COURTESY MOMA
MONDAY, MARCH 6
Screening and Talk: “An Evening with Suzan Pitt” at Museum of Modern Art
When David Lynch’s film Eraserhead hit the midnight-movie circuit for a second time, in 1979, Suzan Pitt’s animation Asparagus (1979) was programmed with it. Pitt’s film includes scenes that now feel like the stuff of paintings by Jamian Juliano-Villani and Cailtin Keogh: women suggestively licking vegetables and vomiting back out sheets of metal. On the occasion of several of Pitt’s surrealist animations being restored, MoMA will screen some of her films, including Pinball (2013), an abstract visual symphony set to an experimental score. Pitt, who resides in Los Angeles, Mexico, and a secluded cabin in Michigan, will be on hand to introduce the screening.
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, 7 p.m. Tickets $8/$10/$12
TUESDAY, MARCH 7
Lecture: Ben Lerner at Institute of Fine Arts
“Ekphrasis” is a word that will make most art history students shudder, but fear not—writer Ben Lerner will offer a crash course in how to properly describe artworks with a lecture titled “The Kiss of Media: Ekphrasis at the Edge of Fiction.” The talk will focus on the relationship between text and image, and how it’s possible to make verbal readings of art dramatic and interesting. Sound a little scholarly? Perhaps, but Lerner’s style is open and accessible, so this lecture should be too.
Institute of Fine Arts, 1 East 78th Street, 6 p.m.
Talk: Nick Mauss and Ken Okiishi at Dia Art Foundation
As part of Dia Art Foundation’s continuing series of artist talks related to artists in the collection or otherwise on show, Nick Mauss and Ken Okiishi will discuss Dia:Chelsea’s Hanne Darboven exhibition. Darboven is best known for her conceptually rigorous works that map numbers and images, often exploring how ideas travel in a society where almost nothing stays put. Mauss and Okiishi, both of whom are known for gestural painting made without using the traditional brush-on-canvas method, don’t make work too straightforwardly similar to Darboven, but their art does carry her sly sense of humor.
Dia Art Foundation, 535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor, 6:30 p.m. Tickets $8/$10
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND SWISS INSTITUTE
Talk: “A Skyscraper with No Windows: On 33 Thomas Street” at Swiss Institute
This panel will be devoted entirely to 33 Thomas Street, a brutalist skyscraper that has no windows and was at one point owned by AT&T. It’s the stuff of Blade Runner–like science-fiction, and sure enough, it appeared in the past season of the TV series Mr. Robot, in which characters plotted to explode the building. It also makes an appearance in a video in the Swiss Institute’s current Frank Heath show. On the occasion of that exhibition, architectural historian Addison Godel will talk about the building with Henrik Moltke, who exposed the building as an NSA surveillance hub, and Lucy Teitler, one of the writers of Mr. Robot.
Swiss Institute, 102 Franklin Street, 7 p.m.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8
Opening: Wong Kit Yi at P!
With news that the Trump administration will significantly cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget, Wong Kit Yi’s show at P! gallery seems timely. A sequel of sorts to the artist’s 2015 show at P!, this exhibition will include works related to Wong’s 2015 trip to the Arctic. Among the pieces on view will be a new 40-minute film that brings together found and original footage of glaciers melting, a manga character, and documentation of the 19th-century ice trade, all of which are displayed here in a sing-along karaoke format. The show will meditate on what it means to be truly frozen in time and whether anything can last forever.
P!, 334 Broome Street, 12–6 p.m.
Opening: “No Boundaries” at Marlborough Gallery
This group show focuses on 13 women sculptors: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Alice Aycock, Lynda Benglis, Deborah Butterfield, Petah Coyne, Lesley Dill, Louise Nevelson, Michele Oka Doner, Beverly Pepper, Judy Pfaff, Davina Semo, Kiki Smith, and Ursula von Rydingsvard. Though the title refers to these artists’ ability to dream up ideas that are unrestricted and entirely free, it also refers to the sprawling size of some of the works on view. Among the works here will be a sculpture from Abakanowicz’s “War Games” series, works made of huge pieces of wood shaped like clubs that seem to hover over metal prisms.
Marlborough Gallery, 40 West 57th Street, 6–8 p.m.
THURSDAY, MARCH 9
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND BRUCE SILVERSTEIN
Opening: Keith A. Smith at Bruce Silverstein
Keith A. Smith may be best known for his psychedelically illustrated and collaged books, but with this exhibition he’ll show an even smaller-format part of his oeuvre: postcards. Since 1965, when he was in college, Smith has made these 5-by-7-inch works, which he sees as being about communication. “Traditional prints can say some things, books can speak through movement, and postcards have their unique abilities to reach people as well,” Smith has said. “I don’t think of any of these as ‘art’ but as my voice.” This show is the first survey of Smith’s postcards, which take their cues from mail artist Ray Johnson.
Bruce Silverstein, 529 West 20th Street, 3rd Floor, 6–8 p.m.
Panel: “The Question of Quantum Feminism” at New Museum
Is the future truly female? As technologies continue to evolve and as more chatbots begin to sound like Siri, all signs point to “yes.” And so it is timely that the New Museum is hosting a panel called “The Question of Quantum Feminism,” which will explore the role that “bodies as sensory systems” will play in an increasingly digital future. Hosted in connection with the museum’s current A. K. Burns show, this talk will involve science and ethics, and combine principles from both fields of study with politics. Burns, Harry Dodge, Carolyn Lazard, Anicka Yi, and Constantina Zavitsanos will be on the panel.
New Museum, 235 Bowery, 7 p.m. Tickets $10/$15
SATURDAY, MARCH 11
Edit-a-Thon: Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon at Museum of Modern Art
For the fourth year in a row, MoMA will play host to the Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon, in which visitors are invited to create Wikipedia entries for women artists who previously never had one. But MoMA is just one of the many institutions having an edit-a-thon this year—many museums around the world, from MAXXI in Rome to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., will have similar events. At MoMA, in addition to the annual festivities, Kimberly Drew, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s social media manager, will host a panel about the truth and the internet with writer Joanne McNeil and Data & Society Research Institute fellow Zara Rahman.
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.