Mark Dion, ‘The Library for the Birds of New York and Other Marvels’ (photo by Hans Schröder, courtesy Tanya Bonakdar Gallery)
This week, hear about photographing Louise Bourgeois, watch The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, and The Big Lebowski simultaneously, go art-hopping around Downtown Brooklyn, watch some witchy films, and more.
Photographing Louise Bourgeois
(via nypl.org)
When: Wednesday, February 24, 6–8pm
Where: New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, Midtown, Manhattan)
Paris-based photographer Alex Van Gelder received a rare and intimate view of Louise Bourgeois’s personal life from 2008 to 2010, when the artist granted him permission to photograph her in her studio and home. The results are compiled in his new book Mumbling Beauty Louise Bourgeois, which Gelder will present at the NYPL, followed by a talk with Bourgeois’s assistant and longtime friend Jerry Gorovoy, moderated by artist Arezoo Moseni. —CV
Yeah, Well, That’s Just, Like, Your Opinion, Marlowe
When: Friday, February 26, 8pm
Where: Present Company (254 Johnson Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn)
Do you know what The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, and The Big Lebowski have in common, aside from being absolute gems of American cinema? They’re all around one hour and 55 minutes long, which is essential for Friday night’s screening, “The Big, Long, Lebowski Sleep Goodbye,” a simultaneous projection of all three films. Come see how Humphrey Bogart’s golden-era turn as Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled detective Philip Marlowe synchs up with Elliott Gould’s incarnation of the same character 27 years later, and the antics of the Dude and his crowbar-toting buddy Walter 25 years after that. —BS
Downtown Brooklyn Beat Nite
(via nortemaar.org) (click to enlarge)
When: Friday, February 26, 6–8pm
Where: Various locations throughout Downtown Brooklyn
Beat Nite can be a bit exhausting — so many spaces, so little time — but it’s also a great impetus for gallery hopping. And one of the things the organizers, Norte Maar, do best is focusing on new or surprising spaces. In this case, they’re shining a light on a whole underappreciated art neighborhood: Downtown Brooklyn. I wouldn’t have thought there’d be enough spaces to sustain a Beat Nite there, yet the list for this — which includes MoCADA, American Medium, and Boomerang dance group rehearsing at Marks Morris Dance Center, to name just a few — looks terrific. (And I’m not just saying that because Hyperallergic is the media sponsor.)
A Library for Birds
When: Opens Thursday, February 25, 6–8pm
Where: Tanya Bonakdar (521 West 21st Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
Mark Dion collects objects like an archaeologist and compiles them like a scientist. In his latest solo exhibit, he presents a cage full of living birds fluttering about books on their species, and cabinets filled with childhood memorabilia and plastic debris from the Alaskan coast. His uncanny installations feel somehow familiar and personal, moving us to contemplate our own scattered existences and ruinous relationship with nature. —EWA
The fifth floor of the Whitney Museum of American Art (photo by Nic Lehoux) (click to enlarge)
Opening an Open Plan
When: Opens Friday, February 26
Where: The Whitney Museum of American Art (99 Gansevoort Street, Meatpacking District, Manhattan)
In its new digs, the Whitney Museum is trying something new: giving over its fifth floor (which it bills as “the largest column-free museum exhibition space in New York”) to a series of artists for a series of single projects. The lineup for Open Plan is excitingly varied, from a piece — opening this week — by institutional critique artist Andrea Fraser that explores parallel museum- and prison-building booms to a residency by free jazz pianist Cecil Taylor. Some feared the Whitney would lean too heavily on blockbusters after moving downtown; it’s good to see the museum erring on the more experimental side.
Unconventional Curation
When: Sunday, February 28, 2–6:30pm ($12)
Where: The Jewish Museum (1109 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
The Jewish Museum isn’t pulling any punches for this symposium on nontraditional curation practices: the participants comprise a who’s who of contemporary museum curators. Although the lineup is New York City–heavy (e.g. Nancy Spector, Guggenheim Museum; Thelma Golden, Studio Museum in Harlem), it’s also varied enough (e.g. Vasif Kortun, SALT Istanbul; Adriano Pedrosa, São Paulo Museum of Art) to promise some interesting and insightful conversations.
BOMB at MoMA PS1
The first issue of ‘BOMB’ (via Facebook)
When: Sunday, February 28, 3pm ($15)
Where: MoMA PS1 (22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens)
MoMA PS1’s upcoming Sunday Session celebrates the 35th anniversary of BOMB magazine, which was primarily founded to publish conversations between artists. Ten pairs of participants — who include Justin Vivian Bond, Nicole Eisenman, David Humphrey, Ralph Lemon, and Ishmael Houston-Jones — will revisit and discuss prior interviews, promising to “go off script … expand, retract, negate, disavow, and redact themselves at will.” The session will end with a performance by guitarist and composer Alan Licht. —TM
Witches’ Brew
When: Through Monday, February 29
Where: BAM (30 Lafayette Ave, Fort Greene, Brooklyn)
Alongside the release of Robert Eggers’s eerie horror film The Witch, the Brooklyn Academy of Music is hosting a series on cinematic depictions of all them witches, from waifish conjurer to sensual sorcerer, looking at how witches reflect attitudes toward feminine sexuality, tensions over religion, and our fascination with the occult. This final week includes tonight’s screening of the 1942 romantic fantasy I Married a Witch, paired with the 2007 new-age pagan short Whispering Pines 4; Wednesday’s Bell, Book and Candle (1958), which stars Kim Novak as a Greenwich Village–living, love spell–casting witch; and Monday’s Day of Wrath (1943), on doomed attraction amid a 17th-century witch hunt. —AM
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With contributions by Elisa Wouk Almino, Allison Meier, Tiernan Morgan, Benjamin Sutton, and Claire Voon
