this week in art

WORLD CUP LIVE: AFRICA CELEBRATES!

The World Cup comes alive in art and on-screen at the Paley Center

Paley Center for Media
25 West 52nd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through July 11
Admission: free
212-621-6800
www.paleycenter.org

Looking for somewhere different to watch the World Cup? Perhaps crowding into a pub at 9:30 in the morning is a bit much? The Paley Center will be screening all the World Cup games — live and for free — in its upstairs theater at 9:30 am and 2:00 pm every day, so you can enjoy the matches with other soccer lovers playing hooky from work during the week or sneaking out on weekends. In addition, the Steven Spielberg Gallery on the main floor is hosting “Africa Celebrates!” an exhibit of photographs taken by Joseph Peter during his whirlwind 2009 tour following the FIFA World Cup Trophy as it made its way through fifty African nations prior to arriving in South Africa. The photographs, shown alongside African art and furniture from the Hemingway African Gallery on 55th St., are divided into four sections: Happiness, Inspiration, Motivation, and Celebration, focusing on the people themselves and their love of the sport. Be sure to catch the United States, who earned a stunning, rather lucky, draw with England last week, as they take on Slovenia on June 18 at 9:30 am and Algeria on June 23, also at 9:30 am.

THINKING PERFORMANCE

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Thursday, June 17, 8:00, and Friday, June 18, 2:00
Tickets: $30
212-423-3500
www.guggenheim.org

In conjunction with the exhibition “Haunted: Contemporary Photography / Video / Performance,” the Guggenheim is presenting “Thinking Performance,” a two-day examination of performance art. On Thursday night, Joan Jonas will stage an expanded version of her 1969 work “Mirror Piece I: Reconfigured,” followed by a discussion between Jonas and curator Chrissie Ilies. On Friday beginning at 2:00, there will be a series of talks and discussions, including Rebecca Schneider’s “The Immaterial Labor of Temporal Drag: Tino Sehgal, Photography, and Interinanimation,” Carrie Lambert-Beatty’s “Performance Police,” Claire Bishop’s “Delegated Performance — Outsourcing Authenticity,” and a pair of artist conversations, one between Susan Philipsz and Nat Trotman, the other with Marina Abramovic and Nancy Spector. The two-day symposium will conclude with a viewing of the exhibit and a reception.

HELP BUILD HOMEBASE

BENEFIT, BRICK DRIVE & ART SALE
East Village Townhouse
Saturday, June 12, and Sunday, June 13, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
Donation: $25-$500
www.homebaseproject.com

For the past four years, Anat Litwin has been examining the idea of home in site-specific installations in which she gathers together a diverse group of artists who each get a room of their own in an abandoned structure either soon to be torn down or completely renovated. The HomeBase Project has been previously situated in a brick building in Greenpoint, a cast-iron building in SoHo, a historic townhouse in Harlem, and a former nursing home on the Lower East Side, where artists filled the rooms with multimedia works and were on hand to speak with visitors as they walked through. For its fifth incarnation, Litwin is taking HomeBase to the Pankow district of Berlin (not at the urging of Helen Thomas), near Germany’s largest synagogue. In order to raise funds for the ambitious project, there will a fundraiser this weekend at a private home in the East Village, open to everyone who buys a brick ($25-$500) that is symbolic of the construction of the German installation. The event will feature an art sale with works by an international collection of artists (from Israel, Lebanon, Switzerland, Iran, Poland, America, and other countries), live music and performances (by Sylvie Diegez, Willum Geerts, Amir Darzi, and others), a hard/soft lemonade stand, baked goods from Colson Patisserie, special presentations, and a raffle. Artists interested in being part of the project can attend an information session on Saturday at 3:00, while Litwin will host “Tea Time Tales: Stories That Lino Loves” at 4:00. On Sunday, German filmmaker Mo Asumang will screen her documentary ROOTS GERMANIA at 2:30. The exact location, an architectural delight, will be emailed upon donation.

KIKI SMITH: LODESTAR / SOJOURN

Kiki Smith’s “Lodestar” continues at the Pace Gallery in Chelsea through June 19 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

LODESTAR
The Pace Gallery
545 West 22nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through June 19
Admission: free
www.thepacegallery.com
“Lodestar” slideshow

German-born American artist Kiki Smith has been examining nature, the human body, and, particularly, the role of women in art and society for more than three decades, from her days as a member of the Colab group in the late 1970s through to today, as seen in two strong, powerful shows currently on view in Chelsea and Brooklyn. Inspired by Prudence Punderson’s lovely late-eighteenth-century silk needlepoint “The First, Second, and Last Scene of Mortality,” which depicts three stages of a woman’s life, Smith has created a pair of site-specific installations that center on the life cycle of women from birth to death, a compelling celebration of creative inspiration and innate spirituality. At the Pace Gallery in Chelsea, “Lodestar” consists of nearly thirty hand-painted mouth-blown stained-glass panels that tell an abstract narrative of pilgrimage. Smith collaborated with Munich glass atelier Mayer’sche Hofkunstanstalt GmbH-Mayer and Bill Katz, who designed the panels as well as three white benches where people can sit and take in the wonder of it all. Smith’s line drawings are spectacular, particularly one in which a baby’s beautiful head is just entering the world. Smith incorporates such symbols as lightbulbs, birds, and chairs as women proceed from life to death in dramatic opaque panels that can be seen from both sides, as if the past is always present. The title, “Lodestar,” evokes the guiding North Star as well as the word “motherlode,” paying homage to femininity.

Kiki Smith’s “Sojourn” runs at the Brooklyn Museum through September 12 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

SOJOURN
Brooklyn Museum of Art
200 Eastern Parkway
Wednesday – Sunday through September 12
Suggested contribution: $10 (free first Saturday of the month after 5:00)
718-638-5000
www.brooklynmuseum.org
“Sojourn” slideshow

A related exhibition, “Sojourn,” continues the tale at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Winding around Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party,” the site-specific installation begins with “Field,” a bronze sculpture of a woman sitting on a chair, holding up her hand as if telling the viewer to proceed at their own risk. Divided into small roomlike segments, “Sojourn” features lifesize bronze sculptures, pencil and ink drawings on fragile Nepal paper, hanging lightbulbs and aluminum constructions, and even a wooden casket. The works feature such titles as “Messenger,” “Visitation,” “Annunciation,” “The Leaving,” and “I put aside myself that there was room enough to enter,” with several drawings the same as those seen at the Pace Gallery. In addition, Smith has added oil paintings, an embroidery, a projected video, and haunting, ghostlike papier-mâché figures to two rooms and the staircase of the Major Henry Trippe House, part of the museum’s outstanding period rooms in the Decorative Arts Galleries, once again evoking the past alongside the present. Taken together, “Lodestar” and “Sojourn” mark a major step forward in the career of one of America’s most important artists, a must-see pilgrimage well worth the journey.

MUSEUM MILE FESTIVAL

The Museum Mile Festival kicks off at El Museo del Barrio, which will host live music and dance as well as chalk drawing for kids and adults

Multiple locations on Fifth Ave. between 82nd & 105th Sts.
Tuesday, June 8, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Admission: free
www.museummilefestival.org

Once again nine of the city’s finest art institutions will open their doors for free for the thirty-second annual Museum Mile Festival, from 6:00 to 9:00 on Tuesday night, June 8. The participating museums (with one of their current shows listed here) include El Museo del Barrio (“Retro/Active: The Works of Rafael Ferrer”), the Museum of the City of New York (“Charles Addams’s New York”), the Jewish Museum (“South African Photographs: David Goldblatt”), the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum (“National Design Triennial: Why Design Now?”) the National Academy (“Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art”), the Guggenheim (“Haunted: Contemporary Photography / Video / Performance”), the Neue Galerie (“Otto Dix”), the Goethe-Institut (the institute has moved downtown but will be at the festival nonetheless), and the Met (“Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art”). Fifth Ave. will also be closed to vehicular traffic and instead will be filled with art activities (chalk drawing, live model drawing), street performances (clowns, juggles, magicians), and live music and dance featuring P-STAR: the ABAKUÁ Afro-Latin Dance Company, Paul Labarbera and Rockbeat, Quarteto Rodriguez Cuban Jewish Allstars, and the Hayes Greenfield Jazz Duo. The Museum Mile Festival is a great way to check out some very cool institutions, especially those you might not be quite as familiar with.

GRAPHIC HEROES, MAGIC MONSTERS

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Morozumi Masakiyo Kills Himself in Battle,” color woodblock print, ca. 1848 (photo © Trustees of the British Museum)

JAPANESE PRINTS BY UTAGAWA KUNIYOSHI FROM THE ARTHUR R. MILLER COLLECTION
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Through June 13
Admission: $12 (free Friday nights 6:00 – 9:00)
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

With the continuing success of manga and graphic novels in the United States, the Japan Society looks back on the career of master visual storyteller Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861) in “Graphic Heroes, Magic Monsters.” More than 130 color woodblock prints are on view, depicting samurai warriors, elegant women, lush landscapes, kabuki scenes, and comic images. Among the many exciting action-filled vignettes, based on both history and legend, are “Fight on the Roof of Hōryū Tower,” in which Inuzaka Shino tries to single-handedly evade capture by Inukai Kenpachi and his men, and “Ariō-maru Kills a Giant Octopus,” the valiant warrior determined to escape from the clutches of an enormous mollusk. Water figures prominently in many of Kuniyoshi’s pieces; in “Hatsuhana Prays Under a Waterfall,” Hatsuhana prays to a deity for a cure for her warrior husband’s illness, water cascading onto her head and around her body, while in “Three Women with Umbrellas in a Summer Shower,” a trio of women in blue-and-white kimonos playfully avoid a downpour. Kuniyoshi also created peaceful scenes devoid of bloody battles and gruesome characters, including such serene works as “Rainbow at Surugadai,” “Ships Between Maisaka and Arai,” and “Monk Nichiren in the Snow at Tsukahara.”

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Monk Nichiren in the Snow at Tsukahara,” color woodblock print, ca. 1835 (photo © Trustees of the British Museum)

Kuniyoshi shows off his absurdist sense of humor in such prints as “Sparrows Impersonating a Brothel Scene,” “Kabuki Actors as Turtles,” and “Cats Parodying the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō.” In the deluxe catalog that accompanies the exhibit, Neil McGregor, director of the British Museum, where the show was a huge hit, writes, “Kuniyoshi was an extraordinarily gifted artist of great versatility, capable by turns of evoking pathos at the doomed fate of a samurai hero, humour with the antics of animals impersonating humans, seduction by feisty-spirited beauties from Japan’s epic past, and calm contemplation of byways in his native city of Edo.” Indeed, Kuniyoshi was a unique and inventive storyteller, displaying immense skill at creating colorful, entertaining, action-packed, and meditative tales. In conjunction with the exhibit, Hiroki Otsuka has created Samurai Beam, a comic book based on Kuniyoshi’s work.

FIRST SATURDAYS: BROOKLYN CHIC

Ronald K. Brown and his Evidence company are part of First Saturdays at the Brooklyn Museum on June 5

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Saturday, June 5, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

On June 5, the Brooklyn Museum’s monthly First Saturdays program celebrates, well, Brooklyn. And why not? The J. C. Hopkins Biggish Band will be playing at 5:00, Ronald K. Brown’s awesome Evidence a Dance Company will be performing at 5:30 (followed by a Q&A with Brown), chief curator Kevin Stayton will discuss “American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection” at 7:00, Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire will put their dancing shoes on for a screening of Stanley Donen’s FUNNY FACE also at 7:00, Keanan Duffy will give a book club talk on his latest, REBEL, REBEL: ANTI-STYLE, at 9:00, the House of Ninja’s Archie Burnett hosts a vogue dance contest at 9:00, and Friends We Love’s DJ Moni will get everyone’s mojo working at the always hot and sweaty dance party (9:00 – 11:00). All of the exhibitions will be open, including “Kiki Smith: Sojourn,’ “Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864,” and “Body Parts: Ancience Egyptian Fragments and Amulets.” Everything’s free, although some of the events require advance ticketing available an hour ahead of time, and the lines do get long, so be prepared.