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This Month’s Museum Openings!!
Jean-Michel Othoniel: My Way. August 17–December 2, 2012
This exhibition presents a survey of the twenty-five-year career of Jean-Michel Othoniel (French, born 1964), from his early works made of sulfur and wax to his recent large-scale, colorful glass sculptures.
Chinese Gardens: Pavilions, Studios, Retreats. August 18, 2012–January 6, 2013
Gardens have an important place in Chinese urban centers. They were usually designed to look like idealized landscapes. This exhibition, outside the Astor Chinese Garden Court, features paintings, ceramics, metalwork, and textiles decorated with images of glorious pictorial gardens from the last one thousand years of Chinese history.
Eyes Closed/Eyes Open: Recent Acquisitions in Drawings. August 8, 2012–January 7, 2013
Drawing acquisitions from the past two years will be on display, including German artist Franz Erhard Walther’s First Work Series (1963–69), Willem de Kooning’s “Eyes-Closed” drawings of 1966, which were sketched blindly by the artist, and Martha Rosler’s Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful photomontage series of 1967-72.
Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist’s Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets. August 12, 2012–January 7, 2013
This exhibition features a retrospective on the work of Quay Brothers, including their films, set and projection designs for operas and concerts, a site-specific piece, and other installations.
Projects 98: Slavs and Tatars. August 15–December 10, 2012
In Slavs and Tatars’ (founded 2005) first solo exhibition in the United States, this international collective of artists, designers, and writers will produce Beyonsense, a transformation of a gallery into a space for meditation and pause for the contemplation of the mystical sides of modernism.
Other Openings this Season…
Raw/Cooked: Ulrike Müller. June 29–September 9, 2012
The fifth exhibition in the Raw/Cooked series presents the work of Sunset Park-based artist Ulrike Müller. Born in Austria, Müller orchestrated a collaborative drawing project based on the inventory list of the feminist T-shirt collection at the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Park Slope, Brooklyn. She distributed textual T-shirt descriptions to feminists, queer artists, and other interested New Yorkers, and asked that they translate these texts into new images. Her exhibition includes 100 drawings from this project.
Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, at Governor’s Island
Graphic Design—Now in Production. May 26–September 3, 2012
Open weekends and holiday Mondays, 10am to 6pm
Co-organized by Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and the Walker Art Center, this exhibition explores how graphic design has changed in the last twelve years.
Art of Another Kind: International Abstraction and the Guggenheim, 1949–1960. June 8–September 12, 2012
Nearly 100 artworks by artists, such as Louise Bourgeois, Alberto Burri, Asger Jorn, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, will be featured. These works bring focus to the post-WWII era, during which artists embraced alternative modes and styles of art.
Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective. June 29–October 3, 2012
This comprehensive survey features over 70 color photographs and 5 video installations by the Dutch artist Rineke Dijkstra (b.1959).
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Ellsworth Kelly Plant Drawings. June 5–September 3, 2012
Although known for his abstract paintings, American artist Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1923) has made figurative drawings throughout his career. A selection of about 80 drawings will be featured.
Renaissance Venice: Drawings from the Morgan. May 18–September 23, 2012
A group of some 70 Renaissance drawings, books, maps, and letters from the Museum’s collection traces the artistic production of the city of Venice and its territories during the republic’s Golden Age, the 16th century.
Churchill: The Power of Words. June 8–September 23, 2012
Through a plethora of documents, including drafts, correspondence, and recordings, this exhibition explores the main events of Sir Winston Churchill’s life and his extraordinary relationship with the United States.
Ellsworth Kelly: Sculpture. June 19–September 9, 2012
As part of its summer program of sculpture exhibitions in the Gilbert Court, the Morgan will present three major sculptures by renowned abstract artist Ellsworth Kelly. The exhibition will also include a group of models and drawings that reveal the artist’s process.
Josef Albers in America: Painting on Paper. July 13–October 14, 2012
Josef Albers (1888–1976) is best known for his series of paintings, Homage to the Square, in which he endlessly explored color relationships within a similar format of concentric squares. Less well-known are the studies he made for these compositions. With approximately 60 oil sketches on paper, this exhibition will reveal a private side of Albers’s work. These sketches were never exhibited in the artist’s lifetime and have rarely been seen after his death.
Robert Wilson/Philip Glass: Einstein on the Beach. July 13–November 4, 2012
Reuniting the score and designs from Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach, this exhibition focuses on the opera’s premiere performances in 1976. Among the objects on display will be an autographed manuscript, Wilson’s storyboard, and 13 leaves encompassing 113 scene designs.
Space-Light-Structure: The Jewelry of Margaret De Patta. June 5–September 23, 2012
This is the first comprehensive retrospective of the life and work of Margaret De Patta (1903-1964). Deeply influenced by renowned artist László Moholy-Nagy, De Patta was a pioneer in American jewelry. She was passionate about modern architecture, Bauhaus and Constructivism. Other important artists will be represented, such as El Lissitzky Alexander Archipenko, and György Kepes.
Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation, 3. Contemporary Native Art from the Northeast and Southeast. June 26–October 21, 2012
New work by more than 80 Native American, First Nations, Métís and Inuit artists from the continental United States, the Pacific Rim, and Canada demonstrates how these individuals take inspiration from cultural traditions while expressing contemporary creativity and innovation.
Caribbean: Crossroads of the World. June 12, 2012– January 6, 2013
This groundbreaking exhibition highlights rarely seen works by Caribbean artists. It explores Spanish, French, Dutch, and English histories through Caribbean themes, such as Caribbean plantation systems and industries such as sugar, fruit, tobacco and coffee, Caribbean identity and culture, race, and the Haitian Revolution of 1804. Furthermore, the show will be featured at three venues: El Museo del Barrio, Queens Museum of Art, and Studio Museum in Harlem.
The Museum of the City of New York
Reimagining the Waterfront: Manhattan’s East River Esplanade. June 6–October 28, 2012
Architects, landscape architects, and city planners were invited to submit redesign proposals for the East River Esplanade, a narrow strip of land in Manhattan between the FDR Drive and the East River (60th to 125th Street). This exhibition features 8 winning designs as well as photographs of the site through history and today.
Ada Bobonis: Stages, Mountains, Water. June 17, 2012–January 6, 2013
Ada Bobonis has produced a site-specific installation in the museum’s 2nd floor gallery. Through painted walls and adhered glass, Bobonis has created an illusion inspired by the Panama Canal, built between 1880 and 1914, and its surrounding topography. This installation was produced in conjunction with the exhibition Caribbean: Crossroads of the World on display at the museum.
South Street Seaport Museum Organized by the American Folk Art Museum
Compass: Folk Art in Four Directions. June 20–October 7, 2012
This exhibition traces the history of New York City’s Schermerhorn Row and the seaport district, an area developed between 1810 and 1812 by Peter Schermerhorn. The exhibition is divided into four themes that relate to people’s experiences in the area: commercial expeditions and explorations, social networking, shopping, and weather conditions.
Primary Sources Artists in Residence 2011–12. June 14–October 21, 2012
The culminating work of three artists in residence—Njideka Akunyili, Meleko Mokgosi and Xaviera Simmons—is on display at the Studio Museum.
Yayoi Kusama’s Fireflies on the Water. June 13–October 28, 2012
Using lights, mirrors, and a pool of water, Yayoi Kusama produces a remarkable environment in the museum that invites the viewer to experience the artist’s personal vision.
Sharon Hayes: There’s so much I want to say to you. June 21–September 9, 2012
Sharon Hayes (b. 1970) is a New York–based artist who works in photography, film, video, sound, and performance. She brings together existing pieces and newly commissioned works, all of which articulate forms of what Hayes calls “speech acts.” The works are presented within an environment designed by Hayes in collaboration with artist Andrea Geyer.
Signs & Symbols. June 28–October 28, 2012
This exhibition features works, drawn from the Museum’s holdings, by commonly overlooked abstract artists. The paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and photographs explore the development of American abstraction during the critical postwar period of the mid-1940s to the end of the 1950s. Artists like Will Barnet, Forrest Bess, Charles Seliger, and Mark Tobey, among others, will be presented.
Oskar Fischinger: Space Light Art—A Film Environment. June 28–October 28, 2012
Screened for the first time in Germany in 1926, Oskar Fischinger’s Raumlichtkunst (Space Light Art) is considered to be the world’s first multimedia projection. The film, restored by the Center for Visual Music in Los Angeles, produces a visual experience using screens of abstract shapes, color, and light.
Yayoi Kusama. July 12 – September 30, 2012
This retrospective features the multimedia work of Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929), who got her start in New York’s “happenings,” and is now best known for her large-scale installations. Kusama’s Fireflies on the Water, a work in the Museum’s collection, is on view in the Lobby Gallery.
Gold, Jasper, and Carnelian: Johann Christian Neuber at the Saxon Court. May 30–August 19, 2012
This is the first comprehensive survey of the Saxon master craftsman Johann Christian Neuber (1736-1808), court jeweler to Friedrich Augustus III and curator of the royal collection of Augustus the Strong. Neuber is known for his small gold boxes and chatelaines, decorated with agate, jasper, carnelian, and the like. He executed enchanting landscapes and patterns with these tiny cut stones, while incorporating Meissen porcelain.
International Center of Photography
Christer Strömholm: Les Amies de la Place Blanche. May 18–September 2, 2012
The great Swedish photographer Christer Strömholm (1918–2002) documented the area of the Place Blanche in Paris, the heart of the city’s red-light district. In the 1960s he befriended and photographed young transgender male prostitutes struggling to live as women and to raise money for sex-change operations. His portraits were first published in Sweden in 1983, and the book quickly sold out, becoming a cult classic; it is being reissued in French and English this year. This is the first presentation of Strömholm’s work in an American museum.
President in Petticoats! Civil War Propaganda in Photographs. May 18–September 2, 2012
On May 10, 1865, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States, was captured in a makeshift camp outside Irwinville, Georgia. In his haste to flee, Davis grabbed his wife’s overcoat rather than his own. Reports immediately circulated claiming Davis had been attempting to disguise himself as a woman. Caricaturists produced a number of sensational images representing the fallen leader of the Confederacy. This exhibition features these early examples of political propaganda.
A Short History of Photography: From the ICP Collection Honoring Willis E. Hartshorn, Ehrenkranz Director. May 18–September 2, 2012
In honor of Ehrenkranz Director Willis Hartshorn, the International Center of Photography presents a survey of its unique collection of photographs.
Sanford Biggers and Jennifer Zackin: a small world… March 30–August 26, 2012
The artists Sanford Biggers and Jennifer Zackin, one African American and one Jewish American, collaborate on a video that explores their childhood in middle-class America. Although their lives are defined by different ethnicities, they surprisingly intersect in many ways.
Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890–1940. May 4–September 23, 2012
This exhibition showcases the entire career of Edouard Vuillard, from his best-known works of the 1890s to the urbane domesticity of the lesser-known late portraits.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Dürer and Beyond: Central European Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1400–1700. April 3–September 3, 2012
This exhibition offers an extensive overview of the Museum’s holdings of early Central European drawings, many of which were acquired in the last two decades.
The Dawn of Egyptian Art. April 10–August 5, 2012
This exhibition features 175 objects from the Museum’s collection that capture the ever-evolving art of the Egyptian people during the Pre-dynastic and Early Dynastic Periods (ca. 4000–2650 BCE).
Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations.May 10–August 19, 2012
This year’s Costume Institute exhibition explores the work of two Italian designers, Elsa Schiaparelli (1890–1973) and Miuccia Prada (b.1949). Designs, accessories, and videos will stimulate an inspiring dialogue between the two women.
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Bellini, Titian, and Lotto: North Italian Paintings from the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo. May 15–September 3, 2012
Fifteen of the world’s Renaissance masterpieces, from the collection of the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, will be featured.
Tomás Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City. May 15–November 4, 2012 (weather permitting)
For this year’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden display, artist Tomás Saraceno (b. 1973, Tucumán, Argentina) will create a constellation of large interconnected modules constructed with transparent and reflective materials.
Museum of the City of New York
Activist New York. Ongoing.
Through photographs, artifacts, and audio and visual presentations, Activist New York traces the history of social activism in New York City from the 17th century to the present.
Capital of Capital: New York City Banks and the Creation of a Global Economy. May 22–October 7, 2012
Tracing the history of banking in New York City, beginning with Alexander Hamilton’s Bank of New York in 1784, this exhibition reveals the city’s identity as a major symbol of the financial world.
Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters. May 2–September 3, 2012
Taryn Simon’s (b. 1975, New York) photographic project A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters is a work produced over a four-year period (2008–11) and composed of 18 chapters, 9 of which are presented. This project involves the artist traveling around the world and documenting bloodlines and their related stories. Each chapter is comprised of three segments: one of a large portrait series depicting bloodline members (portrait panel); a second featuring text (annotation panel); and a third containing photographic evidence (footnote panel).
Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language. May 6–August 27, 2012
This is a group exhibition that brings together 12 contemporary artists and artists’ groups working in all mediums including painting, sculpture, film, video, audio, and design, all of whom concentrate on the material qualities of language—visual, aural, and beyond.
Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan. July 1–October 1, 2012
This retrospective, organized in collaboration with the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid and the Tate Modern in London, will be the largest presentation outside of Italy of works by Italian artist Alighiero Boetti (1940–1994) to date. Working in his hometown of Turin in the early 1960s amidst a close community of artists that included Luciano Fabro, Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, and Michelangelo Pistoletto, among others, Boetti established himself as one of the leading artists of the Arte Povera movement.
Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900–2000. July 29–November 5, 2012
MoMA’s survey of 20th century design for children is the first large-scale overview of the modernist preoccupation with children and childhood as a paradigm for progressive design thinking. This exhibition will bring together areas underrepresented in design history and often considered separately, including school architecture, clothing, playgrounds, toys and games, children’s hospitals and safety equipment, nurseries, furniture, and books.
Women’s Work. May 23–August 26, 2012
Mary Cassatt – Graphic Artist. Mary Cassatt’s most important graphic work is a set of 12 drypoint prints, produced between 1889 and 1890, in an edition of 25 impressions. The set is divided between studies of young women and the mother and child theme. Artist Samuel Colman donated the set on view to the Academy in 1903.
Colleen Browning: Urban Dweller – Exotic Traveler. This exhibition highlights two themes of Realist painter Colleen Browning’s (1929-2003) oeuvre: New York City and sites in the developing world where Browning visited and worked, including Grenada, South America, and Northern Africa.
May Stevens: The Big Daddy Series. In the late 1960s, artist and activist May Stevens (b. 1924) undertook a large series of works that were not only protests against the Vietnam War, but also commentaries on the state of civil rights and the white, male-dominated authoritarian power structures in the country.
Women Sculptors of the National Academy
The 20 sculptures in this exhibition trace the evolution of American sculpture between the late 19th and 20th centuries and celebrate the special achievements and contributions of women artists to the medium.
An American Collection – Second Rotation. May 23, 2012 – January 6, 2013
120 paintings, dating from 1820 to 1970, from the Academy’s collection will be presented.
White: The Anatomy of a Color. May 23–August 26, 2012
This exhibition explores the infinite properties of the color white presented in various ways and different media. Works by Stephen Antonakos, Valerie Jaudon, Robert Mangold, Dorothea Rockburne, and Robert Ryman, all recently elected Academicians, are on view.
Heinrich Kuehn and His American Circle: Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen. April 26–August 27, 2012
Distinguished scholar of photography Dr. Monika Faber has organized this exhibition that focuses on the Austrian photographer Heinrich Kuehn (1866-1944). Kuehn was highly influential among the Vienna Secessionists and was deeply influenced by his friendship with the two American photographers, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen.
Gustav Klimt: 150th Anniversary Celebration. May 24–August 27, 2012
This year, Austria is celebrating the 150th birthday of Gustav Klimt with exhibitions devoted to his work. Several Viennese museums, including the Albertina, the Belvedere, the Kunsthistorisches, the Leopold, and the Wien Museum, are honoring different aspects of Klimt’s extraordinary legacy. The Neue Galerie is joining in these celebrations with a special summer 2012 Klimt exhibition. On view will be Pale Face (1903), Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907), The Black Feather Hat (1910), The Park of Schloss Kammer (ca. 1910), Forester House in Weissenbach on the Attersee (1914), Forest Slope in Unterach on the Attersee (1916), and The Dancer (1916-18). Additionally, a number of Klimt drawings will be included.
The New Museum of Contemporary Art
Museum as Hub: Carlos Motta: We Who Feel Differently. May 16–August 5, 2012
This is a multi-part project that explores the idea of sexual and gender “difference” after four decades of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, Queer, and Questioning politics. The exhibition draws from Motta’s database documentary wewhofeeldifferently.info that consists of a website, publication, online journal, and discursive events. A video installation based on 50 interviews with LGBTIQQ academics, activists, artists, politicians, researchers, and radicals from Colombia, Norway, South Korea, and the United States, exploring notions of equality, difference, citizenship, and democracy.
Pictures from the Moon: Artists’ Holograms 1969-2008. July 5 – September 30, 2012
This exhibition features holograms from the 1960s to the present. The development of laser technology in 1962 enabled the creation of holograms that displayed three-dimensional images on a two-dimensional surface. Photographs of earth taken by astronauts on the first mission to the moon inspire the title of the exhibition.
Ghosts in the Machine. July 18 – September 30, 2012
This exhibition traces artists’ embrace of and fascination with technology in the last fifty years.
The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Studio 231
The Parade: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg. May 2–August 26, 2012
Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg has created a film in the form of animation. Her subject matter includes transgressive and nightmarish allegories of desire and malcontent. Djurberg uses clay, music and sound effects to dramatize primal urges, drawing on sometimes disturbing connections between human psychology and animal behavior.
Stories in Sterling: Four Centuries of Silver in New York. May 4–September 2, 2012
This exhibition highlights the histories of 150 notable examples of silver. The silver ranges from simple spoons to extravagant trophies, all linked to significant moments in the history of New York and the United States.
BE SURE! BE SAFE! GET VACCINATED! Smallpox, Vaccination and Civil Liberties in New York. May 15–September 2, 2012
“Get Vaccinated!” is part of a slogan from an incredibly successful 1947 campaign requesting voluntary vaccination (when five million New Yorkers were vaccinated in two weeks). This exhibition traces the history of smallpox and efforts to manage it in the crowded environs of the nation’s largest city.
Beer Here: Brewing New York’s History. May 25–September 2, 2012
This exhibition will survey the social, economic, political, and technological history of the production and consumption of beer, ale, and porter in New York City from the 17th century to the present.
Illuminated: The Art of Sacred Books. April 6–September 3, 2012
This exhibition explores the aesthetic and technological approaches used in creating and adorning sacred books from a variety of cultures.
Modernist Art from India: Approaching Abstraction. May 4–October 16, 2012
This exhibition explores the art from post-independent and post-Partition India. It defines the characteristics that distinguish abstraction in modernist Indian art from abstraction in Euro-American modernism.
Candid: The Life and Lens of Homai Vyarawalla. July 6 – January 14, 2013
Homai Vyarawalla (1913-2012) was India’s first female photojournalist. This exhibition presents her work from the late 1930s to 1970. From her early years, Vyarawalla documented major events, including the meeting of Gandhi and the Congress Committee in 1947, and visits by historic figures such as Queen Elizabeth, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Ho Chi Minh.
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