COURTESY THE KITCHEN
MONDAY, APRIL 4
Lecture: Huey Copland at Guggenheim Museum
In Sun Ra’s film Space Is the Place (1974), a black prophet comes to earth and goes on a mission to re-settle African-Americans in outer space. Though its low-budget special effects are campy, its message is serious: black Americans are quite literally alienated. Ra’s Afrofuturist film was massively influential for the way it introduced science fiction as a method for confronting racial inequities in America, and in this talk (this year’s Robert Rosenblum Lecture), art historian Huey Copeland will discuss how Ra’s visual language has been incorporated into work by Edgar Arceneaux, Glenn Ligon, and Mai-Thu Perret, among others. Specifically, Copeland will focus on how Ra changed the way black artists made sense of time in their work. (At this time of writing, the event is sold out, but there will be a standby line.) —Alex Greenberger
Guggenheim Museum, 1081 Fifth Avenue, 6:30 p.m. Free
TUESDAY, APRIL 5
COURTESY METROGRAPH
Screening: Sidewalk Stories at Metrograph
Sidewalk Stories is a remake of Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid, the classic story of a vagrant who discovers purpose in life after taking care of an orphaned toddler. In this version—which, like the original, is shot in black and white and is silent—the topic is modern-day homelessness in New York. Made in collaboration with Henry Street Settlement, a neighborhood nonprofit that works to enhance the lives of Lower East Side residents through the arts, social services, and healthcare programs, the film is, according to a press release, “serious without being condescending, a work of social advocacy and touching humor.” Director Charles Lane will be present for a Q&A moderated by David Garza, executive director of Henry Street Settlement.
Metrograph, 7 Ludlow Street, 7 p.m. Tickets $15
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6
Talk: Betty Tompkins and Alison M. Gingeras at FLAG Art Foundation
In honor of Betty Tompkins’s current show at FLAG, “WOMEN: Words, Phrases, and Stories,” the artist will give a talk along with curator and writer Alison M. Gingeras, who organized the show “Black Sheep Feminism: The Art of Sexual Politics” on view now at Dallas Contemporary.
FLAG Art Foundation, 545 West 25th Street, 9th Floor, 6–8 p.m. RSVP to rsvp@flagartfoundation.org
Performance: Joan Jonas at the Kitchen
Joan Jonas will perform They Come to Us without a Word II, a work originally created to accompany her exhibition for the U.S. Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale last year. The pioneering video and performance artist will share the stage with her longtime collaborator, the jazz composer Jason Moran, as well as several performers featured in the Venice edition. The performance will also include re-edited video footage from Jonas’s Venice Biennale show that, according to a press release, “is evocative of the fragility of nature in a rapidly changing situation.”
The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, 8 p.m. Tickets $20.
THURSDAY, APRIL 7
COURTESY FLOWERS GALLERY
Opening: Nadav Kander at Flowers Gallery
Tel Aviv–born, London-based photographer Nadav Kander will present “Dust,” a show that explores the aesthetics of destruction while shedding light on the state of two now-radioactive secret cities on the border of Kazakhstan and Russia. The cities Priozersk and Kurchatov, stricken from official maps until they were discovered by Google Earth, were once given over to the Soviet Union for atomic and other weapons of mass destruction during the Cold War. Falsely reported as uninhabited, the effects of radiation and pollution on the citizens and ecosystems of these cities and the surrounding areas were devastating. According to Kander, the photos presented in show depict “empty landscapes of invisible dangers.”
Flowers Gallery, 529 West 20th Street, 6–8 p.m.
Opening: Cory Arcangel at Team Gallery
After five years, Team Gallery is closing its 47 Wooster Street space, but they won’t be doing it quietly. Cory Arcangel has the honors of doing the Wooster Street location’s grand finale, and it will be a big, loud one, indeed. (There won’t be an opening, however, or a press release.) For show’s run, Arcangel is going to blast the drum intro to Run DMC’s “Sucker MCs” throughout the space on PA speakers. Arcangel keeps working on his interest in music and technology of years here, and he’s going to focus on the idea of nostalgia as a never-ending party, literally—the sound of the drum intro will keep playing, all day, every day, through the end of the month. —Alex Greenberger
Team Gallery, 47 Wooster Street, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
COURTESY THE ARTIST
Performance: “Cheryl Donegan: ‘Extra Layer’ Fashion Show” at the New Museum
To close Cheryl Donegan’s four-month residency and show at the New Museum (“Cheryl Donegan: Scenes + Commercials”), the artist will present “Extra Layer,” her self-designed collection of outerwear commissioned by the museum. Donegan, whose work primarily concerns the consumption and production of items created by mass culture, middling design, and art history, worked with Print All Over Me to conceive the collection and used her own accessories to style each look. A press release adds, “The collection will nod to the deconstructed forms of visionary fashion designer Martin Margiela, particularly his humble tuxedo T-shirt.”
New Museum, 235 Bowery, 7 p.m. Tickets $15/10
SUNDAY, APRIL 10
Opening: Jessi Reaves at Bridget Donahue
Jessi Reaves’s sculptures are reminiscent of upscale design objects gone awry. She’ll cover couches in packing materials or remake chairs with fleece coverings, making them no longer functional and, in some cases, barely recognizable. With this new show, her first with Bridget Donahue, Reaves continues her mysterious, beautiful, and vaguely post-apocalyptic vision. No longer of use to upper-middle-class owners, the furniture takes on a new life, and almost surely not the one it was meant to have.
Bridget Donahue, 99 Bowery, 2nd Floor, 6–8 p.m.
COURTESY ON STELLAR RAYS
Opening: John Houck at On Stellar Rays
At first, John Houck’s photographs look like simple still lifes—painting materials laid on top of colored sheets of paper. Look closer, and you come to realize that objects have been doubled, creating subtle visual stutters. Houck’s rigorous, academic images are about the process of re-photography and how an object can become unstable when put in front of a camera. Following up on his work included in the Museum of Modern Art’s show “Ocean of Images,” this show, titled “Playing and Reality,” and the first in On Stellar Rays’s renovated ground-floor space, wonders whether it’s possible to separate artistic mediums. If paint gets photographed, is it still painting, or does it become something between painting and photography? —Alex Greenberger
On Stellar Rays, 213 Bowery, 6–8 p.m.