this week in art

WHITNEY LIVE

Dylan Rau leads Bear Hands into the Whitney July 2 as part of summer music series (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Whitney Museum of American Art
Lower Gallery and Sculpture Court
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Select Friday nights July 2 – August 27 at 7:00
Free with pay-what-you-wish admission after 6:00 ($12-$18 before 6:00)
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org

In the recent past, the Whitney Live performance series has featured such cutting-edge indie pairings as Vivian Girls with These Are Powers, Woods with Yellow Fever, Abe Vigoda with Grooms, and Titus Andronicus with Real Estate. This summer’s lineup is equally impressive, beginning July 2 with High Places, who just put on a sweet set at the Northside Festival this weekend, and Chaz Bundick, better known as Toro y Moi. On July 23, Bear Hands, who wowed us at an industry showcase a few months back at the Studio at Webster Hall, and Darlings take the stage, followed by Javelin and Warpaint on August 13 and DJ/Rupture and Tanlines on August 27. There are no advance tickets or reservations available; all four shows are free with museum admission (pay-what-you-wish after 6:00), and it’s first come, first served. The museum remains open until 9:00 on Friday nights; exhibitions as of July 1 include “Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield,” “Jill Magid: A Reasonable Man in a Box,” “Christian Marclay: Festival,” “Off the Wall: Part 1 — Thirty Performative Actions,” and “Facing the Artist: Portraits by John Jonas Gruen.”

DARK SOUNDS

Tickets are expected to go fast for innovative concert series at the Guggenheim

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
July 15, August 5, September 3
Tickets: $30
212-423-3500
www.guggenheim.orgs

in conjunction with the multimedia exhibition “Haunted: Contemporary Photography / Video / Performance,” the Guggenheim is presenting three nights of dark, ghostly music, with bands playing on the rotunda floor, able to be seen from anywhere in the museum. On July 15, Beirut will play its unusual brand of indie folk, with the jazzy Cinematic Orchestra scheduled for September 3. But the most exciting night is August 5, when Andrew Bird and Ian Schneller team up for the site-specific “Sonic Arboretum.” As opposed to most summer-night concerts at city museums, tickets are available in advance for this series, and we highly recommend you grabbing yours right about now. In addition, on show nights the museum will remain open late for ticket holders, who will be able to see “Haunted” as well as “Julie Mehretu: Gray Area” before the music begins.

MoMA NIGHTS

Pascal Parisot will perform with Fredda in MoMA’s sculpture garden this summer (photo by Frederique Dastrevigne)

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden
Thursdays in July and August, live sets at 5:30 and 7:00 pm
Free with museum admission of $20 (includes same-day film screening)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

MoMA’s annual music series in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden gets under way July 1 with Nation Beat, kicking off five consecutive Thursday nights of Brazilian music, held in conjunction with the film series “Premiere Brazil 2010,” followed by four weeks of French music, held in conjunction with the art exhibit “Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917.” The schedule, which includes sets at 5:30 and 7:00, continues July 8 with Wax Poetic Brasil, July 15 with Alexia Bomtempo and Pierre Aderne, July 22 with the Adriano Santos Brazilian Jazz Quartet, and July 29 with Kay Lyra. Holden introduces music lovers to France on August 5, followed by Pascal Parisot and Fredda on August 12, Arnaud Fleurent-Didier on August 19, and Marianne Dissard on August 26. The museum will remain open on these Thursday nights until 8:45. The sculpture garden is such a city treasure that it doesn’t really matter whether you know anything at all about these artists and the type of music they play; it’s worth it just to sit in these lovely environs and enjoy a beautiful evening of art and song.

SUMMERNIGHTS

Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys have added a second night to annual Jewish Museum series after selling out opener

Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Ave. at 92nd St.
Thursday nights in July, $15, 7:30
212-423-3337
www.thejewishmuseum.org

The Jewish Museum’s annual summer evening music series is off to a hot start, with July 1’s opening concert, featuring Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys, already sold out, but they’ve just added a second night, with the band returning for an encore performance on July 29. The Sexteto Rodriguez Cuban-Jewish All Stars have also sold out their July 15 show, so you better hurry if you want to see Ansambi Mastika on July 8 or Rana Santacruz on July 22. The galleries remain open until 8:00 on SummerNights; current exhibitions include “Curious George Saves the Day: The Art of Margret and H. A. Rey,” “Modern Art, Sacred Space: Motherwell, Ferber and Gottlieb,” “South African Photographs: David Goldblatt,” “The Monayer Family: Three Videos by Dor Guest,” and “South African Projections: Films by William Kentridge.”

BRONX BOOK FAIR

Bronx Museum of the Arts
1040 Grand Concourse at 166th St.
Sunday, June 27, 12 noon – 5:00 pm
Admission: free
www.bronxmuseum.org

The Bronx Museum of the Arts celebrates small presses at its annual book fair, which this year includes children’s workshops, panel discussions, DJ sets from Wepa Man Victor Vargas, open studios from artists-in-residence Niang Ibrahima and Seydi Samba from Senegal, poetry readings, an ARTfarm site-specific installation, a film screening, and more. Currently the museum is exhibiting “After 1968: Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy,” “Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1968,” “Lobby-for-the-Time-Being” by Acconci Studio, and “Urban Archives: Happy Together — Asian and Asian-American Art from the Permanent Collection.”

THE CREATORS PROJECT

Milk Studios
450 West 15th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Admission: free with advance RSVP confirmation only
www.thecreatorsproject.com

A joint venture between Vice and Intel, the Creators Project seeks to redefine the future of creativity and culture for the twenty-first century through art, film, music, and digital technology. The ambitious global initiative launches today at Milk Studios in the Meatpacking District before heading to London July 17, São Paulo August 14, Seoul August 28, and Beijing September 17-19. Open only to those with confirmed RSVPs, which “sold out” almost immediately, today’s hotly anticipated event features twelve hours of art installations, film screenings, panel discussions, DJ sets, and live performances spread across several floors, with works by such artists as Takeshi Murata, Danny Perez & Animal Collective, Spike Jonze, Nick Zinner & Martyn Ware, Graffiti Research Lab, the xx, Radical Friend, and many more, and live music from the Rapture, Gang Gang Dance, Sleigh Bells, Interpol, Neon Indian, MIA, and others. If you weren’t lucky enough to receive an e-mail confirmation, you can watch the event streaming live at the above website, and of course twi-ny will be there to bring you all the action as well.

Creators Project sweeps up visitors into immersive environments by Muti Randolph and others (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Follow-up: The much-touted launch of the Creators Project in the Meatpacking District on June 26 was a huge success. For some twelve hours, more than thirty-five hundred people got the opportunity to experience four floors of art, music, and film at Milk Studios, organized by Vice and Intel. Experience is the right word, as virtually every installation relied on human interaction of some kind, whether it be looking into a mirror that archives and melds together its previous gazers (United Visual Artists’ “Hereafter”), participating in a Rock Band-type trio where videos play instead of music (LEGS’ “Shred Master Pro”), entering a chamber pod where one’s face merges with others in the creation of a new type of holographic being (Radical Friend’s “The Digital Flesh”), setting off monolithic LED monitors that evoke space-age sound and vision (United Visual Artists’ “Triptych”), using hand motion to make a 3D computer image ([z]ink’s “DSP”), entering an Animal Collective album (Danny Perez’s “ODDSAC”), or walking into a light sculpture that changes color and sound based on presence and movement (Muti Randolph’s “Deep Screen”).

Mira Calix collaboration features haunting music and ghostly imagery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Spike Jonze’s piece included three sections: the screening of his charming short film about robot love, I’M HERE, followed by a live performance by ASKA, playing songs from the soundtrack, and then inviting the audience to share their reaction to the movie in a specially designed video booth that gives each person a watermarked printout of themselves. And we were absolutely mesmerized by Mira Calix’s “My Secret Heart,” a collaboration between composer Calix, Streetwise Opera, video artist Flat-e, and sound designer Dave Sheppard, projecting haunting images, which include the outlines of people, floating around a 360-degree screen, set to a rare performance of Gregorio Allegri’s mysterious “Miserere Mei.” Oh yeah, there were also some pretty hot bands taking over various stages as the afternoon flowed into night. It’s really a shame that this marvelous project was here for only one day; it deserved to be seen — and experienced — by many more here in New York before it continues on its journey.

NORTHSIDE FESTIVAL: ROB LIST PERFORMANCES

Tjebbe Roelefs and Olivia Reschovsky perform Rob List’s “Injerto/Greffe” at Parker’s Box (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Parker’s Box
193 Grand St., Brooklyn
June 24-27, 1:00 – 12 midnight
Admission: free
718-388-2882
www.parkersbox.com
www.ozu.nl

American-born European-based performance artist Rob List has been creating unique pieces built around silence, natural light, everyday clothing, and minimal movement primarily in nontheatrical spaces for a quarter century. For example, in “Injerto/Greffe,” two male dancers stand face-to-face for an extended period of time, their hands grasped together, only their fingers moving, weaving in and around each other. This month List has been presenting several of his works in the all-white front room of Parker’s Box in Williamsburg, a melding of art, sculpture, and dance that places performer and viewer on equal footing. Joined by Melissa Cisneros, Diego Gil, Constance Neuenschwander, Olivia Reschovsky, Tjebbe Roelefs, and David Weber-Krebs, List will be staging “On the Balcony” (1:00 – 4:00), “Natura Morta” (4:00 & 6:00), and “Engrave” (11:00) in his final weekend in New York, as well as five-minute personal-request dances.