky’s use of a Campbell’s Soup can before it gained status as an iconic image and also through the work of other artists on view, like Rolph Scarlett. Several of Scarlett’s works hint at the movement that would later become Op art.

The Wendt Gallery promises to be a destination for not only Modernist works, but for contemporary Southeast Asian works as well, particularly as New York begins to thaw.

“It’s been a little quiet,” Lowy says of foot traffic thus far, “because we opened before the blizzard.” (Carl Gaines) Through Mar. 13. Wendt Gallery, 41 E. 57th St., 212-838-8818.

Steve McQueen Accompanying a group of students through the galleries along West 57th Street, I heard bitching and moaning as we entered Marian Goodman Gallery. Was there any possibility, I was asked, that a person could do the rounds without having to

encounter a darkened room—that is to say, a space featuring a video installation?

I commiserated: Video is, after all, a genre pretty much dominated by sub-cinematic poseurs whose specialty is indulging trivial (or base) obsessions. So, the video featured at Goodman was greeted by not a little skepticism, and then, surprisingly, with something approaching awe.

Steve McQueen’s Giardini, it turns out, is hypnotic, unnerving, highly theatrical and evocative. It’s that rare creature: a genuine work of art.

Giardini is making its American debut, having originally served as the U.K.’s contribution to the 2009 Venice Biennale. Running about 30 minutes and projected on two screens, McQueen’s video is an almost unbearably sensual meditation on narrative disassociation, occluded metaphor and the quiddities of memory and place.

Give Giardini a chance. For the first few minutes or so, McQueen’s juxtapositions of imagery—bugs, men smoking, a stolen embrace in an alleyway, a drop of water and wild dogs foraging through Venice—seem willfully random. A score alternating the ambient noise of traffic, crowds at a sports arena and a forest glen doesn’t help. At which point, a slippery and haunting logic emerges, if “logic” is, in fact, the right word. Imagine De Chirico sub-contracting for National Geographic in the age of HDTV and you’ll get some idea, but only

some,of McQueen’s spare and brainy poetry.

McQueen weaves together his fragmented scenarios through meticulous attention paid to texture, light, resolution, gesture and, not least, pacing. Giardini might move like a glacier, but it’s like a glacier in other ways, too: it’s monumental and sweeping, breathtaking and unstoppable.

Would that the same could be said of Static, a video made last year specifically for this show and with New York City in mind. It’s basically a virtualreality amusement park ride: What, it posits, would it feel like to ceaselessly circle the Statue of Liberty in the choppiest of helicopters? A measure of aesthetic integrity doesn’t redeem McQueen’s homage to Lady Liberty: it’s a pretentious, queasy-making bore. Skip Static and stick with the main event. That way there can be no cavils about this being one of the best shows of the season. (Mario Naves) Through Mar. 6. Marian Goodman Gallery, 24 W. 57th St., 212-977-7160.

Kenneth Blom Devotees of painting will forgive Kenneth Blom’s slick affectations if only because the formula he tweaks is sharp and smart. The Scandinavian artist is making his U.S. debut at Jason McCoy Gallery with five medium-sized canvases, each of which isolates lone figures within streamlined architectural spaces. The

Could anyone be more protean than Man Ray? Enthusiastically pushing boundaries, he became an integral part of the European avant-garde, particularly the Dada and Surrealism movements. To get an idea of the breadth of his talents, this exhibit would be a great place to start. You will find photographs, drawings and objects, each category showing different aspects of his talent. Three striking photographs—of artists Jacques Villon and Meret Oppenheimer as well as a self-portrait—give a good idea why he was first acclaimed for his portraiture.

Their clarity and humanity and his instinct for finding just the right light to reveal personality and character come together to convey the essence of his subjects: the somberness of Villon, the playfulness of Oppenheimer and his own thoughtfulness.

The objects vary a great deal, seemingly randomly arranged or pictured; there is an untitled stick standing on end with a small wheel at its base, in “Enough Rope II,” and a rope lies in a long wooden box, sticks beside it. The question comes to mind: Enough rope for what? To hang yourself? The rope appears innocent and mundane, as most objects do before human intervention. The naked torso in “Venus Restored” is tied up with rope, whether it’s to hold it together or is part of a sado-masochistic game or joke, there’s no telling.

But the image is striking: the shadows on the body, the way it seems to be emerging from the dark, the perfection of its contours and even the exactness of the rope’s path around the breasts and between the legs. Sinister, yes, and beautiful.

Ray never just fooled around. Much as he liked provoking the establishment, he always did it for a reason. He wanted people to look harder and think more clearly. Everything here makes you do that.

(Valerie Gladstone) Through Mar. 18. Zabriskie Gallery, 41 E. 57th St., 212-752-1223.

February 23, 2010 | City Arts

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ArtsAGENDA Gallery listings courtesy of

GALLERY OPENINGS

Opens Mar. 6, 133 Eldridge St., 212-966-3411.

ZÜRCHER STUDIO: Brian Belott: “The Joy of File.”

303 GALLERY: Mike Nelson. Opens Feb. 27, 547 W.

“Hanging Lighs; Cotton Flames” by Nari Ward, at Lehmann Maupin.

N OFebruary C T11-March U R20,N ES 2010 Giglio Dante Albert Fayngold

21st St., 212-255-1121.

440 GALLERY: Amy Williams: “Within You Without You.” Opens Feb. 25, 440 6th Ave., Brooklyn, 718-499-3844.

DAVID ZWIRNER: R. Crumb: “The Bible Illuminated.”

Opens Mar. 4, 519 W. 19th St., 212-517-8677.

FIRST STREET GALLERY: Wendy Gittler. Opens Mar. 2, 526 W. 26th St., suite 915, 646-336-8053.

FREDERIEKE TAYLOR GALLERY: Marion Wilson: “Artificially Free of Nature.” Opens Feb. 25, Project Room. “Anniversary Invitational I.” Opens Feb. 25, 535 W. 22nd St., 6th Fl., 646-230-0992.

GALLERY 221: Michael Brod: “Whoever Emerges II.” Opens Feb. 23, 221 E. 88th St..

GALLERY SCHLESINGER: Gideon Bok: “Re: Stacks.”

Opens Mar. 2, 24 E. 73rd St., 2nd Fl., 212-7343600.

JONATHAN LEVINE GALLERY: “Group Exhibition.”

Opens Feb. 27, 529 W. 20th St., 212-243-3822.

LEHMANN MAUPIN: Nari Ward: “LIVESupport.”

Opens Feb. 25, 540 W. 26th St., 212-255-2923.

MIKE WEISS GALLERY: Sofi Zezmer: “Remote Control.”

Opens Feb. 27, 520 W. 24th St., 212-691-6899.

MITCHELL-INNES & NASH (CHELSEA): Joe Bradley & Chris Martin. Opens Feb. 25, 534 W. 26th St., 212744-7400.

PACEWILDENSTEIN: Joseph Beuys: “Make the Secrets Productive.” Opens Mar. 5, 534 W. 25th St., 212-929-7000.

SKOTO GALLERY: George Afedzi Hughes: “Layers.”

Opens Feb. 25, 529 W. 20th St., 5th Fl., 212352-8058.

SKYLIGHT GALLERY: Mark Weiss. Opens Feb. 25, 538 W. 29th St., 212-629-3131, ext. 248.

SOHO20 GALLERY CHELSEA: Eve Ingalls: “Drawing Earth.” Opens Mar. 2, 547 W. 27th St., suite 301, 212-367-8994.

STEPHEN HALLER GALLERY: Larry Zox: “Paintings.”

Opens Feb. 25, 542 W. 26th St., 212-741-7777.

SUE SCOTT GALLERY: Tom McGrath. Opens Mar. 6, 1 Rivington St., 212-358-8767.

TIBOR DE NAGY GALLERY: Sarah McEneaney: “Recent Paintings.” Opens Feb. 28. Rudy Burckhardt: “Early Photographs.” Opens Feb. 28, 724 5th Ave., 212-262-5050.

TYLER ROLLINS FINE ART: Pinaree Sanpitak: “Quietly Floating.” Opens Mar. 4, 529 W. 20th St., 10W, 212-229-9100.

VON LINTEL GALLERY: Valerie Jaudon. Opens Mar. 2, 520 W. 23rd St., 212-242-0599.

WALLY FINDLAY GALLERIES NEW YORK: Dimitry Gerrman: “Poetry of Form.” Opens Mar. 2, 124 E. 57th St., 212-421-5390.

WOODWARD GALLERY: Natalie Edgar: “From Above.”

Opens Feb. 26, 33 Bleecker St., 212-777-0790.

GALLERY CLOSINGS ALEXANDER AND BONIN: Michael Buthe. Ends Mar. 6,

132 10th Ave., 212-367-7474.

AMERINGER|MCENERY|YOHE: Oliver Arms. Ends Mar.

6, 525 W. 22nd St., 212-445-0051.

BRIC ROTUNDA GALLERY: “the no place.” Ends Mar. 6,

33 Clinton St., Brooklyn, 718-875-4047.

BROOME STREET GALLERY: “The MEANING of

LINE.” Ends Feb. 28, 498 Broome St., 212226-6085.

CUCHIFRITOS: Yumi Roth: “F.O.B.” Ends Feb. 27, 120 Essex St., 212-420-9202.

DANIEL REICH GALLERY: Christian Holstad: “The World’s Gone Beautiful.” Ends Feb. 2010, 537 W. 23rd St., 212-924-4949.

FIRST STREET GALLERY: Suzi Evalenko: “What Mattered Most: A Life in Art and Letters.” Ends Feb. 27, 526 W. 26th St., suite 915, 646-3368053.

FLOMENHAFT GALLERY: Emma Amos. Ends Feb. 27, 547 W. 27th St., suite 200, 212-268-4952.

GAGOSIAN GALLERY: Elisa Sighicelli: “The Party Is Over.” Ends Feb. 27, 980 Madison Ave., 212744-2313.

GALLERY HENOCH: Winter Group Show. Ends Feb. 27, 555 W. 28th St., 917-305-0003.

HAUSER & WIRTH: Ida Applebroog: “Monalisa.” Ends Mar. 6, 32 E. 69th St., 212-794-4070.

HENDERSHOT GALLERY: “Trying Them On.” Ends Feb. 27, 547 W. 27th St., suite 632, 212-239-3085.

HOUS PROJECTS: “versus.” Ends Mar. 8, 31 Howard St., 212-941-5801.

LESLEY HELLER WORKSPACE: Gallery One: Catherine Howe. Ends Feb. 28. Gallery Two: “Wells Street Gallery Revisited.” Ends Feb. 28, 54 Orchard St., 212-410-6120.

MARGARET THATCHER PROJECTS: Gary Carsley: “fiction_non_fiction.” Ends Feb. 27, 539 W. 23rd St., Ground Floor, 212-675-0222.

NOHO GALLERY: Erma Martin Yost: “Felted Flightscapes.” Ends Feb. 27, 530 W. 25th St., 212367-7063.

PETER BLUM SOHO: David Reed: “Works on Paper.”

Ends Mar. 6, 99 Wooster St., 212-343-0441.

PHOENIX GALLERY: Peteranthonie Van Der Kreeke: “Mytho Poëtic Land and Rock Icons.” Ends Feb. 27. John Hampshire: “Tornadic Landscapes.” Ends Feb. 27, 210 11th Ave., 212-2268711.

SASHA WOLF GALLERY: Yola Monakhov: “Photography After Dante.” Ends Mar. 6, 10 Leonard St., 212925-0025.

Kyle Staver

Simon Gaon

RECENT WORK Painting, Monoprints, Linocuts, Etchings

David Geiser

Feb 17 – Mar 20 • Catalogue available

Dae Woong Nam Han Hong Park Han Hong Park “Rain #5,” 2009, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches

NABI GALLERY 137 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001212 929 6063 | www.nabigallery.com

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City Arts | www.cityarts.info

LOHIN•GEDULD•GALLERY 531 West 25 Street New York 212-675-2656 www.lohingeduld.com

“An ensemble triumph!” -The New York Times Ends Feb. 25, 526 W. 26th St., suite 522, 212929-1981.

STEVEN KASHER GALLERY: Cynthia MacAdams: “Feminist Portraits, 1974-1977.” Ends Feb. 27.

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders: “Supermodels of the ’70s & ’80s.” Ends Feb. 27, 521 W. 23rd St., 212-966-3978.

SUE SCOTT GALLERY: Elisabeth Subrin: “Her Compulsion to Repeat.” Ends Feb. 26, 1 Rivington St., 212-358-8767.

TIBOR DE NAGY GALLERY: Jane Freilicher: “Recent Paintings.” Ends Feb. 23, 724 5th Ave., 212262-5050.

TYLER ROLLINS FINE ART: Jimmy Ong: “Sitayana.” Ends Feb. 27, 529 W. 20th St., 10W, 212-229-9100.

VON LINTEL GALLERY: David Maisel. Ends Feb. 27, 520 W. 23rd St., 212-242-0599.

WOODWARD GALLERY: “Big Paper Winter.” Ends Feb. 27, 133 Eldridge St., 212-966-3411.

MUSEUMS ABRONS ART CENTER: “Where They At: A Multi-Me-

dia Archive of New Orleans Bounce.” Ends Mar. 27, 466 Grand St., 212-598-0400.

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY: “Traveling the Silk Road: Ancient Pathway to the Modern World.” Ends Aug. 2010. The Butterfly Conservatory. Ends May 2010, Central Park West at West 79th Street, 212-769-5100.

ASIA SOCIETY AND MUSEUM: “Arts of Ancient Viet Nam: From River Plain to Open Sea.” Ends May 2, 725 Park Ave., 212-288-6400.

BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC: “Archive Exhibition.”

Ends spring 2010, Peter Jay Sharp Building, 30 Lafayette Ave., 3rd Fl., Brooklyn, 718-636-4100.

BROOKLYN HISTORICAL SOCIETY: “It Happened in Brooklyn.” Ongoing, 128 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn, 718-222-4111.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM: “Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanity Fair of 1864.” Ends Oct. 17, 200 Eastern Pkwy., Brooklyn, 718-638-5000.

CHELSEA ART MUSEUM: Jenny Marketou: “Lighter Than Fiction.” Mar. 4-Apr. 3. Kotaro Fukui: “Silent Flowers & Ostriches.” Mar. 5-Apr. 17. Yibin Tian: “Our New York.” Mar. 5-Apr. 17, 556 W. 22nd St., 212-255-0719.

COOPER-HEWITT NATIONAL DESIGN MUSEUM: “Quicktake: Rodarte.” Ends Mar. 14. “Design USA: Contemporary Innovation.” Ends Apr. 4, 2 E. 91st St., 212-849-8400.

THE DRAWING CENTER: Iannis Xenakis: “Composer, Architect, Visionary.” Ends Apr. 8, 35 Wooster St., 212-219-2166.

THE FRICK COLLECTION: “Masterpieces of European Painting from Dulwich Picture Gallery.” Opens Mar. 9, 1 E. 70th St., 212-288-0700.

JAPAN SOCIETY: “Graphic Heroes, Magic Monsters: Japanese prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi from the Arthur R. Miller Collection.” Opens Mar. 12, 333 E. 47th St., 212-832-1155.

JEWISH MUSEUM: “Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention.” Ends Mar. 14, 1109 5th Ave., 212423-3200.

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: “The Drawings of Bronzino.” Ends Apr. 18. “Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage.” Ends May 9, 1000 5th Ave., 212-535-7710.

THE MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM: “A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy.” Ends Mar. 14.

“Rome After Raphael.” Ends May 9, 225 Madison Ave., 212-685-0008.

EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO: “Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis.” Ends Feb. 28, 1230 5th Ave., 212-831-7272.

MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FINANCE: “Women of Wall Street.” Ends Mar. 2010, 48 Wall St., 212-908-

4110.

MUSEUM OF ARTS AND DESIGN: “Slash: Paper Under the

Knife.” Ends Apr. 4, 2 Columbus Cir., 212-2997777.

MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE: “Traces of Memory.”

Opens Mar. 16, 36 Battery Pl., 646-437-4200.

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: “William Kentridge: Five Themes.” Feb. 24-May 17. “Gabriel Orozco.”

Ends Mar. 1. “Tim Burton.” Ends Apr. 26, 11 W. 53rd St., 212-708-9400.

NATIONAL ACADEMY MUSEUM: “The 185th Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art.” Ends June 8, 5 E. 89th St., 212996-1908.

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN: “Beauty Surrounds Us.” Ends Mar. 31, 1 Bowling Green, 212-514-3700.

NEW MUSEUM: Curate by Jeff Koons: “Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection.”

Mar. 3-June 6, 235 Bowery, 212-219-1222.

NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY: “Nature and the American Vision: The Hudson River School at the New-York Historical Society.” Ends Mar. 25. “Lincoln and New York.” Ends Mar. 25. 170 Central Park West, 212-873-3400.

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY: “The Jazz Loft Project.”

Ends May 22. “Candide at 250: Scandal and Success.” Ends Apr. 2010. “Mapping New York’s Shoreline, 1609-2009.” Ends June 26, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, West 42nd Street and 5th Avenue, 917-275-6975.

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS: “Revolutionary Voices: Performing Arts in Central & Eastern Europe in the 1980s.” Ends Mar. 20, 40 Lincoln Center Plz., 212-870-1630.

NOGUCHI MUSEUM: “Noguchi ReINstalled.” Ends Oct. 24, 33rd Road at Vernon Boulevard, Queens, 718-721-2308.

RUBIN MUSEUM OF ART: “In the Shadow of Everest: Photographs by Tom Wool.” Opens Feb. 26, 150 W. 17th St., 212-620-5000.

SKYSCRAPER MUSEUM: “China Prophecy: Shanghai.”

Ends Mar. 2010, 39 Battery Pl., 212-968-1961.

SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM: “Tino Sehgal.”

Ends Mar. 10. “Anish Kapoor: Memory.” Ends Mar. 28, 1071 5th Ave., 212-423-3500.

STUDIO MUSEUM OF HARLEM: “Wardell Milan: Drawings of Harlem.” Ends Mar. 14. “30 Seconds off an Inch.” Ends Mar. 14, 144 W. 125th St., 212-864-4500.

Charles Dickens’

Adapted by Stephen Jeffreys Directed by J.R. Sullivan

Photo by Gregory Costanzo

SPAZIO522: Bonnie Edelman: “Sermo Per Equus.”

NOW PLAYING!

AT NEW YORK CITY CENTER STAGE II

www.pearltheatre.org

AUCTIONS CHRISTIE’S: Fine American Paintings, Drawings and

Sculpture. Mar. 4, 10 a.m., 20 Rockefeller Plz., 212-636-2000.

DOYLE NEW YORK: Belle Epoque: 19th and 20th Century Decorative Arts. Feb. 24, 10 a.m., 175 E. 87th St., 212-427-2730.

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

SWANN AUCTION GALLERIES: Printed & Manuscript African Americana. Feb. 25, 1:30, 104 E. 25th St., 212-254-4710.

ART EVENTS THE GREAT POP-UP ART SALE: The Dumbo Arts Center

presents a massive art sale. Feb. 26-28, 30 Washington St., Brooklyn, 718-694-0831.

MUSIC & OPERA 92ND STREET Y TRIBECA: Leaders of the New Cool, the

traveling showcase of emerging urban artists, returns to New York City with a special debut of the “Don’t Quit Your Day Job” contest, based on

February 23, 2010 | City Arts

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ArtsAGENDA Angela Yee’s Sirius Radio segment of the same name. Feb. 24, 200 Hudson St., 212-601-1000; 7, $10.

AVERY FISHER HALL: David Roberston leads the New York Philharmonic in Ravel’s “Mother Goose” Suite, Barber’s Violin Concerto and Bartók’s “The Wooden Prince.” Feb. 25-27, Lincoln Center, 10 Lincoln Center Plz., 212-875-5656; times vary, $12+.

CATALAN CENTER: To celebrate the New York-debut of contemporary Catalan composer Benet Casablancas, the Perspectives Ensemble plays “Petita música nocturna” and a panel of experts, including the composer, discuss Casablancas’ place in North American and European modernist music.

Feb. 24, Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimon at NYU, 24 W. 12th St., 212-998-8255; 7, free.

CATHEDRAL OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE: Boston Baroque performs Monteverdi’s “Vespers of 1610” under the leadership of music director Martin Pearlman. Mar. 6, 1047 Amsterdam Ave., 212-3167540; 8, $20+.

HARLEM OPERA THEATER: The theater presents its salute to Black History Month with its annual performance, this year featuring excerpts from Duke Ellington’s Queenie Pie. Feb. 26, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 515 Malcolm X Blvd., 212-592-0780; 7:30, $25+.

JUILLIARD: Conductor Jeffrey Milarsky leads the Juilliard Orchestra in the school’s annual evening of world premieres by Juilliard student composers.

Feb. 26, Peter Jay Sharp Theater, 155 W. 65th St., 212-769-7406; 8, free.

MANHATTAN SCHOOL OF MUSIC: The school’s wind ensemble performs a return concert of French music. Feb. 26, John C. Borden Auditorium, 120 Claremont Ave., 917-493-4429; 7:30, $5+.

METROPOLITAN OPERA: Attila: Riccardo Muti conducts and Pierre Audi directs Miuccia Prada in Verdi’s ninth opera. Feb. 23-Mar. 27, West 62nd Street (betw. Columbus & Amsterdam Aves.), 212-3626000; times vary, $20+.

METROPOLITAN ROOM: Gay Marshall reprises her concert series Piaf: Queen of Heart. Feb. 25 & Mar. 4, 11 & 18, 34 W. 22nd St., 212-206-0440; 7:30, $25+.

NORMAN THOMAS HIGH SCHOOL: The Doctor’s Orchestral Society presents a concert to benefit the orchestra and Doctors Without Borders. Feb. 25, 111 E. 33rd St.; 7:30, free.

SAINT PETER’S CHURCH: Featuring a work by Ezra Laderman, the first 2009-10 series concert of the New York Composers Circle also features a work

by Tamara Cashour. Feb. 23, Citigroup Center, 619 Lexington Ave.; 8, $20.

ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S CHURCH: The New York Choral Society performs a concert of French choral works. Feb. 28, 325 Park Ave., 212-378-0222; 2, $30+.

SULLIVAN HALL: Brooklyn-based Americana band Yarn performs. Feb. 27, 214 Sullivan St., 212634-0427; 7, $10.

WMP CONCERT HALL: Violinist Michelle Ross performs with pianist Evan Solomon. Feb. 25, 31 E. 28th St., 212-582-7536; 7:30, $10+.

JAZZ ALLEN ROOM: Manhattan Concert Productions

presents The New York City Jazz Festival. Feb. 28, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Time Warner Center, Broadway at W. 60th St., 212-721-6500; 8, $48+.

DIZZY’S CLUB COCA COLA: The Christian McBride Big Band performs, featuring McBride on bass. Feb. 23-28, 33 W. 60th St., 212-258-9595; times vary, $15+.

HARLEM STAGE: Grammy Award-winning artist Van Hunt kicks of the season of Uptown Nights. Feb.

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City Arts | www.cityarts.info

27, 150 Convent Ave., 212-281-9240; 7:30, $25.

JAZZ STANDARD: Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet

Lickers. Feb. 23 & 24, 116 E. 27th St., 212-5762232; times vary, $25.

OAK ROOM SUPPER CLUB: Husband-and-wife team Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano begin their first joint extended engagement at the Oak Room, debuting their show “This Thing Called Love.”

Ends Mar. 6, 59 W. 44th St., 212-419-9331; times vary, $50+.

ROULETTE: William Parker teams with trombonist Conrad Bauer and percussionist Hamid Drake for an evening of free improv. Feb. 26, 20 Greene St., 212-219-8242; 8:30, $10+.

VILLAGE VANGUARD: Al Foster Quartet. Mar. 2-7, 178 7th Ave. S., 212-255-4037; times vary, $30+.

DANCE 92ND STREET Y HARKNESS DANCE FESTIVAL: “From the

Horse’s Mouth,” a live dance documentary, presents 25 dancers and choreographers who tell personal stories from their lives then perform movement of their own choosing. Feb. 26-28, Buttenweiser Hall, 92nd Street YMHA, 1395 Lexington Ave., 212-415-5555; times vary, $15.

AFRICAN DANCE/BROOKLYN STYLE: Brooklyn Arts Council kicks off its year-long program Black Brooklyn Renaissance: Black Arts & Culture, 1960-2010 with a free celebratory dance extravaganza, designed to track Brooklyn’s evolution through dance styles. Feb. 28, Walt Whitman Theater, Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College, 2900 Campus Rd.; 2-5, free.

AMANDA SELWYN DANCE THEATRE: The troupe presents “Transition,” which includes evening-length works from “Interiors” and “Passage.” Feb. 27, Speyer Hall, University Settlement, 184 Eldridge St.; 7 & 9, $20+.

DANCE THEATER WORKSHOP: DTW presents Natalie Green in a Studio Series work-in-progress showing of “This Dark July.” Feb. 25 & 26, 219 W. 19th St., 212-924-0077; 7:30, free.

LAR LUBOVITCH DANCE COMPANY: The company presents a two-week run at The Joyce, which includes the world premiere of “Coltrane’s Favorite Things.” Feb. 23-Mar. 7, The Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave., 212-242-0800; times vary, $10+.

MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP: The company’s program features the world premiere of “Socrates.” Feb. 23-27, BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave., 718-636-4129; 7:30, $20+.

PAUL TAYLOR DANCE COMPANY: The modern dance company performs the New York premieres of “Also Playing” and “Brief Encounters” for the opening of New York City Center’s season. Feb. 24, New York City Center, 131 W. 55th St., 212581-1212; 7, $10+.

THEATER AS YOU LIKE IT: The Bridge Project presents

Shakespeare, as Mendes and company explore outcasts, power and magical lands. Ends Mar. 13, BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St., 718636-4100.

BAWDY: Join fishnet-clad birthday boy Jesse Luttrell as he hosts Off-Broadway’s biggest little vaudeville, an ever-changing, burlesque-themed romp. Feb. 26, The Triad Theatre, 158 W. 72nd St., 800-838-3006.

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. 45 St., 212-239-6200.

BRACK’S LAST BACHELOR PARTY: Three men from Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler battle it out at a bachelor

Lavay Smith performs at Jazz Standard Feb. 23 & 24. party. Feb. 25-Mar. 14, 59E59 Theaters, 59 E. 59th St., 212-279-4200.

CHICAGO: The long-running revival of Kander and Ebb’s musical about sex, murder and celebrity continues to razzle-dazzle. Open run, Ambassador Theatre, 219 W. 49 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.

HAIR: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical: Diane Paulus’ celebrated revival of the 1967 hippie-centered musical continues its rocking Broadway run. Open run, Al Hirschfeld Theatre, 302 W. 45 St., 212-239-6200.

IN THE HEIGHTS: This heartfelt and high-spirited love letter to Washington Heights features a salsa and hip-hop flavored score by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Open run, Richard Rodgers Theatre, 226 W. 46 St., 212-221-1211.

LOTUS FEET: Michael Domitrovich’s new play tells the story of a young NYC professional who she sacrifices her television career and relationship to follow an elderly female yoga guru. Ends Feb. 28, Theater for the New City, 155 1st Ave., 212-254-1109.

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

MOMENTS AND LEMONS: Thom Fogarty directs the work of playwright Fred Giacinto, which follows the mishaps of an unfortunate man named Casper. Ends Mar. 7, Theater for the New City,

155 1st Ave., 212-254-1109.

NEXT TO NORMAL: A woman and her family struggle to

cope with her bipolar disorder in this emotional, Tony-winning musical. Open run, Booth Theatre, 222 W. 45 St., 212-239-6200.

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA: Prep yourself for the forthcoming sequel by seeing (or re-seeing) Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Gothic musical romance.

Open run, Majestic Theatre, 245 W. 44 St., 212-239-6200.

SOUTH PACIFIC: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical in its first Broadway revival. Ends May 30, Lincoln Center Theater, 150 W. 65th St., 212239-6210.

THE TEMPERAMENTALS: The new American play tells the story of two men as they fall in love while building the first gay rights organization in the United States. Feb. 28-May 9, New World Stages, 340 W. 50th St., 212-239-6200.

THE WONDER: The Queen’s Company, NYC’s all-female classical theater company, presents a revival of Susanna Centlivre’s comedy of intrigue. Feb. 26-Mar. 14, The Kirk Theater, 410 W. 42nd St., 212-279-4200.

To submit a gallery listing, please visit www.artcat.com/submission. For any other type of submission, please email all relevant information to cityarts@manhattanmedia.com at least three weeks prior to the event. Listings run on a space-available basis and cannot be guaranteed to appear.

PainttheTOWN

By Amanda Gordon

A CASE FOR EVIDENCE

A NEW PROJECT

photos: Wendy Stulberg

“It was like, I don’t know, a wedding, a graduation, three or four milestones thrown into one,” said Gus Rogerson, the artistic director of the 52nd Street Project, of the nonprofit’s recent open house, which celebrated its move into a brand new, bigger and cooler building.

“Everybody went a little crazy,” he added, describing the marching band’s procession, kids dressing up in costumes and other activities throughout the building at 500 W. 52nd St. The event marked the culmination of a capital campaign started in 2005, which raised $18.5 million to build the new facility and create an endowment. The jewel of the 52nd Street Project’s new home is a theater Kenny Wollesen and the Himalayas served as the marching band. in which plays written by children can be rehearsed and performed, and children too can take the stage.

There is also enough space for all the programs that the project offers to children from Hell’s Kitchen. Now kids can do their homework in rooms that remain quiet, while the wonderful—and loud—chaos of making instruments, taking a photography workshop or making a literary magazine goes on elsewhere.

The next playmaking shows, Mar. 26, 27 and 28, will present short plays written by 10 child playwrights and performed by adult actors.

“We give them a basic template: Characters have to want something, there has to be conflict, there has to be change,” said Rogerson. “Within that structure, we 52nd Street Project’s executive 52nd Street Project program director Megan Cramer and ac- try to give them as much soverdirector, Carol Ochs, with the ceremonial ribbon-cutting scissors. tors Brad Weinstock, Mary Testa, Ana Nogueira and Tim Cain. eignty and free reign as possible.”

(from left to right) Darren Walker and Pamela Joyner, Yvonne Doggett, New York State’s First Lady, Michelle Paterson, Latoya Henry and Dwayne Ashley, Amanda Pegues and Raven Thomas.

Amanda Gordon

photos: Amanda Gordon

Before performing with Evidence Dance for the company’s silver anniversary gala at the Plaza Hotel, Jennifer Holliday, one of the original stars of Dreamgirls, spoke to CityArts about her dancing days.

They started when she was working on the Broadway musical with choreographer and director Michael Bennett. “He taught me how dance and words come together—he wanted me to know that dance was expressive at any size,” Holliday said, noting that she is much slimmer now than when she played the role. Her favorite move: “I’d call it a backslat swirl,” she said, shimmying with her hips, before the English R&B songstress Estelle came over to say hello. “We met at Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles,” Holliday said.

On stage, Holliday stuck to singing, while Evidence performed “Grace,” one of its most popular works. “It gets me in the mood every time,” said Donna Dougan.

“I love it. Evidence incorporates all genres of dance. It’s elegant, with moves from African culture, a lot of modern, and a tiny, tiny bit of ballet,” said Raven Thomas. “‘Grace’ is visceral, certain moments feel like prayer, certain moments like bondage, certain moments like ecstasy,” raved Rhonda Ross. Evidence, founded by Ronald K. Brown, is now on a tour of Senegal, South Africa and Nigeria.

Its next New York City performance is set for Songbirds Estelle and June 17 at Harlem Stage.

Jennifer Holliday

Nick Lawrence and Russell Taylor.

Nick Lawrence, the director and owner of the Chelsea gallery Freight + Volume, was happy to pose with artist Russell Tyler, at the opening reception for Tyler’s exhibition Decomposing in the Land of Paradise. Tyler, who is working on his MFA at Pratt, takes dark and comic turns primarily by piling on globs of paint to create monstrous yet playful figures—one work’s title is “The Ice Cream Man Poses as Poseidon.” The show, which features 12 paintings, is up through Mar. 20.

NOTES AND NEXTS A commission from the Tuscan winery Tenuta dell’Ornellaia to design labels for its 2007 vintage taught artists Ghada Amer and Reza Farkhondeh a thing or two about winemaking, and a lot more about printmaking. The artists had recently completed a series called “Roses Off Limits” at Pace Prints when the winery’s commission gave them an excuse to stay and learn some more.

“This I did with a Sharpie, this was soft ground with aquatint,” said Farkhondeh, pointing to two of the 18 different labels unveiled at the restaurant A Voce last Wednesday. There was no wine involved in the making of the labels, until the end. “When we were finished, we got two bottles. So we all went into an empty room at Pace and drank the wine. We listened to the soundtrack of Lord of the Rings,” Farkohdeh said. The specially-labeled wine will be auctioned by Sotheby’s on Apr. 28 at a Whitney Museum benefit, with proceeds going to the museum’s conservation department. A full set of 18 bottles spells out “Happily Ever After.” ... On Mar. 15, the Park Avenue Orchestra will perform at “A Winter’s Waltz,” an evening of dancing to benefit the Harmony Program, which provides one-on-one classical music instruction to children in New York City public schools.

For more party coverage, visit www.cityarts.info.

To contact the author or purchase photos, email Amanda.Gordon@rocketmail.com; bit.ly/agphotos February 23, 2010 | City Arts

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