9 Art Events to Attend in New York City This Week

TUESDAY, JANUARY 30

Talk: Eva Díaz at Guggenheim Museum
In this lecture titled “Copies Have More Fun,” Pratt Institute art history professor Eva Díaz will address Josef Albers’s work from Mexico, which is currently the subject of a Guggenheim Museum exhibition. Of particular interest will be Jill Magid’s recent discovery that the architect Luis Barragán had on view in his home two replicas of works by Albers. They were abstractions, like many of his paintings, and they dealt with perception. Here, Díaz will discuss why Albers might have allowed—and even encouraged—his admirers to create copies.
Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Avenue, 6:30 p.m. Tickets $10/$15

Concert: David Virelles at Jazz Standard
On Gnosis, the full-length album on ECM Records from Cuban-born pianist David Virelles in collaboration with the drummer Román Díaz and the Nosotros Ensemble, traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms are cut with more dissonant musical gestures informed by contemporary improv and classical music. The end result marks a new chapter in the rich history of music stemming from the artist’s home country and its related communities in cities including New York. Various parties involved in the making of the record will be present for this two-day run at the Flatiron venue known as the Jazz Standard, connected to the barbecue purveyor Blue Smoke.
Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, 7:30 p.m. Tickets $25

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31

Talk: “Art and Equity” at Barnard College
At this event, Toyin Ojih Odutola—whose solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum is on view through February 25—will be in conversation with South African artist Mary Sibande, who will discuss questions related to aesthetics, gender, race, justice, and the political role that artists can play. Both Ojih Odutola and Sibande examine the role of race in their work, and the discussion will be moderated by Kellie Jones, a MacArthur fellow and professor of art history at Columbia University. The talk is one of the inaugural events held by the Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity, a program aimed at dismantling racism in the U.S. and South Africa.
Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, 6 p.m.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2

Opening: Jory Rabinovitz at Martos Gallery
Tabby concrete is an uncommon material created by burning oyster shells down into lime. It features prominently in Jory Rabinovitz’s new show of sculptures, one of which is an oyster shell made with the special type of concrete. The shell is filled with, among other things, a copper-cast head of Abraham Lincoln and feet from the Statue of Liberty, with the metal sourced from American pennies and the artist’s old sculptures. After the exhibition’s conclusion, the sculptures will be donated to the Billion Oyster Project and placed in bays around New York City, where the copper will fend off predators and the tabby concrete will provide housing, in turn aiding in the restoration of oyster life in the city’s harbors and also functioning as a natural filtration system.
Martos Gallery, 41 Elizabeth Street, 6–8 p.m.

Book Launch: Trap Door at New Museum
To celebrate the release of Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, an anthology edited by Reina Gossett, Eric A. Stanley, and Johanna Burton, the New Museum will host a conversation with some of the book’s contributors. On the heels of “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon,” the book—published by the New Museum and the MIT Press—explores trans identity in art and pop culture, particularly as it relates to activism, performance, and police brutality. Writer Che Gossett, activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, artist and poet Juliana Huxtable, and journalist Toshio Meronek will talk at this event.
New Museum, 235 Bowery, 7 p.m. Tickets $10/$15

Screening: Peggy Ahwesh and Chick Strand at Metrograph
In the midst of the #MeToo movement, which has placed an emphasis on women coming forward with their own stories, Metrograph’s series “Tell Me: Women Filmmakers, Women’s Stories” could not be more timely. Loosely speaking, the films chosen focus on giving women a space to talk, and it kicks off with this screening of works by Peggy Ahwesh and Chick Strand. Soft Fiction, Strand’s 1979 film, depicts women performing what she once called an “an exorcism of [an] experience,” or something that allows her subjects to work through trauma while also getting in touch with erotic fantasies. It will be screened with Ahwesh’s 1985 work From Romance to Ritual.
Metrograph, 13 Ludlow Street, 7 p.m. Tickets $15

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3

Exhibition: Tania Bruguera at Museum of Modern Art
Cuban artist Tania Bruguera’s Untitled (Havana, 2000), a live performance and video installation conceived for the Havana Biennial in 2000, will go on show this weekend at MoMA. Originally, the work was staged in a former military fortress used as a jail and a site of torture and execution during the Cuban Revolution. The installation consists of a long tunnel whose floor is covered in decomposing sugarcane. Through the darkness shines a faint light at the end of the tunnel: a television showing footage of Fidel Castro. The first of Bruguera’s works to be acquired by MoMA, it will be presented as a part of “Citizens and Borders,” a series that presents perspectives on migration, territory, and displacement.
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.

Concert: “Julius Eastman: Macle, Trumpet, Joan d’Arc” at the Kitchen
The composer and performer Julius Eastman died at the age of 49, but not without leaving a formative catalogue of scores and recordings in his wake. For the final event of an interdisciplinary series celebrating the life and work of the artist, the Kitchen presents a night of four Eastman pieces executed by an all-star roster of ensembles and soloists. Included in the program is the modern premiere of the recovered Eastman work Trumpet, recently transcribed by Christopher McIntrye and performed by TILT Brass. There will also be a pre-concert talk, accessible to ticket holders, that features Mary Jane Leach, the co-editor of Gay Guerrilla, a 2015 book on Eastman.
The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, 8 p.m. Tickets $20/$25

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 4

Screening: Shaft at Brooklyn Academy of Music
To celebrate the release of the film Black Panther, BAM’s “Fight the Power: Black Superheroes on Film” series is offering a range of films about African-American role models, many of whom have superpowers. The series highlights heroes who challenged inherent power structures both on- and off-screen, subverting the conventions of the traditional film industry. Shaft, the 1971 blaxploitation crime film, features private eye John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) as he goes up against the white mafia to track down the kidnapped daughter of a Harlem crime kingpin. Critic Nelson George will introduce the film.
Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Avenue, 7 p.m.