9 Art Events to Attend in New York City This Week

TUESDAY, MARCH 27

Talk: “Japanese Incarceration: Public Memory, Part 1” at International Center of Photography
This talk, the first half of a two-part event, focuses on the legacy of Japanese incarceration during World War II and how it relates to contemporary artists, scholars, poets, and photographers. Part I will feature a reading from poet Kimiko Hahn and a conversation between poet Christine Kitano and photographer Kevin Miyazaki. Tom Ikeda, executive director of Densho, a non-profit that preserves and shares oral histories related to the internment camps, will moderate the discussion. Part II—with a lineup featuring Julian Saporiti, Erin Aoyama, Brandon Shimoda, Paul Kitagaki, and Bob Lee—follows on March 28.
International Center of Photography Museum, 250 Bowery, 6:30–8 p.m.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28

Talk: “Talking About David Antin” at Artists Space
David Antin, who died in 2016, was a poet, curator, and art historian fascinated by the malleability of language. (His writings appeared in many publications, including ARTnews.) Antin is best known for his “talk poems,” live improvisations inspired by the writings of Gertrude Stein that resulted in the creation of new literary and poetic texts. In conjunction with a series of talks, performances, and workshops in New York and L.A. called “While I was also listening to NY & LA,” “Talking About David Antin” pays homage to the artist’s inventive and multifaceted body of work. The conversation will include his wife, the artist Eleanor Antin, as well as poet and essayist Charles Bernstein and artists Julien Bismuth and Ellen Zweig.
Artists Space, 55 Walker Street, 7:30 p.m. Tickets $5

THURSDAY, MARCH 29

Opening: Cary Leibowitz at Invisible-Exports
Cary Leibowitz’s exhibition of new paintings, ceramics, and photo-collages pay homage to the English actress Joan Collins. In 2016, at a Los Angeles auction, he bought a desk that once belonged to Collins and found upon its delivery that the drawers were stuffed with her personal belongings. This exhibition, “I Need to Grow Up And Be Taken Seriously Said the Clown At the Urinal,” is entirely about Collins, and it will feature some of Leibowitz’s classic, mordantly witty text paintings.
Invisible-Exports, 89 Eldridge Street, 6–8 p.m.

Opening: Hank Willis Thomas at Jack Shainman Gallery
In “What We Ask Is Simple,” his largest gallery show to date, Hank Willis Thomas draws on a range of techniques, including silvering, screen printing, and 3-D image capture, and in the process alludes to photography’s roots. The timely show threads together recent protest movements with historical, archival images from movements in Africa, Europe, and America. As the viewer moves around the space, different vantage points activate the works in new ways, serving as a reminder that each image is subjective and variable.
Jack Shainman Gallery, 513 West 20th Street and 524 West 24th Street, 6–8 p.m.

Opening: “You Are Who You Think I Think You Are” at American Medium
The show’s title, an inversion of C. H. Cooley’s quote “I am who I think you think I am,” finds its roots in his theory of the “looking glass self,” according to a release. Paintings and drawings by Peter Böhnisch, Maren Karlson, Brian Kokoska, Koak​, ​Jonny Negron, ​Gladys Nilsson​,​ Kenny Rivero, and Geetha Thurairajah demonstrate Cooley’s theory, which holds that the perception of identity is a result of learning to see ourselves as others might. Making use of the aesthetics of caricature and cartooning to expand on notions of the self, the eight artists featured here underscore the idea that lived experiences and senses of identity define the ways we lead our lives.
American Medium, 515 West 20th Street, #3N, 6–9 p.m.

Talk: Odili Donald Odita and David Reed at National Academy of Design
This installment of the “Salon” talks series at the National Academy of Design convenes Odili Donald Odita and David Reed. The two artists will talk about abstract approaches to form, composition, and, most importantly, coloration. Both Reed and Odita have become known for the hues of their canvases—the former for his smeary blues and greens, and the latter for his prismatic paintings featuring what appear to be spectrums. In addition, both painters will address their influences and the ways their work is related to larger art-historical movements.
National Academy of Design, 5 East 89th Street, 6:30–8:30 p.m.

FRIDAY, MARCH 30

Talk: “On Black Performance” at School of Visual Arts
The artist Pope.L once said there is “no other ontology than the stage, staging, and being staged.” With this quote in mind, the School of Visual Arts is bringing together three artists (NIC Kay, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, and Will Rawls) and a curator (Nana Adusei-Poku) to discuss the idea of blackness as a performance, in both the art world and outside it. Topics to be considered include how black performance artists can think about being hyper-visible to an audience and ways that this type of work draws on a history of black bodies being treated as spectacles.
School of Visual Arts, 132 West 21st Street, 10th Floor, 7–9 p.m.

SATURDAY, MARCH 31

Exhibition: Adrian Piper at Museum of Modern Art
For more than five decades, the artist Adrian Piper has taken a headstrong approach to conceptualism that has been focused on identity and its complexities. This retrospective—a collaboration between the artist, MoMA, and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles—is Piper’s most comprehensive show yet; it will take over the museum’s sixth floor and the Marron Atrium. Some 290 works will be featured, running the gamut from drawing, painting, and photography to video, performance, and installation art. Highlights include the artist’s text-based works My Calling (Card) #1 and My Calling (Card) #2 (1986), which take the form of small business cards and serve as interrogation of the viewer’s own potential racist or sexist biases, and The Mythic Being, which started as a series of ads in the Village Voice and attempt to synthesize the artist’s male alter ego with details from her own personal narrative.
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.

Opening: Martin Roth at Yours Mine & Ours
Since November 2017, the Austrian-born, New-York based artist Martin Roth has been visiting the home of Las Vegas Strip shooter Stephen Paddock with the intention of studying his garden. During this research, Roth found what he calls an “outlier” on the shooter’s property: one single saltbush known as Atriplex Hymenelytra, or the desert holly, growing out of Paddock’s gravel-strewn garden. The artist then launched a Kickstarter campaign to help raise the funds to create an immersive installation revolving around this plant. “By giving agency to plants and by viewing them as collaborators, I hope to raise questions about how we cope with violence. I don’t believe in a hierarchy of humans, animals, and plantlife, and with my work, I hope to show how plants can change us—and affect change,” Roth said in a statement promoting his Kickstarter campaign, which was successfully funded. The installation has now been realized and will debut in this exhibition.
Yours Mine & Ours, 54 Eldridge Street, 6–8 p.m.