COURTESY ARTISTS SPACE
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28
Talk: Laura Poitras at the New York Film Festival
Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras, joined by collaborators Charlotte Cook and AJ Schnack, will discuss her new documentary initiative Field of Vision, a spin-off from her digital editorial venture, The Intercept. The website she created with Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill featured Watching the Watchers, Trevor Paglen’s series of high-contrast nighttime photographs of U.S. intelligence agencies. Poitras will also touch on her company’s plans for a new documentary series.
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Film Center Amphitheater, 144 West 65th Street, 7 p.m. The event is free.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29
Opening: “Drawings and Prints: Selections from the Permanent Collection” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Domenichino, Mariano Fortuny, Frank Lobdell, Thomas Nozkowski, John Singer Sargent, Richard Tuttle, and James Siena are among the artists featured in this show of extremely photosensitive prints, drawings, and illustrated books dating from the Renaissance to the present day. Due to their sensitivity to light, these works are never found in the museum’s permanent exhibition, and include works that would ordinarily slip through the curatorial cracks in major exhibitions, as well as recently acquired pieces.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery, 1000 Fifth Avenue, 10:00 a.m.—5:30 p.m.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30
Opening: “641: Food in Print” at Pioneer Works
“641: Food in Print is a wide examination of food publishing. The title of the show comes from the classification for Food and Drink in the Dewey Decimal library classification system. A criticism of the system, which was created in 1876, is that its categories are too broad, and difficult to expand with the future. We take this broad categorization as a strength, not a weakness–to be inclusive rather than exclusive.”
This show combines the ethos of two unequal forces in contemporary culture: independent publishing and images of food in media. Turning away from the mega-watt, reality-cooking-show approach to food so prevalent in popular culture, this exhibition celebrates the “slower,” more niche presentations often found in zines. Ray Cha, the show’s curator as well as co-creator of the queer nerd zine, FAQNP, and managing editor of Queer Zines, sourced many of these images from people he met and food zines he encountered at the New York Art Book Fair one year.
Pioneer Works, 159 Pioneer St, Brooklyn, 6—8 p.m.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1
Opening: Rashid Johnson at The Drawing Center
Rashid Johnson now becomes the third “Forever Now” painter, after Mark Grotjahn and Josh Smith, to have a New York solo show this fall with this exhibition at The Drawing Center. Viewers who saw Johnson’s “Cosmic Slop” paintings at MoMA this year can expect more dark, abstract images, this time done in the form of portraits that make use of black soap and wax. Here, the color black is used very literally to reflect on the condition of Americans, and if the fact that these are portraits called “Anxious Men” is any hint, Johnson isn’t happy with what he sees. Johnson turns the gallery into an environment with wallpaper featuring a photograph of his father and a soundscape featuring the Melvin van Peebles song “Love, That’s America,” initially made for the 1970 film Watermelon Man and later appropriated by Occupy Wall Street.
The Drawing Center, 35 Wooster Street, 6–8 p.m.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND WHITEBOX, NEW YORK
Panel: “Intimate Transgressions: The Act of Doing” at the Brooklyn Museum
Held in honor of a show of the same name at WhiteBox, in the Lower East Side, this panel focuses on the intersection of art and activism, particularly with respect to calling attention to war, sexual violence, and genocide. Panelists will include Eleanor Heartney, who has written for ARTnews and Art in America; Luisa Valenzuela, an experimental, Argentina-born writer who approaches dictatorships through the lens of feminism; and Shirin Neshat, an Iranian artist who recently had a major show at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Artist Anita Glesta and WhiteBox’s Raul Zamudio and Juan Puntes will respond.
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, 7 p.m., free with museum admission
Opening: “Berlin Metropolis: 1918-1933” at Neue Galerie Museum for German and Austrian Art
This broad-ranging show focuses exclusively on Weimar-era Berlin, featuring 300 works of painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, photography, architecture, film, and fashion, organized into one of five themes: The Birth of the Republic, A New Utopia, The “Neue Frau,” or New Woman, The Crisis of Modernity, and Into the Abyss. Each theme reflects a stage of the city’s zeitgeist following World War I, beginning with political dominance and ending with political confrontation. Highlights of the show include works by Herbert Bayer, Hannah Hoch, Max Beckmann, Ludwig Meidner, George Grosz, Lily Reich, Raoul Hausmann, Rudolf Schlichter, John Heartfield, and Georg Scholz.
Neue Galerie Museum for German and Austrian Art, 1048 Fifth Avenue, 11 a.m.—6 p.m.
Discussion: “THE HARD CORPS: clubs, sex, activism, bodies” at La MaMa Galleria
This Visual Aids-approved event features panelists Julie Tolentino, Aldo Hernandez, and Tei Okamoto, moderated by Joshua Lubin-Levy. They will reflect on activist measures to organize sex-positive parties (Clit Club, Tattooed Love Child, Meat, and Pork, among others) for purposes of building nightlife community during the peak of the AIDS crisis in New York.
La MaMA Galleria, 47 Great Jones Street, 6—8 p.m. This event is free.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2
Talk: “How to be a wo(man)” at Artists Space Books and Talks
With its Greene Street exhibition space closed for the coming four months, Artists Space is channelling its energy into its talks for now, starting with “WE (Not I),” a series of readings, panels, and meetings about women in the art world. For “How to be a wo(man),” artists Judith Bernstein, Dara Birnbaum, and Joan Jonas will discuss the transformation of gender archetypes. Birnbaum most famously did this in the ’70s with her remixed and revised videos, while Jonas, whose work is currently on view at the United States Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, accomplished something similar using performance. Bernstein acclaimed show of paintings at Mary Boone caused Barbara Pollack to write in her review of the show, “It is the female character that is strongest, with the male a cowering wimp.”
Artists Space Books and Talks, 55 Walker Street, 7 p.m., $5 entrance donation
COURTESY NYFF
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4
Screening: Don’t Blink—Robert Frank at the New York Film Festival
The scope of Robert Frank’s 1958 book The Americans has led some critics to say that it changed the landscape of American photography forever. Frank’s black-and-white images, taken in major cities across the U.S., brought to light pieces of Americana that had never been captured before by documentary photographers. Even later in his career, Frank continued to change the game with his photomontages and films. Now, at age 90, Frank finally gets the documentary he deserves, courtesy of filmmaker Laura Israel. The screening, which is also the world premiere of the documentary, will be followed by a discussion between Israel and Frank. At this time of writing, tickets are sold out, but there will be a standby line.
Alice Tully Hall, 1941 Broadway, 3 p.m., $25/$20