Spring is just around the corner, be sure to discover endless amounts of activities with family and friends!
Must See Art Shows:
Kent Monkman
Metropolitan Museum of Art, through 4/12. The 2010s witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number of artists of color exhibiting at galleries and museums a wave of diversity challenging white heterosexual cultural hegemony that nevertheless remains dependent on both formal tropes borrowed from European art and the largesse of a collector base that is noticeably thin on minorities. Monkman stacks queer aesthetics, ecoconsciousness and multiculturalism into a wedding cake of intersectionality, pleading for unity in the face of extinction while inserting people of color into art history through a viewer friendly, if reactionary, genre.
Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925 1945
Whitney Museum of Art, 2/14 – 5/17. During a tumultuous period for both Mexico and the United States, an interchange between Mexican muralists and their American counterparts created a new kind of art for the masses.
Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara
Metropolitan Museum of Art, through 5/10. The Met invites you to check out these treasures from the sub Saharan region of Sahel, which was home to wealthy African empires. The Sahel wasn’t a monolithic entity, although the objects here share some attributes over the course of time.
Jordan Casteel: Within Reach
New Museum, 2/19 – 5/24. The figurative painter’s first solo museum exhibition in New York City showcases the indelible sense of presence she imbues to subjects who are often overlooked in life.
About Time: Fashion and Duration
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2/7 – 5/7. The show explores how fashion’s history is both linear and cyclical: On the one hand, there’s no more reliable marker for a particular period than the clothes being worn at the time; yet on the other hand, fashion itself often looks to the past for inspiration. The Met reaches into its vast collection to explore how fashion often moves forwards by moving back.
New Photography Shows Illuminating NYC:
Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures
Museum of Modern Art, 3/9-5/9. A giant of 20th-century photography, Lange found many of
her subjects among the impoverished farmers and sharecroppers eking out a living during the Great Depression. Given our political moment, it seems like a good time to revisit Lange’s work and its commitment to social justice.
The Lower East Side: Selections from the IPC Collection
International Center of Photography, through 5/18. Today, the Lower East Side is synonymous with hip restaurants, cool art galleries and ever-encroaching luxury residences. Now, the International Center of Photography is inaugurating its new home at Essex Crossing in the heart of the LES with a show of historical photos that look back on the Lower East Side of yore. Images by legends such as Weegee and Jacob Riis are just some of the contributions capturing the poverty and promise that defined the LES.
Madame d’Ora (The Images of Dora Kallmus)
Neue Galerie, 2/20-6/8. Lasting from 1919 to 1933, the Weimar period in Germany was known for cutting-edge art that captured the artistic freedom—and decadence—of those years. The same
qualities suffuse the images of Dora Kallmus (1881–1963), an Austrian-Jewish photographer who went by the name Madame d’Ora. This show is the largest ever presented of her work in the United States.
Iconic Theater:
Girl From the North Country (Conor McPherson/Bob Dylan)
Belasco Theatre, open end run. Playwright-director Conor McPherson weaves 20 songs by Bob Dylan into this adumbral evocation of American life in the Great Depression. After a run at the Public last season, the musical now moves to Broadway.
72 Miles to Go
Laura Pels Theatre, 2/13-5/3. A recently deported Mexican woman maintains a bond with her husband and children across the border in Arizona in this drama by Hilary Bettis (The Americans). Jo Bonney directs the world premiere, with a cast of five.
Madame d’Ora (The Images of Dora Kallmus)West Side Story
Broadway Theatre, open end run. As in the musical’s most recent Broadway production in
2009, actors playing gang members file onstage and stare out at the audience, daring us to ignore them. This time, however, the menace is magnified; they are dressed in modern street clothes, and close-ups of their hard faces and neck tattoos tower behind them on a 30-feet-tall LED screen at the back of the otherwise empty stage.
Musical Theater:
Company (Stephen Sondheim musical)
Bernard Jacobs Theatre, open end run. Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s path-breaking 1970 musical about love in the big city has had several revivals, but this one has a twist: The commitmentaverse main character is now a woman, played by The Band’s Visit’s mesmerizing Katrina Lenk.
Caroline, or Change (musical)
Studio 54 (roundabouttheater.org), open end run. This profoundly soulful, tuneful and transformative musical about a maid in 1963 Louisiana was ahead of its time in 2003, but times have changed. With a libretto by Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and music by Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home), this is the rare work of musical theater that can truly change the way you see the world.
Escape The Winter:
The Ford Foundation Atrium
Ford Foundation Gallery (fordfoundation.org), Mon.-Sat, 11 am – 6 pm, free. If you need a quick change of scenery from our concrete tundra, duck into this hidden oasis in midtown that just so happens to be open to the public. The Ford Foundation building houses a 12-story atrium that boasts a verdant green space with 39 species of subtropical plants, a reflecting pool and a garden with plants you can touch and smell.
The Butterfly Conservatory
American Museum of Natural History (amnh.org). In what feels like a makeshift rain forest, a winding path leads you through an enchanted landscape where you’ll marvel at 500 vibrant butterflies fluttering in the air. Plus, you can reconnect with nature while staying nice and cozy in the temperature-controlled exhibition room, set to a balmy 80°F to protect these winged beauties.
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