Saturday, May 1-Sunday, May 3: Pictoplasma Berlin 2025 Online

This just in from the organizers: Live broadcast of all conference talks, including theentire animation selection here: home.pictoplasma.com!

Simply sign up, lean back and tune in LIVE May 1 – 3, daily from 12:45 – 20:30 (CEST) for all of 2025's greatness to be delivered to you in real-time – and subsequent as 24h VoD offering, in order to accommodate all timezones!

Your Picto ONLINE ticket (= PictoPRO membership) not only gives you comfortable access to all Berlin conference lectures and the official 2025 animation selection –but also grants 1 full year of remote entry to all future conference broadcasts (NYC, OnTour…), and also unlocks Picto’s growing archive of 280+ previous talks by cutting edge artists from around the world. Register 

Sunday, May 3, 11am-5pm: Memento Mori at Green-Wood Cemetery

Green-Wood Cemetery, with close to 500 acres of manicured parkland, was founded in 1838 and is now a National Historic Monument. With its broad offering of public events, many centered on artistic practices, it attracts half a million visitors per year—second only to Niagara Falls.

As part of Green-Wood’s Sunday in the Cemetery program, Morbid Anatomy will conduct two walking tours - exploring their catacombs, and Memento Mori gravestone imagery. Green-Wood’s Modern Chapel will host a pop-up table for a mobile Morbid Anatomy Library station in its lobby all afternoon. More about Morbid Anatomy’s Memento Mori Fest here

Memento Mori Tour (11am-12pm, meet at main gate): Writer and cultural critic Allison Meier leads visitors through The Green-Wood Cemetery for a tour of Memento Mori gravestone imagery. Tickets required, purchase here .

Joanna Ebenstein Reading & Signing (12pm-1pm, Modern Chapel): Morbid Anatomy Founder & Creative Director Joanna Ebenstein joins the Sunday in the Cemetery celebrations with a reading from her most recent publication Memento Mori: The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life, the cornerstone for this weekend’s activities, followed by a Q&A.

Morbid Anatomy Library Pop-Up Table  (12pm-5pm:, Modern Chapel Lobby): Visit the Morbid Anatomy pop-up throughout the day for a selection of books and object d’arte from our Library & Shop.

Catacomb Tour (2:30pm-3:30pm, meet at main gate): Join Green-Wood Cemetery tour guide and artist L. J. Lyndhurst for a visit to the cemetery catacombs. Built in the 1850s and rarely accessible to the public, the burial grounds were an underground alternative for Gilded Age tastemakers. Tickets required, purchase here.

Last chance, closing Sunday, May 3: Thresholds at Olympia

Thresholds brings together five artists who explore the liminal spaces we navigate in our daily, familial, spiritual, and creative lives. Some depict figures and environments in moments of transformation, while others embrace the transcending qualities of uncertainty. Through oil on canvas, egg tempera on panel, dye on intimately woven textiles, and graphite on paper, the exhibition centers a commonality of pushing boundaries within chosen mediums to deepen our understanding of self and surroundings.

This, the second iteration of a two-part exhibition jointly held with Naranjo 141 (Mexico City),  brings together works by Lily Alice Baker, Colleen Herman, Lee Maxey, Katarina Riesing, and Pauline Shaw [left: Float, 2023].

Olympia, 41 Orchard Street, New York, NY Info

Continuing: Lily Kwong | Gardens of Renewal at Madison Square Park

This collaborative project between artist Lily Kwong and the Conservancy explores the ecological potential of the built environment while underscoring the political urgency of the climate crisis. Across two separate yet interconnected immersive landscapes, Kwong reaffirms the importance of public parks to our individual and collective wellbeing by highlighting their ability to facilitate spiritual renewal and political consciousness in equal measure.

Gardens of Renewal takes shape across the Redbud and Sparrow Lawns, each with an intricate pathway that provides visitors with opportunities for play, learning, self-reflection and ecological awakening. Redbud Lawn features the Meditation Garden, where Kwong, working closely with Madison Square Park Conservancy’s world-class horticulture team, has created a layout blooming with pollinators, herbs and other plants native to the New York region. The spiral pathway follows a narrative arc that recalls ancient labyrinths; as visitors venture deeper into the center of the garden, the planting palette features increasingly rare and disappearing native plants, those which are having their very existence threatened by climate change. For more information on this exhibition and to access the field guides and meditation audio, please visit gardens-of-renewal.com.

Madison Square Park, Fifth Avenue between 23^rd and 26^th Streets

Tuesday, May 6: Toyi Ojih Odutola | Ile Oriaku at Jack Shainman

Toyin Ojih Odutola (b.1985 in Ile-Ife, Nigeria; lives and works in New York, NY) is best known for her multimedia drawings and works on paper, which explore the malleability of identity and the possibilities in visual story-telling. Interested in the topography of skin, Ojih Odutola has a distinctive style of mark-making using only basic drawing materials, such as ballpoint pens, pencils, pastels and charcoal. This signature technique involves building up of layers on the page, through blending and shading with the highest level of detail, creating compositions that reinvent and reinterpret the traditions of portraiture narratives that unfold through series of artworks like the chapters of a book.

Her work is inspired by both art history and popular culture, as well as her own personal history—being born in Nigeria then moving as a child to America where she was raised in conservative Alabama. The idea of traveling or transporting the self is a recurring theme in her work and, for Ojih Odutola, the construction of her figures is a means of discovering an individual’s character and personal story. Though the representation of skin has been a core focus of her practice, she has also explored depictions of landscapes, architecture and domestic interiors in more recent series.

Jack Shainman, Tribeca, 46 Lafayette Street, New York, NY Info