9 Art Events to Attend in New York City This Week

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17

Talk: “Authority, Appropriation, and the Democratic Imagination” at Museum of Modern Art
Which artists are allowed to lay claim to what material? It’s a complex question, and one that will be explored on this panel about appropriation and power structures. Moderated by the Museum of Modern Art’s director, Glenn Lowry, the panel will include critic Homi K. Bhabha, Social Science Research Council President Alondra Nelson, and philosopher Charles M. Taylor. They will discuss authority, how it’s arbitrated, and its effects on power.
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, 6:30 p.m. Tickets $10

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19

Exhibition: Mary Kelly at Mitchell-Innes & Nash
Mary Kelly’s long career has been somewhat under the radar in the United States, but in recent years, that’s begun to change. Last year, she started being represented by Mitchell-Innes & Nash; this week, she will have her first show there. It will feature a series of works Kelly made using the lint that collects on dryer screens—a residue that she likens to memory forming in the collective conscience. Alongside these new works, the show, titled “The Practical Past,” will feature illustrations and covers that the British Conceptualist pioneer made for the feminist publication 7 Days, to which she regularly contributed over the course of its short run, from 1971 to 1972.
Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 534 West 26th Street, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

Opening: Lee Mullican at James Cohan Gallery
Merging abstraction and representation, Lee Mullican’s works draw inspiration from his time as a topographer during World War II. In 1953, the artist wrote, “I am concerned with the essence of nature; its behavior, its contour and exploitation, as in the discovery of a new planet with its phases of light, growth, weather…” His paintings and works on paper often allude to nature and animals. But Mullican was a formalist, too, and the pieces from the 1960s that will be on view in this exhibition showcase his experimentation with lines, shapes, and color palettes.
James Cohan Gallery, 533 West 26th Street, 6–8 p.m.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20

Exhibition: Toyin Ojih Odutola at Whitney Museum
Toyin Ojih Odutola, who was born in Nigeria and grew up in Alabama, creates drawings and paintings that explore themes related to race as a sociopolitical construct. Often this will take the form of life-sized depictions of multicolored human figures, each rendered in rich pastels and charcoal. They call attention to her subjects’ skin, which often appears to be wavy or ridged. For her first solo museum exhibition in New York, Ojih Odutola has created a series of fictional portraits depicting two well-to-do Nigerian families. These will be presented alongside a selection of work she made in the last year.
Whitney Museum, 99 Gansevoort Street, 10:30 a.m.–10 p.m.

Exhibition: Hirsohi Sugimoto at Japan Society
In 16th-century Japan, four boys who had converted to Catholicism made an epic pilgrimage to the papal courts in Europe. Intrigued by the otherwise undocumented journey these young men took, artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, equipped with his camera, retraced their steps. For this exhibition, which marks the Japan Society’s 110th anniversary, Sugimoto will display the photographs he took of the sites the boys had visited in an attempt to “share the same memory,” he has said. These photographs will be accompanied by a grouping of 16th-century works from Japanese and American collections.
Japan Society, 333 West 47th Street, 12–9 p.m.

Conference: The Brooklyn Conference at Brooklyn Museum
In these politically fraught times, when many are calling for art and social justice to intersect more regularly, the Brooklyn Museum will host a multi-day event toward that end titled the Brooklyn Conference, which bears the subtitle Inspiring Social Change. The conference kicks off this Friday with a preview of the museum’s Judy Chicago exhibition and is followed by two days of talks, with artists, writers, and filmmakers joining forces with local leaders, activists, elected officials, and the public to explore art and politics in a series of lectures, panel discussions, and performances. Among the confirmed speakers are New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Tania Bruguera, Claudia Rankine, Charles Blow, and members of the Laundromat Project and Black Thought, among others.
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, 5–8 p.m. Ticket prices vary; consult Brooklyn Museum website for details

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21

Opening: Emma Amos at Ryan Lee
Ryan Lee in this show surveys the art of Emma Amos, an artist and educator known for her vivid figurative works that explore issues of African American identity and narrative, often through the lens of both art history and popular culture. There’s recently been a renewed interest in Amos’s work, which appeared in the Brooklyn Museum’s “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965–85” show; this is her first solo exhibition since that show opened. Classic paintings by the former Spiral group artist, including 1994’s Tightrope, which shows Amos clad in a Wonder Women suit and a black robe, will be shown alongside newer pieces.
Ryan Lee, 515 West 26th Street, 2-4 p.m.

Opening: Kenny Scharf at Jeffrey Deitch
The legacy of early 1980s New York art continues to resonate. Timed with the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition on the legendary performance space Club 57, venue regular Kenny Scarf will premiere a new series of “sloppy style” paintings, according to the artist’s own terminology, at Jeffrey Deitch’s SoHo space. The new works find Scarf cutting his pop-graffiti imagery with a drippy, abstract looseness.
Jeffrey Deitch, 18 Wooster Street, 6–8 p.m.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 22

Exhibition: Carolee Schneemann at MoMA PS1
Despite worldwide acclaim, Carolee Schneemann is only just now receiving her first major retrospective with this show, titled “Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting,” which traveled from the Museum der Moderne Salzburg in Austria. Over the past six decades, Schneemann has tried her hand at just about every medium, from painting to assemblage to experimental film and even theater pieces. Performance has always been of interest to her, and she has often used to it to explore the roles of women in society. Most recently, Schneemann has started creating large-scale multimedia installations. One of which, Flange 6rpm (2013), includes motorized sculptures and a silent video that suggests flames or an explosion.
MoMA PS1, 22-55 Jackson Avenue, Queens, 12–6 p.m.