this week in art

MUSEUM MILE FESTIVAL 2015

Uptown institutions stay open late and open their doors for free for Museum Mile Festival

Multiple locations on Fifth Ave. between 82nd & 105th Sts.
Tuesday, June 9, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Admission: free
www.museummilefestival.org

There’s really only one main problem with the annual Museum Mile Festival: It’s too short. On Tuesday, June 9, from 6:00 to 9:00, nine uptown art and cultural institutions will open their doors for free and fill Fifth Ave. between 82nd & 105th Sts. with family-friendly activities for the thirty-sixth year. There will be live outdoor performances by Calpulli Mexican Dance Company, Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, Evolfo, Kim David Smith, the Martha Graham Dance Company, Sammie & Trudie’s Imagination Playhouse, Silly Billy the Very Funny Clown, and Magic Brian, in addition to face painting, art workshops, chalk drawing, and more. The participating museums (with at least one of their current shows listed here) are El Museo del Barrio (“Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa — Art and Film”), the Museum of the City of New York (“Saving Place: 50 Years of New York City Landmarks”), the Jewish Museum (“Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television,” “Laurie Simmons: How We See”), the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum (“How Posters Work,” “Making Design”), the National Academy (“The Annual 2015: The Depth of the Surface”), the Guggenheim (“Storylines: Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim”), the Neue Galerie (“Gustav Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer: The Woman in Gold”), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (“Van Gogh: Irises and Roses,” “Robert Motherwell: Lyric Suite”), along with the Africa Center (which is building a new home). Don’t try to do too much, because it can get rather crowded; just pick one or two exhibitions in one or two museums and enjoy.

CARLOS ESTRADA-VEGA: SUITE COLOR

Carlos Estrada-Vega, “Jacoba,” wax, limestone dust, oil, olepasto, pigments on wood, 2015

Carlos Estrada-Vega, “Jacoba,” wax, limestone dust, oil, oleopasto, pigments on wood, 2015

Who: Carlos Estrada-Vega
What: “Suite Color”
Where: Margaret Thatcher Projects, 539 West 23rd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., 212-675-0222
When: Through June 6, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Why: Carlos Estrada-Vega has titled his latest exhibition at Margaret Thatcher Projects “Suite Color,” and his use of color is sweet indeed. Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, and living and working in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Estrada-Vega has created a series of three-dimensional eight-inch-by-eight-inch sculpture-paintings, each one consisting of more than three hundred tiny rectangular wooden boxes that jut out of an unseen metal plate at different levels, resulting in a colorful topography grid that bursts with childlike imagination. Each block is hand-painted in pigments made of wax, limestone dust, oil, and oleopasto, laid out in color schemes inspired by Estrada-Vega’s Mexican heritage, and featuring such names as “Jacinta,” “Jordana,” “Jimena,” “Judina,” and “Jorgina,” honoring the women in his culture. “My work is like a mantra that relies on discipline, intuition, and process,” Estrada-Vega notes in his artist statement. “The path of my work is systematically determined by the physical execution and my daily experience with life. Simplicity and repetition are the vehicles of form. The physical existence of the work is meant to open and reflect.” It is easy to open and reflect while looking at these engaging grids that also recall maps, pixels, and complex data representation as well as the simpler art materials of children, such as Play-Doh and Lego blocks.

FIRST SATURDAY: INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ PRIDE

Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972). Faces and Phases installed at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany, 2012. (Photo: © Anders Sune Berg)

Zanele Muholi, “Faces and Phases,” installed at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany, 2012 (photo © Anders Sune Berg)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, June 6, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The June installment of the Brooklyn Museum’s free First Saturday program celebrates LGBTQ Pride, with live performances by the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, Aye Nako, DJ Lynnee Denise, DJ Ilsa, and Junglepussy with DJ Joey Labeija; an exhibition talk by Jess Wilcox on “Zanele Muholi: Isibonelo/Evidence” and ten-minute pop-up gallery talks about “Diverse Works: Director’s Choice, 1997–2015”; a flag-making workshop; a poetry performance by Dark Matter (Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian); a literary workshop with bklyn boihood, focusing on its upcoming publication, Outside the XY; screenings of Seyi Adebanjo’s 2013 documentary, Trans Lives Matter! Justice for Islan Nettles, followed by a talkback with the director, and Dan Sickles & Antonio Santini’s 2014 film, Mala Mala, followed by a talkback with the directors and cast memebers Paxx and Joyce Puty; and a tribute to retiring museum director Arnold Lehman, with reflections and performances by DapperQ, Visual Aids, Harriett’s Apothecary, Haiti Cultural Exchange, CaribBEING, Afrika 21/Harriet’s Alter Ego, and Balmir Latin Dance. In addition, you can check out such exhibitions as “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks,” “Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic,” “Kara Walker: ‘African Boy Attendant Curio (Bananas),’” and “Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time.”

LIFE OF CATS: SELECTIONS FROM THE HIRAKI UKIYO-E COLLECTION

Takahashi Hiroaki (Shotei), “Nude Playing with a Cat,” color woodblock print, ca. 1927-30 (courtesy Private Collection, New York and Tokyo)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Through Sunday, June 7, $12 (free Friday 6:00 – 9:00)
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

“Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose),” Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami said in an interview about his 2002 book, Kafka on the Shore, which features a character who has a rather unique rapport with felines. (It’s not a coincidence that we named one of our cats Haruki.) Japan’s relationship with cats goes back some fifteen hundred years, when it is believed that cats came to the islands on ships carrying Buddhist scriptures from China. Cats do more than just naturally slip in in the Japan Society exhibit “Life of Cats: Selections from the Hiraki Ukiyo-e Collection,” a claw-some gathering of more than 120 color woodblock prints, hanging scrolls, paintings, and sculptures. Each work contains a cat in one form or another, sometimes hovering in the background, other times front and center, for both good and evil purposes. Dating from the Edo Period (1615-1867), the works are divided into five groups: “Cats and People,” “Cats as People,” “Cats versus People,” “Cats Transformed,” and “Cats and Play,” depicting the diverse relationship between humans and felines. “A cat is just a cat, but the cat motif contains many nuances and connotations,” the catalog points out, and indeed, the nuances and connotations are many in the exhibition. Sometimes the cat is hovering in the background, barely visible, or on the pattern of a kimono, while at other times it’s front and center, providing loving warmth or performing a dastardly dance of death. People become anthropomorphized cats, with claws, whiskers, and not-so-cute ears. Housecats turn into demonic figures, while tigers and lions lurk threateningly. A cat sits on a man’s back or cuddles at a woman’s neck. Some works are tantalizing and sexy, like Takashi Hiroaki’s “Nude Playing with a Cat,” while others, known as omocha-e, or “toy pictures,” provide moral lessons for children, like “Newly Published Scenes of Good and Evil Cats,” by an unknown artist. There are works by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Kanagaki Robun, Utagawa Hiroshige, Kitagawa Utamaro, Utagawa Kunisada, Katsushika Hokusai, and even Édouard Manet, depicting cats in a multitude of ways, not always as adorable as they are in online videos. (If you saw the show prior to the end of April, you might want to go back, as nearly fifty pieces were rotated in on April 29.) Essentially, the exhibition reveals what we already know: that cats rule, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

SHANNON EBNER WITH DAVID REINFURT: A HUDSON YARD

Shannon Ebner and David Reinfurt’s “A Hudson Yard” public art collaboration will be celebrated on June 4 on the High Line (photo by Timothy Schenck)

Who: Shannon Ebner, David Reinfurt, Alex Waterman
What: Launch of art-project pamphlet with live music
Where: 14th Street Passage on the High Line at 14th Street
When: Thursday, June 4, free, 6:00 – 8:00
Why: From May 2014 to April 2015, New Jersey-born artist Shannon Ebner, who lives and works in Los Angeles and specializes in combining sculpture, photography, and language, added a four-by-six-foot wheat-pasted poster of different versions of the capital letter “A” in Chelsea and the Meatpacking District, giving odd, mysterious ratings to street corners, construction sites, and random walls, one at the beginning of each month, in collaboration with New York City-based graphic designer and writer David Reinfurt. Once put up, the posters remained for between one day and one week, depending on the weather or someone taking it down. On June 4 at 6:00, the work, known as “A Hudson Yard,” will be celebrated with the release of a pamphlet containing photographs and text by the artists, who will be on the High Line, at the 14th Street Passage, for its public unveiling, accompanied by “Clouds and Crowds for 12 Singers,” a new composition by Alex Waterman that will be performed at 6:30.

BROOKLYN SPACES BOOK LAUNCH

Who: Oriana Leckert, Hungry March Band, Morgan O’Kane, Batala NYC, Stefan Zeniuk, DJ Dirtyfinger, the Artist Formerly Known as Anya Sapozhnikova and others from House of YES, Dani Leigh & Demi Fyrce of Big Sky Works
What: Book party celebrating the launch of Brooklyn Spaces: 50 Hubs of Culture and Creativity (Monacelli Press, May 19, $29.95)
Where: Gowanus Ballroom, 55 Ninth St.
When: Saturday, May 30, free (suggested donation $10), 7:00 – late
Why: In her new book expanded from her popular website, Brooklyn Spaces, Oriana Leckert selects fifty of the most unusual and fascinating places in Brooklyn, documenting, as she writes in the introduction, “the Brooklyn I know, the Brooklyn that is mine, the Brooklyn that endlessly inspires me with its passion, innovation, and experimentation.” On May 30, Leckert will host a crazy-mad book party at the Gowanus Ballroom, one of the locations detailed in the book. “One of the most perfect representations of a Brooklyn underground arts space, the Gowanus Ballroom succeeds beautifully at artistic exhibition, cultural advancement, and creative commerce, all within a gorgeously strange historic building,” Leckert writes. (Other spots included in the book are Brooklyn Brainery, Flux Factory, the Invisible Dog, the Morbid Anatomy Museum, the Schoolhouse, Superhero Supply Co., and the Swamp.) The all-night book launch will feature art, music, dance, photography, and lots of unpredictable goings-on, selected from other cultural institutions and artist houses singled out in the book.

CELEBRATE ISRAEL: ISRAEL IMAGINES

Bikers join with marchers and floats in Celebrate Israel Parade (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

CELEBRATE ISRAEL PARADE AND OTHER EVENTS
57th to 74th St. up Fifth Ave.
Sunday, May 31, free, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
celebrateisraelny.org

On May 14, 1948, “The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel” proclaimed, “The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice, and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” Israel’s existence has been fraught with controversy since the very beginning, but the nation perseveres, and on May 31 its sixty-seventh birthday will be honored with the annual Celebrate Israel Parade. This year’s theme is “Israel Imagines,” a tribute to the ideal of Israel upon its creation. As the official parade website explains, “The founders of Israel had a dream. They imagined a vibrant, independent and Jewish state that would not only be a haven for Jews from all over the world but also one that would incorporate the best characteristics of its citizens: brains and brawn, creativity, determination, fairness, and imagination — a state whose greatest natural resource is its people who could imagine that future — one that would benefit the whole world!” On Sunday, some thirty thousand marchers are expected to make their way from Fifty-Seventh to Seventy-Fourth St. up Fifth Ave. Among the performers will be Miri Ben-Ari, Golem, SOULFARM, Peri Smilow, SHI 360, the Israel Dance Institute, and Areyvut Mitzvah Clowns. Special guests include David Blu, Derrick Sharp, Steve Lacey, Becky Griffin, Robert Moses, Deputy Minister Danny Danon, Ambassadors Ido Aharoni and Ron Prosor, and members of the Israeli Knesset. The day begins with the one-mile Celebrate Israel Fun Run up Fifth Ave. and continues with the Celebrate Israel Festival on Pier 94 ($5-$15), with live performances by Rita and Rinat Gabay, a kosher marketplace, a Technology Pavilion, an “Israel 24/7” Instagram Photography Competition, the CreateLAB, the “Ahava” Art Installation, an Art4Israel community mural, and more; this year’s theme is “Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Cities of Light.”

Finally, the unaffiliated Israel Day Concert in the Park is a free show in Rumsey Playfield (2:30 – 7:30) with Gad Elbaz, LIPA, Alex Clare, Tal Vaknin, Shloime Dachs, Mati Shriki, Avraham Rosenblum (accompanied by Ruby Harris, Izzy Kieffer, Heshy R, and Sam Ramras) Shloime Dachs Orchestra & Singers, Shlomi Aharoni, Broadway Youth Ensemble, Steve Lucas, Chaim Kiss, Israel Alliel, Born Kids, Aryeh Pollack, Jerry Markovitz singing Hatikva and the National Anthem, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Helen Freedman, Assemblyman David Weprin, and others. The special guest speakers are Governor Mike Huckabee, Ambassador John Bolton, and Science Minister Danny Danon.