Sunday, April 7: Last chance for Going Dark | The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility

This exhibition, which fills the Guggenheim’s rotunda, is predicated on a duality: works of art that present the figure, yet obscure it in some way, thus existing at the “edge of visibility.” The exhibition asserts that these experimentations in figuration across media—painting, photography, drawing, prints, sculpture, video, and installation—articulate pressing questions around what it means to be seen, not seen, or erased in society.Aruna D’Souza, writing in the New York Times, said, “Sandra Mujinga’s work [above] is a fitting introduction to a show that asks what it means to be seen, and to see each other, especially when seeing takes place across racial and other forms of difference. What does it mean, especially for people of color, to be hyper-visible and subject to increased surveillance, while at the same time erased from the field of vision, forgotten in the social and political landscape? How does looking at each other through these layers of stereotyping and misunderstanding distort our perception of the world? If being visible is a trap, is there solace to be found in near-invisibility?

“These are questions the show’s curator, Ashley James, raises in “Going Dark,” which features work by 28 artists, including three new commissions. Among them are Faith Ringgold and Charles White, the distinguished elders of the exhibition; Lorna Simpson and David Hammons, celebrated conceptualists of the ’80s and ’90s; and a troupe of younger artists including Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Sondra Perry and Farah Al Qasimi.

It’s a compelling counterpoint to the art world’s seemingly endless hunger for Black portraiture by superstars like Jordan Casteel, Amy Sherald, Henry Taylor and Kehinde Wiley, who have long been offering images of Black subjectivity through figuration. In this show, the figure is often barely there.” Read the article here

Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Info

Opened March 28: Threads to the South at ISLAA

The exhibition features works by over twenty artists from ten countries, including videos, photographs, paintings, works on paper, and textiles developed between 1967 and 2023. Through these varied works, Threads to the South considers the medium of fiber as a conceptual tool for exploring the relationship between belonging, identity, and territory in Latin America. Above: Nora Correas, En carne viva (In the Raw), 1981

The exhibition title is borrowed from the poem “I am climbing threads to the South” by Chilean artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña. Having lived most of her life in exile from her homeland, Vicuña writes of longing for her home and climbing symbolic threads that connect her to her roots in the south. Featuring artworks by artists including Gustavo Caboco, Cristina Flores Pescorán, Jorge Eduardo Eielson, Anna Bella Geiger, Lidia Lisbôa, Hélio Oiticica, Marta Palau, Antonio Pichillá, and Vicuña, among others, the exhibition illustrates how fiber serves as a bridge between distinct times and places, embedded with histories and cultural traditions, including the complexities of national and individual identities in and from Latin America. The artists in the exhibition use thread to communicate physical or emotional displacement as they long, search, and strive for real and imagined territories to ground themselves firmly in Latin America. Together, these works underscore the processes of making, thinking, and feeling through fiber to question colonial conceptions of time and place, produce alternative art histories, and create new ideas of home.

Institute for Studies on Latin American Art, 142 Franklin Street, New York, NY Info

Thursday, April 4, 6-8pm: Dumbo First Thursday Gallery Walk

On the first Thursday of every month‚ the galleries of DUMBO stay open late, hosting special events and receptions for the First Thursday Gallery Walk. Attendees are encouraged to visit participating First Thursday galleries at their own pace. Above: Janet Borden Gallery

This month’s special Insider’s Tour invites attendees to meet at 6:00 p.m. in the lobby of 20 Jay Street to visit and hear from experts at the following exhibitions:

6:05 p.m. Platform Project Space Love Fest, 20 Jay Street 319

6:20 p.m. Cuban Art Space Lost and Found, 20 Jay Street 301

6:30 p.m. New York Studio School Projects @ DUMBO Yiting Zhao Linger, 20 Jay Street 307

6:45 p.m. A.I.R. Gallery Keli Safia Maksud old blues new bruises, Zoila Andrea Coc-Chang () never settling into the stability of objects, and Maxine Henryson Frequently the woods are pink, 155 Plymouth Street.

This month's attendees can also view the second installment of the DUMBO Projection Project, Brooklyn’s most expansive video art series ever happening simultaneously across three locations.

April 5-7/10-14, noon-6pm: Among Friends4 at Metaphor

Metaphor Projects, an artist-run space in Brooklyn, is hosting its fourth edition of Among Friends in two weekend installmants. In the summer of 2017, Beth Dary and Patricia Fabricant visited the Museum of Modern Art to see the Robert Rauschenberg show Among Friends. As they were looking at the exhibition, they separated and later found each other at the installation of Hiccups, which consisted of ninety-seven sheets of handmade paper with original Xerox transfer collages zipped together. “At that moment, we both had the same thought—we could hand out zipper papers to our friends to create a great collaborative show,” they recall. Read the interview in Art Spiel. Artwork, left, by Cecilia Andre

Metaphor Projects, 382 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY Info

Monday, April 8, 2-5pm: Solar Eclipse Party at Hudson River Museum

View the eclipse’s progress with safe tools, including two solar telescopes that reveal incredible details of the Moon’s jagged silhouette and sunspots on the face of the Sun. While you wait your turn at the solar telescopes, observe the eclipse with pinhole viewers, mirror projections, exclusive HRM eclipse glasses (while supplies last), and other safe methods. Recommended for ages 8+. Please note, the Museum is not responsible for the cancellation of outdoor activities that are dependent on the weather; all general admission ticket sales are final. Purchase tickets (includes eclipse glasses); capacity is limited

You can also stop by the Planetarium for an ongoing, open-door presentation on the unique nature and history of Earth’s eclipses, and why they have been so avidly watched by astronomers. 

Hudson River Museum, 511 Warburton Avenue, Yonkers, NY Info/tickets

Continuing: Storywork | The Prints of Marie Watt at Print Center NY

The artist’s first traveling retrospective and the first to reflect on the role of printmaking in her ambitious interdisciplinary work considers Marie Watt’s printmaking both as a process and a philosophy—a medium that has had a nuanced and enduring impact on her career since 1996. Featuring over 50 works, it presents Watt’s etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts alongside a selection of her monumentally-scaled sculptures and textile works.

Watt, a member of the Seneca Nation, reveals twinned languages between the present and the past, drawing from Native and non-Native traditions such as Greco-Roman myth, pop culture, and Indigenous oral narratives. She is known, increasingly, for assembling material drawn from community sewing circle events or open calls, and for her central use of reclaimed textiles as humble, everyday materials that carry intimate meanings and memories. This is exemplified by Watt’s celebrated Blanket Stories sculptures, such as Blanket Stories: Great Grandmother, Pandemic, Daybreak (2021), a column made of folded, stacked blankets drawn from a call to the public and pinned with tags documenting the blankets’ stories.

First introduced to printmaking as a student at Willamette University, Watt enrolled in printmaking classes while attending the Institute of American Indian Arts, where she studied under the artist and Indigenous activist Jean LaMarr. Since completing her MFA in Painting and Printmaking at Yale in 1996, Watt has returned to printmaking repeatedly: she has used a sewing roulette wheel to puncture woodblocks (Door, 2005), run collaged and sewn fabric through a press to capture the trace of an object (Artifact, 2014 and Companion Species [Malleable/Brittle], 2021), drawn intricately woven threads (Blanket Relative, 2002), and developed a visual language that moves fluidly between her print and non-print works. 

Print Center New York, 535 West 24th Street, New York, NY Info