Lisa Anne Auerbach will activate her “American Megazine” on Friday nights at the Whitney Biennial (photograph © Lisa Anne Auerbach)
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Through May 25, $18 (pay-what-you-wish Fridays 6:00 – 9:00)
Many programs require advance registration and/or tickets
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org
The 2014 Whitney Biennial, the last to be held in Marcel Breuer and Hamilton P. Smith’s 1960s building on the corner of Madison and Seventy-Fifth, is another mixed bag, further complicated by the curious decision to have three floors organized by three different curators, creating a more disjointed survey of the state of American art than usual. Perhaps the best time to take in this year’s model is when you get the added bonus of a special performance or program, many of which require advance RSVP or tickets. On May 7 at 7:30 ($8), the curators, Stuart Comer, Anthony Elms, and Michelle Grabner, will participate in a roundtable discussion with Jay Sanders that should shed plenty of light on their choices, but there are lots of other events as well. From April 2 to 6 in the second-floor Kaufman Astoria Studios Film and Video Gallery, Academy Records and Matt Hanner present the concurrent film loop The Bower with the three-hour audio No Jets, combining visuals of a cherry tree with audio of flight delays immediately following the events of September 11, while Gary Indiana’s Stanley Park merges images of a Cuban prison with shots of jellyfish. Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst’s twenty-three-minute short, She Gone Rogue, plays April 2-6 and 9-13 in the lobby gallery. On April 4, New York City teens in grades nine through twelve are invited to a free artist workshop led by the collective My Barbarian; the program continues April 11 with Joshua Mosley. On Friday nights through May 23, Lisa Anne Auerbach will activate her large-scale American Megazine on the third floor.
Miguel Gutierrez and Mickey Mahar team up for dance performance that examines midcareer anxiety (photo by Eric McNatt)
On April 6 at 4:00, James Benning’s re-creation of the 1969 classic Easy Rider will be shown in the Kaufman gallery in conjunction with Julie Ault’s “Afterlife: a constellation.” Composer Robert Ashley and director Alex Waterman will present the world premiere of their opera, Crash, April 10-13 ($20); their Spanish-language TV opera, Vidas Perfectas, runs April 17-20 ($20), while their reimagined speaking opera, The Trial of Anne Opie Wehrer and Unknown Accomplices for Crimes Against Humanity, with Amy Sillman, Wayne Koestenbaum, Mary Farley, and Barbara Bloom, plays April 23-27 ($20). Fred Lonidier will lead a teach-in on April 11 at 7:00 that looks at art and labor. On April 12 and 26 ($10 per family), Whitney Wees offers kid-friendly tours and workshops for families with children ages four to five, in addition to the sketching tour “Sculpture and Drawing” for families with kids ages six to ten ($10); also on April 12, Mosely will be leading an Artist’s Choice Workshop for families with children ages eight to twelve ($10), and the Open Studio program, for kids of all ages, will examine Sheila Hicks’s “Pillar of Inquiry / Supple Column.” (Other family workshops are scheduled for April 26 in the Whitney Studio, May 2 with Dan Walsh, May 10 for kids with autism and with My Barbarian, and May 17 with Sara Greenberger Rafferty.) From April 16 to 20, Taisha Paggett will debut a new performance piece in the lobby gallery. On April 17 at 7:00 ($8), Miguel Gutierrez and My Barbarian’s Alexandro Segade have put together “Take Ecstasy with Me,” an evening of performances and reflections by Kalup Linzy, Jacolby Satterwhite, Nao Bustamante, Jorge Cortiñas, A. L. Steiner, Kate Bush Dance Troupe, Juliana Huxtable, and others, inspired by the work of the late Cuban theorist José Esteban Muñoz; Gutierrez will perform the duet Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/ with dancer Mickey Mahar April 23 – May 4 ($20).
Anthony Elms, Stuart Comer, and Michelle Grabner will discuss their curatorial choices at May 7 panel discussion (photo by Filip Wolak)
On April 18 at 7:30, Kevin Beasley, with Leon Finley and Christhian Diaz, will present the interactive audio piece “Public Programs in Sonic Masses.” (Beasley will also host a teen workshop on May 2 and activate his sound sculptures on May 14 at noon, May 16 at 1:00, and May 17 at 3:00 in the lobby gallery.) On April 26 at 6:30 ($8), Triple Canopy will investigate “Media Replication Services.” Doug Ischar’s Come Lontano, Tristes Tarzan, and Alone with You will screen April 30 – May 4 in the Kaufman gallery. On May 1 at 6:30 ($8), Joseph Grigely will deliver a “Seminars with Artists” lecture about communication and miscommunication, followed by Susan Howe’s talk on the “telepathy of archives” on May 14 at 6:30 ($8) and Amy Sillman examining the materiality of color on May 22 at 6:30 ($8). On May 6 at 7:00 ($8), Ault, Benning, and William Least Heat-Moon will discuss “Histories of Place.” On May 11, Travis Jeppesen will read his novel The Suiciders in a durational performance on the third floor. And on May 19 at 7:00 ($8), Dawoud Bey will lead a roundtable Conversations of Art discussion about the portrayal of southern blacks during the civil rights movement. Tickets are available in advance for all of the above events that require an additional fee, as indicated in parentheses; some free programs require preregistration, so don’t hesitate if you want to attend any of these Whitney Biennial bonuses.
“Tanny’s body created inspiration for choreographers,” one of the interviewees says in Nancy Buirski’s documentary Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq. “They could do things that they hadn’t seen before.” The American Masters presentation examines the life and career of prima ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq, affectionately known as Tanny, who took the dance world by storm in the 1940s and ’50s before tragically being struck down by polio in 1956 at the age of twenty-seven. Le Clercq served as muse to both Jerome Robbins, who made Afternoon of a Faun for her, and George Balanchine, who created such seminal works as Western Symphony, La Valse, and Symphony in C for Le Clercq — and married Tanny in 1952. In the documentary, Buirski (The Loving Story) speaks with Arthur Mitchell and Jacques D’Amboise, who both danced with Le Clercq, her childhood friend Pat McBride Lousada, and Barbara Horgan, Balanchine’s longtime assistant, while also including an old interview with Robbins, who deeply loved Le Clercq as well. The film features spectacular, rarely seen archival footage of Le Clercq performing many of the New York City Ballet’s classic works, both onstage and even on The Red Skelton Show. The name Tanaquil relates to the word “omen” — in history, Tanaquil, the wife of the fifth king of Rome, was somewhat of a prophetess who believed in omens — and the film details several shocking omens surrounding her contracting polio. The film would benefit from sharing more information about Le Clercq’s life post-1957 — she died on New Year’s Eve in 2000 at the age of seventy-one — but Afternoon of a Faun is still a lovely, compassionate, and heartbreaking look at a one-of-a-kind performer. A selection of the 2013 New York Film Festival, Afternoon of a Faun has completed its theatrical release at Lincoln Center and will next be shown April 6, 13, and 20 as part of the Symphony Space series Thalia Docs.
