9 Art Events to Attend in New York City This Week

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26

Talk: Aruna D’Souza at the 8th Floor
The International Association of Art Critics (AICA-USA) has selected Aruna D’Souza to deliver its annual Distinguished Critic Lecture, which will this year feature the art historian and author of Whitewalling: Art, Race & Protest in 3 Acts discussing how best to write criticism that acknowledges America’s history of racism. What might writing about art that properly grapples with Black Lives Matter, #SayHerName, and decolonizing cultural institutions look like? D’Souza, who previously discussed some of these themes in an edition of “The ARTnews Accord,” will offer some answers in her lecture.
The 8th Floor, 17 W 17th Street, 6:30–8 p.m. Free with R.S.V.P.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27

Opening: Carmen Argote at Ballon Rouge Collective
After touring South America, Europe, and the U.S., the itinerant gallery Ballon Rouge Collective will come this week to New York, where it will host a solo exhibition by the Los Angeles–based artist Carmen Argote. For the show, Argote, who was in this year’s edition of the Made in L.A. biennial at the Hammer Museum, has produced a new work, Warm is a Black, a site-responsive piece based on time the artist has spent in Harlem. The installation will consist of sculptures made from wooden tortilla presses and adorned with products, some of which are native to pre-colonial Latin America, like insect dye and muslin cloth.
Ballon Rouge Collective, 345 East 104th Street, 6–9 p.m.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28

Opening: Jane Kaplowitz at Fortnight Institute
Curator Alison M. Gingeras has titled this show “RSVP Jane Rosenblum” in reference to artist Jane Kaplowitz’s marriage to the late art historian and curator Robert Rosenblum. Included in the Kaplowitz survey are around 40 of the artist’s works on paper and paintings. For many of her pieces, Kaplowitz recycled fancy invitations to art-world events by writing or drawing on them—so that they function as critiques of power and rituals taken up by gallerists, artists, historians, and curators. Fittingly, Kaplowitz has termed herself a “super fan girl of the art world.”
Fortnight Institute, 60 East 4th Street, 6–8 p.m.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29

Opening: Jennifer Packer at Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
Following a solo outing at the Renaissance Society in Chicago and an appearance last year in the Studio Museum in Harlem show “Regarding the Figure,” Jennifer Packer will have her second New York exhibition. The artist is best known for her figural works, for which friends and family members are often the subjects. These paintings explore representations of the body and engage the idea of the white male gaze. Packer also creates meditative still life florals, through which she conveys ideas about grief, trauma, and healing.
Sikkema Jenkins & Co., 530 West 22nd Street, 6–8 p.m.

Opening: Eileen Myles at Bridget Donahue
To complement Evolution, a new book of poetry, Eileen Myles produced a series of photographs that focus on the everyday, with subjects including partially licked ice cream cones, absinthe cocktails, and dogs. For Myles, this kind of photography shares similarities with writing. “I write poems, I write about art & these photos I take I think are a similar kind of gathering—truncated places with words & writing that just trace a buzzing passage on Earth,” Myles writes in a statement about the show. As part of the show’s opening, Bridget Donahue gallery will host a performance by the poet Precious Okoyomon.
Bridget Donahue, 99 Bowery, 6–9 p.m.

Concert: John Zorn at Guggenheim Museum
Composer John Zorn will present new music responding to the work of Hilma af Klint, the subject of a exhibition now on view at the Guggenheim Museum. Af Klint originally created many of the works in the museum’s survey for a spiritualist temple, and Zorn will offer his artistic own contributions intended to conjure that space. After the concert, which will take place in the museum’s rotunda, audience members are invited to a private, after-hours viewing of the show. Though tickets are currently sold out, standby tickets will be available on a first-come, first serve basis beginning at 6:55 p.m. on the night of the performance.
Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Avenue, 7 p.m. Tickets $20/$25/$30

Talk: Hal Foster and Richard Serra at 192 Books
Artist Richard Serra and art historian Hal Foster will discuss their recently released book Conversations about Sculpture, a volume including conversations between the two over 15 years. Their exchanges zero in on sources of inspiration for Serra’s work and include musings on the history of sculpture as an artistic medium. Among the subjects touched upon are Machu Picchu, Serra’s early experiences working in a steel mill, Donatello, and the work of Constantin Brancusi.
192 Books, 192 10th Avenue, 7 p.m.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30

Talk: “Becoming Queer” at Whitney Museum
As part of the Whitney’s current Andy Warhol retrospective, this conversation between the historians Trevor Fairbrother and Nina Schleif will focus on artworks created by Warhol during his time as a commercial artist in the 1950s, many of them featuring explicitly homoerotic subject matter. Following the discussion will be a screening of Jerett Robert Austin’s Camille (1953), a seminal work of queer camp cinema that takes the form of a remake of the George Cukor film based on Alexandre Dumas’s tale of a 19th-century French courtesan.
Whitney Museum, 99 Gansevoort Street, 6:30 p.m. Tickets $10/$12

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1

Talk: “Stonewall Is Not Here Yet” at New Museum
This panel discussion focuses on the past, present, and future of queer action in tandem with the annual Day Without Art, for which institutions around the world devote their programming to showcases for AIDS awareness, and the New Museum’s current exhibition of MOTHA and Chris E. Vargas. The talk is organized by Vargas (who is the founder of the Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art) and the artist Sharon Hayes, and brings together an eclectic list of artists, lawyers, poets and activists including Janani Balasubramanian, Eduardo Restrepo Castaño, Joan Gibbs, and Río Sofia. It will focus on Stonewall’s legacy and potential as a conceptual incubator for future activism.
New Museum, 235 Bowery, 3 p.m. Free with museum admission