this week in art

DANISH MODERNITY: JACOB A. RIIS AND VILHELM HAMMERSHØI IN 1900

Museum of the City of New York will host discussion surrounding

Museum of the City of New York will host presentation and discussion about contemporaries Jacob A. Riis and Vilhelm Hammershøi

Who: Danish ambassador Anne Dorte Riggelsen, curator Bonnie Yochelson, and assistant professor of art history Dr. Thor J. Mednick
What: “Danish Modernity: Jacob Riis and Vilhelm Hammershøi in 1900”
Where: Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Ave. at 103rd St.
When: Monday, November 16, $16, 6:30
Why: In conjunction with the exhibition “Jacob A. Riis: Revealing New York’s Other Half” at the Museum of the City of New York and “Painting Tranquility: Masterworks by Vilhelm Hammershøi from SMK — The National Gallery of Denmark” at Scandinavia House, MCNY is hosting an evening of presentations and discussions on the similarities and differences between the life and careers of Danish-born American photojournalist and social reformer Jacob A. Riis and Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi as they relate to the movement toward modernity.

MOBY-DICK: A MARATHON READING

Frank Stella, “The Whiteness of the Whale (IRS-1, 2X),” paint on aluminum, 1987 (© 2015 Frank Stella/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph by Steven Sloman)

Whitney Museum of American Art
Neil Bluhm Family Galleries, fifth floor
99 Gansevoort St.
Friday, November 13, 11:00 am – 10:00 pm
Saturday, November 14, 11:00 am – finish
Free with museum admission of $18-$22
212-570-3600
whitney.org

Last November’s second biennial Moby-Dick Marathon took place over the course of three days at the Ace Hotel, the South Street Seaport Museum, and the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe. This year a bonus marathon is being held November 13-14 on the fifth floor of the new Whitney, where more than 150 artists, writers, curators, editors, and others will celebrate the 164th anniversary of Herman Melville’s thousand-page 1851 epic with a two-day marathon reading in conjunction with Frank Stella’s Moby-Dick series, part of a major retrospective of the work of the Massachusetts-born, New York-based artist that continues through February 7. Stella created the works for a special 150th anniversary publication of Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, containing reproductions of sculptures, reliefs, prints, and a mural inspired by the tale of Captain Ahab’s desperate hunt for the title mammal. Among the myriad scheduled readers of the massive tome are Ben Greenman, Brian Floca, Trisha Baga, Alan Light, Morgan Parker, AK Burns, Lucky DeBellevue, Monica de la Torre, Salman Rushdie, Melissa Febos, Paul Rome, Rebecca Dinerstein, Kurt Andersen, Ben Fama, Angela Flournoy, and Rowan Ricardo-Phillips, with more to be announced.

CANSTRUCTION

Gensler’s What’s U, Doc? Canstructure consists of 5,932 cans (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Gensler’s “What’s Up, Doc?” CANsculpture consists of 5,932 cans (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Brookfield Place
250 Vesey St.
Daily through November 16, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-945-0505
brookfieldplaceny.com
www.sdanyc.org/canstruction
canstruction nyc slideshow

The twenty-third annual Canstruction NYC Design/Build Competition is under way at Brookfield Place, although they’re a little trickier to find this year than in the past, when they lined the Winter Garden. The architectural battle and fundraiser — visitors are asked to bring a can of high-quality, nonperishable food to donate — features more than two dozen creative structures built by teams referencing the international hunger crisis. As always, the overall construction is best viewed through a camera, but get up close and personal with the naked eye to see how ingenious many of the intricate designs are. You can vote for your favorite here. Among the impressive competitors are HOK’s “Presidential CANdidates,” Thornton Tomasetti’s “Wall Street Charging Bull,” Severud Associates’ “Spanning the Hungry Rapids,” GACE Consulting Engineers’ “The Butterfly Effect: How Far CAN Kindness Go?,” RAND Engineering & Architecture’s “Pipe Down Hunger,” and WJE Engineers & Architects’ “Yoshi’s Soup’er Mission,” although it will be mighty tough to beat out Gensler’s “What’s Up, Doc?” At the end of the competition, the structures are taken apart and the cans donated to City Harvest, so come on by, bring some nonperishable items, and help CANstruction raise upwards of 100,000 cans of food. On November 12 from 12 noon to 3:00, Jenny McCoy, a chef-instructor at the Institute of Culinary Education and author of Desserts for Every Season, will host a free presentation and tasting (of sweets made with canned food) next to Hudson Eats, right near several of the CANsculptures.

ARTIST TALK: AWOL ERIZKU

Artist Awol Erizku will be at FLAG on November 13 to discuss his latest solo exhibition (photography by Art Echo LLC)

Who: Awol Erizku, Alicia Quarles, and Glenn Fuhrman
What: Artist talk
Where: The FLAG Art Foundation, 545 West 25th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., tenth floor, 212-206-0220
When: Friday, November 13, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: In conjunction with the exhibition “New Flower | Images of the Reclining Venus,” New York-based artist Awol Erizku will talk about his solo show, consisting of photographs of sex workers taken in Addis Ababa in 2013 that reexamine and challenge conventional art-historical tropes. “While ‘New Flower’ importantly revises the homogeneous tradition of the ‘odalisque,’ the series also complicates the counter tradition by highlighting the tension between labor and the aesthetic — through a framing that is definitively and defiantly new,” Ashley James writes about the exhibit. On November 13, Erizku will be at the FLAG Art Foundation in Chelsea to discuss his work, in conversation with fashion journalist Alicia Quarles and FLAG founder Glenn Fuhrman. “New Flower | Images of the Reclining Venus,” which includes a mixtape you can check out here, will remain on view through December 12.

MARINELLA SENATORE AND NÁSTIO MOSQUITO: VISIBLE ON THE HIGH LINE

Nástio Mosquito will perform “S.E.F.A. Se Eu Fosse Angolano (If I Were Angolan)” to help kick off Creative Time Summit

The High Line
Gansevoort St. entrance to Chelsea Market Passage
Friday, November 13, free, 6:00
thehighline.org
creativetime.org

The Creative Time Summit, a two-day series of workshops, roundtables, and open discussions exploring the intersection of art and social justice, takes place November 14-15 at the Boys and Girls High School campus on Fulton St. in Brooklyn, featuring such participants as keynote speakers Nikole Hannah-Jones and Boots Riley along with Bill Ayers, Hans Haacke, Leonard Lopate, Luis Camnitzer, Hope Ginsburg, Tahir Hemphill, Chloë Bass, Tania Bruguera, and many others. But the summit, “The Curriculum NYC,” kicks off Friday night with the special event “Visible on the High Line,” an evening of site-specific participatory performances focusing on collaboration and social interaction, curated by Matteo Lucchetti and Judith Wielander of the Visible Project, “a research project in contemporary art devoted to art work in the social sphere, that aims to produce and sustain socially engaged artistic practices in a global context.” Italian visual artist Marinella Senatore will present the latest iteration of her “School of Narrative Dance” project, beginning at the Gansevoort St. entrance to the High Line and continuing on to the Chelsea Market Passage above Sixteenth St., where Angolan artist and musician Nástio Mosquito will perform “S.E.F.A. Se Eu Fosse Angolano (If I Were Angolan),” a look at media and identity, with visuals by Vic Pereiro. Admission to the High Line performance is free; tickets to the Creative Time Summit run from $25 to $350, depending on what you can afford.

BLACK

The Brooklyn Hangar
140 53rd St. at Second Ave. Dr.
Saturday, November 14, $30-$80, 10:00 pm – 6:00 am
black-nyc.com
thebrooklynhangar.com

Tickets are going fast for BLACK, a combined music-and-art experience taking place at the Brooklyn Hangar, a thirteen-thousand-square-foot, two-floor warehouse space that hosts unique events. Run by MATTE Projects, the downtown Manhattan company that also promotes the Full Moon Festival and Kitsuné Club Nights, BLACK will feature music by Gesaffelstein, Jon Hopkins, GENER8ION, Virgil Abloh of FLAT WHITE, and NSR (The Deep) x Haruka. (You can hear a mix of songs from the musicians here.) While music is going on upstairs, the basement will be divided into six interactive rooms designed by six visual artists — Cara Stricker, Jesper Just, Nate Brown, Toki Series, Abloh, and Zach Walker, each in a different color. There will also be DJ sets by Tummetott and MASHA downstairs.

WIKIPEDIA EDIT-A-THON: BASQUIAT STILL FLY @55

You can help MoMA update Wikipedia articles on black artists on November 10

Museum of Modern Art
The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building
The Library and Archives Reading Rooms, sixth floor
4 West 54th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Tuesday, November 10, free with RSVP
www.moma.org

Influential artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died at the age of twenty-seven in 1988, would have turned fifty-five this December 22, so MoMA is using that as the inspiration behind its November 10 event, “Wikipedia Edit-a-thon: Basquiat Still Fly @55.” On Tuesday night at 6:00, everyone is invited to bring their own laptops and power cords and help update Wikipedia articles on Basquiat and other black artists, focusing on “the multicultural and gender gaps in Wikipedia.” No art, editing, writing, or HTML experience or knowledge is required, and light refreshments will be served. Advance RSVP is required here.