The Skinny on Art Events in New York:
Out with the old, in with the new. As the art world gears up for fall openings, a clutch of galleries and museums are closing the season out with a bevy of events to ease the transition.
One man's outmoded art collection is another man's treasure at Kraine Gallery's inaugural art-swap party. Family Business concludes its open-call public project and group show of readymades with a series of artist performances, while MoMA puts out word for its "Meta-Monumental Pre-Game Garage Sale" taking place next Thursday at the museum. In conjunction with Martha Rosler's first solo exhibition at the museum this November, MoMA is inviting donations, from beloved knickknacks to no-longer-used odds and ends.
With the switch to daylight savings time quickly approaching, savor some of summer's final warm evenings outside with a moonlight tour of Storm King's grounds and live modern beats en plein air at MoMA's Sculpture Garden, hosted after the rest of the museum has closed. Then head over to the Shirley, a shared studio and nonprofit exhibition space in Bushwick, to get ready for the season's long evenings with a group show on luminescence.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29TH
- Art Swap at Kraine Gallery, 85 East 4th Street, 9-11 p.m.
Sick of that artwork you snagged for a song that hangs so glumly on your wall? Seize the opportunity to trade it for another at Kraine Gallery's inaugural Art Swap Party. Cocktails will be on hand to boost your ability to appraise new works in exchange for a piece of your own. Kraine Gallery will supply wall space and nails, push pins, double-sided mounting tape, string and binder clips for the presentation.
- "Shock of the Best: How the Field Determines Quality," a talk at the American Folk Art Museum, 6 p.m., free
Join gallerist and writer Randall Morris in a discussion examining the ways in which artists working in the field of non-academic art come to be considered important, or even masters of their medium.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 30TH
- MoMA Nights with Janka Nabay and the Bubu Gang, MoMA's Sculpture Garden, 5:30 p.m. - 8 p.m., free with museum admission
Meander through MoMA's collection after hours while enjoying live music alongside hulking chunks of wrought metal in the museum's famed Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden (sets begin at 6:30 p.m.). Vocalist Janka Nabay will provide bubu beats—Sierra Leone's brand of electro—pop-along with the Bubu Gang, a bevy of Brooklyn musicians, Nabav will fill the garden with a mix of modern beats coupled with analog keyboards, call-and-response vocals, improvisation, and touches of 1970s psychedelia.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 31ST
- Closing day performances of iLike Market (and Market likes Me) at Family Business, 520 West 21st street, 5-10 p.m.
Cluster Mag presents an evening of performances by artists Zefrey Throwell, Lorelei Ramirez, Cem Kocyildirim, and Lucia Love. Throwell will demonstrate ways to work out childhood issues with a machete. Ramirez will demonstrate her patented participatory Protection Blankets. Kocyildirim and Love will be Joseph Beuys and the Coyote Werewolf, with a machine facilitating the transformation.
- Opening Reception of Bushwick Blackout at the Shirley, 47 Thames Street, No. 306, Brooklyn, 8-11 p.m., free (through September 21st)
The Shirey presents an opening reception for Bushwick Blackout, an immersive multimedia exhibition and video screening of luminous works that twinkle and glow in the dark of their own accord, free from the traditional illumination of gallery lighting.
- Special moonlight tour of Storm King Art Center, 8 p.m.
Become a member at the Storm King Art Center and enjoy a magical moonlight tour of the Upstate New York sculpture grounds complete with a special viewing of artist Spencer Finch's radiant Lunar (2011). Finch himself will be in tow to discuss his work.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1ST
- Governors Island Art Fair, Governor's Island, Building 12, sections D, E, H, I and P, free, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. (Saturdays and Sundays through September 30th)
4heads presents the Fifth Annual Governors Island Art Fair. Organized by a group of New York-based working artists, this fair brings together juried works by more than 100 underrepresented international artists and includes painting, photography, sculpture, video, drawings, performance, installation, and everything in between. Special events, salons, and live music will be interspersed throughout the event.
OUTSIDE NEW YORK:
With most hitting the road or the beach for labor day, the best artistic experience available this culturally dead weekend—aside from the stellar offerings in our nation's museums, which might be pleasantly uncrowded—is to cozy up with a nice, enriching art book. Why not catch up with one of the following recent-ish releases:
- Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, in which the authors float the controversial proposition that Holland's troubled artistic genius and earless wonder was (gasp!) murdered.
- Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty by Phoebe Hoban chronicles the rather colorful life of New York bohemia's greatest resident portraitist.
- Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era by Julia Bryan-Wilson would be a fitting Labor Day choice, taking a look at how Lucy Lippard, Hans Haacke, Robert Morris, and Carl Andre seized the mantle of "art worker" in the 1960s and '70s-and all the laborer's rights it implies-laying the ground for the work of artist groups like W.A.G.E. today.
Happy Labor Day!
The SkinnyArt Events For 8/29-9/2
