Ursula von Rydingsvard, seen here in her Williamsburg studio, will take part in virtual webinar on September 1
Who:Ursula von Rydingsvard, Amanda Gluibizzi, Jason Rosenfeld, Vi Khi Nao What: Virtual webinar Where:The Brooklyn Rail Zoom When: Tuesday, September 1, free with RSVP, 1:00 Why: I had long ago fallen love with the extraordinary sculptures of German-born, Brooklyn-based artist Ursula von Rydingsvard, monumental wooden works that breathe with the glory and complexity of life. But I fell in love all over again upon seeing Into Her Own, Daniel Traub’s intimate and revealing portrait of von Rydingsvard’s difficult life and artistic adventures; screening virtually through Film Forum, it was followed by a live Q&A that further showed von Rydingsvard to be an extraordinary human being, charming and engaging, open and honest. (You can watch the discussion here.) On September 1, in conjunction with her longtime gallery, Galerie Lelong & Co., the Brooklyn Rail will be hosting a live Zoom talk with von Rydingsvard, in conversation with Rail ArtSeen editor Amanda Gluibizzi and Rail editor-at-large Jason Rosenfeld. The event, which is free and will conclude with a poem from Vi Khi Nao, is part of the Rail’s “New Social Environment” series, which features such upcoming programs as “Common Ground: A Conversation with Dwight Bullard,” “Yto Barrada with Yasi Alipour,” and “Andy Goldsworthy with Jason Rosenfeld.”
Who: Maya Wiley, Sayu Bhojwani, Tantoo Cardinal, Rita Dove, Catherine Gray, Susan Herman, Jari Jones, Shola Lynch What: Virtual watch party marking a century of women’s suffrage Where:Park Avenue Armory When: Tuesday, August 18, free with RSVP, 2:00 Why: Park Avenue Armory and National Black Theatre’s second part of its “100 Years | 100 Women” program occurs August 18 at 2:00 with a free virtual watch party. Hosted by New School professor Maya Wiley, the event celebrates the one hundredth anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, with woman artists, activists, scholars, students, and community leaders responding to the centennial while also putting it in context with what is happening in America today. Wiley will be joined by Susan Herman, Jari Jones, Tantoo Cardinal, Rita Dove, Catherine Gray, the Kasibahagua Taíno Cultural Society, and Shola Lynch, who will premiere her short film A Portrait of 100 Years | 100 Women. The project features contributions from Zoë Buckman, Staceyann Chin, Karen Finley, Ebony Noelle Golden, Andrea Jenkins, Meshell Ndegeocello, Toshi Reagon, Martha Redbone, Mimi Lien, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver of Split Britches, Carrie Mae Weems, Christine Jones, Deborah Willis, and many more. Also participating in the program with Park Avenue Armory and National Black Theatre are the Apollo Theater, Juilliard, La MaMa, the Laundromat Project, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of the Moving Image, National Sawdust, NYU, and Urban Bush Women.
Robert Frederick Blum, Two Idlers, oil on canvas, 1888-89, NA diploma presentation, March 26, 1894 (photo courtesy National Academy of Design)
Who: Jeremiah William McCarthy, Diana Thompson What: Livestreamed art conversation Where:National Academy of Design When: Monday, August 17, $10-$15, 7:00 Why: The National Academy of Design on the Upper East Side had already been closed for exhibitions for several years when the pandemic lockdown hit; at the time, its traveling retrospective, “For America: Paintings from the National Academy of Design,” was on the road, having visited Dayton, Connecticut, and Florida before scheduled stops in New Mexico, Iowa, and other locations across the country. It is currently on view at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens in Memphis, but you can catch up with it online August 17 at 7:00 when curator Jeremiah William McCarthy and director of collections Diana Thompson explore the show, which features one hundred paintings from the collection, either a portrait of and/or or by a member, along with a second piece (known as diploma works), which are required upon induction into the academy. The traveling exhibit is divided into five sections: “Founding an American School,” “A New Internationalism,” “Painting America,” “Postwar Realisms,” and “For America,” with canvases by Childe Hassam, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, William Merritt Chase, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, George Wesley Bellows, Ivan Albright, Andrew Wyeth, Charles White, George Inness, Will Barnet, Maxfield Parrish, Thomas Eakins, Jane Freilicher, Philip Pearlstein, Reginald Marsh, Wayne Thiebaud, Louisa Matthíasdóttir, and others. The hourlong discussion is being held in conjunction with the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, where the show will be on view February 20 – May 9, 2021.
Greg Glassman and Susan Jennings activate sound sculptures at Tanja Grunert’s Beatrix House gallery in Hudson (photo courtesy Tanja Grunert)
Who: Silver the Void with Susan Jennings What: Live outdoor performance Where:Tanja Grunert Salon When: Monday, August 17, free, 7:30 Why: On Friday night during the golden hour, artist Susan Jennings and musician Greg Glassman teamed up for a live performance in conjunction with Jennings’s current exhibit at Tanja Grunert’s Beatrix House gallery in Hudson, with Glassman on trumpet and Jennings activating pieces from the show, “To Be the Waves and the Ocean: New Sound Sculptures and Paintings.” On Monday, August 17, at 7:30 (which just happens to be Grunert’s birthday), Silver the Void, which consists of Jennings, painter Alexander Ross, and Faye Ross, will perform on the sound sculptures and paintings. There will be no live audience; the event will be streamed live on Tanja Grunert’s social media platforms. You can watch a clip from the Friday-night performance here to get in the mood.
Marta Minujín received the Cultural Achievement Award at Americas Society in 2018 (photo by Beatriz Meseguer)
Who: Marta Minujín, Aimé Iglesias Lukin What: Artist conversation Where:Americas SocietyInstagram Live, (archived on YouTube) When: Wednesday, August 12, free, 5:00 Why: This past fall, Argentine artist Marta Minujín remounted her seminal La Menesunda interactive installation at the New Museum, an exciting and fun multimedia labyrinth that anticipated Instagram-friendly pop-up galleries way back in 1965. The seventy-seven-year-old Buenos Aires-based Minujín is now returning — virtually, of course — to Americas Society, where in 1968 she installed Minucode at the Center for Inter-American Relations, now known as Americas Society, for a live discussion from her studio with the institution’s visual arts director and chief curator, Aimé Iglesias Lukin; part of the Americas Society program “In the Studio,” the free talk will take place on August 12 at 5:00, after which it will be archived on YouTube. The Wednesday series previously featured such artists as Naufus Ramiréz-Figueroa, Gabino Castelán, Gonzalo Fuenmayor, Sara Ramo, and Juan José Olavarría; up next on August 19 will be Ulrik López.
Lynn Hershman Leeson, CyberRoberta, custom-made doll, clothing, glasses, webcam, surveillance camera, mirror, original programming, and telerobotic head-rotating system, 1996 (photo courtesy the artist; Anglim Gilbert Gallery, San Francisco; and Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York)
Who:Lynn Hershman Leeson,Margot Norton What: Artist conversation Where:New Museum Zoom When: Thursday, August 6, free with RSVP, 7:00 Why: On February 9, 2021, the New Museum is planning on opening “Twisted,” the first solo museum exhibition by Cleveland-born artist Lynn Hershman Leeson. The multimedia show will feature drawåing, sculpture, video, photography, and interactive online works. Leeson, who is based in San Francisco, has also directed five films: Strange Culture, Teknolust, Conceiving Ada, Women Art Revolution: A Secret History, and Tania Libre. On August 6 at 7:00, Leeson will discuss the upcoming exhibition, which explores such issues as transmutation, identity, and cyborgs (including her new series “Twisted Gravity”), as well as art in the time of Covid-19, with New Museum curator Margot Norton, who organized the show and interviewed Leeson for the catalog. The Zoom discussion is free with advance RSVP here.
A masked Prometheus rules over flags at Rockefeller Center celebrating the resiliency of New York City (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The Rink at Rockefeller Center
Forty-Ninth to Fiftieth Sts. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Daily through August 16, free www.rockefellercenter.com
Flags are more political than ever these days, generating heated arguments about the meaning of Confederate symbols, kneeling during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at sports events, and even President Trump’s refusal to order flags to half-staff for coronavirus victims until the death toll headed toward one hundred thousand.
Ohio State University computer science student Henos Efrem depicts diversity and solidarity in his flag (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Rockefeller Center is using flags as a way to heal the city with “The Flag Project,” continuing through August 16 around the periphery of the skating rink, which is currently being used as a place of respite, offering delightful socially distant seating, drinks, and food from the Rainbow Room barbecue booth. (Make sure you wear your mask down there; even golden Prometheus’s face is covered.) Rock Center is usually surrounded by 193 flags, one for each member country in the United Nations. But for just more than two weeks, those have been replaced by flags designed by emerging and established artists, adults and children, to honor how New Yorkers have come together during the pandemic lockdown. Each eight-foot-by-five-foot flag boasts a design celebrating essential workers, the uniqueness of the Big Apple, and/or hope for a promising future. Many of the flags are accompanied by an artist statement you can find on this map.
“The Flag Project” continues at Rockefeller Center through August 16 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
“Flags are employed to guide people through uncertain or dangerous situations. They can be used as a means of communication, signaling, or a way to unite people, for better or for worse,” Marina Abramović says about her contribution, a staggered red line on a white background. “I created a flag which represents the echocardiography (EKG) line of the human heartbeat. . . . The EKG line of my flag represents the resilience of the human spirit in the color red, which symbolizes our blood and is a color I often surround myself with when I need to feel strong. This red line beats across the white flag, which symbolizes surrender. In this moment in human history, I believe we as a society must conduct ourselves with a balance of strength and surrender. We must be strong in the face of the unknown and at the same time we must surrender to changes demanded of society, our politics, and our planet.”
Other commissioned artists include Carmen Herrera, Christian Siriano, Hank Willis Thomas, Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, KAWS, Laurie Anderson, Sanford Biggers, Sarah Sze, Shantell Martin, Steve Powers, and Faith Ringgold, who pays homage to “the life & Breath of Freedom” in her red, white, and blue quiltlike creation.
The flags are, of course, more impressive when there’s some wind blowing them around, allowing them to unfurl; be on the lookout for Ien Boodan’s Henri Matisse- and Keith Haring-inspired design based on “La danse” (“My wish is to have other queer brown boys and girls see this flag waving in public space so that they may know that their bodies are worthy of representation, pleasure, and celebration,” he notes), Karen Margolis’s tiny burned cells (“I explore the changing landscape of both our physical and internal worlds through the arbitrariness of destruction and loss”), Kate Matthiesen’s vivid abstract painting (her intensity takes on greater meaning since she hails from Portland, Oregon), Mario Milosevic’s repetitive half-circles, which support immigrants, language, and unity (“The gradient symbolizes skin tones and diversity, while five color stripes represent five boroughs”), Jonathan Rockefeller’s bright, shining cityscape, Courtney Heather’s group of sneakered feet on a subway near a plastic bag, and Vlad Zadneprianski’s NYC Strong flag, in which masked superheroes are joined by an essential healthcare worker. You’ll also find depictions of Coney Island, sports and cultural events, the Statue of Liberty, water towers, bridges, a salted pretzel, Broadway, mass transit, skyscrapers, a pigeon, and other familiar city sights.
“The Flag Project” features 193 specially designed flags temporarily replacing those of UN countries (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
“Our flag is not just one of many political points of view. Rather, the flag is a symbol of our national unity,” said U.S. Air Force Radio and Television Broadcasting Specialist Adrian Cronauer, best known as the man Robin Williams portrayed in the 1987 film Good Morning, Vietnam.
“A thoughtful mind, when it sees a Nation’s flag, sees not the flag only, but the Nation itself,” longtime Brooklynite Henry Ward Beecher proclaimed. In these flags, one can see the whole of New York as it rises yet again through unimaginable diversity and tragedy, once more a microcosm of America.
