For the love of anything, please may we save the Elizabeth Street Garden. For the love of Mozart, snag tickets to The Marriage of Figaro on Little Island (runs through September 22). For the love of nostalgia, read the new New York After Dark (and catch the book launch at the National Arts Club on Wednesday). For the love of birds, track the ultimate nightlife. Read on for a full report on the best of this very good week.
This week’s bangers:
🆓 = costs $0, 🎨 = art, 🎼 = music, 🎬 = film, 📚= books, 🌳 = nature, 🎭 = performance, 🧠 = extra smart people, 🍸 = drinks available, 🦩 = party/friendly vibe
🔑 Click the venue link under each listing for full event details.
Monday, September 9
Last day to see SPRING/BREAK Art Show
What a show! We spent Saturday afternoon here with friends, in love with work from Anna Krieps (embroidered prints featuring her sister [the actress Vicky Krieps] as Olympia, Venus, and other figures of art history), Tom Prinsell (look at this!!), Yen Yen, Rachel Cohen, and Abby Cheney’s booth (still thinking about buying this), and others we could write a whole report on.
You have one last day to catch it: show is open through 7p tonight with the final ticketed entry at 6p.
75 Varick St, Hudson Square
Mon from 12-7p 🎨
Other Monday events, briefly noted:
Last day to see Ich bin Ich / I Am Me (the first major U.S. exhibition on Paula Modersohn-Becker) at Neue Galerie (Upper East Side), 11a-6p 🎨
Thomas Houseago: Night Sea Journey opening reception at Lévy Gorvy Dayan (Upper East Side), 6-8p 🆓 🎨
Lecture: Amanda Bellows on the Forgotten Explorers in U.S. History at the gorgeous Explorer’s Club (Upper East Side), 6p drink reception, 7p lecture 📚 🧠
Tuesday, September 10
Make it a High Line evening (with a Lehmann Maupin opening)
Every week, the High Line offers a few opportunities to tour the park with a smart docent. Get the full schedule here. And every Tuesday from sunset til 30 minutes before the park closes, you can look at stars. We can’t vouch for good stargazing, but we love spending an evening in the park so we won’t be mad if the viewing sucks.
Consider going on the High Line tour, then catch the end of the opening reception of Oren Pinhassi’s Losing Face at Lehmann Maupin on 24th St and 10th Ave (runs from 5-7p), then head back to the park for stargazing.
High Line Tour: From Freight to Flowers tour at Gansevoort Street, Meatpacking District
Tues from 5-6:30p 🆓 🧠 🌳
Stargazing on the High Line at Little W 12th Street,
Tuesdays from sunset (7:13p) til 9:30p 🆓 🌳
Wednesday, September 11
Legacies: Asian American Art Movements in New York City (1969-2001) opening reception at 80WSE
We’ve been sleeping on 80WSE since graduating from NYU, but the school’s non-profit gallery space has put on some bangers of contemporary and historical artwork lately. Tonight, we’re excited to catch the opening of Legacies: Asian American Art Movements in New York City (1969-2001), featuring work from over 90 artists and collectives. The show is “the first institutional survey exhibition focusing on artists of Asian descent who were based in New York City.”
80WSE, Greenwich Village
Wed from 5-7p 🆓 🎨
New York After Dark book launch at the National Arts Club
Dustin Pittman captured the legendary world of New York’s after-hours nightlife in the '70s and '80s, from Warhol’s Factory to the burgeoning punk scene at CBGBs and the Mudd Club to the VIP room at Studio 54 to the women’s liberation movement of the 70’s and beyond. Tonight, Pittman talks about his work with the creators of his newly published monograph from Rizzoli: New York After Dark (with a very “I wanna be your dog” Iggy Pop on the cover).
Don’t ever miss a chance to get inside the National Arts Club, our favorite place to pretend to be a member of—the decor is stunning, the people watching is legendary, and the culture talks always hit.
The National Arts Club, Gramercy Park
Wed at 7p 🆓📚
Other Wednesday events, briefly noted:
Philip Guston’s Room, Sea & Sky opening reception at Hauser & Wirth on 18th St (Chelsea), 6-8p 🆓 🎨 🍸🦩
Dorothea Rockburne book launch at Dia Chelsea (Chelsea), 6:30-7:30p 🆓 (with RSVP here) 📚 🎨
Thursday, September 12
Christian Marclay’s Subtitled opens at Paula Cooper
We love leftovers from Paris and anything from Christian Marclay (the living legend behind The Clock, the 24-hour video project). Today, his video installation Subtitled from 2019 (previously displayed as part of his 2022/2023 survey at theCentre Pompidou) makes its American premier at Paula Cooper. The work is on view through October 19.
Paula Cooper Gallery, Chelsea
Thurs from 10a-6p 🆓 🎨
Peter Fischli David Weiss: Polyurethane Objects opening reception at Matthew Marks
Fischli/Weiss is the Swiss artist duo who made stupid, funny, and divinely brilliant work for over 30 years (including Will Happiness Find Me?, one of our favorite books of all time). We know, we’re obvious, but we’re obsessed with these guys.
Tonight, Matthew Marks’ gallery on 22nd Street opens a show featuring “a body of work that combines, rearranges, or otherwise manipulates the mundane into something new and unexpected.” The show goes deep, featuring their first collaborative work, Wursterie (Sausage Series, 1979) in which “Fischli and Weiss transformed a bathroom shelf into a runway for fashionably attired sausages, and an unmade bed into an Alpine landscape.”
“For Polyurethane Objects, begun in 1982, they used the same material Hollywood propmakers do to make meticulously carved and painted replicas of ordinary objects (a paint roller, a bottle of bleach, a few stray M&Ms, a cardboard box). Visible World (1986–2012) is a quasi-encyclopedic view of natural and built landscapes, from the commonplace to the extraordinary, made up of thousands of photographs made around the world by Fischli and Weiss over twenty-five years of travel.” Sign us up and see you there.
While you’re at it, catch an opening reception for Jasper Johns: Drawings 1982–2021 at Matthew Marks Gallery on 24th Street, also running from 6-8p 🆓 🎨
Matthew Marks Gallery on 22nd St, Chelsea
Thurs from 6-8p 🆓 🎨
These Boots Are Made For Walking opening reception at Room57
This group show features work from artists everyone already knows (Cindy Sherman, Sylvie Fleury, and others) and artists we’re just getting to know (like Nicole James, who we met at Spring Break Art Show and who is great).
Room57, Upper East Side
Thurs from 6-8p 🆓 🎨
Book launch and signing of The Battle of Versailles: The Fashion Showdown of 1973 at Bookmarc
We haven’t related to Marc Jacobs as a fashion designer in a very, very long time. But we love Marc Jacobs the fashion book guy. His bookstore on Bleecker Street hosts incredible launches for fashion, music, and art books. Recently in the shop: Naomi Campbell, Debbie Harry, Susanne Bartsch, you get the idea.
Tonight, Mark Bozek and Pat Cleveland sign copies of their new publication, “the first illustrated book to chronicle the dramatic 1973 face-off between French and American fashion designers, which left an indelible mark on the fashion industry, launched American designers as a global force, and challenged the cultural norms of the time.”
Bookmarc, West Village
Thurs from 6-8p 🆓 📚
The Unhinged Bisexual Novel: a conversation presented by Lux Magazine
Who isn’t an unhinged bisexual these days, we whisper to ourselves in the mirror.
McNally Jackson, South Street Seaport
Thurs at 6:30p 📚 🧠 🍸
Other Thursday events, briefly noted
Hannah Whitaker’s Stranger opening reception at Marinaro Gallery (Soho), 6-8p 🆓 🎨
Akira Ikezoe’s Not So Still Life opening reception at Marinaro Gallery (Soho), 6-8p 🆓 🎨
Paul de Flers’ Poisson - Scorpion opening reception at Almine Rech (Upper East Side), 6-8p 🆓 🎨
Suzanne Jackson’s light and paper opening reception at Ortuzar Projects (Tribeca), 6-8p 🆓 🎨
Keegan Monaghan’s In opening reception at James Fuentes (Tribeca), 6-8p 🆓 🎨
Slow Looking group show with Beverly Acha, Holly Coulis, Amie Cunat and Tracy Thomason opening reception at Dinner Gallery (Chelsea), 6-8p 🆓 🎨
Ace Artist in Residence and Byline present Caroline Zimbalist’s Tomorrow’s Garden opening reception with drinks and music at the ACE Hotel Brooklyn, (Downtown Brooklyn), 7-9p 🆓 (with RSVP)🎨🍸🎼
Yves Tumor DJ set at Elsewhere (Bushwick), 10p 🎼 🍸🦩
Friday, September 13
Playing with Design: Gameboards, Art, and Culture opens at the Folk Art Museum
We’re noticing a theme since coming back from summer break: we’re really into the lives and psychologies of eccentric collectors. Such as: who has over 100 handmade gameboards that are good enough to feature in a show at the Folk Art Museum? We’re curious to see the work, just as curious to learn about Bruce and Doranna Wendel (it’s a crime that all the images in this article are broken), from whose collection this show emerges.
The Folk Art Museum, Upper East Side
Fri from 11:30a-6p 🎨. Runs through Jan 26, 2025.
Other Friday events, briefly noted
Last day to see Thomas McDonell’s Figueroa St. Paintings at Europa (Two Bridges), 12-6p 🆓 🎨
Richard Tuttle’s A Distance From This opening reception at 125 Newbury (Tribeca), 6-8p 🆓 🎨
Tosh Basco’s FIELD OF FEELS and Tobias Bradford’s As My Eyes Adjust opening reception at Company Gallery (Lower East Side), 6-8p 🆓 🎨
Recital Series featuring Leah Hawkins (soprano) and Kevin Miller (piano) in the very romantic Board of Officers Room at Park Avenue Armory (Upper East Side), 8p 🎼
Saturday, September 14
Dia Chelsea presents Activations: Memory Textures with Camila Palomino and Alix Vernet
Find new ways to love and know your city: “How do we create and maintain relationships with our built environment? Organized by Camila Palomino and Alix Vernet, Memory Textures invites participants to an afternoon of studying urban surfaces in Chelsea and building tools to record public space. Participants will examine inscriptions—from patterns to lettering across surfaces and sidewalks—and learn how to archive these impressions with techniques usually reserved for studying antiquity, collapsing temporalities and creating a personal collection of urban texture and memory.”
Meets at Chelsea Recreation Center, Chelsea
Sat from 11a-3p 🆓 (with RSVP) 🎨
Jack Boul: paintings and prints opening reception at Salmagundi Club
We like the new, but we especially like the old: people, trees, paintings. Today, 97-year-old Jack Boul gets his first solo show in his hometown at the lovely old Salmagundi Club. The show runs for one week, with a gallery talk on Wednesday, 9/18 from 5-6p featuring Dr. Eric Denker, “senior lecturer emeritus at DC’s National Gallery of Art, who curated Jack Boul’s retrospective at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and has written extensively on his work
The Salmagundi Club, Greenwich Village
Sat at 12p 🆓 🎨
Other Saturday events, briefly noted:
Downtown Artists: Neighborhood Tour presented by the New Museum (Bowery), 11a 🎨 🧠
Geoffray Riondet presents Antique French Jewelry: 1800-1950 at Albertine Bookstore (Upper East Side), 3-4p 🆓 📚
Carrie Mae Weems’ The Shape of Things opening reception at Gladstone Gallery (Chelsea), 3-6p 🆓 🎨
Patrick McNabb’s Aftertaste opening reception at Haul Gallery (Gowanus), 6-9p 🆓 🎨🍸🦩
Sunday, September 15
One Big Sit: Mahasangha NYC
Extinction Rebellion and The Buddhist Action Coalition present One Big Sit with this thought:
Thich Nhat Hanh once said, “It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community…”
Might we come together in this One Big Sit to embody this profound sentiment?
May we gather outdoors, touching Earth, to declare that this planet is our place of practice, that we embrace the responsibility to care for it, and that we are here only because Earth is.
Have a seat in Washington Square Park for some or all of this event, or at least say “hi” and “thank you” to a tree today.
The North West Green in Washington Square Park, Greenwich Village
Sun from 12-6p 🆓 🌳
Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir present Sunday Services
Weekly reminder that the Church of Stop Shopping and Reverend Billy are doing remarkably important work in the form of performance art. Catch their Sunday service, make a donation, and meet some people.
Earth Chxrch, East Village
Every Sun at 5p 🆓
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