Art Rx
Museums are great for holiday weekends, especially ones a little more off the beaten track than, say, the Met or MoMA. If that sounds too mainstream for you ... well, there are always North Korean propaganda films. Happy Thanksgiving!
The art world is fairly quiet this week, as the holidays come rolling in and people gear up for next week’s fairs in Miami. But just because galleries and many smaller spaces are dormant doesn’t mean there’s a shortage of things to do! Museums are great for holiday weekends, especially ones a little more off the beaten track than, say, the Met or MoMA. We recommend a few that have great exhibitions on. If that sounds too mainstream for you … well, there are always North Korean propaganda films. Happy Thanksgiving!
Kim Jong Il: The Great Thinker
When: Friday, November 29, 8 pm ($5)
Where: Spectacle (124 South 3rd Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn)
This should be an arch companion to Thanksgiving’s communion of family and food: Friday evening Spectacle will screen a delicious double feature under the header The Great Thinker: Kim Jong Il Propaganda Films. Combining archival footage and unregenerate praise, The Great Thinker and Leadership of Korea are like North Korea’s family videos — a mix of embarrassment, absurdity, terror. And like father, like son the penchant for propaganda survives: Kim Jong Un has taken up the tradition, a familial birthright. —JP
Salonukah
When: Friday, November 29, 7–10 pm
Where: Recession Art (47 Bergen Street, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn)
Never mind Hanukkah or whatever other holiday you celebrate: Recession Art has eight nights of art programing for you. Salonukah, a cheeky portmanteau of salon and Hanukkah (which in a very rare alignment begins Thanksgiving day this year), is an embarrassment of gifts: a Wardrobe/Thrift Party, a night of Drink(ing) and Draw(ing) (for inspiration, Bob Ross’s The Joy of Painting will be playing in the gallery), and video screenings and performances as an art alternative to Cyber Monday. Each night will see another light added to Ian Trask’s trash-art menorah. —JP
French New Wave Classic
When: Opens Friday, November 29 ($12.50)
Where: Film Forum (209 West Houston Street, West Village, Manhattan)
Not quite 30 years old, Leos Carax’s Mauvais sang (1986) is getting an early but apt retrospective at Film Forum. Carax is one of cinema’s greatest conjurer-citizens, and his scene of Denis Lavant leaping, rolling, sprinting through Paris’s streets to the tune of Bowie’s “Modern Love” is among the director’s most evocative, thrilling scenes. The scene was recently, appropriately, recalled by Noah Baumbach in Frances Ha, his homage to the French New Wave. —JP
Many Shows at the Morgan
When: Ongoing
Where: The Morgan Library & Museum (225 Madison Avenue, Midtown, Manhattan)
The list of exhibitions on right now at the Morgan Library & Museum is so good, it’s a little ridiculous: a Leonardo da Vinci codex, drawing, and works on paper, from Turin; two 19th-century scores of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; an exhibition devoted to Edgar Allen Poe; 18th-century Venetian drawings; and more. You could easily spend the entire day here.
South Asian Portrait Photos
When: Ongoing
Where: Rubin Museum of Art (150 West 17th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan)
Portrait photography is a fascinating genre, one whose historical uses and values we’re perpetually discovering and wanting to learn more about. To that end, the current Rubin Museum exhibition of early portrait photography from South Asia sounds fantastic. Featuring royal court portraits, middle-class carte-de-visites, painted photographs, and more, the show reflects life a changing way of life in India, Burma, Sri Lanka, and Nepal between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries.
Contemporary Drawing
When: Ongoing
Where: Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (80 Hanson Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn)
This unique show at MoCADA tackles two issues: the manifestation of drawing as a contemporary practice and the exclusion of artists of African descent from the conversation that’s been happening around that question. Six Draughtsmen features six artists of Nigerian descent working in the medium. As you might expect from a drawing show today, the artworks are far more experimental than marks on paper.
Emerging Artists in Sculpture
When: Ongoing
Where: Socrates Sculpture Park (32-01 Vernon Blvd, Long Island City, Queens)
It might sound crazy to recommend an outdoor exhibition in the midst of such frigid weather, but we stubbornly insist that there’s something lovely about sculpture parks in the wintertime. Not only that, but by the time January comes, we’ll all be struggling to walk to the subway. So enjoy the beginning of the season with Socrates Sculpture Park’s Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition, for which 15 artists created artworks responding to the museum’s beautiful waterfront location. We promise it’ll be worth the views, and the Instagrams that inevitably accompany them.
El Museo Bienal
When: Ongoing
Where: El Museo del Barrio (1230 5th Avenue, Spanish Harlem, Manhattan)
Biennials claim a lot of space and attention in the art world, but one that often gets overlooked is that of El Museo del Barrio, New York’s museum devoted to Latino art and culture. This year’s edition, the seventh, is titled Here Is Where We Jump, and it features 37 Latino, Caribbean, and Latin-American artists who live and work in New York City. Many of the names on the list are unfamiliar to us, which is always a good thing, and having seen the last bienal, we have high hopes for this one.
* * *
With listings by Jeremy Polacek
