this week in lectures, signings, panel discussions, workshops, and Q&As

INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE DAY

Multiple locations in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan
Saturday, May 2 free
bookstoredaynyc.com

More than two dozen independent bookstores in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens are participating in Independent Bookstore Day on May 2, with signings, readings, lectures, film screenings, art exhibits, children’s activities, giveaways, games, food tastings, discussions, and, in several cases, free beer, to steer you clear of Amazon and B&N. Guitarist Gary Lucas will be performing live at bookbook on Bleecker St. Paul Durham, Matt Myklusch, Michael Northrop, Dianne K. Salerni, and Josh Lieb join together for a Fantastic Middle Grade panel at Books of Wonder. Amy Hest, Chris Raschka, Deborah Heligman, and Cynthia Weill are among a dozen authors and illustrators who will be at Bank Street Book Store. Housing Works will host a Kidlit Game Show emceed by C. Alexander London. Colm Tóibín, Eileen Myles, Joseph O’Neill, DJ Spooky, Said Sayrafiezadeh, and others are among the literati taking part in a marathon Langston Hughes reading at McNally Jackson. Jon Scieszka will lead a Mad Scientist Party at the Community Bookstore, followed by an evening celebration with Paul Auster, William Corbett, and Felix Harr. The powerHouse Arena will launch Luke’s Lobster’s Real Maine Food, with sample treats. And Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman will be team captains in a game of Pictionary at the Astoria Bookshop during this first-ever national Independent Bookstore Day.

WFMU RECORD FAIR

Annual WFMU Record Fair moves into Brooklyn Expo Center this weekend

Who: Bambi Kino, Olivia Neutron John, Conspiracy of Beards, Tin Sandwich, Daniel Kahn, Danny Kroha, Todd-O-Phonic Todd, the Baseball Project, Michael Shelley, Fool’s Paradise with Rex, Miriam, Billy Jam, and more than 150 record and CD dealers
What: WFMU Record Fair
Where: Brooklyn Expo Center, 79 Franklin St. between Noble & Oak Sts.
When: May 1-3, $7, 4:00 – 7:00 Friday, 10:00 am – 7:00 pm Saturday & Sunday (early admission Friday at 4:00, $25)
Why: Because there’s still nothing like spinning that black circle. In addition to tons of vintage vinyl and CDs for sale from all musical genres, the annual WFMU Record Fair will feature screenings of such cult classics as Francis Ford Coppola’s Dementia 13, Dan Lucal’s Dance of the Clones, Tim Smith’s Sex and Broadcasting (followed by a Q&A with Smith), Christopher Kirkley’s I Sing the Desert Electric, Paul Lovelace and Jessica Wolfson’s Radio Unnameable, Selma Vilhunnen’s Song, Cate Giordano’s Heritage, Olivia Wyatt’s The Pierced Heart & the Machete, and Philippe Garrel’s The Inner Scar.

IRIS

Iris Apfel shows off her unique and influential fashion sense in Albert Maysles documentary (photo courtesy Magnolia Pictures)

IRIS (Albert Maysles, 2014)
Film Forum, 209 West Houston St., 212-727-8110
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway between 62nd & 63rd Sts., 212-757-2280
Opens Wednesday, April 29
www.magpictures.com
mayslesfilms.com

“I like individuality,” self-described “geriatric starlet” and nonagenarian fashion doyenne Iris Apfel says at the beginning of octogenarian Albert Maysles’s penultimate film, Iris. “It’s so lost these days. There’s so much sameness. Everything is homogenized. I hate it. Whatever.” Iris celebrates that individuality, not only Apfel’s, who at ninety-three is still active in the fashion world, but Maysles’s, who passed away in March at the age of eighty-eight, leaving behind a legendary legacy that changed the face of documentary cinema, including such classics as Salesman, Grey Gardens, and Gimme Shelter. Throughout the film, Apfel speaks directly to Maysles, who ends up on camera several times, breaking that once-impenetrable fourth wall that he, his brother, David, and their partner, Charlotte Zwerin, helped tear down years ago. Maysles spent four years filming the Queens-born Apfel as she shared her lovely story, growing from an interior designer and textile-business owner to a world-renowned fashion collector, tastemaker, and rule breaker, accompanied all along the way by her husband of more than sixty-six years, Carl. Maysles shows Iris, in her trademark enormous circular-framed glasses and unique, colorful ensembles that mix designer clothing with a healthy dose of inexpensive accessories, as she bargains at a cheap local store, advises women at a special Loehmann’s event, prepares for her 2005 show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, hawks her jewelry line on the Home Shopping Network, works on a window display at Bergdorf Goodman, and talks fashion with Martha Stewart, Tavi Gevinson, and others. Maysles interviews such designers as Alexis Bittar, Duro Olowu, Naeem Khan, and Dries van Noten, Met curator Harold Koda, Architectural Digest editor in chief Margaret Russell, and J. Crew head Jenna Lyons, who have only the most kind and generous things to say about the always positive Apfel, who has a genuine love of life. “It’s better to be happy than well dressed,” she tells friend and photographer Bruce Weber.

Nonagenarian Iris Apfel and octogenarian Albert Maysles display a love of life in IRIS (photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)

Maysles also explores the Apfels’ inspiring relationship, filled with humor, a love of collecting knickknacks and tchotchkes (strewn about their cluttered apartment), and an infectious yen for trying anything and everything that life has to offer. The film concludes with Carl’s one-hundredth birthday party. Early on, Iris tells a story about one of her first jobs, toiling for Frieda Loehmann in Brooklyn. “One day she called me over and she said, ‘Young lady, I’ve been watching you.’ She said, ‘You’re not pretty, and you’ll never be pretty, but it doesn’t matter. You have something much better. You have style.’” Iris indeed has style, as this wonderful documentary extols, a marvelous tribute both to her and Carl as well as Albert Maysles. Who needs pretty when something this beautiful is what emerges? Iris opens April 29 at Lincoln Plaza and Film Forum, where it will be preceded by Vivian Ostrovsky’s fashion short, Losing the Thread. Producers Laura Coxson and Rebekah Maysles, one of Albert’s children, will be at Film Forum for the 6:20 show on April 29, while Iris herself will participate in a Q&A following the 6:20 screening on May 1 and will then introduce the 8:20 show.

FIRST SATURDAY — KEHINDE WILEY: A NEW REPUBLIC

Kehinde Wiley, “Shantavia Beale II,” oil on canvas, 2012 (Collection of Ana and Lenny Gravier. © Kehinde Wiley. Photo by Jason Wyche, courtesy of Sean Kelly, New York)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, April 4, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

You know L.A.-born, New York–based artist Kehinde Wiley has made it, since one of his works is featured in the hit show Empire. Wiley’s new show at the Brooklyn Museum, “Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic,” is the centerpiece for the May edition of the institution’s free First Saturday program. The free evening will feature live musical performances by Chargaux and Zebra Katz and DJ sets by Juliana Huxtable and Total Freedom; a curator talk by Eugenie Tsai about the Wiley show; a Wiley-inspired three-dimensional frame-making workshop; pop-up gallery talks; an interactive space curated by Browntourage combining entertainment and activism; a screening of Jeffrey Dupre’s short 2014 documentary Kehinde Wiley: An Economy of Grace; and a Wiley-inspired dance performance of Leaders of the New School by Art of Legohn. In addition, you can check out such exhibitions as “Revolution! Works from the Black Arts Movement,” “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks,” “Diverse Works: Director’s Choice, 1997–2015,” “The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago,” and “Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time.”

SPRING 2015 TALKS AT THE NEW SCHOOL: THOMAS HOUSEAGO

Thomas Houseago will discuss new Rock Center work, “Masks (Pentagon),” at New School talk April 29 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Who: Thomas Houseago
What: Public Art Fund Talks
Where: The New School, 12th Street Auditorium, Alvin Johnson / J. M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
When: Wednesday, April 29, $10, 6:30
Why: British-born, L.A.-based artist Thomas Houseago will discuss public works and his latest project, “Masks (Pentagon),” which is on view through June 12 in Rockefeller Plaza. The site-responsive installation consists of five large-scale white masks, cast from clay in industrial-strength synthetic plaster, arranged in a pentagram so visitors can enter and look out at the surrounding Rockefeller Center area, as well as witness the revealing insides of the masks. “In this piece I wanted to bring the activity and the feel of the studio into public space as an experience,” Houseago explains in a statement. “The public gets to ‘see’ the work both from the outside as an image but then also from the inside as an insight into its construction. It becomes a kind of retreat from the city but also a porous viewing space. The public becomes part of the experience of looking and also an integral part of the work.”

FOOD FOR THOUGHT 2015

Dance and food take center stage at annual Danspace Project benefit (photo by Judy Hussie-Taylor)

Who: Curators Jeanine Durning, David Thomson, and Iréne Hultman and dancers and choreographers Ivy Baldwin, Whitney Hunter, Sam Kim, Joanna Kotze, Stanley Love, Juliette Mapp, Mina Nishimura, Ni’Ja Whitson Adebanjo, Daria Faïn, Christine Bonansea Saulut, Massimiliano Balduzzi, Alex Escalante, Niall Jones, and Dai Jian
What: Food for Thought
Where: Danspace Project, 131 East Tenth St., 212-674-8112
When: April 30 – May 2, $5 with cans of food, $10 without, 8:00
Why: Danspace Project’s annual Food for Thought presentation comprises three programs of dance and process, benefiting St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery food pantry. On April 30, “This is not the end: an evening with the 2013-2015 Movement Research Artists-in-Residence” brings together curator Jeanine Durning with fellow artists-in-residence Ivy Baldwin, Whitney Hunter, Sam Kim, Joanna Kotze, Stanley Love, Juliette Mapp, Mina Nishimura, and Ni’Ja Whitson Adebanjo for a look at their current practice. On May 1, for “Charged Space,” curator David Thomson will host solo performances by Daria Faïn, Christine Bonansea Saulut, and Massimiliano Balduzzi. And on May 2, curator Iréne Hultman’s “A.N.D Yes!” features dance makers Alex Escalante, Niall Jones, and Dai Jian.

ON KAWARA — SILENCE

On Kawara exhibition explores time and place on a daily basis (photo by David Heald / © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Friday – Wednesday through May 3, $18-$25 (pay-what-you-wish Saturday 5:45-7:45)
212-423-3587
guggenheim.org

In many ways, Japanese Conceptual artist On Kawara was the first blogger, sharing details of his life via his own social-media platforms long before the internet, but never actually revealing much about his true self. As the splendid Guggenheim exhibition “On Kawara — Silence” discloses, Kawara, who was born in Japan in 1933 and spent most of his life in New York City, where he died last July while the installation was being put together (with his participation), took a rather objective view of existence. His oeuvre comprises postcards he sent to friends and colleagues telling them what time he woke up that morning, extensive notebooks listing who he came into contact with that day, maps of where he went, telegrams to friends and colleagues confirming he was alive, and paintings of the date, accompanied by often random newspaper clippings from the same day. These elements tell us everything about Kawara, and nothing. “How can we avoid misrepresenting the art of On Kawara?” senior curator Jeffrey Weiss asks in his catalog essay, “Bounded Infinity.” “Perhaps misrepresentation of Kawara’s work is not only inevitable but useful. To be sure, regarding the work of any artist, the things we choose to say are always haunted by the things we leave out. With Kawara, however, this aspect of interpretation is specifically, even strategically compounded by the work’s evasive status.” This evasiveness extends into the Guggenheim’s online bio of Kawara, which merely states, “29,771 days,” the exact length of time he was on this planet.

On Kawara, “Telegram to Sol LeWitt, Febryary 5, 1970,” from “I Am Still Alive,” 1970-2000 (© On Kawara. Photo by Kris McKay © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)

Such series as “I Got Up,” “Today,” “I Met,” “I Am Still Alive,” and “One Hundred Years” engage viewers and encourage exploration despite their obvious repetitiveness, as they lead you to ponder the days of your own past, the people you’ve met, the places you’ve been, and the things that happened on specific dates, which hold different memories for different people, eliciting unique emotional responses. Every Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm on the rotunda, there are continuous live readings of “One Million Years,” Kawara’s lists of dates going back and forward one million years, the annums echoing through the Guggenheim. But mostly Kawara’s output is centered on the here and now, where we are at this precise time and place. “He tells us: ‘It is today!’” artist Daniel Buren writes in his catalog essay, “A Moment’s Footprint.” “On Kawara — Silence” is also a natural fit for the Guggenheim; the show is arranged primarily chronologically by series, so as visitors rise up the museum’s spiraling walkway, they circle through intriguing aspects of Kawara’s daily existence. “It had always been his dream to have a show at the Guggenheim because of the cyclical nature of time and the way that the building represents that,” assistant curator Anne Wheeler points out in an online video. “On Kawara — Silence” speaks volumes, about both him and us. (On April 28 at 6:30, “Duologues on Kawara: Alfredo Jaar and Tom McDonough” will examine Kawara’s work in relation to world events and sociocultural critique.)