Thursday, August 21, 5-9pm: Edel Rodriguez | Worm at Society of Illustrators

Join this Museum Mixer celebrating the opening of Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey, showcasing the art of Edel Rodriguez. The night will also feature a screening of Edel’s documentary Freedom is a Verb (2024) at 6:00 pm followed by a Q&A with Edel and his parents, and a book signing. The eveningwill also feature live music by Los Ciegos Del Barrio, a multi genre Latin band from New York City, featuring some of the best known Cuban music. Free, no RSVP.

Dubbed “America’s Illustrator-in-Chief” by Forbes for his provocative work, artist and educator Edel Rodriguez is well-established as one of the most preeminent voices in political art today. Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey is a vibrant graphic memoir covering Rodriguez’s early childhood in Cuba, his family’s flight from the despotism of the country and his ongoing dedication to the values of free speech and democracy.

When Rodriguez was nine, Cuba’s leader Fidel Castro announced that he was allowing 125,000 Cubans to leave the country but, viewing them as traitors, labeled them “worms.” Deeply disturbed by the political regime and its oppressive surveillance, Rodriguez and his family eventually took part in the tumultuous Mariel boatlift exodus to America. Worm recounts the harrowing story of a frightened young boy’s world torn apart, the anxious displacement of a family in exile and the existential pains of leaving a life and loved ones behind for an uncertain future. Read this Q&A with Rodriguez about the project.

Society of Illustrators, 128 East 63^rd Street, New York, NY Info

Wednesday-Friday, August 20-22, 11am-6pm: Book Giveaway at Salon 94

While the gallery’s exhibition space  is closed for a summer recess, the main floor is open to anyone looking to boost their creative juices by pawing through waist-high stacks of art world esoterica that’s up for grabs. No Lie. 

Salon 94, 3 East 89^th Street, New York, NY Info
 

Saturday, August 23, 6:30pm: Thomas Libetti | Talk and Pop Up Art Show in a barn

Join longtime DART subscriber and contributor, Thomas Libetti, for a one-night pop-up show and artist talk in a barn, in Great Barrington, MA! If you’re in the neighborhood and want to join the festivities in this private space, please DM @thomaslibetti

Thomas is also participating in the 2025 Open Studios at the nearby Alford Artists Collective on August 31, 11am-4pm. Directions

August 26.  Push and Pull | Two Decades at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop at the James

The Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop (RBPMW) was founded in 1947, during an era of racial segregation with limited opportunities for artists of color.  The PMW became a vital collaborative space for historically marginalized artists, such as ethnic minorities and women, whose contributions to art history are now recognized and indisputably central to the formation of our contemporary cultural landscape. International and multiracial, the artists who knew Blackburn during his lifetime recall a man who often sacrificed his own career for the good of his community—for this reason, a selection of Blackburn’s own prints will be exhibited. Curated by Shameekia Shantel Johnson and developed with Jazmine Catasús and Essye Klempner from RBPMW, the exhibition features over 35 original prints, archival ephemera, and video. This soft opening precedes a reception on September 9^th. Photo above courtesy of Hauser & Wirth

In the six decades Blackburn ran the PMW, an atmosphere of tolerance, artistic freedom and mutual support was fostered. As a result of this, the PMW became a site of considerable innovation, pioneering printmaking techniques such as viscosity printing, for example, which allows an artist to print a multi-colored image from a single printing plate. Blackburn’s dedication to his art and his community, his willingness to collaborate and to teach artists regardless of their background, education, and skill level paint the portrait of a beloved man and mentor for whom art and life was inextricable. The PMW was, during Blackburn’s lifetime, not just a printmaking workshop but the incubator for generations of artists whose radical, transgressive practices reflect the environment that shaped them. It is this legacy that the exhibition honors, that the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop strives to maintain today for contemporary artists seeking to engage with this rich and generous history. 

James Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Info

Extended to August 31: Happiness Project at Lubov

A reasonable question at an art exhibition might be, “Are you acquainted with the work of such-and-such?” One searches for recognition in another — the shared acknowledgement of a line, a gesture, some sensation — manufacturing from the inanimate a human connection, a familial experience. In this exchange, the viewer not only identifies an artistic practice, they bond with a kindred spirit.  

Organized by José Freire, this is his first contemporary art venture since the closure of his Team Gallery five years ago.\, who says, “Any group exhibition is an opportunity to encourage comparisons, however, these three artists, while having so much in common, are each mining a distinctive strain of abstraction. For all their shared DNA, this is a group of highly iconoclastic figures, their individuated approaches precise and distinct.”Acquaintance, as an exhibition, functions as a reunion for its three artists and its curator as they had worked together extensively in the late 80s and early 90s.

Linda Daniels is represented by three of her dynamic abstractions, which begin with the cobbling together and dissection of circular forms that end up as mysterious shapes rendered in pulsating colors on sensuous white grounds. Marilyn Lerner will include three of her tight, geometric fantasias, organized around dynamic tensions between color and form. Like outpourings of code and data, they appear highly calculated. Jill Levine presents her painted sculptures of interlocking, puzzle-like shapes where line, color and form are shared by the applied paint and the shapes on which it rests. 

Lubov, 5 East Broadway FL4, New York, NY Info

Continuing at the Brooklyn Museum: Excerpts from Ruckus Manhattan

Red Grooms, Mimi Gross, and The Ruckus Construction Co.: Excerpts from “Ruckus Manhattan” (1975–77) features two scenes from the original immersive installation by Red Grooms, Mimi Gross, and more than twenty artists comprising The RuckusConstruction Company. 

A fantastical twist on the Staten Island Ferry, Dame of the Narrows transports visitors into the heart of New York City. In this “sculptural comic book” of urban life, on view for the first time in more than thirty years, a towering ferry, a sprawling suspension bridge, and the Statue of Liberty are set against a backdrop of Lower Manhattan.  Julie Schneider, of Hyperallergic, writes, “With a zest for New York City and its people and places — pretty or gritty or both — Ruckus Manhattan bats away hopelessness, choosing celebration instead. This spirited collaborative project and its populist vision, propelled by voracious creativity and humor, offer space for collective art viewing and imagination. It not only reflects slices of the city to its residents and visitors, but invites us in to be part of the circus of it all.”

Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY Info