Artist Otobong Nkanga will be joined by six performers to activate Cadence installation on April 27 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Who:Otobong Nkanga and others What:Installation activation Where: Marron Family Atrium, MoMA, 11 West Fifty-Third St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves. When: Sunday, April 27, free with museum admission, 10:30 am – 5:30 pm Why: Describing her MoMA atrium commission Cadence, Nigeria-born, Belgium-based artist Otobong Nkanga notes, “Once I’d visited MoMA, I was interested in creating a tapestry work for the highest wall in the atrium, which would allow for a way of looking into the world from a different perspective. I wanted to create the notion of falling: a fall of things, a certain shift, a certain rhythm. The tapestry opens up to a more three-dimensional space, with sculptural pieces made of clay, smoked raku, and glass hanging from ropes and sitting on anthracite rocks, and a sound piece integrated in the sculpture that relates to the notion of teardrops, which is another kind of fall. . . . I wanted to make something that explores different rhythms of life. You might also feel that it’s a world that is beyond this one, like the universe somehow. It’s a mix of different worlds — from the underworld and the mining of minerals, to the surface and the soil, to the atmosphere and the heat of the sun, into outer space — all collapsing together in one place. That’s what creates the cadence of life. That’s what creates, actually, a world, because you cannot separate what is happening in the universe from what is happening underneath the soil in the core of the earth.”
On April 27 from 10:30 to 5:30, Nkanga and six other performers — Holland Andrews, Keishera, Muyassar Kurdi, Anaïs Maviel, Miss Olithea, and Samita Sinha, in costumes by Christian Joy — will activate the installation, incorporating sound and movement to interact with the piece. “What if a teardrop actually had a voice? What would it say? How would it say it? The work is really looking at that teardrop, and the emotions that go with it,” Nkanga says of the live performance, which is free with museum admission. Cadence is on view through July 27.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
El Greco’s St. Jerome is once again flanked by Hans Holbein the Younger’s Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
THE FRICK COLLECTION
1 East 70th St. at Fifth Ave.
Wednesday – Sunday, $17-$30 (pay-what-you-wish Wednesdays 2:00–6:00) www.frick.org
The Frick is my happy place.
Judging by the smiles on the faces of the hundreds of other Fricksters I encountered at a recent members preview of the reopened Fifth Ave. institution, I am far from the only one.
In 1913, American industrialist and art collector Henry Clay Frick commissioned the architecture firm of Carrère and Hastings to design the building as both a private home and a public resource. Frick died in 1919 at the age of sixty-nine; his daughter, Helen Clay Frick, served as a founding trustee of the collection and, in 1920, established the Frick Art Reference Library. In 1931, the building was adapted into a museum by architect John Russell Pope. The Frick Collection opened on December 11, 1935, for distinguished guests; three days later, ARTnews editor Alfred M. Frankfurter wrote that it is “one of the most important events in the history of American collecting and appreciation of art.”
The Frick closed in March 2020 for a major renovation, temporarily moving its remarkable holdings to the nearby Breuer Building on Seventy-Fifth and Madison, the former home of the Whitney. On April 17, the Frick will reopen to the public, with ten percent more square footage, going from 178,000 square feet to 196,000, including 60,000 square feet of repurposed space and 27,000 square feet of new construction, increasing the gallery space by thirty percent, highlighted by the unveiling of the second floor, which has been converted from administrative offices to fifteen rooms of masterpieces. The renovation and revitalization also features a new Reception Hall, Education Room, and 218-seat auditorium.
The 1732 Great Bustard resides on a pedestal near the Garden Court fountain (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The main floor will be familiar to anyone who has ever visited the Frick; amid some minor changes, the twenty rooms have remained mostly intact. The Gainsboroughs are in the Dining Room, Boucher’s The Four Seasons are in the West Vestibule, four Whistler portraits stand tall in the Oval Room, Fragonard’s The Progress of Love series populates the Fragonard Room, and Goya’s Portrait of a Lady (María Martínez de Puga?) brings mystery to the East Gallery.
El Greco’s Purification of the Temple can be found in the Anteroom, Tiepolo’s Perseus and Andromeda in the East Vestibule, and Vecchietta’s The Resurrection in the Octagon Room. John C. Johansen’s portrait of Henry Clay Frick enjoys primo placement in the Library, where he is joined by Gilbert Stuart’s 1795 portrait of George Washington and numerous canvases by such British artists as Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney, Turner, and Constable, whose Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds has delighted me over and over again.
The Garden Court, with its peaceful fountain surrounded by columns, plantings, and Barbet’s Angel, is one of the loveliest indoor respites in the city.
Velázquez’s King Philip IV of Spain and Goya’s The Forge hang catty corner in the West Gallery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The glorious West Gallery houses many of the greatest hits, from Rembrandt’s stunning 1658 Self-Portrait and Velázquez’s regal King Philip IV of Spain to Goya’s gritty The Forge and Veronese’s enigmatic parable The Choice Between Virtue and Vice, along with a pair of gorgeous Turner port scenes, Corot’s captivating landscape The Lake, Vermeer’s Mistress and Maid, portraits by El Greco, Hals, Goya, and Van Dyke, and more than a dozen small mythological sculptures.
Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert no longer has its own room but is coping (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The centerpiece of the Frick has always been the Living Hall, with magisterial furniture, chandeliers, large vases, and a five-hundred-year-old Persian carpet. On one wall, Titian’s Pietro Aretino and Portrait of a Man in a Red Hat flank Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert, which in the Frick Madison had its own room. Opposite that trio is the pièce de résistance: El Greco’s elongated St. Jerome stares out above the fireplace; to his left and right, respectively, are Hans Holbein the Younger’s stunning portraits of archenemies Thomas Cromwell and Sir Thomas More, the latter, in my opinion, the most spectacular portrait in the history of Western art. Its name, the Living Hall, could not be more appropriate, as it feels lived in.
Drouais’s The Comte and Chevalier de Choiseul as Savoyards is near the base of the stairs (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The South Hall offers two Vermeers, Girl Interrupted at Her Music and Officer and Laughing Girl, facing a Frick fan favorite, Bronzino’s Lodovico Capponi, with its cleverly placed sword. After years of appearing behind the ropes that bar visitors from going upstairs, Drouais’s The Comte and Chevalier de Choiseul as Savoyards, depicting two young boys smiling like the cat who ate the canary, can now be approached before you make your pilgrimage to newly sanctified land.
And then, there it is: the Grand Stairway leading to the previously off-limits second floor. The looks as people make their way to the steps are fascinating, a mix of bated breath, yearning, excited anticipation, and even stealth, as if some museumgoers still can’t believe it is allowed. At the landing is a decorative screen and an Aeolian-Skinner organ that was once played by Archer Gibson for Henry and at dinner parties. At the top is Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s La Promenade, a lush oil of a woman and two young twin sisters that used to reside near the base of the stairs and now serves as a fine introduction to the myriad treasures upstairs.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s La Promenade greets visitors at the top of the Grand Stairway (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The second floor is a mazelike procession of tighter spaces where the Fricks lived, again adorned with dazzling classics and lesser-known works that were not regularly on view in the past. Corot’s Ville-d’Avray and The Pond are in the Breakfast Room, with sets of jars and wine coolers and Théodore Rousseau’s The Village of Becquigny. Manet’s The Bullfight can now be found in the Impressionist Room, joined by Degas’s The Rehearsal and Monet’s Vétheuil in Winter, which had numerous people gasping. “I don’t remember ever seeing this before,” one woman said, and others nodded. Don’t miss Watteau’s The Portal of Valenciennes in the Small Hallway.
Hans Memling’s Portrait of a Man is now upstairs in the Sitting Room at the Frick (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
The Gold-Grounds Room gathers such religious works as Fra Filippo Lippi’s The Annunciation, Piero della Francesca’s The Crucifixion, and Paolo Veneziano’s The Coronation of the Virgin. Although there is a user-friendly app that tells you where everything is, I preferred searching on my own and was thrilled when I finally located Hans Memling’s Portrait of a Man in the Sitting Room, a depiction of an invitingly calm, laid-back man. Ingres’s Louise, Princesse de Broglie, Later the Comtesse d’Haussonville, another Frick fave, now holds court in the Walnut Room, near Houdon’s marble Madame His.
Among the other second-floor galleries are the Clocks and Watches Room, the Du Paquier Passage, the Boucher Room and Anteroom, the Ceramics Room, the Medals Room, and the Lajoue Passage, each with their own charm. And be sure to check out the hallway ceilings, covered in a beautiful mural with fabulous detail in the corners and ends.
The corners of the second-floor ceiling murals hold tiny gems (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
As recently retired former Frick director Ian Waldropper notes in the Frick’s Essential Guide, “The reopening of the renovated Frick Collection is cause for celebration.” It’s an inspiring place to visit old friends and make new ones, to see masterpieces in literal and figurative new light. One way the Frick has not changed is that the institution still does not allow any photos or videos, except at the early members and press previews. At first, I wasn’t going to take any pictures, but then I heard a few guards say, “Get out your cameras now, because you won’t be allowed to starting April 17.”
My happy place is back, and just in time.
There are two current special exhibitions; “Highlights of Drawings from the Frick Collection,” continuing in the Cabinet through August 11, consists of a dozen rarely displayed works, from Pisanello’s haunting pen and brown ink Studies of Men Hanging and Whistler’s surprising black chalk and pastel Venetian Canal to Goya’s brush and brown wash The Anglers and the coup de grâce, Ingres’s graphite and black chalk study for Louise, Princesse de Broglie . . .
Vladimir Kanevsky’s porcelain hydrangeas can be found in the Breakfast Room (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Meanwhile, for “Porcelain Garden,” US-based Ukrainian artist Vladimir Kanevsky has installed porcelain flowers in nineteen locations throughout the Frick, on the floor and on tables, in vases and pots, creating a dialogue between the fragile plants and the museum’s many treasures; you’ll find lilacs in the Dining Room, foxgloves in the West Vestibule, cascading roses and white hyacinths in the Fragonard Room, dahlia branches and anemones in the Portico Gallery, and a lemon tree in the Garden Court, among others.
And from June 18 to August 31, “Vermeer’s Love Letters” unites the Frick’s Mistress and Maid with the Rijksmuseum’s Love Letter and the National Gallery of Ireland’s Woman Writing a Letter, with Her Maid.
Below are only some of the scheduled programs, with more to come.
Friday, April 18
Gallery Talk: A Home for Art, Library Gallery, free with museum admission, 6:00 & 7:00
Gallery Talk: Closer Look at Vermeer’s Mistress and Maid, West Gallery, free with museum admission, 6:00 & 7:00
Friday, April 25
Gallery Talk: A Home for Art, Library Gallery, free with museum admission, 6:00 & 7:00
Saturday, April 26
Spring Music Festival: Jupiter Ensemble, Lea Desandre, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium, 7:00
Thursday, May 1
Spring Music Festival: Takács Quartet and Jeremy Denk, Piano, Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium, 7:00
Saturday, May 3
Spring Music Festival: Sarah Rothenberg, Solo Piano, Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium, 7:00
Sunday, May 4
Spring Music Festival: Alexi Kenney, Violin and Amy Yang, Fortepiano, Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium, 7:00
Thursday, May 8
Sketch Night, free with advance RSVP, 5:00
Spring Music Festival: Emi Ferguson, Flute and Ruckus, Baroque Ensemble, Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium, 7:00
Friday, May 9
Stephen K. and Janie Woo Scher Fellow Lecture: The Milicz Medals of Johann Friedrich of Saxony and the Subtleties of Political Art in the Age of Reformation, with Maximilian Kummer, Ian Wardropper Education Room, free with advance RSVP, 6:00
Sunday, May 11
Spring Music Festival: Mishka Rushdie Momen, Solo Piano, Stephen A. Schwarzman Auditorium, 5:00
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Art Spiegelman discusses hie life and career in Disaster Is My Muse
COMIC ARTS FEST 2025: ART SPIEGELMAN: DISASTER IS MY MUSE (Molly Bernstein & Philip Dolin, 2024)
L’Alliance New York, Florence Gould Theater, Tinker Auditorium
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Friday, March 28, $30.55 – $54.20, 7:30
Festival runs March 28–30, pass $86.10
212-355-6100 lallianceny.org
In the documentary Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse, Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist and editor Art Spiegelman explains, “I did take comics very, very seriously, and I thought they were time turned into space, a perfect container for memory, and an incredibly maligned art form. And without being pretentious about it, I thought that this was as valid as anything that happened in literature or in painting, or in cinema.”
Winner of the 2024 DOC NYC Grand Jury Prize in the Metropolis Competition, the hundred-minute PBS American Masters film is part of the opening-night celebration of the 2025 Comic Arts Fest, taking place March 28–30 at L’Alliance New York; it will be shown on Friday evening at 7:30, followed by a Q&A with special guests and a party with food and drink, music, and a live Exquisite Corpse session with guest illustrators.
In the documentary, Bernstein and Dolin incorporate archival footage, family photos, detailed investigations of key panels from many of Spiegelman’s comics and graphic novels, and new interviews with such comic artists as Griffith, R. Crumb, Trina Robbins, Gary Panter, Charles Burns, Chris Ware, Peter Kuper, and Jerry Craft in addition to author Hillary Chute, film critic J. Hoberman, filmmaker Ken Jacobs, Spiegelman, Mouly, and their children, Dash and Nadja. “By showing in your comics stuff you’re not supposed to show, stuff you’re not supposed to deal with, the culture outside is telling you don’t go there, by doing it, you’re robbing it of its power,” Griffith says of his Arcade cofounder’s aesthetic.
Mouly offers, “Art has never separated work and life,” especially when it comes to his genre-redefining 1986 graphic novel, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (My Father Bleeds History) and the 1991 sequel, Maus: And Here My Troubles Began. The books explore his complicated relationship with his Polish father, Vladek, who finally told his son about his experiences at Auschwitz, a subject that he and Art’s mother, Anna, had previously avoided delving into with him.
Art Spiegelman holds up the 1973 “Centerfold Manifesto” in poignant documentary
In the books — which the New York Times originally listed as fiction until Spiegelman wrote them a letter explaining that Maus was a carefully and thoroughly researched true story and should be categorized as nonfiction — Spiegelman depicted the Jews as mice and the Nazi soldiers as evil cats. “He tackled a subject that was enormous and he established the medium as a serious literary form,” Sacco says.
As deeply personal as Maus is — the documentary includes scenes of Spiegelman visiting Auschwitz in 1987 — it is primarily a human tale of innocent people trapped amid the scourge of Fascism, something Spiegelman has been warning people about given what is happening around the world this century.
“Art Spiegelman is the guy that reinvented comics as a medium that people took seriously,” artist and author Molly Crabapple says. “He showed that comics could express the darkest, most tragic, most complicated, most true things about history, about our relationships, about family.” Disaster Is My Muse was made prior to Donald Trump reclaiming the presidency in November, but Spiegelman makes his feelings about him very clear in lectures and conversations.
Speaking about his early, radical work with EC and Mad writer and editor Harvey Kurtzman, Spiegelman notes, “It was asking you to deeply question things, and I believe it was an important aspect of what led to the generation that protested the Vietnam War.” Among the other topics that are examined are several of Spiegelman’s autobiographical panels from Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!; 1968’s Prisoner on the Hell Planet: A Case History, about his mother’s suicide, the comic that first attracted Mouly to him; his longtime association with Topps designing Wacky Packages and Garbage Pail Kids cards; making potent New Yorker covers; his 9/11 book, In the Shadow of No Towers; Maus being banned in many school libraries across the country; such influences as Mad magazine #11 and Bernard Krigstein’s Master Race; his adaptation of Joseph Moncure March’s 1928 lost classic, The Wild Party; and his time spent in a state mental facility and the tragic death of his brother. Although his smoking habit is never mentioned, he is nearly always seen with a pipe, cigarette, or vape.
In 1973, Spiegelman and Griffith created the “Centerfold Manifesto” in Short Order Comix #1, which proclaimed, “Comics must be personal! . . . Efficient and Callous Capitalist Exploitation must be condemned and deplored at every turn . . . And replaced by Inefficient and humane Capitalist Exploitation!” More than fifty years later, he is still living by his word.
The Comic Arts Fest overflows with opportunities to appreciate the art form Spiegelman champions: Highlights include screenings of four episodes from season two of Florian Ferrier’s series The Fox-Badger Family and four episodes of Daniel Klein’s Living with Dad, the masterclass “Aleksi Briclot: My Journey with Marvel Studios,” the conversation “The Return of the Iconic Gaston Lagaffe” with Delaf, the lecture “The Rise of Afromanga” with Gigi Murakami, a screening of Anora Oscar winner Jacques Audiard’s Paris, 13th District followed by a discussion with artist Adrian Tomine, a screening of Silenn Thomas’s Frank Miller: American Genius followed by a Q&A with Thomas and artist Emma Kubert, and the closing event, “Françoise Mouly, from Indie Comics to the New Yorker,” in which Spiegelman’s wife and business partner sits down with Anita Kunz, Peter de Sève, Barry Blitt, and others to talk about her career. Spiegelman will also be at the Artist Alley & Bookstore section of the fest on March 30 from 3:30 to 5:30; among the other participants are Paul & Gaëtan Brizzi, Patrick McDonnell, Pauline Lévêque, Griffith, and Tomine.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
WONDROUS OBJECTS SYMPOSIUM
The Museum at FIT
Katie Murphy Amphitheatre, Fred P. Pomerantz Art and Design Center
300 Seventh Ave. between Twenty-Sixth & Twenty-Seventh Sts.
Friday, March 28, free with advance RSVP, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
Exhibition continues through April 20, free www.fitnyc.edu
In conjunction with its current exhibition, “Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities,” the Museum at FIT is hosting the all-day symposium “Wondrous Objects” on March 28. Among the scholars, artists, and designers participating in the free event are associate lecturer in cultural and historical studies Jason Cyrus, FIT associate professor Hilary Davidson, visual artist Mark Dion, exhibition curator Dr. Colleen Hill, antiques dealer and collector Evan Michelson, jewelry and decorative objects designer Ted Muehling, artist Niio Perkins, Bard assistant professor Mei Mei Rado, and Peabody Essex Museum director of curatorial affairs Petra Slinkard.
The exhibit, on view through April 20, connects cabinets of curiosities with fashion through nearly two hundred garments and accessories, divided into “Specimens,” “Aviary,” “Artisanship,” “Kunstkammer,” “Reflections and Refractions,” “Vanitas,” “Illusions,” “The Senses,” and “What Is It?” Highlights include Sophia Webster’s Chiara sandals with multicolor embroidery and hand-painted heels,” Tom Ford’s sequined and beaded zebra-print dress with horsehair “mane,” specimen jars featuring earrings from major brands, and Comme des Garçons’ polyester, cotton, and nylon dress printed with Arcimboldo’s painting of Vertumnus.
Below is the full schedule; admission is free with advance registration.
Friday, March 28
Welcoming Remarks, by Dr. Joyce F. Brown, resident of FIT, 10:00
Introduction, by Dr. Valerie Steele, director and chief curator of the Museum at FIT, 10:05
“Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities,” with Dr. Colleen Hill, 10:15
“Shoes of Wonder: The Legacy of the Ruby Slippers,” with Hilary Davidson, 10:45
Audience Q&A, 11:15
“The Lady’s Fan: Accessorizing Modern Femininity in Republican China,” with Mei Mei Rado, 11:30
Dr. Colleen Hill in conversation with Niio Perkins and Ted Meuhling, noon
Audience Q&A, 12:30
Lunch break, 12:45 – 2:15
“Draping Innovation: Cristóbal Balenciaga and the Sari,” with Jason Cyrus, 2:15
“When Fashion and Design Are Your Life: The Stylings of Iris Apfel,” with Petra Slinkard, 2:45
Audience Q&A, 3:15
“Ephemeral Beauties: Wax Women and the Dawn of Consumer Culture,” with Evan Michelson, 3:30
“Wonder Rooms,” with Mark Dion, 4:00
Audience Q&A, 4:30
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Christina Phensy’s Elegy for the Future is part of opening night of Marvels of Media Festival at MoMI
MARVELS OF MEDIA FESTIVAL 2025
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
March 27-29, free with advance RSVP movingimage.us
The Marvels of Media Festival returns to the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) for its fourth iteration, celebrating the work of autistic creators with film screenings, panel discussions, workshops, an exhibition, and satellite locations in Westchester, Long Island, and San Francisco.
“Marvels of Media has shown the brilliant work of neurodiverse media makers in clear evidence,” MoMI trustee and founder of Marvels of Media and Sapan Studio Josh Sapan said in a statement. Debut filmmaker and As We See It star Sue Ann Pien added, “Expanding the audience’s understanding of an autistic female’s reality is a perspective changer for those more accustomed to stereotypically male depictions in film and television history. It’s a culturally relevant reminder that no one person is meant to represent an entire spectrum (just like not everyone with blue eyes or brown hair is the same).”
The three-day festival features twenty-two films, five video games, and two virtual reality experiences focusing on the neurodivergent community. The opening-night selection is the East Coast premiere of Pien’s fifteen-minute short, Once More, Like Rain Man, which she explains “gives a voice to a young autistic teenage girl’s own experiences finding her creative empowerment through the casting process.” Also on the bill is Christina Phensy’s fourteen-minute Elegy for the Future; Pien appears in both works. The evening also includes a panel discussion on autistic representation, with Pien, actress Bella Zoe Martinez, and Phensy, moderated by filmmaker and playwright Jackson Tucker-Meyer, and will be followed by a reception and a viewing of the exhibition “The Adventure of Nature and the Senses,” consisting of five films totaling fifteen minutes and the VR presentations Booper, Get Home by Thomas Fletcher and MUD & TKU Student Work XR/VR Gallery by Mike S., Opy S., Pattrick L., Rafat A., Tate B., Xavier A., Rose L., Briana G., Sasha R., Alejan T., Joshua K., and Koby F. In addition, the Marvels of Media Game Lab Exhibition includes Elliot Rex White’s visual novel A Night for Flesh and Roses as well as Metal Place by Abdullah Kante, Fizzy Adventure by Alex Lundqvist, Awesome Game by Carter Lee, and The Happy Hedgehog Wants a Big Wish by Tech Kids Unlimited’s Digital Agency.
We’ve come a long way since Rain Man.
Below is the full schedule.
Thursday, March 27
“Vibrant Voices: Four Shorts”: House of Masks by Atticus Jackson and Jason Weissbrod, 420 Ways to Die by Samara Huckvale, Insight by Ben Stansbery, and Breaking Normal by Jessica Cabot, followed by a discussion with Weissbrod, Huckvale, Stansbery, and Tal Anderson, 4:00
“Marvels of Media Festival Opening Night,” with opening remarks from Josh Sapan, Aziz Isham, Leonardo Santana-Zubieta, and Miranda Lee; screenings of Once More, Like Rain Man by Sue Ann Pien and Elegy for the Future by Christina Phensy; panel discussion, reception, and exhibition viewing (including Night City by Kyle Davis, Daltokki by Daniel Oliver Lee, CMYK Walk in the Woods by Quinn Koeneman, As One by Bec Miriam, and Jellyfish Memories by Eliza Young), 6:30
Friday, March 28
New York premiere of Lone Wolves (Ryan Cunningham, 2024), followed by discussion with Cunningham (in person) and writer-actor Matt Foss (via live video), 6:00
Saturday, March 29
“Playful Tales: Six Shorts”: Secret of the Hunter by Jessica “Jess” Jerome, Wilson S. Whale by Harry Schad, Abelard the Traveling Hedgehog’s Underwater Adventure with Max the Turtle by Pete Peterman and Ambrose Peterman, Joust My Luck by Jacob Lenard, The Ugliest Masterpiece by Rae Xiang, and Julius’ Identity Crisis by Brendan Ratner, followed by a discussion with Schad, Lenard, Xiang, Ratner, Payton Hepler, and Andy Nava, moderated by Mr. Oscar Segal and Allison Tearney, 1:00
“Life Lessons: Four Shorts”: Unbreakable by Alex Astrella, Glitter by Violet Gallo and Maya Velazquez, Surviving the Spectrum by Carley Marissa Dummitt, and Late-Diagnosed by Matthew Baltar, followed by a discussion with Gallo, Baltar, and Dummitt, 2:30
“Media-Maker Talk and Networking Mixer,” with Jason Weissbrod and others, 6:00
Sunday, March 30
“Collage Animation Workshop,” with artist David Karasow, 4:00
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Carmen Winant, Arrival, “Carmen Winant: My Mother and Eye,” 2024, (photo by Nicholas Knight / courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY)
Who:Carmen Winant, Melanie Kress What:Public Art Fund Talk and artist-led tour Where: Talk: The Cooper Union, Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, 41 Cooper Sq.; tour: West End Ave. between West Sixty-Third & Sixty-Fourth Sts. When: Talk: Wednesday, March 26, free with advance RSVP, 6:30; tour: Thursday, March 27, free with advance RSVP, 11:00 am Why: In its continuing mission to bring unique, intriguing, and involving public art to New Yorkers all around the city, which it has been doing since its founding in 1977, the Public Art Fund has been teaming with JCDecaux for several years, placing art in bus shelters in all five boroughs. The latest installation is “Carmen Winant: My Mother and Eye,” consisting of eleven compositions arranged from more than fifteen hundred screen captures taken from films Carmen and her mother took when they were teenagers traveling across the country; Winant’s mother documented her trip from Los Angeles to Niagara Falls on Super 8 in the summer of 1969 with her friend Judy Carter, while Carmen traveled from Philadelphia to Los Angeles with a 35mm camera in 2001.
The montages are on view in three hundred bus shelters in New York, Boston, and Chicago through April 6. You can find Horizon on Prospect Ave. and on Roosevelt Ave., Beach on the Southwest Grand Concourse, Rainbow on Frederick Douglass Blvd. and on Pearl St., Niagara Falls on 180th St. and on Clarkson Ave., Cornfield on Victory Blvd., and Bless Our Happy Home on Myrtle Ave., among other works at other locations.
“I think of myself as a feminist artist who uses art as an expression of my politics,” Winant says in a PAF Instagram post. “That has meant thinking about existing photographs as documents or as tools of the movement, how those pictures resonate now, or what they can tell us about contemporary feminism or the space between feminist movements.”
On March 26, Winant, who was born in San Francisco, grew up in Philly, and is now based in Columbus, Ohio, will participate in a Public Art Fund Talk and experimental lecture about the project, sitting down with PAF senior curator Melanie Kress at the Cooper Union. The next day, Winant and Kress will lead a tour of some of the bus shelters, beginning on the Upper West Side. Both events are free with advance RSVP.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Who:Nuala Clarke, Crystal Gandrud, Rob Ward, Megan Mook, Kevin Townley What:“Alchemy and Art on the Spiritual Path” Where:Tibet House NYC and online, 22 West Fifteenth St. When: Monday, March 24, free – $20 – $225, 6:30 Why: “I swim in the sea, and my experience of cold has changed. I can no longer be trusted with the question ‘Is it cold out?’ I experience it without the tightening of torso muscles and raising of shoulders. It has become separate from the whole, less readily identifiable. In my hands it feels like leanness, the appendages pared away to the essential; in my back and around my ribs it tingles; it is fresh on my lips; in my toes it is clear and my chest, above my heart, accepts it as youngness, in need of care. I am an effervescent being.” So writes Irish artist Nuala Clarke in her new book, Irish Moss of a Dead Man’s Skull (the Owl Circus, March 18, $33).
Influenced by the work of Irish alchemist and natural philosopher Robert Boyle (1627–91), author of Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours, with Observations on a Diamond that Shines in the Dark, as well as by installation artist Robert Irwin, serigrapher and ceramicist Robert Brown, and spiritual coach and meditation teacher Robert Chender, Clarke has spent nearly five years “thinking about whether a painting could be prescribed for an ailment.” The result is a work that Clarke calls “an ode to light, color, loss, and the elements.” The 224-page book features 86 full-color images and details the impact each of the four Roberts has had on her art and her meditation practice.
On Monday, March 24, Clarke will launch the book at Tibet House as part of the Dharma Friends series, joined by experimental writer and acquiring editor Crystal Gandrud, Food Will Win the War violist, songwriter, and lead vocalist Rob Ward, and monthly Dharma Friends hosts Megan Mook and Kevin Townley, who will lead guided meditations. Having participated back in 2010 with composer Roarke Menzies, Gandrud, my wife, and others in a performance Clarke curated for her show “You Delight Me” on Shelter Island, I can vouch for how terrific her events are, and this one should offer its own numerous pleasures.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
