Wednesday, January 29, 6pm: Beatriz Cortez x rafa esparza: Earth and Cosmos at Americas 

This exhibition inaugurates a series in which Americas Society invites two artists who are friends and collaborators to jointly explore how they influence each other's work. This new approach shares insight into a vital part of artistic production that is seldom the subject of exhibitions: the conversations that artists have with colleagues and companions that inform and enrich their practice. Above: Beatriz Cortez and rafa esparza, Solar Star, 2020

Beatriz Cortez (b.1970, San Salvador) and rafa esparza (b.1982, Los Angeles) have over the years talked about ancient and contemporary ideas of the Earth, the cosmos, the underworld, and the knowledge developed by ancient Indigenous people. Their collaboration, Earth and Cosmos presents works selected by the artists that show how this knowledge flows around all beings and matter across the cosmos. Below: Beatriz Cortez, Cabeza de Jaguar (Monumento #47), 2022 and rafa esparza, Hyperspace, 2024

“I see my sculptures as time-travelers. I don’t always know if they are coming here from the past or from the future, but I know that they are spaces of generosity. They honor the technologies, strategies, spirituality, and knowledge of ancient peoples and celebrate their survival in the future," said Cortez in the exhibition’s publication. In the same book, esparza talked about his collaboration with Cortez. "It feels empowering to be boundless in our conversations and in our creative journeys and to work in ways that are reciprocal and not unilateral," he said. The works in the exhibition will be placed atop an adobe brick installation by esparza, which will occupy part of the gallery to allow the works to meet the Earth and the soil from where they are removed.

Americas Society, 680 Park Avenue, New York, NY Info

January 24-February 2: The Winter Show at Park Avenue Armory

The Winter Show is the longest-running fair in America devoted to fine art, antiques, and design. Since it began in 1954, the Show has been the annual benefit for East Side House Settlement, a community-based organization serving the Bronx and Northern Manhattan.. With dealers from across the Americas and Europe, the 2025 edition of The Winter Show will once again showcase the finest museum-quality works to an international audience of collectors, connoisseurs, and enthusiasts, alongside an acclaimed program of talks, panels, and events with leading experts in art, antiques, and design. 

The Winter Show presents a suite of public programming and special events throughout the run of the fair that offers visitors opportunities to deepen their knowledge and engage with current trends and topics. Emphasizing the Show’s collaborative focus and educational approach, the panel discussions and talks feature experts in art, antiques, and design as well as leaders from museums and other institutions.Below: Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Ville d'Avray. L'Etang et les villas avec une vachere a droite, 1855-1860, at Jill Newhouse Gallery

Public program highlights include: 
“Crosscurrents: Cultural Exchange in the Eighteenth Century,” moderated by Daniella Berman, PhD, Head of Special Projects and Strategic Initiatives at The Drawing Foundation, with collector Alan Templeton; Jonny Yarker, Principal at Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd, and Laurel Peterson, Curator at the Yale Center for British Art, on January 31 at 12:30 PM 

“The Forgotten Women Polymaths of Design,” moderated by Laura Jacobs, Arts Intel Report Editor at Air Mail, with Patricia Meares, Deputy Director of the Museum at F.I.T., and fine jewelry expert and author Ruth Peltason, on January 31 at 4 PM 

“Voyages of Creativity: The Influence of Travel on Design,” moderated by Peter Lyden, President of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, with designers Suzanne Tucker and Charlotte Moss and architect James Carter, on February 1 at 2:30 PM 

A full schedule of programs is available online at thewintershow.org/programs.

The Park Avenue Armory is located at Park Avenue and East 67^th Street, New York, NY Info

Extended through February 22: Irving Penn | Kinship at Pace

This exhibition of work by the famed photographer Irving Penn, curated by artist Hank Willis Thomas spotlights works produced by Penn throughout his 70-year career, including selections from his Worlds in a Small Room series his iconic portraits of artists, actors, and writers, and other genres of his images. Above: Composite of Irving Penn, Three Single Oriental Poppies, New York, 1968; Irving Penn, Three Dahomey Girls (with Bowls), 1967. © The Irving Penn Foundation

Often investigating the ways that framing and perspective can shape our experiences of the world around us, Thomas situates Penn’s photographs within a bespoke, star-shaped structure with intersecting corners, created using a material similar to the plywood flats of the photographer’s original studio for his portraits in a corner. Displayed on the structure’s exterior walls and within its central interior space, Penn’s images will invite viewers to inhabit a similarly intimate, enclosed space as the subjects of his portraits captured across the globe—through Thomas’s vision, this room becomes a new world of its own. 

Showcasing the varied but interconnected motifs and ideas that Penn returned to time and again over the course of his life, the images selected and paired by Thomas speak to a transcendent, universal quality that can be traced across the photographer’s vast oeuvre. His arrangement of Penn’s works is guided by a kind of “visual muscle memory,” which he describes as “the notion that an artist’s eye and hand retain the imprints of past works, unconsciously shaping new creations.” The diverse photographs on view, for Thomas, are marked by their stillness and dignity, their shared interest in capturing and communicating the human experience in a single frame.

A trained photographer, Hank Willis Thomas, widely known for his galvanizing public works around the US, is deeply interested in both the making and consumption of images. His investigations into subjectivity and perception inform his work in photography and other mediums, including sculpture, screenprinting, video, and installation. Penn’s Worlds in a Small Room works—for which he journeyed to Cuzco, Crete, Extremadura, Dahomey, Cameroon, San Francisco, Nepal, New Guinea, and Morocco to capture people’s portraits within a tent he used as a portable studio—have been particularly influential for Thomas, who was part of the artistic team behind the traveling, participatory installation In Search of the Truth (The Truth Booth), which debuted in 2011 and has since been presented around the world.

Pace Gallery, 508 West 25^th Street, New York, NY Info

Wednesday, January 29, 3-4pm: Everyday Beauty live online from New Museum

While the Museum continues construction of our building expansion, virtual workshops take up themes and ideas from artists who have presented at the New Museum over our 47-year history. This workshop is inspired by the Museum’s 1986 exhibition Choices: Making an Art of Everyday Life.

Our daily experiences, whether actively social or momentarily internalized, hold the power to transform our mindset and our lives. Make your daily experiences into works of art with a FREE live virtual workshop guided by New Museum Teaching Artist Rosed Serrano. Engage with artworks that challenge and redefine conventional ideas about art, and write a poem that reveals and celebrates the hidden beauty within your everyday routines and environments. No writing experience is necessary and sharing with the group will be voluntary. Register Above: Installation view: Alex Gray, Spiritual Energy System, Universal Mind Lattice, 1979–1986. Choices: Making an Art of Everyday Life, 1986, New Museum

Continuing: Nick Cave | Amalgams and Graphts at Shainman

Marking the inaugural presentation at Jack Shainman Gallery’s flagship Tribeca location, Nick Cave introduces two distinct series that push his singular style and vision to an epic realm, while maintaining an intimate and personal conversation with his audience.  

Anchoring the exhibition is a series of three large bronze sculptures, titled Amalgams. These contemporary monuments create a positive, inclusive and resilient alternative to the plethora of public art that has often misrepresented history, silenced diverse voices and commemorated war and conquest. The Amalgams are an evolution of Cave’s iconic Soundsuits, which were created in response to the brutal beating of Rodney King by police in 1991. They concealed race, gender and class to force the viewer to engage without preconceived judgment. In the new Amalgams Cave fuses casts from his own body with natural forms such as flowers, birds and trees with similar effect.

At nearly twenty-six feet tall, Amalgam (Origin) grounds viewers with a connection to humanity but quickly lifts them to a place of awe or spirituality. Intricate and ornate designs cover and connect the figure to a place where we might expect to see a face. Instead, Cave has rendered a complex migration hub through a flourishing of branches and birds of all types, poetically gesturing to nature’s sense of evolution and possibility. Nearby, Amalgam (Plot) shows two bronze figures lying side by side recalling a still from video footage portraying the ongoing racially motivated violence cast onto Black bodies. One figure faces up toward the sky and the second face down with hands behind its head, taking cover. The figure lying face up seems to grow an oversized garden plot bursting with vintage tole florals in place of its visage. In this context, the garden becomes both a memorial and a symbol of resistance and renewal.

Debuting alongside these bronze figures is Cave’s newest series, Graphts. These mixed media assemblages situate needlepoint portraits of the artist amongst fields of florals and color constructed from vintage serving trays. While Cave has often used his own body within his artwork, this is the first time that he has revealed a recognizable self. 

Through March 15, Jack Shainman Gallery, 46 Lafayette Street, New York, NY Info

February 1 through 8: 2025 Master Drawings NY

With a preview event on Friday, January 31, the 19^th edition of this annual art fair will be held at more than two dozen galleries on New York’s Upper East Side and will feature exceptional works on paper from the 15^th to the 21^stcenturies, as well as complementary paintings and sculpture. This year’s event includes 29 exhibitors from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Zurich, and Vienna. Above: Image: Julien Lignier, 1768. Aecidium Berberidis, 1925; courtesy of Victoria Munro

MDNY has once again partnered with The Drawing Foundation, a New York-based nonprofit that celebrates the art of drawing, to present a  robust line-up of programing featuring 11 events, panels and talks during the run of the fair. Conversations with curators and collectors, lectures, tours, and special exhibition viewings will be held at leading museums and galleries including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper Hewitt, Park Avenue Armory, Sotheby’s, and more. Most events are free and open to the public. Advanced registration is required. Registration is now open; scroll down to register for events Above:Julien Lignier, 1768. Aecidium Berberidis, 1925. Watercolor, ink on paper.

Master Drawings New York is open at 29 New York Galleries; download the map here