Editors’ Picks: 16 Events for Your Art Calendar This Week, From a Virtual EXPO Chicago to a Live Performance at the Met
By Artnet News 

Each week, we search New York City for the most exciting and thought-provoking shows, screenings, and events. In light of the global health crisis, we are currently highlighting events and digitally, as well as in-person exhibitions open in the New York area. See our picks from around the world below. (Times are all EST unless otherwise noted.)

Monday, September 21

1. “Art in a Time of Crisis: Excavating the Past, Confronting the Present, Imagining the Future” hosted by Cooper Union and Public Art Fund, New York

This past spring, the Public Art Fund commissioned 50 New York-based artists to create new work in response to these unprecedented times, resulting in a wide-ranging exhibition titled “Art on the Grid.” This accompanying talk features artists Firelei Báez and D’Angelo Lovell Williams in conversation with the fund’s director and chief curator Nicholas Baume. The artists will reflect on their individual themes and working methods to explore how they mine different histories and styles of representation to generate dialogues that both acknowledge and aim to transcend the limits of our dysfunctional present.

Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 5 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Eileen Kinsella

2. “Planned Parenthood of Greater New York’s Choice Works 2020” at Sotheby’s New York

Heavy-hitting feminist artists including Marilyn Minter, Barbara Kruger, and Laurie Simmons join forces with pro-choice allies such as Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha, Sam Gilliam, and Jasper Johns for this Planned Parenthood of Greater New York auction chaired by Cecily Brown, Amy Cappellazzo, Lisa Dennison, and Amy Sherald. The fundraising effort also extends to the “Contemporary Curated” sale on October 2, where Judy Chicago’s Birth Trinity Quilt (1983), originally donated by the artist to Planned Parenthood of Rocky Mountains in 1991, is expected to bring in as much as $350,000. Tickets to this week’s virtual party previewing the sale, which features a DJ set by Questlove, include a limited-edition Cindy Sherman and Narciso Rodriguez t-shirt.

Location: Sotheby’s New York, 1334 York Avenue, New York
Price: Tickets to virtual event from $100
Time: Virtual launch event, 7 p.m.; by appointment in person or any time online

—Sarah Cascone 

Tuesday, September 22

3. “Diana Al-Hadid Studio Visit” with the NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery

As part of New York University Abu Dhabi’s “TRACE: Archives and Reunions” series, the executive director and chief curator of the university’s Abu Dhabi art gallery, Maya Allison, will look back at Brooklyn-based artist Diana Al-Hadid’s past show, “Phantom Limb,” which debuted at the gallery in 2016. The live-streamed studio visit coincides with the digital publication of the exhibition archive.

Price: Free
Time: 10:30 a.m.

—Caroline Goldstein

4. “Gedi Sibony With Yasi Alipour” at the Brooklyn Rail

Gedi Sibony will chat with writer and artist Yasi Alipouror as part of the Brooklyn Rail’s lunchtime conversation series “The New Social Environment.” The talk comes just ahead of the artist’s new solo show, “Gedi Sibony: The Terrace Theater,” on view September 24 through October 31 at Greene Naftali Gallery. Using repurposed walls, shelves, and other scraps from his studio, Sibony has created new sculptures as well as wall works with a specially conceived architecture.

Price: Free
Time: 1 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Wednesday, September 23

5. “Xaviera Simmons in Conversation with Sally Tallant and John Hatfield” at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York

In conjunction with her exhibition “Xaviera Simmons: Posture” at the Institute of Fine Arts, the artist will be joining Sally Tallant, president of the Queens Museum, and John Hatfield, director of Queens’s Socrates Sculpture Park, for a live-streamed conversation about how whiteness functions within museums and how art institutions can dismantle these systems while advocating for wealth redistribution and reparations for Black Americans. The panelists will also address the benefits and challenges of stewarding art institutions located in Queens, one of the world’s most ethnically diverse communities.

Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 6 p.m.

— Katie White

Wednesday, September 23 and Wednesday, September 30

6. “Lee Mingwei: OUR LABYRINTH” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Met is hosting its first live performance in more than six months with a site-specific staging of Lee Mingwei’s durational performance OUR LABYRINTH. The Taiwanese-American artist has enlisted dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones to retool the piece for an online audience, to be streamed on YouTube from three different galleries for three successive Wednesdays (this week is the second), when the museum is closed. A different dancer appears each time, using a stylized broom to sweep a pile of rice through a labyrinthine path.

Price: Free
Time: 12 p.m.–4:30 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone 

Thursday, September 24

7. “Women, Race, Representation: Artists of Conscience” at the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC

The Phillips is commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment with a Zoom panel discussion under the banner “Artists of Conscience.” The talk coincides with a digital exhibition featuring female artists from the permanent collection, including multiple recipients of the Anonymous Was a Woman Award.

Price: Free with registration
Time: 5:30 p.m.–7 p.m.

—Caroline Goldstein

Thursday, September 24–Sunday, November 15

8. “Akeem Smith: No Gyal Can Test” at Red Bull Arts, New York

Akeem Smith’s first major solo exhibition draws from a vast, highly personal archive of videos and photos tracking the evolution of Kingston, Jamaica’s inimitable dancehall scene from the early 1980s through the dawn of the 21st century. More than a straightforward celebration or documentation of a local cultural force that has since gone worldwide—if you’ve ever nodded your head (or more) to Sean Paul’s titanic 2002 single “Get Busy,” you’ve felt dancehall’s impact on the mainstream—Smith’s works also unearth the subculture’s many intricacies, the colonial tensions embedded in its spread, and the often unforgiving effects of time on places and people alike.

Location: Red Bull Arts, 220 West 18th Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: 1 p.m.–8 p.m. daily; reserve your time slot here (appointments recommended, but not required)

—Tim Schneider

Thursday, September 24–December

9. “Drawing 2020” at Gladstone Gallery, New York

As we enter week three of this most bizarre fall gallery-going season, we’re starting to see the different directions the big shops are taking with regard to how to fill the walls in a socially distanced world. For Gladstone Gallery, the answer is drawings—lots of drawings, brand new ones, by more than 100 artists, in an ambitious attempt to get the final word on the concept of the handmade work on paper. It’s a sequel of sorts to a similar show Barbara Gladstone staged in 2000, when she attempted to take the temperature of the new millennium by asking a large chunk of the then-vanguard for fresh drawings. Two decades later, we again find ourselves in interesting times—”this important moment in history,” says the press release—and here we have a new batch of wildly dissimilar voices with sketches that address said times. The stuffed bill of fare includes Alvaro Barrington, Kye Christensen-Knowles, Gladys Nilsson, Damián Ortega, Pope.L, and Peter Saul.

Location: Gladstone Gallery, 530 West 21st Street
Price: Free
Time: 10 a.m.–6 p.m. daily; reserve your time slot here (appointments recommended, but not required)

—Nate Freeman

Friday, September 25

10. “Photographer Kiki Williams on Artistic Healing” with Salon 21, New York 

Polaroid photographer Kiki Williams is joining Salon 21 founder Alex Bass for an Instagram Live conversation about the therapeutic benefits of art practices. In conjunction with the talk, Salon 21 will be selling t-shirts to benefit mental health initiatives that are based in artistic creation, including Combat Paper, which transforms military uniforms into paper for art projects. Williams will be raffling one of her original polaroids to those who purchase shirts.

Price: Free
Time: 12 p.m.

— Katie White

Friday, September 25–Sunday, September 27

11. “Exhibition Weekend” at EXPO CHICAGO

Another major art fair goes virtual for 2020, with EXPO CHICAGO offering a full slate of virtual studio visits, exhibition and gallery tours, and discussions in addition to online viewing rooms with works for sale. Programming highlights include a conversation with Nick Cave, introduced by Agnes Gund, and the Richard H. Driehaus Museum’s “A Tale of Today: Nate Young and Mika Horibuchi,” in which the two contemporary artists discuss how they went about creating site-specific work for the historic house museum.

Price: Free
Time: Opening 11 a.m.

—Tanner West

Saturday, September 26

12. Champagne Reception and Press Preview at Aicon Gallery, New York

In honor of artist Natvar Bhavsar’s second solo exhibition, Sublime Light: On the Cusp of the 1980s, Aicon Gallery is hosting a champagne reception and press preview for their patrons. Bhavsar draws his influence from colorful memories of a childhood spent in India and New York in the 1970s. This show highlights 13 of his large paintings from the decade.

Location: Aicon Gallery, 35 Great Jones Street, New York
Price: Free with RSVP
Time: 4 p.m.–8 p.m. (only two parties allowed inside at a time)

—Neha Jambhekar

Through Saturday, October 10

13. “I Heard a Wild Flower” at Carvalho Park, Brooklyn

Head over to Carvalho Park in Brooklyn to check out Brian Rattiner and Keiko Narahashi’s two-person show, “I Heard a Wild Flower.” Rattiner’s large pastel paintings, imbued with a sense of serenity found during time spent in Greece and upstate New York, stand in stark contrast with Narahashi’s sculptures, which are reminiscent of Japanese minimalism. The dreamy paintings and the minimalist sculptures create a duality “in which the intangible sensations of one’s complex experiences of nature materialize,” according to the gallery’s statement.

Location: Carvalho Park, 112 Waterbury Street, Brooklyn
Price: Free
Time: Thursday, Friday, Saturday 12 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Neha Jambhekar

Through Sunday, October 6

14. “Children in the Wood: A Trip to the Madhouse” at Ivy Brown Gallery, New York

Elizabeth Jordan’s current solo show at Ivy Brown calls to mind the dark side of the original, unsanitized version of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, with eerie sculptures of animals formed from materials including wood, chicken wire, burlap, and plaster transforming the gallery into a haunted yet dreamlike forest. Among the artist’s self-proclaimed interests? “Photographing dead things, newspaper clippings, fairy tales; horror films from the fifties and sixties; ghost stories; animals, birds and insects behaving like people; fables; store mannequins.”

Location: Ivy Brown Gallery, 675 Hudson Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: By appointment

—Sarah Cascone

Through Saturday, October 31

15. “Aubrey Levinthal: Vacancy” at Monya Rowe Gallery, New York

In this solo show at Monya Rowe, Aubrey Levinthal presents tender moments of everyday life. In quiet scenes offering both thoughtful portraits and carefully considered still lifes, the artist hints at the emotional burdens and invisible anxiety that we all carry just below the surface—if you look close enough.

Location: Monya Rowe Gallery, 224 West 30th Street, #1005, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Nan Stewert

Through Sunday, November 1

16. “Kevin Claiborne: Black Enough” at Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York

Curator and critic Antwaun Sargent has written the essay for Kevin Claiborne’s first New York show, which features a mix of sculpture and photography that considers Black identity and oppression in the year 2020. Clairborne, who has captured some of the most striking images of this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, transforms police barricades into sculptures such as a cross recalling the iconography of the crucifixion and poses though-provoking questions, like “where is Black enough,” in bold text overlaid atop black and white photographs of the Joshua Tree desert.

Location: Thierry Goldberg Gallery, 109 Norfolk Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Wednesday–Sunday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone