Takashi Murakami adds unique characters to many of his Hiroshige re-creations in Brooklyn Museum exhibit (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
SOL/SOLEY/SOLO
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, August 3, free, 5:00 – 10:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org
The Brooklyn Museum honors Caribbean culture with its free August First Saturday program, “Sol/Soley/Solo,” featuring live performances by Metro Steel Orchestra, RAGGA NYC DJs Oscar Nñ and Byrell the Great, Dada Cozmic, and Lulada Club; storytelling with Janet Morrison and Deborah C. Mortimer; a pop-up Caribbean market; pop-up poetry with Roberto Carlos Garcia, Omotara James, Anesia Alfred, and Christina Olivares; a hands-on art workshop in which participants will make Caribbean-inspired fans; and screenings of Ben DiGiacomo and Dutty Vannier’s 2023 documentary Bad Like Brooklyn Dancehall, followed by a talkback with Pat McKay, Screechy Dan, and Red Fox, moderated by Lauren Zelaya, and Eché Janga’s 2020 drama, Buladó. In addition, the galleries will be open late so you can check out “Nico Williams: Aaniin, I See Your Light,” “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm,” “Brooklyn Abstraction: Four Artists, Four Walls,” “The Brooklyn Della Robbia,” “The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago,” and more.
Paul McCartney, Self-portrait, London, 1963, large graphic reproduction (courtesy MPL Communications Ltd.)
It’s also your last chance to catch the must-see exhibition “Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo (feat. Takashi Murakami),” which closes August 4. For the first time in more than two decades, the Brooklyn Museum is displaying its rare complete set of Utagawa Hiroshige’s “100 Famous Views of Edo,” an 1856–58 collection of woodblock prints of Edo, later to become Tokyo. Hiroshige, who died in 1858 at the age of sixty-one, captured everyday life in the gorgeous works, from flora and fauna to stunning landscapes to fish, cats, people, and weather patterns, including Nihonbashi, Clearing After Snow; Ryogoku Ekoin and Moto-Yanagibashi Bridge; Cotton-Goods Lane, Odenma-cho; Yatsukoji, Inside Sujikai Gate; Shitaya Hirokoji; Night View of the Matsuchiyama and Sam’ya Canal; View of Nihonbashi Tori-itchome; Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake; and Bamboo Yards, Kyobashi Bridge.
The show is supplemented with related objects, contemporary photographs of the locations by Álex Falcón Bueno, and, most spectacularly, Takashi Murakami’s re-creations of each view of Edo, many with gold or platinum leafing. Dozens of smaller 14 1/2 × 9 7/16 inch acrylics on canvas are arranged in three rows on the walls, as well as 39 3/8 × 25 9/16 inch works in two rows, but it’s the large-scale 137 13/16 × 89 9/16 inch pieces that demand intense scrutiny, as Murakami has added classic miniature characters from his oeuvre, hiding them in trees, behind bushes, on rooftops, and in other hard-to-find locations, in the same gallery space where “© Murakami” dazzled visitors in 2008.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]