25 Art Exhibitions to View in N.Y.C. This Weekend

Our guide to new art shows and some that will be closing soon.

‘ART AFTER STONEWALL, 1969-1989’ at Grey Art Gallery (through July 20) and at Leslie-Lohman Museum (through July 21). For this summer’s half-century anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots, substantial displays of art produced in the long wake of the uprising are filling New York City museums and public spaces. The largest is this two-part exhibition, organized by Jonathan Weinberg and shared by Grey Art Gallery at N.Y.U. and Leslie-Lohman Museum. The Leslie-Lohman half, which focuses on the 1970s and has lots of archival matter, feels tight and combustible. Much of what’s in it was hot off the political burner, responsive to crisis conditions. The pace at Grey, where much of the work dates from the 1980s, is more measured, but has tensions of its own as the story encompasses AIDS and the culture wars. (Holland Cotter)
212-998-6780, greyartgallery.nyu.edu
212-431-2609, leslielohman.org

‘ARTISTS RESPOND: AMERICAN ART AND THE VIETNAM WAR, 1965-1975’ (through Aug. 18) and ‘TIFFANY CHUNG: VIETNAM, PAST IS PROLOGUE’ (through Sept. 2) at Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. Everything in “Artists Respond,” a big, inspiriting blast of a historical survey, dates from a time when the United States was losing its soul, and its artists — some, anyway — were trying to save theirs by denouncing a racist war. Figures well known for their politically hard-hitting work — Judith Bernstein, Leon Golub, Hans Haacke, Peter Saul, Nancy Spero — are here in strength. But so are others, like Dan Flavin and Donald Judd and Barnett Newman, seldom associated with visual activism. Concurrent with the survey is a smaller, fine-tuned show by a contemporary Vietnamese-born artist, Tiffany Chung; it views the war through the eyes of people on the receiving end of aggression. (Cotter)
202-663-7970, americanart.si.edu

‘AUSCHWITZ. NOT LONG AGO. NOT FAR AWAY’ at the Museum of Jewish Heritage (through Jan. 3). Killing as a communal business, made widely lucrative by the Third Reich, permeates this traveling exhibition about the largest German death camp, Auschwitz, whose yawning gatehouse, with its converging rail tracks, has become emblematic of the Holocaust. Well timed, during a worldwide surge of anti-Semitism, the harrowing installation strives, successfully, for fresh relevance. The exhibition illuminates the topography of evil, the deliberate designing of a hell on earth by fanatical racists and compliant architects and provisioners, while also highlighting the strenuous struggle for survival in a place where, as Primo Levi learned, “there is no why.” (Ralph Blumenthal)
646-437-4202, mjhnyc.org

‘CAMP: NOTES ON FASHION’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Sept. 8). Inspired by Susan Sontag’s famous 1964 essay, “Notes on ‘Camp,’” the latest spectacular from the Met’s Costume Institute attempts to define this elastic, constantly evolving concept, which leaves taste, seriousness and heteronormativity in the dust. The show researches camp’s emergence in 18th-century France and 19th-century England, examines “Sontagian Camp” and culminates in an immense gallery of designer confectionaries from the 1980s to now that calls to mind a big, shiny Christmas tree barricaded with presents. (Roberta Smith)
212-535-7100, metmuseum.org

‘LEONARD COHEN: A CRACK IN EVERYTHING’ at the Jewish Museum (through Sept. 8). The curators of this show, John Zeppetelli of the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal and Victor Shiffman, commissioned artists of various disciplines to develop pieces inspired by Cohen. Some are simple and quiet, like “Ear on a Worm” from the film artist Tacita Dean, a small image playing on a loop high in the space that shows a perched bird, a reference to “Bird on the Wire” from Cohen’s 1969 album “Songs From a Room.” Some are closer to traditional documentary, like George Fok’s “Passing Through,” which intercuts performances by Cohen throughout his career with video that surrounds the viewer, suggesting the songs are constant and eternal while the performer’s body changes with time. Taken together, the layered work on display has a lot to offer on Cohen, but even more to say about how we respond to music, bring it into our lives, and use it as both a balm and an agent for transformation. (Mark Richardson)
212-423-3200, thejewishmuseum.org

‘CYCLING IN THE CITY: A 200-YEAR HISTORY’ at the Museum of the City of New York (through Oct. 6). The complex past, present and future roles of the bicycle as a vehicle for both social progress and strife are explored in this exhibition. With more than 150 objects — including 14 bicycles and vintage cycling apparel — it traces the transformation of cycling’s significance from a form of democratized transportation, which gave women and immigrants a sense of freedom, to a political football that continues to pit the city’s more than 800,000 cyclists against their detractors today. (Julianne McShane)
212-534-1672, mcny.org

‘THE JIM HENSON EXHIBITION’ at the Museum of the Moving Image (ongoing). The rainbow connection has been established in Astoria, Queens, where this museum has opened a new permanent wing devoted to the career of America’s great puppeteer, who was born in Mississippi in 1936 and died, too young, in 1990. Henson began presenting the short TV program “Sam and Friends” before he was out of his teens; one of its characters, the soft-faced Kermit, was fashioned from his mother’s old coat and would not mature into a frog for more than a decade. The influence of early variety television, with its succession of skits and songs, runs through “Sesame Street” and “The Muppet Show,” though Henson also spent the late 1960s crafting peace-and-love documentaries and prototyping a psychedelic nightclub. Young visitors will delight in seeing Big Bird, Elmo, Miss Piggy and the Swedish Chef; adults can dig deep into sketches and storyboards and rediscover some old friends. (Jason Farago)
718-784-0077, movingimage.us

‘ALICJA KWADE: PARAPIVOT’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Oct. 27). This shrewd and scientifically inclined artist, born in Poland and based in Berlin, has delivered the best edition in five years of the Met’s hit-or-miss rooftop sculpture commission. Two tall armatures of interlocking steel rectangles, the taller of them rising more than 18 feet, support heavy orbs of different-colored marble; some of the balls perch precariously on the steel frames, while others, head-scratchingly, are squinched between them. Walk around these astral abstractions and the frames seem to become quotation marks for the transformed skyline of Midtown; the marbles might be planets, each just as precarious as the one from which they’ve been quarried. (Farago)
212-535-7710, metmuseum.org

‘LOVE & RESISTANCE: STONEWALL 50’ at New York Public Library (through July 13). Organized by Jason Baumann, this archival show functions as a timeline of the gay movement from the founding of the Mattachine Society in the 1950s through Stonewall and its immediate aftermath. Pictures by Diana Davies and Kay Tobin Lahusen, lesbian photojournalists, mark a forward path that is lined with protest posters, dance club fliers and L.G.T.B.Q. publications (Transvestia, Demi-Gods, Third World Women’s Gayzette). (Cotter)
917-275-6975, nypl.org

‘NOBODY PROMISED YOU TOMORROW: 50 YEARS AFTER STONEWALL’ at Brooklyn Museum (through Dec. 8). In this large group show, 28 young queer and transgender artists, most born after 1980, carry the buzz of Stonewall resistance into the present. Historical heroes, including Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, are honored (in a film by Sasha Wortzel and Tourmaline). Friends in life, Johnson and Rivera are tutelary spirits of an exhibition in which a trans presence, long marginalized by mainstream gay politics, is pronounced in the work of Juliana Huxtable, Hugo Gyrl, Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski and Elle Pérez (who is also in the current Whitney Biennial). (Cotter)
718-638-5000, brooklynmuseum.org

‘OCEAN WONDERS: SHARKS!’ at the New York Aquarium (ongoing). For years, the aquarium’s 14-acre campus hunkered behind a wall, turning its back to the beach. When aquarium officials last year finally got around to completing the long-promised building that houses this new shark exhibit, maybe the biggest move, architecturally speaking, was breaking through that wall. The overall effect makes the aquarium more of a visible, welcoming presence along the boardwalk. Inside, “Ocean Wonders” features 115 species sharing 784,000 gallons of water. It stresses timely eco-consciousness, introducing visitors to shark habitats, explaining how critical sharks are to the ocean’s food chains and ecologies, debunking myths about the danger sharks pose to people while documenting the threats people pose to sharks via overfishing and pollution. The narrow, snaking layout suggests an underwater landscape carved by water. Past the exit, an outdoor ramp inclines visitors toward the roof of the building where the Atlantic Ocean suddenly spreads out below. You can see Luna Park in one direction, Brighton Beach in the other. The architectural point becomes clear: Sharks aren’t just movie stars and aquarium attractions. They’re also our neighbors — as much a part of Coney Island as the roller coasters and summer dreams. (Michael Kimmelman)
718-265-3474, nyaquarium.com

[Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead.]

‘PLAY IT LOUD: INSTRUMENTS OF ROCK & ROLL’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Oct. 1). Presented in collaboration with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, this exhibition offers a vision of history in which the rock music that flowered in the 1960s and ’70s sits firmly at the center. The format of the rock band provides the structure of the show, with one room given over to the rhythm section and another showcasing “Guitar Gods.” Yet another room has a display highlighting the guitar’s destruction, with pieces of instruments trashed by Kurt Cobain and Pete Townshend. To the extent that it shifts focus toward the tools of the rock trade, the show is illuminating. Of particular interest is the room set aside for “Creating a Sound,” which focuses on the sonic possibility of electronics. The lighting in “Play It Loud” is dim, perhaps reflecting rock music as the sound of the night. Each individual instrument shines like a beacon, as if it’s catching the glint of an onstage spotlight. It makes the space between audience member and musician seem vast, but that doesn’t diminish the wonder of browsing the tools once used by pop royalty. (Richardson)
212-535-7710, metmuseum.org

‘CHARLOTTE POSENENSKE: WORK IN PROGRESS’ at Dia Art Foundation in Beacon, N.Y. (through Sept. 9). This Hudson Valley institution continues its satisfying enlargement of its roll call of Miminalists and Conceptualists with a major showcase of this German artist, who showed her modular, industrially inspired sculptures alongside Donald Judd and Frank Stella in the late 1960s, but then abandoned art for sociology. Posenenske’s most important works were free-standing pipes, made of sheet steel or cardboard, that look almost exactly like commercial air ducts. Unlike some of the control freaks whose art is also on view here, Posenenske made her art in infinite editions, out of parts that can be arranged in any shape you like: a generous distribution of authorship from the artist to her fabricators and collectors. (Farago)
diaart.org

‘PUNK LUST: RAW PROVOCATION 1971-1985’ at the Museum of Sex (through Nov. 30). This show begins with imagery from the Velvet Underground: The 1963 paperback of that title, an exploration of what was then called deviant sexual behavior and gave the band its name, is one of the first objects on display. Working through photos, album art and fliers by artists like Iggy Pop, the New York Dolls, Patti Smith and, yes, the Sex Pistols, the exhibition demonstrates how punk offered a space for sexual expression outside the mainstream. In the story told by “Punk Lust,” much of it laid out in placards by the writer and musician Vivien Goldman, one of the show’s curators, graphic sexual imagery is a tool for shock that frightens away the straight world and offers comfort to those who remain inside. While some of the power dynamic is typical — underage groupies cavorting with rock stars — images from female, queer and nonbinary artists like Jayne County and the Slits make a strong case for sex as an essential source of punk liberation. (Richardson)
212-689-6337, museumofsex.com

‘SCENES FROM THE COLLECTION’ at the Jewish Museum (ongoing). After a surgical renovation to its grand pile on Fifth Avenue, the Jewish Museum has reopened its third-floor galleries with a rethought, refreshed display of its permanent collection, which intermingles 4,000 years of Judaica with modern and contemporary art by Jews and gentiles alike — Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman and the excellent young Nigerian draftswoman Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze. The works are shown in a nimble, nonchronological suite of galleries, and some of its century-spanning juxtapositions are bracing; others feel reductive, even dilettantish. But always, the Jewish Museum conceives of art and religion as interlocking elements of a story of civilization, commendably open to new influences and new interpretations. (Farago)
212-423-3200, thejewishmuseum.org

STATUE OF LIBERTY MUSEUM on Liberty Island (ongoing). Security concerns stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks led the National Park Service to restrict the number of people who could go inside the Statue of Liberty’s massive stone pedestal and up to the crown. So the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation wanted to offer something more for visitors who found the outdoor view less than satisfying: a stand-alone museum on the island that would welcome everyone who wanted to hear the story behind Lady Liberty. Going beyond the vague and often dubious ideal of American “liberty,” the museum’s displays highlight the doubts of black Americans and women who saw their personal liberties compromised on a daily basis in the 1880s, when the statue opened. These exhibits also spotlight a bit of history that is often forgotten: that the French creators intended the statue as a commemoration of the abolition of slavery in the United States. (Julia Jacobs)
statueoflibertymuseum.org

‘STONEWALL 50 AT THE NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY’ (through Sept. 22). For its Stonewall summer, the society offers a bouquet of three micro-shows. One is devoted to relics of L.G.B.T.Q. night life, from the 1950s lesbian bar called the Sea Colony to the gay male sex clubs like the Anvil and the Ramrod that sizzled in the 1970s. Another documents the founding in 1974 — by Joan Nestle, Deborah Edel, Sahli Cavallero, Pamela Olin and Julia Stanley — of a compendious and still-growing register of lesbian culture called the Herstory Archives. And a third turns a solo spotlight on charismatic individuals: Storme DeLarverie (1920-2014), Mother Flawless Sabrina/Jack Doroshow (1939-2017), Keith Haring (1958-90) and Rollerena Fairy Godmother. (Cotter)
212-873-3400, nyhistory.org

‘TOO FAST TO LIVE, TOO YOUNG TO DIE: PUNK GRAPHICS, 1976-1986’ at the Museum of Arts and Design (through Aug. 18). Many of the objects on display in this exhibition were first hung in record stores or in the bedrooms of teenagers. Posters promoting new albums, tours and shows are mixed in with album art, zines, buttons and other miscellany. Most of the pieces are affixed to the walls with magnets and are not framed, and almost all show signs of wear. The presentation reinforces that this was commercial art meant for wide consumption, and the ragged edges and prominent creases in the works make the history feel alive. (Richardson)
212-299-7777, madmuseum.org

‘T. REX: THE ULTIMATE PREDATOR’ at the American Museum of Natural History (through Aug. 9, 2020). Everyone’s favorite 18,000-pound prehistoric killer gets the star treatment in this eye-opening exhibition, which presents the latest scientific research on T. rex and also introduces many other tyrannosaurs, some discovered only this century in China and Mongolia. T. rex evolved mainly during the Cretaceous period to have keen eyes, spindly arms and massive conical teeth, which could bear down on prey with the force of a U-Haul truck; the dinosaur could even swallow whole bones, as affirmed here by a kid-friendly display of fossilized excrement. The show mixes 66-million-year-old teeth with the latest 3-D prints of dino bones, and also presents new models of T. rex as a baby, a juvenile and a full-grown annihilator. Turns out this most savage beast was covered with — believe it! — a soft coat of beige or white feathers. (Farago)
212-769-5100, amnh.org

‘2019 WHITNEY BIENNIAL’ at the Whitney Museum of American Art (through Sept. 22). Given the political tensions that have sent spasms through the nation over the past two years, you might have expected — hoped — that this year’s biennial would be one big, sharp Occupy-style yawp. It isn’t. Politics are present but, with a few notable exceptions, murmured, coded, stitched into the weave of fastidiously form-conscious, labor-intensive work. As a result, the exhibition, organized by two young Whitney curators, Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta, gives the initial impression of being a well-groomed group show rather than a statement of resistance. But once you start looking closely, the impression changes artist by artist, piece by piece — there’s quiet agitation in the air. (Cotter)
212-570-3600, whitney.org

‘VIOLET HOLDINGS: LGBTQ+ HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE N.Y.U. SPECIAL COLLECTIONS’ at Bobst Library (through Dec. 31). With the Stonewall Inn now a National Historic Landmark (and a bar again; it was a bagel shop in the 1980s), nearby New York University has produced a homegrown archival exhibition at Bobst Library, across the park from Grey Art Gallery. Organized by Hugh Ryan, it takes the local history of queer identity back to the 19th century with documents on Elizabeth Robins (1862-1952), an American actor, suffragist and friend of Virginia Woolf, and forward with ephemera related to the musician and drag king Johnny Science (1955-2007) and the African-American D.J. Larry Levan (1954-92), who, in the 1980s, presided, godlike, at a gay disco called the Paradise Garage, which was a short walk from the campus. (Cotter)
212-998-2500, library.nyu.edu

‘JEFF WALL’ at Gagosian (through July 26). Rumination and risk-taking, in equal measure, mark this conceptual photographer’s spellbinding new exhibition. The show, Wall’s first at this Chelsea gallery since ending a 25-year run with the rival dealer Marian Goodman, feels decidedly introspective. Figures alone in contemplative trances, or alienated from their partners in scenes of evident tension, define most of the works. The encyclopedic visual literacy that has long characterized Wall’s pictures (with their compositional echoes of old master paintings) has been pared back, allowing more psychological complexity to emerge. Just as new is an emphasis on narrative and sequence; among the pieces are two diptychs and an enveloping, cinematic triptych. (Karen Rosenberg)
212-741-1717, gagosian.com

Last Chance

‘MAYBE MAYBE NOT: CHRISTOPHER WOOL AND THE HILL COLLECTION’ at the Hill Art Foundation (through June 28). This foundation’s inaugural show presents more than a dozen paintings, works on paper and photographs by Wool, the painter who wrenched abstraction into the No Wave era. In a stenciled painting from 1989, the drippy black letters of the word “SPOKESMAN” are arranged three by three, filling the white aluminum background with the same deductive logic as Frank Stella’s early stripes. After making layered, silk-screened floral patterns in the 1990s, Wool became more gestural; three extraordinary paintings here from the 2000s, with cloudy spray-gun loop-de-loops and merciless erasures, exhibit a simultaneous love and doubt of abstraction that recalls the best of Albert Oehlen. His enthrallingly difficult later silk screens cannibalize his own archive, discordantly remixing earlier works and treating paint as both material and information. (Farago)
212-337-4455, hillartfoundation.org

‘THE SELF-PORTRAIT, FROM SCHIELE TO BECKMANN’ at the Neue Galerie (through June 24). Self-portraiture can seem pretty narrow. But the 70-odd works in this exhibition, which run from a handful of delightfully exact Rembrandt etchings to Felix Nussbaum’s searing 1940 painting “Self-Portrait in the Camp,” ably demonstrate the genre’s universal scope: It’s a consciously constructed illusion of spontaneous self-revelation, a sincere put-on. And as such it’s a peek beneath the hood of art in general. (Will Heinrich)
212-994-9493, neuegalerie.org

‘THE WORLD BETWEEN EMPIRES: ART AND IDENTITY IN THE ANCIENT MIDDLE EAST’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through June 23). The Met excels at epic-scale archaeological exhibitions, and this is a prime example. It brings together work made between 100 B.C. and A.D. 250 in what we now know as Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. In the ancient world, all were in the sphere of two competing superpowers — Rome to the west and Parthia to the east — and though imperial influence was strong, it was far from all-determining. Each of the subject territories selectively grafted it onto local traditions to create distinctive new grass-roots cultural blends. Equally important, the show addresses the fate of art from the past in a politically fraught present. (Cotter)
212-535-7710, metmuseum.org

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