With several fairs taking place throughout the city, Armory Arts Week is also a great time to check in on some seriously good exhibitions on view in New York. We’ll start with the museums: here are 10 shows not to miss.
1. “Anri Sala: Answer Me” at The New Museum
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
The New Museum presents a major exhibition of the work of Anri Sala, one of the most acclaimed artists to emerge in recent decades. “Anri Sala: Answer Me” features extensive multichannel audio and video installations that unfold across the galleries, composing a symphonic experience specific to the New Museum. Additionally, every Wednesday throughout the exhibition, Intervista (Finding the Words) (1998) and Nocturnes (1999) will be screened in the New Museum Theater from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Laura Poitras (b. 1964), Laura Poitras filming the NSA Utah Data Repository construction in 2011. Photograph by Conor Provenzano.
2. “The Aftermath of Conflict: Jo Ractliffe’s Photographs of Angola and South Africa” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10128
Throughout her career, South African photographer Jo Ractliffe has directed her camera toward landscapes to address themes of displacement, conflict, history, memory, and erasure. This exhibition brings together selected works from three of her recent photographic series that focus on the aftermath of the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002) and its relationship with the Border War (1966–89) fought by South Africans in Angola and present-day Namibia.
3. “Marcel Broodthaers: A Retrospective” at The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019
Marcel Broodthaers worked primarily as a poet until the age of 40, when he turned to the visual arts. Over the years, his works ranged from sculptures, paintings, artist’s books, printmaking, film, and more. This exhibition—the first Broodthaers retrospective organized in New York—will reunite key works from all aspects of the artist’s art making to underscore the complex trajectory of his career, which despite its brief duration proved enormously influential to future generations of artists.
Marcel BroodthaersArmoire blanche et table blanche (White cabinet and white table)
1965
Painted furniture with eggshells, cabinet: 33 7/8 × 32 1/4 × 24 1/2 inches
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
© 2015 Estate of Marcel Broodthaers / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SABAM, Brussels
4. “Peter Fischli David Weiss: How to Work Better” at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10128
For more than three decades, Peter Fischli and David Weiss collaborated to create a unique oeuvre that brilliantly exploits humor, banality, and a keen rethinking of the readymade to realign our view of the world. “Peter Fischli David Weiss: How to Work Better” offers the most thorough investigation to date of their joint production, demonstrating the intricate interrelationships among Fischli and Weiss’s works in sculpture, photography, installation, and video, each of which they used to confront, examine, and lampoon the seriousness of high art.
5. “Laura Pointras: Astro Noise” at The Whitney Museum
99 Gansevoort Street
New York, NY 10014
This is the first solo museum exhibition by artist, filmmaker, and journalist Laura Poitras, organized by Jay Sanders, Curator and Curator of Performance. Documenting post–9/11 America, she will create immersive environments that incorporate documentary footage, architectural interventions, primary documents, and narrative structures to invite visitors to interact with the material in strikingly intimate and direct ways.
KAWSALONG THE WAY
2013
Wood
216 x 176 x 120 inches
Photo by Adam Reich
Courtesy of Mary Boone Gallery, New York
6. “Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial” at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
2 East 91st Street
New York, NY 10128
“Beauty-Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial” is the fifth installment of the museum’s popular contemporary design exhibition series. With projects ranging from experimental prototypes and interactive games to fashion ensembles and architectural interventions, “Beauty” will feature work by 63 designers, filling most of two floors of the museum with more than 250 works from around the globe. It will explore the transformative power of aesthetic innovation as well as celebrate design as a creative endeavor that engages the mind, body and senses.
7. “The Eccentrics” at Sculpture Center
44-19 Purves Street
Long Island City, NY 11101
Evoking the figure of the “eccentric,” a term for Russian circus performers, Walter Benjamin alludes to clowns, magicians, and acrobats as the forerunners to the comic actors who later inhabited the newly created space of film in his influential 1936 text, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. The range of performances found in an event like the circus allows for critique and pleasure, role reversals, and societal upheavals within the parameters of controlled celebrations.
Anri Sala, Answer Me, 2008 (still). Single-channel HD video, stereo sound, color; 4:51 min. © Anri Sala. Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery; Hauser & Wirth; Johnen Schöttle, Munich; and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris
8. “Greater New York” at MoMA P.S.1
22-25 Jackson Avenue
Long Island City, NY 11101
MoMA PS1 presents the fourth iteration of its landmark exhibition series, begun as a collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art in 2000. Recurring every five years, the exhibition has traditionally showcased the work of emerging artists living and working in the New York metropolitan area. Greater New York departs from the show’s traditional focus on youth, instead examining points of connection and tension between our desire for the new and nostalgia for that which it displaces. Bringing together emerging and more established artists, the exhibition occupies MoMA PS1’s entire building with over 400 works by 157 artists, including programs of film and performance.
9. “KAWS: ALONG THE WAY” at The Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Brooklyn, NY 11238
Brooklyn-based artist KAWS straddles the line between fine art and popular culture in his large-scale sculptures and brightly colored paintings, thoughtfully playing with imagery associated with consumer products and global brands.
10. “Marc Andre Robinson: Twice Told” at The Studio Museum in Harlem
144 West 125th Street
New York, NY 10027
Brooklyn-based artist Marc Andre Robinson is known for sculptures that engage his long-standing interests in the history and culture of African Americans. Composed of the back legs of chairs and suspended from the ceiling, Twice Told forms a winding path of symmetrical lines. Robinson uses traditional carpentry techniques to formally and conceptually explore American history through a contemporary lens. Specifically, Robinson considers the legacy of African-American oppression in American society and its contemporary counterpart in ongoing social rights issues.
