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

SEX AND TRAVEL NIGHT

A scale-model replica of King Edward VII’s sex chair will be on view during special free event at Museum of Sex

Museum of Sex
233 Fifth Ave. at 27th St.
Tuesday, July 26, free, 7:00
212-689-6337
www.museumofsex.com

“Love was immediately associated with travel,” Elisabeth Eaves writes in Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents (Seal, May 2011, $16.95), remembering a long-distance college romance. Her memoir follows her from New Guinea to Cairo and beyond. In The Sinner’s Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe (Broadway, May 2011, $15), Tony Perrottet limits his sexually inspired travels to a single continent: “The British Museum was only the first stop in a personal Grand Tour I’d planned across Europe, in search of forbidden historical fruit,” he explains. “Today, the entire continent is still littered with secret boudoirs, perverse relics, and ancient dungeons, many of which, I was convinced, could be found.” Eaves’s and Perrottet’s dual journeys will bring them together July 26 for “Sex and Travel Night” at the Museum of Sex, where they will read from their books and discuss the intersection between lust and travel in the institution’s OralFix bar, where the audience can partake in such aphrodisiac cocktails as the Aphrodite (good for potency and lust), the Golden Blossom (endurance and longevity), and the Lucky Devil (excitement and joy), as well as a specially devised elixir created for the event. Among the items on view will be a playful scale-model replica of King Edward VII’s sex chair.

ART OF ENCOUNTER: GALLERY READINGS

Lee Ufan, “Relatum (formerly Language),” cushions, stones, and light, 1971 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Tuesday, July 26, $10, 6:30
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org

“Infinity begins with the self but is only manifested fully when connected with something beyond the self,” Lee Ufan wrote in 1993. “I do not want to fix or represent the self as self, but to recognize the existence of the self in relationship with otherness and perceive the world in a place where such a relationship exists.” One of the many pleasures of the Guggenheim’s current dazzling retrospective, “Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity,” is the inclusion of many quotes from the Korean visual artist and theoretician, who has written extensively about his work specifically as well as the making, or “not-making,” of art in general. Scattered throughout the exhibit and translated on the audioguide, the quotes lend thought-provoking, illuminating insight into Lee’s creative process. On Tuesday, July 26, a group of artists and thinkers will gather among Lee’s Mono-ha (“School of Things”) “living structures” and paintings and read selections from his writings, including Laurie Anderson, Jonah Bokaer, Young-ha Kim, Larissa MacFarquhar, Andrew Solomon, and John Yau, followed by a reception. “Expression achieves externality that is simultaneously passive and active. I hope to cut into the controlled everyday reality of industrial society, breathing fresh air into it and stimulating an awareness of infinity that transcends the human, to awaken a world that is always open,” Lee wrote in 1970. This special program is being held in conjunction with the Korea Society exhibition “The Writings of Lee Ufan,” which continues through August 15; the Guggenheim show runs through September 28.

PRINCE OF THE CITY: REMEMBERING SIDNEY LUMET

Al Pacino gives a fiery performance as a would-be bank robber in Sidney Lumet's DOG DAY AFTERNOON

DOG DAY AFTERNOON (Sidney Lumet, 1975) and SERPICO (Sidney Lumet, 1973)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Serpico: Saturday, July 23, 9:00
Dog Day Afternoon: Saturday, July 23, 6:30, and Monday, July 25, 1:00
Series continues through July 19-25
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s tribute to the late Sidney Lumet continues tonight with two of the Philadelphia-born New Yorker’s greatest works, a pair of tense, powerful fact-based dramas starring Bronx native Al Pacino that helped define the 1970s, both onscreen and off. First up, at 6:30, is one of the most bizarre bank robberies gone wrong you’ll ever see, Dog Day Afternoon. Pacino stars as Sonny, a confused young man desperate to get money to pay for his boyfriend’s (Chris Sarandon) sex-change operation. But things don’t go quite as planned, and soon Sonny is leading the gathered crowd in chants of “Attica! Attica!” while his partner, Sal (John Cazale), wants a plane to take them to Wyoming and Det. Moretti (Charles Durning) is trying to get them to surrender without hurting anyone, primarily themselves. Dog Day Afternoon is a blistering, funny, biting commentary on mid-’70s New York as well as a fascinating character study of a deeply conflicted man. Following at 9:00 is another gritty, realistic drama, Serpico, with Pacino giving an unforgettable performance as an undercover cop single-handedly trying to end the rampant corruption that has spread like a disease throughout the NYPD. When his fellow officers and supposed friends turn their back on him, he is left on his own, vulnerable but still committed, risking both his career and his life to do what he thinks is right. Pacino is explosive in both films, playing two very different protagonists on different sides of the law yet similar in so many ways. “Prince of the City: Remembering Sidney Lumet” features three other Lumet films today, 1978’s The Wiz (10:30 am), 1968’s The Sea Gull (1:15), and 1988’s Running on Empty (4:00), while tomorrow’s schedule includes 1962’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (12:30), 1990’s Q&A (4:00), and 1981’s Prince of the City (7:15), the latter two followed by Q&As with cast members and real characters depicted in the films.

PIG OUT!

3rd Ward
195 Morgan Ave.
Saturday, July 23, free with RSVP, 2:00 – 9:00
www.3rdward.com

Brooklyn art collective 3rd Ward considers itself “an incubator for innovation and possibility” where anyone and everyone is invited “to work, play, learn, grow, and, ultimately, transform.” On July 23, the public is also invited to eat to their heart’s content at 3rd Ward’s fourth annual Pig Out! From 2:00 to 9:00, attendees will be lining up for barbecue from the Lower East Side’s Brindle Room (and you thought all those artistic types were either vegetarian or vegan), local produce from Plovgh, and live music by Union Street Preservation Society, Northern Bells, Alana & the Rough Gems, and DJs the Gorges Boys. There will also be workshops and demonstrations, including “Alginate Casting,” “Chocolate Sculpture,” “The Bicycle Doctor Is In,” and “Ingredient Challenge.”

SUMMER NIGHT AT THE FRICK COLLECTION

Giovanni Bellini, “St. Francis in the Desert,” oil on poplar panel, ca. 1475-78

The Frick Collection
1 East 70th St. at Fifth Ave.
Friday, July 22, free, 6:00 – 9:00 (children over ten welcome)
212-288-0700
www.frick.org

Every Sunday morning from 11:00 to 1:00, admission to the Frick Collection is pay-what-you-wish instead of the normal $18 to experience one of the city’s genuine treasures. But this Friday, the Frick is extending its hours, as the “Summer Night” program will open its doors for free from 6:00 to 9:00 for a special after-hours viewing of “In a New Light: Bellini’s ‘St. Francis in the Desert,’” which has recently undergone infrared reflectography, leading to new insight into the meaning behind the masterpiece, as well as “Turkish Taste at the Court of Marie-Antoinette.” The evening will also include the class “Summer Sketch: Bellini and Botany,” taught by Liz Insogna in the Garden Court; the gallery talks “Introduction to the Frick” at 6:15, 7:15, and 8:15 in the West Gallery and “Rooms of the Frick” at 6:45, 7:45, and 8:45 in the Dining Room; the curatorial presentations “Marie-Antoinette’s Turkish Dreams” by Charlotte Vignon at 6:30 and 7:00 and “Bellini Multimedia: Screening” by Denise Allen at 7:30; and five-minute live performances of “Danse Arabe” by Andreas Heise and Kristen Stevens in the Music Room at 8:15, 8:25, 8:35, and 8:45. Although there are no reservations or tickets needed, there are likely to be long lines for everything, so get there early.

GET WEIRD: GRAY

Gray will be getting weird again at the New Museum on July 21 (photo by Linda Covello)

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Thursday, July 21, $15, 7:00 & 9:00
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

In 1979, Jean-Michel Basquiat teamed up with performance artist Michael Holman to form the jazzy, funky experimental No Wave ambient industrial band Gray, named after Gray’s Anatomy, an influential book on Basquiat’s career. “New York is my town / Lower East Side I get down,” they declared on “Life on the Streets.” On July 21, Holman and original Gray member Nicholas Taylor, who have re-formed and released the album Shades of . . . last year, consisting of new and old songs, will play two special shows at the New Museum on the Lower East Side as part of the monthly Get Weird series, which focuses on “experimental and freaky jams.” In the past twenty-three years, the band — which has also included such members as Justin Thyme (Wayne Clifford), Shannon Dawson, and Vincent Gallo — has played live only twice, including at Basquiat’s memorial service, so this is a rare occasion indeed. There will be two performances, one at 7:00 and another at 9:00. The New Museum is very busy this weekend as well. On Friday night, Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran will give the talk “CAMP, or the Love of Technology,” and on Saturday the New Museum Block Party in Sara D. Roosevelt Park will include such acts as Lumberob, Geo Wyeth, BowWow, and Isle of Klezbos, art activities and workshops, and free admission to the museum, where you can check out the new exhibits “Ostalgia” and “Charles Atlas: Joints Array.”

THE FINE ART OF COMICS, WITH GARY PANTER, ART SPIEGELMAN, AND CHRIS WARE

Lyonel Feininger, “Wee Willie Winkie’s World,” from the Chicago Sunday Tribune, November 25, 1906, commercial lithograph, © 2011 Lyonel Feininger Family, LLC/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photograph © the Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY)

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Wednesday, July 20, $8, 7:00
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org

In conjunction with the splendid exhibit “Lyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World,” the Whitney is presenting the special program “The Fine Art of Comics” on July 20. The wide-ranging retrospective traces New York native Feininger’s career path, which began with such comic strips as “The Kin-der-Kids” and “Wee Willie Winkie’s World” for the Chicago Tribune. Discussing the work of Feininger and the state of the comics industry will be three living legends: Art Spiegelman, who started the highly influential RAW with his wife, Françoise Mouly, back in 1980 and won the Pulitzer Prize for his two-part graphic novel Maus; painter, designer, and commercial artist Gary Panter, creator of the Jimbo books and a two-time Emmy winner for his set designs for Pee-Wee’s Playhouse; and Chris Ware, who has released such complex comics as Acme Novelty Library and Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. The panel will be moderated by journalist John Carlin.