Opening This Month…

American Folk Art Museum (www.folkartmuseum.org)

Jubilation/Rumination: Life, Real and Imagined. January 17–September 2, 2012. Reality and Imagination tended to overlap in early American folk art. This exhibition features works by Martín Ramírez, Dr. and Mrs. Shute, and James Castle. Viewers are encouraged to interpret the art as either real or imagined.

Brooklyn Museum (www.brooklynmuseum.org)

Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913–1919. January 20–August 19, 2012. The American journalist and activist Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) lived in Greenwich Village between 1913 and 1921, writing for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Vanity Fair. Her life as a proto-feminist and bohemian is documented in photographs, drawings, works on paper, and Barnes’s own stories in newsprint (including eight illustrations she composed to accompany her newspaper columns).

Rachel Kneebone: Regarding Rodin. January 27–August 12, 2012. This exhibition pairs fifteen iconic works by 19th-century French master Auguste Rodin selected from the Museum’s collection by British artist Rachel Kneebone, with her own large-scale porcelain sculptures.

International Center of Photography (www.icp.org)

Weegee: Murder Is My Business. January 20–September 2, 2012. Drawn from the ICP’s extensive Weegee Archive, this exhibition focuses on the artist’s ability to dramatically photograph crime scenes and news events. It also includes a spatial recreation of Weegee’s apartment and past exhibitions of his work.

The New York Times Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/arts/design/weegee-at-international-center-of-photography-review.html?_r=2&ref=arts

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (www.metmuseum.org)

New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts. Opening January 16, 2012. This wing completes the third and final phase of the American Wing renovation project. Twenty-five galleries display the Museum’s grand collection of American art, including the famous painting Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851) by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (1816-1868) and many other treasures.

New York Times review: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/arts/design/metropolitan-museum-of-arts-new-american-wing-galleries-review.html?_r=1&ref=design

Chinese Art in an Age of Revolution: Fu Baoshi (1904–1965). January 21–April 15, 2012. Chinese artist Fu Baoshi (1904-1965) created a unique style of ink painting based on the merging of Japanese and Chinese traditions. In his youth, he studied art history in Tokyo and translated several important books from Japanese into Chinese. Seventy paintings are drawn from the collection of China’s Nanjing Museum and a New York-based private collection.

The Morgan Library and Museum (www.themorgan.org)

Rembrandt’s World: Dutch Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection. January 20–April 29, 2012. The Morgan presents over ninety drawings by artists of the Dutch Golden Age. Among the artists are Rembrandt, Abraham Bloemaert, Aelbert Cuyp, Jan van Goyen. These works, from the collection of Clement C. Moore, are exhibited publicly for the first time.

New Museum of Contemporary Art, Studio 231 (www.newmuseum.org)

Enrico David: Head Gas. January 18–April 22, 2012. In Enrico David’s first New York exhibit, the Berlin artist has produced a series of emotional portraits. These paintings and works on paper are delicate studies of David’s own psychological state. Included here are gestural works, what the artist calls “paravents,” or folding screens, which were initially created for his Berlin studio and now occupy the gallery’s south wall.

 Other Exhibits…

Brooklyn Museum (www.brooklynmuseum.org)

Work of Art: The Next Great Artist. December 22, 2011–February 5, 2012. This exhibition entitled, Not for Long, My Forlorn, features the work of Kymia Nawabi, winner of Bravo’s competition series, Work of Art.

The Frick Collection (www.frick.org)

White Gold: Highlights from the Arnhold Collection of Meissen Porcelain. December 13, 2011–April 29, 2012. This exhibition presents approximately seventy pieces of Meissen porcelain. Meissen porcelain is the first European-made white porcelain. A group of sculptures by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1740-1828) are also exhibited, including his Diana the Huntress (1776-1795).

Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting. February 7–May 13, 2012. The Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) is known for his luxurious portrait masterpieces. This exhibition features nine iconic paintings in full-length format. These are vertical canvases that represent contemporary subjects and demonstrate Renoir’s ambition as a young artist.

A Passion for Drawings: Charles Ryskamp’s Bequest to The Frick Collection. February 14–April 8, 2012. The Frick’s former director, Charles Ryskamp, was an avid drawings collector. His gift of ten drawings, along with other acquisitions, are on display in the museum’s Cabinet gallery. Included in this exhibition are works by Théodore Rousseau, Edgar Degas, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Eugène Delacroix, among many others.

The Guggenheim Museum (www.guggenheim.org)

John Chamberlain: Choices. February 24–May 13, 2012. John Chamberlain was a singular sculptor, who took Abstract Expressionism into 3D. He is best known for his large-scale scrap metal assemblages that are rolled, bent, crushed, and folded. This exhibition presents nearly 100 works by the artist.

The Jewish Museum (www.thejewishmuseum.org)

Kehinde Wiley. The World Stage: Israel. March 9–July 29, 2012. The Jewish Museum recently acquired a painting by Kehinde Wiley, Alios Itzhak (2011), a portrait inspired by a traditional paper cut in the Museum’s collection. Wiley is best known for referencing many historic works art. This exhibition features several portraits of Israeli youths of various cultural backgrounds.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (www.metmuseum.org)

Duncan Phyfe: Master Cabinetmaker in New York. December 20, 2011–May 6, 2012. The work of New York City cabinetmaker Duncan Phyfe (1770-1854) was in such demand during the early 19th century that he was nicknamed  “The United States Rage.” This exhibition showcases nearly 100 pieces from his life’s work.

The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini. December 21, 2011–March 18, 2012. This exhibition features more than 150 Renaissance portraits by some of the leading Italian artists of the 15th and 16th centuries. Paintings, sculptures, medals, and manuscripts by artists such as Donatello, Filippo Lippi, Ghirlandaio, Mantegna, Bellini, and others demonstrate the period’s enthusiasm for portraiture.

Rembrandt and Degas: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. February 23–May 20, 2012. As a student in Rome, Edgar Degas was greatly influenced by the work of Rembrandt. This exhibition explores this relationship through a series of self-portraits produced by both artists during their youth.

The Steins Collect. Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde. February 28–June 3, 2012. This exhibition traces the collecting practices of the Steins—Gertrude, her brothers Leo and Michael, and Michael’s wife Sarah—in Paris during the first decades of the 20th century. Approximately 200 works of art demonstrate the significant impact the Steins’ patronage had on modern art.

The Morgan Library and Museum (www.themorgan.org)

Dan Flavin: Drawing. February 17–July 1, 2012. Surprising to many, fluorescent light artist Dan Flavin was also an avid draftsman. Over 100 works are featured in the first retrospective of his drawings.

The Museum of Modern Art (www.moma.org)

Sanja Iveković: Sweet Violence. December 18, 2011–March 26, 2012. This is the first time the work of Sanja Iveković has been on display in the United States. The artist examines culture, politics, power, and gender through various media. The exhibition also features a monument that created a stir in her native Croatia accompanied by newspaper articles documenting the event.

Cindy Sherman. February 26–June 11, 2012. For more than thirty years, Cindy Sherman has transformed herself into a range of intriguing characters. This retrospective traces her career through her dominant themes.

Neue Galerie (www.neuegalerie.org)

The Ronald S. Lauder Collection: Selections from the 3rd Century BC to the 20th Century/Germany, Austria, and France. October 27, 2011–April 2, 2012. In honor of the tenth anniversary of the founding of the museum, this exhibition celebrates the Museum’s collection of medieval art, arms and armor, Old Master paintings, 19th and 20th-century drawings, fine and decorative art of Vienna 1900, and modern and contemporary art.

The New Museum of Contemporary Art (www.newmuseum.org)

The Ungovernables. Second New Museum Triennial. February 15–April 22, 2012. The New Museum Triennial features a group of fifty artists whose works explore notions of self-determination, impermanence, and transformation. These artists are presented together because they are all part of the generation that came of age after the independence and revolutionary movements of the 1960s and 1970s in their respective countries.

New-York Historical Society (www.nyhistory.org)

Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn. November 11, 2011–April 15, 2012. This educational exhibition compares the revolutions in America, France and Haiti through various media. For the first time, these histories are explained as a global narrative.

Whitney Museum of American Art (www.whitney.org)

Real/Surreal. October 6, 2011–February 12, 2012. Drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection, this exhibition focuses on the tension and overlap between two strong currents in 20th century art: Realism and Surrealism. Artists include Charles Sheeler, Yves Tanguy, Edward Hopper, and others.

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