Wednesday, July 13, 6-8pm: Panel | The Legacy of A.I.R. at P•P•O•W

In conjunction with Dotty Attie’s What Surprised Them Most, a survey exhibition of major works from 1974 to 2023, P·P·O·W is pleased to host a panel discussion with Attie and fellow A.I.R. Gallery founding members Judith Bernstein and Daria Dorosh.

Founded in 1972 as the first nonprofit artist-run cooperative gallery for women artists in the United States, A.I.R. Gallery has led the way in championing women artists, increasing their visibility and the viability of their endeavors. Moderated by Catherine Morris, Senior Curator for the Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, this conversation will explore the founding and legacy of this pioneering organization. Above: Founding Members of A.I.R. Gallery

P•P•O•W Gallery 392 Broadway, New York, NY Info

Thursday, July 14, 6-8pm: Tony Smith | Wall, New Piece, One-Two-three at Pace

Offering viewers the opportunity to experience Smith’s developing practice during the 1690s and ‘70s, the exhibition presents three painted metal works in which he explored crystalline structures at a monumental scale. 

Smith began his career as an architect, working with Frank Lloyd Wright on Usonian homes and other projects in the late 1930s. The artist was an independent architectural designer from the early 1940s through the 1950s, crossing over into sculpture in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He often drew inspiration for his dynamic geometric abstractions from phenomena in the natural world including octahedrons and tetrahedrons. Embracing the imaginative effects of chance and chaos, the artist produced sculptures that forged a new language of abstraction amid the rise of Minimalism. Deeply engaged with architecture, science, mathematics, and philosophy, Smith’s works propose new modes of understanding and experiencing their surrounding environments.

Pace, 510 West 25^th Street, New York, NY Info Visit the Tony Smith Estate Website

Thursday, July 14: Grounded in Clay at The Met

Steadily, quietly, without fanfare, The Metropolitan Museum of Art has, in recent years, unfolded exhibitions—one after another—on the subject of ceramic arts. Most recently, the Museum offered  new perspectives on stoneware made by enslaved and free potters in and around Edgfield South Carolina Info. Now it presents Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery.

 The exhibition will foreground Pueblo voices and aesthetics and will offer a visionary understanding of Pueblo pots as vessels of community-based knowledge and personal experience. The first community-curated Native American exhibition at the Museum, it will features more than 100 historical, modern, and contemporary items in clay. 

Although Pueblo pottery has long been exhibited within the context of Eurocentric timelines and Western concepts of art and history, Grounded in Clay gives voice to the Pueblo Pottery Collective, a group of more than 60 individual members of 21 tribal communities who selected and wrote about artistically and culturally distinctive pots from two significant Pueblo pottery collections—the Indian Arts Research Center of the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Vilcek Foundation in New York, New York.

Elysia Poon, curator at the Indian Arts Research Center, Santa Fe, says, “We try to make sure everyone's voice is represented in some way, It's either in the label, or the quote up here, or in that panel. It's in poetry form, other ones are in prose, others are a little more abstract in how they write. Some really reflect on the pot itself ... or distant memories of growing up around pottery, how this pot inspires memory." Images here are from the recent installation in Santa Fe

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Info

Thursday, July 14: Ilana Savdie: Radical Contractions at The Whitney

The artist’s striking new paintings and black-and-white drawings, which are foundational for her paintings, will debut at the Whitney and were created specifically for this exhibition. "The exhibition represents [the museum’s] ongoing commitment to emerging artists in the early stages of their careers who are adding a specific point of view to current discourses in contemporary art,” says Marcela Guerrero, the DeMartini Family Curator at the Whitney, and is presented in the Lobby gallery, which is free and open to the public. Above: from Radical Contractions (detail)

Referencing a range of subjects like the history of abstract art, folklore, human anatomy, microbiology, horror, and pop culture, Savdie creates complex and unruly abstractions by seamlessly juxtaposing varied fragments, vivid color palettes, and unexpected textures. The artist expertly applies brilliant, intense hues—bile greens, oozing yellows, and delicate washes of pink—in thickly-laid brushstrokes of acrylic, oil, and scaly beeswax. She subverts and distorts representational forms throughout her work to create surreal encounters that blend reality and myth.

Savedie's explorations concernng forms of resistance and protest through mockery, exaggeration, and the grotesque are influenced by her experience growing up around the Carnaval de Barranquilla. The artist is particularly drawn to the Marimonda, a figure from the Carnaval known in folklore to mock the so-called elite. Savdie is interested in the transformative power of performance and sees the trickster in both folklore and in nature as an invaluable agent of change.

Whitney Museum of American Art, 92 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY Info
Friday nights from 7 to 10pm  are pay what you wish Info
Save the date: Monday, July 24, 6:30 pm: Ilana Savdie in conversation with Carmen Maria Machado Info

Planning ahead, July 21-24: Upstate Art Weekend

Now in its fourth year, this annual event, for locals and tourists alike, celebrates the cultural vibrancy of Upstate New York. UPAW launched in 2020 with 23 participants. The participants are art organizations, galleries, museums, residencies and studios. UPAW compiles a program of events and a comprehensive google map, and an online guide.