Plus, an annual scavenger hunt returns to the Bronx, and legal experts talk museum deaccessioning.

by Sarah Cascone

Each week, we search for the most exciting and thought-provoking shows, screenings, and events, both digitally and in-person in the New York area. See our picks from around the world below. (Times are all ET unless otherwise noted.)

Each week, we search for the most exciting and thought-provoking shows, screenings, and events, both digitally and in-person in the New York area. See our picks from around the world below. (Times are all ET unless otherwise noted.)

Tuesday, May 10

Remedios Varo, Fenómeno de ingravidez (Phenomenon of Weightlessness), (1963); Image courtesy National Museum of Women in the Arts, gift from a private collection

1. “Virtual Happy Hour: Surrealist Women Artists” at National Museum of Women Artists, Washington, D.C.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts will celebrate Surrealist women artists with a virtual happy hour. This is the latest in a series of creative “toasts” to women artists. It will explore the work and dramatic biographies of painters Remedios Varo, Kay Sage, and Leonora Carrington, as well as several Surrealist photographers. A local mixologist will teach participants how to craft a Surrealist-inspired specialty drink.

Price:  Free with registration (donations welcome)
Time: 5:30-6:30 p.m.

—Eileen Kinsella

Tuesday, May 10–Sunday, May 15

Taylor Dafoe. Inspired by vanitas paintings, his still life photographs were shot during lockdown, and reflect themes of isolation and confinement.

Location: International Center of Photography, 79 Essex Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception Friday, May 13, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Monday, Wednesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–7 p.m.; Thursday, 11 a.m.–9 p.m.

—Caroline Goldstein

Wednesday, May 11

Image courtesy the Center for Art Law.

3. “Art Law Lunch Talk: Museums and Deaccession” at the Center for Art Law, Brooklyn 

Jill Deupi, Beaux Arts director and chief curator of the Lowe Art Museum, and Katie Wilson-Milne, a partner at the law firm Schindler, Cohen, and Hochman, will discuss the issues and guidelines surrounding museum deaccessioning. Founder and managing director of the Center for Art Law Irina Taris, a commercial attorney specializing in art and cultural heritage legal issues, will moderate.

Price: General admission $10; artists and students $5
Time: 12 p.m.

—Eileen Kinsella

Wednesday, May 11–Saturday, June 11

Izzy Barber: Crude Futures” at James Fuentes, New York

Blurring the line between abstraction and figuration, Izzy Barber paints bold, rough interior scenes of public life in New York City, such as subway cars from the B and M trains. She works quickly, completing each painting in a single sitting, reflecting the chaotic immediacy of city life.

Location: James Fuentes, 55 Delancey Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Friday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Saturday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Thursday, May 11–Saturday, June 11

Installation view of “Phaan Howng: I’ll Be Back” at Dinner Gallery, New York. Photo courtesy of Dinner Gallery, New York.

5. “Phaan Howng: I’ll Be Back” at Dinner Gallery, New York

Fresh off a presentation featuring Phaan Howng at NADA New York, Dinner Gallery stages its first solo show with the artist, whose neon-colored paintings and sculptures evoke a toxic and unnatural landscape where plants have evolved to survive on polluted planets. The artist has created a site-specific installation for the occasion, with colored wallpaper to match her vibrant works.

Location: Dinner Gallery, 242 West 22nd Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.; Tuesday–Friday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m. by appointment, Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Friday, May 13

Gala Porras-Kim, 615 Offerings for the Rain at the Peabody Museum (detail) (2021). Image courtesy the artist and Commonwealth and Council. Photo: Paul Salveson.

6. “Gala Porras-Kim: Artist Talk” at the Getty, Los Angeles

Los Angeles-based visual artist Gala Porras-Kim, who has had recent solo shows at the Amant Foundation and Kadist in New York, Gasworks London, and the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis, will discuss the projects she worked on during her residency at Getty Research Institute from 2020 to 2022. Her work explores the afterlives of objects held in museum collections, and the ways they are subject to institutional paradigms of classification, conservation, and display. The program is part of “The Fragment” series, which explores how fragments have long catalyzed the study of visual culture while also influencing contemporary views of society and art.

Location: Zoom (register here) and Getty Center Museum Lecture Hall, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles
Price: Free
Time: 12 p.m. PT (3 p.m. ET)

—Eileen Kinsella

Friday, May 13–Sunday, June 5

Martina Grlić: Hypermnesia II” at Fragment, New York

In her inaugural U.S. solo show, Martina Grlić alchemizes themes of personal memory, post-socialist politics, and gender norms into a series of absorbing paintings that oscillate between the real and the surreal. The canvases feature classical symbols of femininity (costume jewelry, a scrap of lace, a scarlet bow​​) sourced from a family photo album of the artist’s childhood in Croatia. By foregrounding these objects against dreamlike colorscapes, Grlić nudges viewers to question where each composition falls on the shaky continuum between remembered and invented—as well as what forces were responsible for the psychic gravity it now commands.

Location: Fragment, 39 East Broadway, #404, New York
Price: Free
Time: 6 p.m.–8 p.m.

—Tim Schneider

Friday, May 13–Sunday, May 22

Pascale Marthine Tayou, Many, Many (people) (2011). Photo courtesy of the Moleskin Foundation Collection.

8. “Moleskine Detour New York” at One World Observatory, New York

Founded in 2006, the Moleskin Foundation Collection contains more than 1,300 Moleskine notebooks that have been turned into works of art. The foundation will present 75 of them at a show at One World Observatory, including works by William Kentridge, Joana Vasconcelos, and Sigur Rós.

Location: One World Observatory, One World Trade Center, floor 100, New York
Price: Free with admission to One World Observatory, which start at $38
Time: 9 a.m.–9 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Saturday, May 14

Turning Point: Simone Pellegrini” at Calvin-Morris Gallery, New York

In his first U.S. solo show, Italian artist Simone Pellegrini presents nine mixed-media drawings on paper, featuring mysterious symbols and enigmatic figures. The gallery calls him “a psychic animist giving shape and presence on his papyrus-like papers to an endless parade of thought forms but also the animal, mineral, and plant forms.”

Location: Calvin-Morris Gallery, 529 West 20th Street, third floor, New York
Price: Free with admission to One World Observatory, which start at $38
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Saturday, May 14

A selection of works from Uptown Perspectives. Courtesy of the artists.

10. “Uptown Perspectives” at Buunni Coffee, New York

As a resident of Washington Heights, I’m a little biased here, but if you’re a fan of cityscapes, it’s worth making the trek up to West 207th Street for the debut show of Uptown Perspectives, a new collective of five artists all dedicated to capturing the beauty of Upper Manhattan in their work. The exhibition includes delicate watercolors from Suzanne Russo and Francis Hsueh, paper cuts from Jerise Fogel, crisp line drawings by Sara Poleman, and bold illustrations by husband-and-wife duo YumaYork.NYC. Saturday is the opening reception and artist talk, but the show is on view at Buunni Coffee through May 31, before moving to Recirculation at 876 Riverside Drive for the month of July.

Location: Buunni Inwood NYC, 4961 Broadway, New York
Price: Free with registration
Time: 6 p.m.–8 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Keys to the City. Image by Jörg Schubert, courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.

11. “Keys to the City: BX Marks the Spot” at the Museum of the City of New York

The Museum of the City of New York’s annual Keys to the City scavenger hunt heads to the Bronx this year, with 50 clues scattered across the Belmont, Fordham Heights, Crotona, Concourse, and Mott Haven neighborhoods. The grand prize includes a key to the city, plus a private wine reception and tour of the museum with 25 guests. And, even if you don’t win, you’ll get to learn about the birth of hip hop, the city’s real Little Italy (Arthur Avenue), and the art and architecture of the Bronx.

Location: Ciccarone Park, 2426 Hughes Ave, Bronx, and Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue, at East 103rd Street, New York
Price: $54
Time: Scavenger hunt, 10 a.m.–2 p.m.; closing party and award ceremony, 3 p.m.–5 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Sunday, Sunday, May 22 

Margot Bird, Jet Buttons (2021). Courtesy of the artist and Marvin Gardens.

12. “Margot Bird: Knuckles and Cockpits” at Marvin Gardens, Ridgewood 

At Marvin Gardens, an art space in the Ridgewood neighborhood of Queens, the painter Margot Bird has an exhibition of her distinctive, colorful, totally out-there paintings of little cat heads hovering over people’s knuckles, plane cockpits, and more. In one series, pairs of hands belonging to the artist’s friends and colleagues are depicted going about each person’s daily lives and livelihoods—holding a skateboard or tattooing, for instance—on which little cat heads hover. Another group of paintings on view features more friends, here transposed into the pilot seats of fantastical aircraft cockpits… and with those same cat faces adorning all the plane’s dials and gears. These peculiarly engaging paintings are humorous for sure, but the cat heads also call to mind the nostalgic sticker-covered mania of childhood, and even, in their disembodied cuteness, Renaissance putti. The exhibition press release reads: “Did you ever think you’d suddenly be subject to the gaze of 476 cats in one room?”

Location: Marvin Gardens, 1534 Decatur Street, Ridgewood, Queens
Price: Free
Time: Sunday, 1 p.m.–5 p.m. and by appointment

—Katie White 

Through Friday, May 27

Natalie Terenzini, Making an Appearance, 2021 Courtesy of Thierry Goldberg Gallery

13. “Natalie Terenzini: Mouse Trap” at Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York

Thierry Goldberg Gallery presents the first solo exhibition by New York-based artist Natalie Terenzini. Terenzini presents intimate scenes of a woman at home alone, part of a series of vibrant, brightly colored paintings. The figure is an alter-ego of herself where she slowly reveals her real, uncensored self.

Location: Thierry Goldberg Gallery, 109 Norfolk Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Neha Jambhekar

Through Sunday, June 12

Image Courtesy of Soloway Gallery.

14. “K.C Joseph: Gall” at Soloway Gallery, New York

Sometime in 2011, artist Melissa Joseph’s father, who was a surgeon, handed her a box of photo-collages and made a simple request: “Make me a famous artist.” Even though she knew that her father had artistic leanings, she never knew of his thriving practice of taking the removed gall bladders from his patients, placing them on a collage based on the patient’s personality, and then photographing them. Dr. K.C. Joseph passed away in 2015 before he could see this show come to fruition. It has taken Joseph over a decade to figure out a way to honor her father’s request but she has finally done so in curating this wild show at Soloway Gallery. Outside of his medical practice, Dr. Joseph was an avid drawer and later took up oil painting. However, it’s these unique works that “capture perfectly his personality, sense of humor, and his wild imagination,” according to the gallery statement.

Location: Soloway Gallery, 348 South 4th Street, Brooklyn
Price: Free
Time: Saturday–Sunday, 12 p.m.–5 p.m. and by appointment

—Neha Jambhekar