COURTESY THE ARTIST
MONDAY, DECEMBER 5
Screening and Talk: “An Evening with Haile Gerima” at Museum of Modern Art
For many, Haile Gerima’s name will be unfamiliar, despite the fact that for the past few decades, he has been one of black cinema’s most important directors. This week, the Museum of Modern Art will show Gerima’s 1982 film Ashes and Embers, which won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Berlin Film Festival the following year. The film follows a Vietnam War veteran who, after returning home, must deal with racism in America. After the screening, Dessane Cassell, a joint curatorial fellow in MoMA’s film department and the Studio Museum in Harlem, will lead a Q&A with Gerima, who is currently a professor at Howard University.
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, 7 p.m. Tickets $8/$10/$12
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7
Opening: Aidan Koch at Picture Room
At the Whitney Museum’s “Dreamlands” show, Aidan Koch’s untitled 2015 animated film stands out because it’s completely silent. And unlike other works in the exhibition, Koch’s animation is pensive, quiet, and moody—a sombre look at how people and pictures change over time. With this show at the Picture Room, which is attached to the bookstore McNally Jackson, Koch will debut a series of sketches that she made in museums. Each work is one notebook page and features a group of images, as though it were taken from a book of tattoo inspirations. For Koch, these are not finished works—she may or may not return to them at a later date.
Picture Room, 236 Mulberry Street, 6–8 p.m.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8
©SAMUEL LEVI JONES/COURTESY GALERIE LELONG, NEW YORK
Opening: Samuel Levi Jones at Galerie Lelong
Rather than allude to history, like so many artists, Samuel Levi Jones erases it. In his paintings, Jones often exhibits damaged books, showing how, over time, their ideas get lost. For this show, his first with Galerie Lelong, Jones will focus on law books, as a way of talking about how, for many black Americans, their words have become virtually meaningless—courts and police officers have turned against them. On view here will be Burning all illusion (2016), a painting in which coverless encyclopedias are arranged in a grid.
Galerie Lelong, 528 West 26th Street, 6–8 p.m.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND 11R
Opening: Anna Glantz at 11R
Anna Glantz’s quaint-looking paintings take the figural impulse of many young artists right now and move it toward an emotional end. Her dreamy scenes find cats observing winter landscapes, thin hands caressing each other, and a man pondering his existence in front of a Marsden Hartley–esque background. This show, titled “Stones for Sandman,” will feature new paintings by the Queens-based artist, among them one work in which a striped cat returns the viewer’s stare.
11R, 195 Chrystie Street, 6–8 p.m.
Performance: Kameelah Janan Rasheed at the 8th Floor
Drawing on the writings of James Baldwin and others dealing with the “temporal politics of liberation,” as a release notes, Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s A More Convenient Season will be a combined lecture and performance. The New York–based artist typically deals with texts written by authors of color and the history of self-publishing in her work, and this new performance, developed from a piece published by Frieze, will similarly build on past essays about progress. She’ll look at the discrepancy between what we imagine has changed about American politics and what’s really happened—no doubt a topical idea with a new president soon to be in the White House.
The 8th Floor, 17 West 17th Street, 8th Floor, 6-8 p.m. RSVP to media@sdrubin.org
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9
Talk: LaToya Ruby Frazier and Carrie Mae Weems at the Greene Space
At this talk, Sarah Lewis, who guest edited Aperture‘s special issue about the black experience in America, Vision & Justice, will discuss visual literacy and race with photographers LaToya Ruby Frazier and Carrie Mae Weems. Both artists are known for their work that deals, albeit in very different ways, with images of blackness—Frazier does so in a photojournalistic way, while Weems often has a more conceptual take. Together, the artists and Lewis, who is currently a professor at Harvard University, will talk about being black when our conceptions of race and identity are changing so radically.
The Greene Space, 44 Charlton Street, 7–8:30 p.m. Tickets $15
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10
COURTESY THE ARTIST
Symposium: Open Score at New Museum
For its second edition of Open Score, the New Museum and Rhizome have shrunk the conference on art and technology just slightly, offering three panels over the course of the afternoon instead of four. Be that as it may, the conference’s lineup remains strong. The first talk of the day, moderated by Aria Dean, will be about blackness online, and will feature artists Manuel Arturo Abreu, Hannah Black, Devin Kenny, and Mendi + Keith Obadike. Following that will be a talk about art and artificial intelligence featuring artists Ian Cheng and Sondra Perry, and a panel about the internet and social infrastructures moderated by Grace Dunham.
New Museum, 235 Bowery, 1:30–6 p.m. Full-day tickets $25/$30; individual session tickets $10/$15
RYAN HARMAN
Talk: Betty Tompkins at Brooklyn Museum
There are few better people to talk about Marilyn Minter’s work than Betty Tompkins, the feminist artist whose work has seen critical acclaim in the past few years. Known best for her “Fuck Paintings,” Tompkin’s work, like Minter’s, tackles representations of women in mainstream media. (Tompkins’s interest is pornography; Minter’s is, generally speaking, fashion photography.) At this talk, which is part of the Brooklyn Museum’s “Artist’s Eye” series, Tompkins will discuss Minter’s current retrospective.
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, 2 p.m.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 11
Reading: “of poetry” at Participant Inc
As part of its current Eve Fowler show, Participant Inc is hosting a night of readings. Rather simply called “of poetry,” the event is organized by writer and visual artist Sophia Le Fraga, who is known for her experimental writing about language after the internet. The event has a strong lineup of readers: Fia Backstrom, Henry Burke, Cathy de la Cruz, Andrew Durbin, Jameson Fitzpatrick, Ariel Goldberg, Diana Hamilton, Rin Johnson, Shiv Kotecha, and, finally, Eileen Myles.
Participant Inc, 253 East Houston Street, 6–8 p.m.