In Museums

New Art at The Frick Madison  In a bold move that stemmed from a blinding glimpse of the obvious, The Frick Madison has installed new works by contemporary artists alongside the old masters that are the mainstay of the collection. As The Art Newspaper reports, this project came out of a very simple need to fill empty spaces on the wall as some key works are sent out on loan for major exhibitions, as well as to build conversations with “the enormous number of contemporary artists who have been coming to the Frick Madison and are being vocal about it”, curator Aimee Ng says. “Our audience suddenly got wider and broader.”

The Frick Collection’s stay in the Modernist Breuer building on Madison Avenue has given visitors a chance to rediscover the museum’s Old Masters in a new light. The museum’s programmatic experimentation continues this week with the pop-up display series Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters, in which contemporary paintings will be hung alongside masterpieces by Vermeer, Holbein and Rembrandt. Above: Salman Toor, Museum Boys (2021) © Salman Toor. Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. Photo: Farzad Owrang

The Frick Madison, 945 Madison Avenue, NY, NY Info

Greater NY 2021 at MoMA PS1 Every five years, MoMA PS1 mounts a survey of work by artists with a relationship to New York City. This edition, which was postponed by a year due to the pandemic, features art across media by a fascinating selection of artists and collectives ranging from young up-and-comers like photographer and video artist Diane Severin Nguyen, who currently has a show up at Sculpture Center, to Paulina Peavy, a 20th-century West Coast spiritualist whose work has seen a resurgence of interest in recent years. Above: Shanzhai Lyric. Canal Street Research Association in retail drag. 2020

Greater NY 2021. MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Ave, Queens, NY, NY Info

The Dr. Bernard Heller Museum at the Hebrew Union College reopened last week with the exhibition Relative Relations, which was postponed due to the pandemic. Curator Laura Kruger says, “This exhibition highlights the connections that provide for the amazing melding of the human race, an ever-widening network of interests, talents, commitment, and broadening diversity.”

Director Jean Bloch Rosensaft noted, “Relative Relationships” represents the Dr. Bernard Heller Museum’s mission to present exhibitions that explore Jewish experience, values, and history and have universal relevance. The ethnic and religious diversity of the seventy artists in this exhibition find common ground in their expression of the essence of human connections.”

Rabbi David Adelson, Dean of HUC-JIR/New York, adds, “The unity amid diversity represented in “Relative Relations” is exactly the message we need to hear in this moment in our nation’s and world’s history.”

The Dr. Bernard Heller Museum, One West Fourth Street (between Broadway and Mercer Street), NY, NY Info Left: View from Quarantine by longtime DART subscriber Klay-James Enos

In Galleries

Continuing through October 23: Leonardo Drew at Galerie Lelong & Co.
Most recently seen at Madison Square Park’s lawn, with City in the Grass (2019), Leonardo Drew’s new exhibition at Galerie Lelong offers a broad view of his use of artificially weathered natural, but store-bought wood through processes that make them appear to have been found in a state of natural decomposition. Drew’s approach extends to the recycling and re-invention of materials and older works into new ones—an act that parallels the rebirths seen in the natural world. Evident in Number 306 (2021), Drew repurposed a “carpet” element from City in the Grass, now transposed from the ground onto the wall in an assemblage that comprises smaller wood elements seemingly disintegrating and congregating at once. Above: installation view at Galerie Lelong

Leonardo Drew at Galerie Lelong & Co., 528 West 26th Street, NY, NY Info

Continuing through October 28: Yolande Heijnen | Someone, Someplace, Else 
The paintings in Yolande Heijnen’s solo exhibition, Someone, Someplace, Else span the years 2016-2021, depicting friends, strangers, and herself. Point of view and proximity change between paintings, as well as her relationship to observation and fantasy, with a growing emphasis on the poetics of paint and the language of the medium. Yolande Heijnen was born and raised in Luxembourg, Europe. She is a Dutch national and since 1998 has lived in NYC, where she studied drawing and painting, while working in Fashion Design. Right: Yolande Heijnen, Badass, 2019

Revelation Gallery, 224 Waverly Place, NY, NY Info 

Continuing through October 23: Daisy Youngblood | Tender Mercy(s), Early and Late Works in Clay

The six rarely presented works on view, made between 1977 and 2020 can all be seen as “light-body/portraits” that emit a distinctive and watchful presence drawing their language from the artist’s affinity for indigenous cultures, living creatures, and the ability to see more than just the exterior.  Youngblood, a MacArthur Fellow, is noted for an affecting, mystical body of sculpture made slowly through deep immersion with changing form. Since the 1970s she has received critical attention for her work in clay and in cast bronze. The survey is accompanied by an interview conducted by Miani Johnson. Little Gorilla, 2020

Daisy Youngblood | Tender Mercy(s), Early and Late Works in Clay. Van Doren Waxter Gallery, 23 East 73^rdStreet, NY, NY Info

In the Subway 

Marcel Dzama for MTA Arts & Design at the Bedford Avenue L train Station

At Bedford Avenue Station, Brooklyn based artist Marcel Dzama depicts the hopeful beauty of the sun and the moon’s illuminated mysteries in four mosaic panels. Inspired by Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry", the sun and moon rise and set on the city and its constant flow of people throughout time. Depicted in radiant gold and dazzling blue, 400 square feet of glass mosaic fabricated by Mayer of Munich appear in locations at the mezzanine and new stairways at the Driggs Avenue end of the station. Read more in Hyperallergic Photos © Kris Graves

In addition, the exhibition Marcel Dzama | Who Loves the Sun, which includes the original drawings and studies for the subway murals, continues through October 23 at David Zwirner Gallery, 34 East 69^th Street, NY, NY Info 

On the Street

Che Min Hsiao | Sunflower’s Wedding on the Jumbotron at SkyView Center 

The artist, a longtime DART subscriber, writes: “The past year in the pandemic is like a very long day. We waited through the quarantine, gradually moved forward with our lives with a little bit of sunlight, or hope, and finally we can again look forward to embracing and celebrating life with family and friends. For this Jumbotron commission at the Skyview Center, I wanted to capture a feeling of “looking forward to a celebration” and hope it brings some joy to the Flushing community.” Photo courtesy the artist

Through October at the Shops at SkyView Center, 4024 College Point Blvd, Queens, NY Info

In Books 

A graphic edition of On Tyranny, historian Timothy Snyder’s bestselling book of lessons for surviving and resisting America’s arc toward authoritarianism, illustrated by Nora Krug, was published this week by Ten Speed Press/Penguin Random House and by C.H. Beck in Germany. The artist draws from her highly inventive art style in Belonging—at once a graphic memoir, collage-style scrapbook, historical narrative, and trove of memories—to breathe new life, color, and power into Snyder’s riveting historical references. In a time of great uncertainty and instability, this edition of On Tyranny emphasizes the importance of being active, conscious and deliberate participants in resistance. Info Image courtesy of the artist

Nora Krug and Timothy Snyder will be speaking about their collaboration with essayist and New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik at Writers Bloc on October 13. A more complete list of upcoming speaking events can be found here.