This week, we reflect on the best of New York art and culture from 2024. We feel gratitude for the good (see below) and say good riddance to the rest.
Thank you, as always, for reading Days & Nights! It means the whole entire world to us.
🗓️ Btw, save the date for the next installment of Days & Nights presents THE EVENING on January 10. We’ll tear through Tribeca to see legendary openings like the new Jack Shainman space with a show of work from Nick Cave. More details soon!
Best Art Shows
The art market had a year of downs (with some modest ups), but the art-viewing public had months blessed with almost too many riches to count. Here are some of the New York shows still stuck deep inside our brains, in order of appearance:
Joan Snyder, ComeClose at Canada (Jan 2024)
Books group show at Paula Cooper (Jan 2024)
Sonia Delaunay: Living Art at the Bard Center (Feb 2024)
Elene Chantladze at kaufmann repetto (Feb 2024)
Oliver Beer’s Resonance Paintings – Cat Orchestra at Almine Rech (March 2024)
The Bay Area’s miraculous Dorian Reid presented by KAPP KAPP at NADA’s Spring fair (May 2024)
Fischli and Weiss: Polyurethane Objects at Matthew Marks (Sept 2024)
Iria Leino: 1968–1970 at Harper’s (Sept 2024)
Cecily Brown’s The 5 Senses at Paula Cooper (Oct 2024)
Sarah Joy Groff: Prophecy of the End at Nicodim (Oct 2024)
The Bitch, Matthew Barney and Alex Katz at O’Flaherty’s (Nov 2024)
Franz Kafka at the Morgan (Still on view! Runs through April 2025)
Steve McQueen at Dia Chelsea (Still on view! Runs through July 2025)
Best Art Fair
Spring/Break Art Show continues to be our favorite fair for surprising work, fun curation, and approachable prices. You’ll still break the bank, but you can realistically take home a piece or two. And thank goodness for bars (that aren’t just champagne stations) where you can get a drink for a reasonable $10 and make friends while you’re in line. Spring/Break is everything we want in an art fair.
This year, we were especially floored by the work and presentation of Tom Prinsell’s booth, MIRROR, MIRROR curated by and featuring Nicole James + Aliza Stone Howard, and the work of Anna Krieps who we chatted with for a while, featuring portraits of her sister, the actress Vicky Krieps.
Best Dance
Having been a mere consciousness floating above a body for quite some time, we rediscovered the miraculous power of live dance and embodiment this year. Our lives were changed by these groups:
Young Boy Dancing Group, the Zurich-based collective we wrote about after seeing them do their slip-n-slide act at Performance Space. Although YBDG aren’t New Yorkers, plug for just about everything that gets programmed at Performance Space.
Verbal Animal, the rotating ensemble led by Lavy whose recent performance at Greenpoint’s Trisk theater was legendary.
Best New Yorkers
It was a big year for Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir. They ran Earth Chxrch on Avenue C for months (helping refugees and immigrants find love and support in New York when the city threw up its hands and said “sorry pals, good luck on your own”). They toured with Neil Young. They just wrapped performances of EXTINCTION! The Musical at Joe’s Pub. These New Yorkers teach us how to stay human while resisting the forces so powerful they’ll live in our bones if we aren’t vigilant (like consumerism and scarcity mindsets).
We daresay they’re the most punk New Yorkers living today. And we love this iteration of punk that makes space for theatricality and quite literally hugging trees.
Learn more about and support Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir here.
Best Institution
Just when you thought all institutions are crumbling, BISR gives us some hope. The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research is “an interdisciplinary teaching and research institute that offers critical, community-based education in the humanities and social sciences. Working in partnership with local businesses and cultural organizations, we integrate rigorous but accessible scholarly study with the everyday lives of working adults and re-imagine scholarship for the 21st century.”
We told you about the class we took on Black Mountain College over the summer—a star happening of the year. We’ll keep dropping intel on new classes in our weekly reports, but recommend you check out the full list of programming here. (Plug for Understanding Loneliness: Literature, Philosophy, Theory, kicking off in March.)
Best Community Space
Giorno Poetry Systems is “a non-profit organization that supports artists, poets, and musicians, and centers their perspectives” founded by one of our favorite poets, the late John Giorno. “It's based on the idea of artists supporting other artists.” What we like best: 222 Tuesdays, the free weekly gathering where you’ll meet extraordinary New Yorkers and artists, and the regular programming that draws the best talent and crowds.
Check out their recently launched Membership program to support the org and stay engaged with this supreme community of the best writers, musicians, artists, and people in New York.
Best New Yorky Night
Annie Baker presenting My Dinner with Andre at Lincoln Center. We wrote about the movie while on molly back when we were railing against the Summer Industrial Complex, and the screening proved to be one of the best evenings of the year. Paired with two of the coolest girls we know, we watched our favorite movie on the big screen with Annie and Wallace Shawn himself in the audience. And then Annie and Wallace talked about the whole thing. What a dream! And then we got drunk on martinis at P.J. Clarke’s, Lincoln Square’s best nostalgic dump. Again, a dream!
Non-New York-Specific Bests
This section isn’t even close to comprehensive, but we’d like to plug the following:
Best Books: Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley (we love how vehemently Crosley celebrates and defends her dead friend; it’s a masterclass on friendship) and Menu No. 10, the Trash Fire cookbooklet by Friend of the List Brian Voll (we’d argue this is Brian’s most perfect publication to date, the pure essence of the Menus series).
Best Music: Transa from Red Hot Org, the year’s most jaw-dropping embarrassment of riches. The greatest singers and musicians on earth—including Anohni, Perfume Genius, Moses Sumney, Sade (!), Laraaji, Lauren Auder, the list goes on!—give us 46 songs over nearly four hours of programming to celebrate “the most daring, imaginative trans and non-binary artists working today.”
Best Dream Come True: We curated the show Lately at Transmission Gallery in Oakland, California, featuring work from our supremely talented friends Selby Sohn and Cooper Salmon. Thanks to everyone who came out to see the show, hang at the opening reception, and party with us at Thee Stork Club. 💙
Happy holidays, sweeties, and catch you next week ✌️
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THAT’S ALL, FOLKS
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