this week in art

JEFF KOONS: SEATED BALLERINA

Jeff Koons’s “Seated Ballerina” has extended her stay at Rockefeller Center through July 5 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

30 Rockefeller Plaza
49th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Extended through July 5, free
www.rockefellercenter.com
seated ballerina slideshow
www.artproductionfund.org

In 2000, controversial American artist Jeff Koons placed “Puppy,” a forty-three-foot-high stainless-steel sculpture of a dog covered in tens of thousands of flowering plants, in the plaza at Rockefeller Center, a work that Koons called a symbol of “love, warmth, and happiness.” In 2014, he installed at the same spot the thirty-seven-foot-high stainless-steel “Split-Rocker,” part toy pony, part dinosaur, also covered in flowering plants. And now Koons, who also had a major retrospective at the Whitney in 2014, has brought “Seated Ballerina” to Rockefeller Plaza, a forty-five-foot-high inflatable tchotchke that would feel at home in the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Inspired by a smaller piece from his “Antiquity” series, the sculpture, which recalls his balloon dogs and is sponsored by the Art Production Fund and Kiehl’s, is based on a porcelain figure by Oksana Zhnikrup, who created statuettes for the Kiev Experimental Ceramic-Art Factory beginning in 1955. Koons’s nylon ballerina, which is supposed to reference a modern-day Venus while also raising awareness for the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, is sitting on a tuffet, leaning over to her left and adjusting one of her ballet slippers. In the wind, she slowly rocks back and forth, her left arm in motion, strings holding her in place. (On days with severe weather she is deflated, only to rise up again on balmier times in shining gold, silver, red, and blue.) Although the signs say she will remain in Rockefeller Center through June 5, her stay has been extended until July 5, so there’s still time to catch her. As with so much of Koons’s oeuvre, what you see is pretty much what you get; some people love it, some hate it; some find it plagiaristic art lacking originality, while others consider it an entertaining bit of artistic appropriation, one of the foundations of Koons’s practice. In any case, it certainly attracts attention, both up close as well as from a distance, where “Seated Ballerina” hovers over Paul Manship’s monumental sculpture of Prometheus in the light-up fountain below. “I hope the installation of ‘Seated Ballerina’ at Rockefeller Center offers a sense of affirmation and excitement to the viewer to reach their potential,” Koons said in a statement. “The aspect of reflectivity emulates life’s energy; it’s about contemplation and what it means to be a human being. It’s a very hopeful piece.”

LAST CHANCE — A WORLD OF EMOTIONS: ANCIENT GREECE, 700 BC – 200 AD

“A World of Emotions” takes a unique approach to Greek antiquities (photo courtesy the Onassis Cultural Center)

Onassis Cultural Center
Olympic Tower
645 Fifth Ave. at 51st St.
Saturday, June 24, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
onassisusa.org

Saturday is the last day to see the outstanding exhibition “A World of Emotions: Ancient Greece, 700 BC – 200 AD,” at the Onassis Cultural Center in Olympic Tower in Midtown. “The Greeks were not the first people who felt something; they were not the first who wrote literature or created art because they felt something. But they were the first who made emotions the subject of their literature and their art,” curator Angelos Chaniotis says on the audio tour. The show consists of more than 125 archaic and classical works dating back nearly three thousand years, from statues, coins, and vases to masks, amulets, and a painting that portrays a surprising depth of field. The exhibition is divided into ten categories and subcategories, including “The Art of Emotions,” “Spaces of Emotions,” “Enslaved by Emotions,” “The Battlefield,” “The Cemetery: Space of Grief and Hope,” and “Medea,” and features small monitors with excerpts from mythological poems and tales. The works depict romance and murder, joy and sorrow, relating stories about Apollo, Artemis, Agamemnon, Iphigenia, Zeus, Herakles, Leda and the Swan, Penthesileia, and others. There’s also a clip from Yukio Ninagawa’s modern all-male staging of Euripides’ Medea. Looking at ancient Greek artworks can be cold and distant, but Chaniotis’s approach brings a warmth and sense of humor to a collection that boasts numerous treasures from the Onassis Cultural Center, the Acropolis Museum, the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, the Louvre, the British Museum, and the Vatican Museums, among others. Be sure not to miss the stele of the man and his beloved pig.

PERFORMANCES AND ACTIVATIONS FOR “CALDER: HYPERMOBILITY”

Christian Marclay will perform Alexander Calder’s “Small Sphere and Heavy Sphere” July 19-23 at the Whitney (photograph © Jerry L. Thompson. Calder Foundation, New York; Mary Calder Rower Bequest, 2011. © 2017 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)

Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort St.
Wednesday – Monday through October 23, $17-$22
212-570-3600
whitney.org

Alexander Calder, kineticism, and the Whitney have been inextricably linked since the institution acquired in May 1982 the Pennsylvania-born artist’s delightful “Calder’s Circus,” which, when on view, is always accompanied by a video showing the work in action. In addition, on rare occasions, it is activated live. The Whitney will be activating many of Calder’s other works in the new exhibition “Calder: Hypermobility,” set in motion at specific times to a specially commissioned sound walk by Jim O’Rourke. Activations, by motor or air, will take place multiple times each day (Monday to Thursday at 12 noon, 2:00, and 4:00; Friday at 12 noon, 2:00, 4:00, 7:30, 8:00, and 9:00; and Saturday and Sunday on the hour from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm). In addition, the Calder Foundation will activate the rarely exhibited “Object with Red Ball” on June 21 at 2:00, “Boomerangs” on June 28 at 2:00, “Tightrope” on July 9 at 4:00, “Goldfish Bowl” on July 12 at 2:00, and two untitled pieces on July 18 and 26 at 2:00, with more to come in August, September, and October. Below is a list of special performances by other artists during the run of the show, some of which require advance tickets.

Wednesday, July 19
through
Sunday, July 23
Christian Marclay performs Calder’s “Small Sphere and Heavy Sphere” (Calder’s first suspended mobile), with cellist Okkyung Lee, Susan and John Hess Family Theater

Saturday, August 5
and
Sunday, August 6
Jack Quartet, music by Earle Brown, John Cage, Morton Feldman, and others, Hurst Family Galleries

Thursday, September 7
through
Sunday, September 10
Arto Lindsay, noisemakers and rattles, in conjunction with the exhibition “Hélio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium,” Susan and John Hess Family Theater

Thursday, September 28
Jill Magid, Susan and John Hess Family Theater

Friday, September 29
through
Sunday, October 1
Math Bass and Lauren Davis Fisher perform “Quiet Work in Session,” Susan and John Hess Family Theater

Thursday, October 5
and
Friday, October 6
C. Spencer Yeh, Susan and John Hess Family Theater

Saturday, October 7
A screening of films commissioned by the Calder Foundation by artists Ephraim Asili, Rosa Barba, Lucy Raven, Agnès Varda, and others, followed by a conversation moderated by Victoria Brooks, Susan and John Hess Family Theater

Friday, October 13
through
Sunday, October 15
Empire State Works in Progress, with artist Abigail DeVille and director Charlotte Brathwaite, Susan and John Hess Family Theater

Friday, October 20
through
Sunday, October 22
Nora Schultz, Susan and John Hess Family Theater

RIVER TO RIVER: NIGHT AT THE MUSEUMS

night at the museums

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUMS
Multiple downtown locations
Tuesday, June 210, free, 4:00 – 8:00
lmcc.net
nightatthemuseums.com

Last Tuesday, the Museum Mile Festival offered free admission to seven institutions along Fifth Ave. between 82nd and 105th Sts. This Tuesday, June 20, fifteen downtown organizations will open their doors for free. As part of the River to River Festival, which includes experimental dance, theater, music, and more through June 25, people are invited inside to see exhibitions and special programs as well as join walking tours. The participating organizations (with current exhibitions and special events) are the African Burial Ground National Monument (ranger presentations and screening of Our Time at Last), Federal Hall National Memorial (ranger tours, George Washington, Early American Music by Linda Russell), Fraunces Tavern Museum (“Dunsmore: Illustrating the American Revolutionary War,” “Lafayette,” live music by Rose Tree), the Museum of American Finance (“For the Love of Money: Blacks on US Currency,” hourly tours), the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust (“My Name Is…The Lost Children of Kloster Indersdorf,” “Eyewitness: Photographs by B. A. Van Sise,” 6:30 talk on Jewish communities in China), the China Institute (“Dreams of the Kings: A Jade Suit for Eternity, Treasures of the Han Dynasty from Xuzhou,” live music), the National Archives at New York City, the National Museum of the American Indian (“Akunnittinni: A Kinngait Family Portrait,” “Circle of Dance,” live performances by Martha Redbone), the National September 11 Memorial Museum, the NYC Municipal Archives (building tours with MA photographer Matthew Minor and MA commissioner), the 9/11 Tribute Center, Poets House (“Poetry Since 1912: Books, Issues, & Ephemera from the Poetry Foundation,” literary scavenger hunt), the Skyscraper Museum (“Ten and Taller, 1874-1900,” tour with founding director Carol Willis), and the South Street Seaport Museum (“Street of Ships: The Port and Its People,” Waterfront History Walking Tour, Bowne C. Stationers and Printers live demonstration).

RIVER TO RIVER 2017

Maria Hassabi presented an informal preview of her latest work this summer on the High Line (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The latest iteration of Maria Hassabi’s Staged series will move be performed in City Hall Park as part of the River to River Festival (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple locations downtown
June 14-25, free
www.rivertorivernyc.com
lmcc.net

The best free multidisciplinary arts festival of the summer, River to River packs a whole lot into a narrow amount of time. Sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, this year’s activities, which, as always, focus on more experimental presentations, take place June 14-25 at such locations as Governors Island, Federal Hall, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Fulton Center, City Hall Park, and other downtown areas. While everything is free, some performances require advance registration because of space considerations. In addition to the below events, Katja Novitskova’s “EARTH POTENTIAL” Public Art Fund exhibition opens June 22 in City Hall Park, photographer Kamau Ware’s “Black Gotham Experience” interactive storytelling project will pop up at various places throughout the fest, LMCC’s Open Studios allows visitors the chance to meet with dozens of artists, and Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s “A Supple Perimeter” will be on view at LMCC’s Arts Center and Movie Theater Exterior on Governors Island.

Wednesday, June 14, 6:00
Wednesday, June 21, 8:00
Sunday, June 25, 7:00
The Dance Cartel: R2R Living Rooms, with DJ Average Jo and special guests, Pier A Harbor House
One of the most energetic companies around, the Dance Cartel will host a trio of live music and dance performances at the River to River Festival hub, with plenty of audience participation.

Thursday, June 15, 3:00 & 6:00
Monday, June 19, 3:00
Netta Yerushalmy: Paramodernities #2 and #3, National Museum of the American Indian
South Carolina–born choreographer and performer Netta Yerushalmy’s “Paramodernities” series deconstructs landmark dance works within the framework of modernity. For River to River, she will present Paramodernities #2, examining Martha Graham’s Night Journey, and Paramodernities #3, investigating Alvin Ailey’s Revelations, accompanied by scholars who will take part in public discussions. The seventy-five-minute production will move around inside the National Museum of the American Indian.

Thursday, June 15, 7:00
Saturday, June 17, 7:00
Sunday, June 18, 7:00
A Marvelous Order, Fulton Center
Joshua Frankel, Judd Greenstein, Will Rawls, and Tracy K. Smith have collaborated on the multimedia opera A Marvelous Order, which delves into the famous fight between Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs over the future development of New York City. For the River to River Festival, they will present a twenty-five-minute excerpt at the Fulton Center, with Eliza Bagg, Tomás Cruz, Lucy Dhegrae, Christopher Herbert, and Dashon Burton as Robert Moses and live music by NOW Ensemble, conducted by David Bloom.

Friday, June 16, 6:00
Amir Elsaffar: Rivers of Sound — Not Two, the Plaza at 28 Liberty
American jazz trumpeter and composer Amir Elsaffar celebrates the release of his latest record, Not Two (New Amsterdam, June 16), with a two-hour performance at the Plaza at 28 Liberty featuring his seventeen-piece Rivers of Sound orchestra.

Friday, June 16, 3:30
Saturday, June 17, 3:30
Sunday, June 18, 3:30
Jodi Melnick: Moat, Fort Jay, Governors Island
Choreographer, dancer, and teacher Jodi Melnick, who has said, “I am truly, madly, deeply in love with movement,” has teamed up with visual artist John Monti for Moat, a sixty-minute site-specific performance taking place in the moat that surrounds historic Fort Jay on Governors Island.

Beth Gill’s Catacomb will be performed in Federal Hall for the River to River Festival (photo by Brian Rogers)

Saturday, June 17, 8:00
Sunday, June 18, 8:00
Monday, June 19, 8:00
Beth Gill: Catacomb, Federal Hall
In May 2016, Bessie Award–winning choreographer Beth Gill presented the site-specific Catacomb at the Chocolate Factory, a dreamlike physical and psychological exploration of what we see and who we are. For River to River, the aching sixty-minute performance moves to historic Federal Hall.

Saturday, June 17, 12 noon – 6:00
Sunday, June 18, 12 noon – 6:00
Saturday, June 24, 12 noon – 6:00
Sunday, June 25, 12 noon – 6:00
The Set-Up: Island Ghost Sleep Princess Time Story Show, the Arts Center at Governors Island
For five years, Wally Cardona and Jennifer Lacey have been collaborating with men and women from multiple dance disciplines, presenting unique performances that push the boundaries of the movement arts. Their project now culminates in a grand finale on Governors Island, with dance masters I Nyoman Catra (Balinese Topeng), Proeung Chhieng (Cambodian), Junko Fisher (Okinawan), Saya Lei (Mandalay-style, classical Burmese), Jean-Christophe Paré (French baroque), Kapila Venu (Indian Kutiyattam), and Heni Winahyuningsih (Javanese refined) and musicians Jonathan Bepler, Reiko Fueting, and Megan Schubert. “Many dances on an ISLAND, a GHOST of what they were, having lost details during a long SLEEP but nevertheless the PRINCESS of their destiny. This TIME it is one STORY, full of fortuitous meetings, grave errors, and happy misunderstandings. It’s a SHOW, folks!” Cardona and Lacey explain. You can see the complete schedule here.

Monday, June 19, 6:00
Tuesday, June 20, 2:00
Wednesday, June 21, 2:00
Faye Driscoll: Thank You for Coming: Play, Broad and Wall Sts.
At last year’s LMCC Open Studios on Governors Island, the endlessly inventive Faye Driscoll offered a work-in-progress showing of the second part of her participatory “Thank You for Coming” series, which began in 2014 with Thank You for Coming: Attendance Play later moved to the BAM Fisher. She now revisits Play, staging a forty-minute version at the intersection of Broad and Wall Sts.

Tuesday, June 20, 4:00 – 8:00
Night at the Museums
Many Lower Manhattan museums and cultural institutions will stay open late on June 20, offering free entry to historic sites along with special programs. Among the participants are the African Burial Ground National Monument, China Institute, Federal Hall National Memorial, Fraunces Tavern Museum, Museum of American Finance, Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, National Archives at New York City, National Museum of the American Indian, National September 11 Memorial Museum (advance RSVP required), 9/11 Tribute Center, NYC Municipal Archives, Poets House, the Skyscraper Museum, and the South Street Seaport Museum.

Wednesday, June 21, 5:00
Thursday, June 22, 3:00
Friday, June 23, 3:00
Marjani Forté-Saunders: Memoirs of a . . . Unicorn, Melville Gallery, South Street Seaport Museum
Pasadena-born, Harlem based dancer and choreographer Marjani Forté-Saunders, who previously was in the Urban Bush Women Dance Company, brings her solo Memoirs of a . . . Unicorn to the South Street Seaport Museum, a collaboration with media designer Meena Murugesan and sound designer Everett Saunders that relates to the history of Black American magic.

Thursday, June 22, 7:00
Friday, June 23, 7:00
Saturday, June 24, 7:00
Sunday, June 25, 5:00
En Garde Arts: Harbored, Winter Garden, Brookfield Place, 230 Vesey St.
En Garde Arts, which was founded by Anne Hamburger to “catalyze social change” through immersive theater, will stage the sixty-minute site-specific collage play Harbored, about Willa Cather, Lewis & Clark, and Cather’s character Ántonia. The piece, featuring more than fifty performers, is written and directed by Jimmy Maize, with an original score by Heather Christian sung by the Downtown Voices Choir and movement by Wendy Seyb. During the day, you can share your immigration story with them and it just might be incorporated into that night’s show.

Friday, June 23, 6:00
Sunday, June 25, 6:00
Maria Hassabi: Staged? (2016) — undressed, City Hall Park
Last summer, Maria Hassabi presented Movement #2 on the High Line, a dance performed by Simon Courchel, Hristoula Harakas, Molly Lieber, and Oisín Monaghan as people passed by. That morphed into Staged, which ran at the Kitchen in October. Now Hassabi is bringing Staged? (2016) — undressed to City Hall Park, where four dancers will move around Katja Novitskova’s “EARTH POTENTIAL” exhibition.

MUSEUM MILE FESTIVAL 2017

museum mile

Multiple locations on Fifth Ave. between 82nd & 105th Sts.
Tuesday, June 13, free, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
www.museummilefestival.org

The fortieth annual Museum Mile Festival will take place on Tuesday, June 13, as seven arts institutions along Fifth Avenue between 82nd and 105th Sts. open their doors for free between 6:00 and 9:00. There will be live outdoor performances by Fogo Azul Bateria Feminina, DJ Shabbakano, Carlos Jesus Martinez Dominguez & Leslie Jimenezin, Banda de lost Muertos, Silly Billy, and Sarah King and the Smoke Rings in addition to face painting, art and dance workshops, chalk drawing, and more. The participating museums (with at least one of their current shows listed here) are El Museo del Barrio (“Nkame: A Retrospective of Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayón,” “uptown: nasty women / bad hombres”), the Museum of the City of New York (“New York at Its Core,” “AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism”), the Jewish Museum (“Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry,” “The Arcades: Contemporary Art and Walter Benjamin”), the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum (“The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s,” “Esperanza Spalding Selects”), the Guggenheim (“Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim,” “The Hugo Boss Prize 2016: Anicka Yi, Life Is Cheap”), the Neue Galerie (“Austrian Masterworks from the Neue Galerie New York”), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (“Irving Penn: Centennial,” “Lygia Pape: A Multitude of Forms”), along with presentations by the Little Orchestra Society, the New York Academy of Medicine, the 92nd St. Y, the Church of the Heavenly Rest, and Asia Society. 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.

TICKET ALERT — LEE FRIEDLANDER WITH GIANCARLO T. ROMA: PASSION PROJECTS

Lee Friedlander, who has revived his self-publishing company with his grandson, Giancarlo T. Roma, will mare a rare public speaking appearance at the New York Public Library on June 20 (photo © Lee Friedlander)

Who: Lee Friedlander, Giancarlo T. Roma
What: Live from the NYPL
Where: New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, 476 Fifth Ave. at 42nd St., 917-275-6975
When: Tuesday, June 20, $40, 7:00
Why: Legendary Washington-born photographer Lee Friedlander will make an extremely rare speaking appearance on June 20, his first in more than thirty years, when he comes to the New York Public Library, sharing the stage with his grandson, Giancarlo T. Roma, who describes himself on his Twitter page as a writer, stockbroker, business partner, guitar player, and more. Now eighty-two, Friedlander’s work over the last sixty years has included such series as “America by Car,” “Mannequin,” “Letters from the People,” and “Sticks & Stones,” capturing the social landscape of the country. Roma, whose mother is Friedlander’s daughter, has been collaborating with his father, photographer Thomas Roma, since the boy was in single digits, and he has now revived his grandfather’s self-publishing company, Haywire Press. The conversation, titled “Passion Projects,” will focus on Friedlander’s life and career, which he continues to do his way, not following any conventional methods.