Wednesday, March 8, 6-8pm: Of Mythic Worlds: Works from the Distant Past through the Present at The Drawing Center

This new show explores the ways in which rituals, myths, traditions, ideologies, and beliefs can intersect across cultures, histories, and time periods. The exhibition brings together fifty-three works by more than thirty artists including Jordan Belson, Lee Bontecou, Cameron, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Walter De Maria, Steffani Jemison, Duane Linklater, Yutaka Matsuzawa, Georgia O’Keeffe, Betye Saar, Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri, and Jack Whitten, among others. Above: Lenore Tawney, Untitled, 1965

Spanning a wide range of historical periods and cultural traditions, it highlights the esoteric and often elusive pursuit of understanding phenomena that are outside of our objective, worldly experience. Together, the works of these artists investigate personal belief systems, spirituality, and consciousness; explore the metaphysical and the sublime; recall myths passed down from ancient cultures; and expand our understanding of mysticism and immateriality.

The Drawing Center, 35 Wooster Street, New York, NY Info

Wednesday, March 8, 6pm: Talk and book signing, Andrea Mastrovito | To Draw is to Know

Andrea Mastrovito, in conversation with CIMA Founder Laura Mattioli, will trace Mastrovito’s entire oeuvre, with a particular focus on his latest work from 2015 to the present. Organized in sections that range from the frottages and stained glass works to the conversations, intarsias, blackboards, and finally the films NYsferatu and I Am Not Legend, the book highlights not only the complexity and heterogeneity of the artist’s work but also its stylistic unity, albeit expressed through a diversity of mediums. Above, from I Am Not a Legend

Rizzoli Bookstore, 1133 Broadway, New York, NY Info

Friday, March 10, 6-8 pm: Home | A new Photography Triennial at MCNY

There’s no place like home...home is where the heart is...home, sweet home...feeling at home. There are many evocative and iconic expressions about the concept, but what does home in New York City look like today? Opening March 10th, New York Now: Home – the inaugural edition of the Museum of the City of New York’s new contemporary photography triennial – considers the literal places we dwell and the homes we choose to make, exploring the many facets of contemporary homemaking in and around New York’s five boroughs.

Featuring 33 image-makers whose work ranges from social documentary to conceptual, the exhibition celebrates the diversity of what home, family, kinship, and community are – and can be – in New York, now. Inspired by the Museum’s landmark presentation of the same name in 2000, New York Now will occur every three years with different themes. Above, from Living in the Chelsea Hotel by Linda Troeller

Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue at 103 Street, New York, NY Info

Friday, March 10, 6-8 pm: Women Celebrate Women at PS109

Celebrating Women’s History Month and the creative vision of a diverse group of artists. Multimedia, multigenerational, the exhibition features work. By over xxx artists. Curated by Yvonne Lamar Rogers and Rolinda Ramos, the show continues through March 31.

El Barrio’s Artspace PS109, 215 East 99^th Street, New York, NY Info @ylamarrogers Above, from Barbara Lubliner’s Flower Lips series

Closing March 26: Juan Francisco Elso | Por America at El Museo del Barrio

Juan Francisco Elso: Por América investigates the brief yet significant career of the late Cuban artist Juan Francisco Elso (1956-1988). Based in Havana, Elso was part of the first generation of artists born and educated in post-revolutionary Cuba, who gained international recognition in the early 1980’s.

Created mostly using natural, organic materials, his sculptural practice examines the complex forms of contemporary Cuban, Caribbean, and Latin American identities, as inflected by the cultural influences of Indigenous traditions, Afro-Caribbean religious beliefs, as well as the traumas of colonial oppression. Elso’s commitment to such histories – which relate to El Museo del Barrio’s own foundational ethos – presage current post- and decolonial perspectives. The exhibition examines such legacies and parallels by placing Elso’s prescient work alongside a multigenerational group of artists active in the Caribbean, and throughout North, South, and Central America.

El Museo del Barrio,1230 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Info

Continuing: Fresh, Fly and Fabulous | Hip Hop at FIT

On a hot summer night in August of 1973 DJ Kool Herc and his sister, Cindy, put on a “back to school jam” in the recreation room of their apartment block at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the West Bronx. The rest is history. The birth of hip hop rippled out across the globe, inuencing music and fashion for generations.

Early hip hop style focused on customization—from spraypainted jean jackets and sweatshirts to creased jeans and fat laced sneakers. Before Louis Vuitton had apparel, Dapper Dan designed his own luxury sportwear in addition to one-of-akind looks with the logos of MCM, Gucci, and Fendi. Hip hop’s eclectic style eventually evolved into its own apparel brands, from Cross Colours to FUBU

Much of hip hop style encompasses aspiration, inventiveness, remixing existing forms, customization, and individualization, which have been read by naysayers as outside the bounds of propriety, good taste, and generally as “too much.” Yet, pushing at the boundaries is also an overarching tenet of hip hop style, and inevitably, what hip hop has started, mainstream culture has adopted, adapted, and appropriated. Get the book here

The Museum at FIT, 227 West 27^th Street, New York, NY Info