Weekly Art Rx: Holiday Overdose
Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Festivus (Cristivuskwanzakkah?) is upon us, but that's no excuse to miss your weekly dose of Art Rx. In fact, we're forcing a spoonful of holiday spirit down your throat with a selection of events for everyone, no matter what holiday you celebrate …
Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Festivus (Christivuskwanzakkah?) are upon us, but that’s no excuse to miss your weekly dose of Art Rx.
In fact, we’re forcing a spoonful of holiday spirit down your throat with a selection of events for everyone, no matter what holiday you celebrate, including Kwanzaa quilt-making at the Studio Museum in Harlem, an exhibition that claims Santa Claus is a New Yorker and a big gay Festivus party where you can celebrate what the holidays are really all about — complaining about your friends and family.
It’s a Big Gay Festivus!
When: December 22 – 23, 2011
Where: The Big Gay Ice Cream Shop (125 East 7th street, East Village, Manhattan)
This year celebrate Festivus, the holiday for the rest of us, at the Big Gay Ice Cream Shop. The Big Gay Festivus has all the key elements of a true Festivus celebration, complete with the Airing of Grievances, where you can let your family and friends know how they disappointed you in 2011 on the BGIC webcam, and the Feats of Strength, where the heads of house (maybe in this case the best gays) attempt to wrestle each other to the floor.
BGIC’s Festivus celebration is also for a good cause. The shop will introduce their Festivus Miracle Cone (vanilla ice cream dyed green and covered with red sprinkles, which seems too Christmasy for Festivus, but we’ll let it slide) with all the proceeds going to New York Care’s winter coat and toy drive. Now that’s a Festivus Miracle!
Celebrate Kwanzaa with the Studio Museum in Harlem
When: December 29, 2011, 4:00pm – 6:00pm
Where: The Studio Museum in Harlem (144 West 125th Street, Harlem, Manhattan)
We don’t usually play holiday favorites here at Hyperallergic, but Kwanzaa should be the holiday of 2011. It’s seven principles of unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith have a lot of relevance to the protest movements we have seen spread across the world this year.
The Studio Museum in Harlem follows Kwanzaa’s communal sentiment with a series of community quilting workshops during their Target Free Sundays. The program kicks off on December 29 with a conversation between quilt and fiber artist Ife Felix and artist and writer Faith Ringgold, who is best known for her painted story quilts. Felix and Ringgold will discuss the history and significance of quilting as a collaborative activity and pay homage to the Kwanzaa principle of Kuumba, or creativity.
The Studio Museum will be accepting fabric submissions to add to the quilt until Friday, December 23. If you would like to contribute, click here for what to do.
Hating on the Holidays at MoMA
When: December 28, 2011 – January 2, 2o12
Where: The Museum of Modern Art (11 West 53rd Street, Midtown, Manhattan)
For all the scrooges out there, MoMA presents A Bitter Sweet Christmas Treat, a screening of the hilarious and mean-spirited French Christmas comedy Le père Noël est une ordure, which roughly translates to “Santa Stinks.” The film, directed by Jean-Marie Poiré in 1982, is the French equivalent of It’s a Wonderful Life in terms of popularity, but minus the sentimentality and sincerity, which is oh so French of them.
Santa Claus Was a New Yorker
When: Until January 8, 2012
Where: The New York Historical Society (170 Central Park West at 77th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan)
Sorry kids, Santa Claus is not actually from the North Pole. In fact, he’s a New Yorker from West 23rd street (Wait, is he David Barton?).
The New York Historical Society’s got proof for Santa’s Big Apple origins in their current exhibition It Happened Here: The Invention of Santa Claus that tells the story of Clement Clarke Moore, a scholar living in what is now Chelsea who penned the famous Christmas rhyme “A Visit from St. Nicholas” for his six children. The poem soon made St. Nicholas, and later Santa, a popular feature of American Christmas celebrations. The exhibition also includes imaginative works by two other New Yorker’s who contributed to Santa’s popularity: Washington Irving, the creator of Knickerbocker’s History of New York, and Thomas Nast, an artist whose drawings of Santa were reproduced all over the country in the years following the Civil War. Now that we know that Santa truly hails from Chelsea, maybe we’re bound to find out that he also runs a trendy gallery with art made from rare reindeer antlers.
Menorahs from the Jewish Museum’s Collection
When: Until January 29, 2012
Where: The Jewish Museum (1190 Fifth Avenue at 92nd street, Upper East Side, Manhattan)
The Jewish Museum offers a real treat this Hanukkah with a selection of 33 menoras, made from the 18th to 20th centuries, chosen by famed author Maurice Sendak from the museum’s collection. Sendak’s selections for An Artist Remembers: Hanukkah Lamps Selected by Maurice Sendak, reflect his personal experiences of dealing with the trauma of the Holocaust, in which many of his family members perished. In the press release he notes that he went for menorahs that “go right to the heart” and whose “beauty is contained.”
The menorahs are wonderfully intricate, ranging from lavish to delicate designs, and hail from all over the world including Israel, Austria, Poland, Italy and Germany. They are symbols of a vanished world, but Sendak hopes that bringing them out of the museum’s collection will inspire young visitors to keep the memory alive. Also included in the exhibition are original drawings from Sendak’s books and audio conversations with curators.
