This November, New York museums are showcasing retrospectives for seminal artists, mid-career surveys and new installations. Shows opening in museums such as the Whitney, the Bronx Museum and the Met Breuer revolve around politically charged art, works that upend traditional expectations, and reflections on the importance of public art. Below are our NYC museum highlights for November.
Guggenheim Museum: “Josef Albers in Mexico”
November 3, 2017 through February 18, 2018
The Guggenheim Museum will present “Josef Albers in Mexico,” an examination of how Mexico and Latin American countries inspired the artist’s abstract work.
Josef Albers (1888-1976) first visited Mexico in 1935, and continued to visit Mexico and other Latin American countries on a dozen different occasions between 1935 and 1967 with his wife, Anni Albers (1899-1994). During each trip, Albers took hundreds of black and white photographs of pyramids, shrines and sanctuaries, often grouping together multiple images printed at various scales onto 8 by 10 sheets.
The exhibition will be comprised of photographs and photo collages, many of which have never been exhibited publicly, alongside works from his Homage to the Square and Variant/Adobe series, which were heavily influenced by Mesoamerican architecture. The exhibition shows the nuanced relationships between the forms and motifs of these monuments and the artist’s abstract works.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is located at 1071 5th Ave, New York, NY 10128. www.guggenheim.org.
Click here for exhibition details.
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"Untitled (Uxmal, Mexico)" by Josef Albers, ca. 1940. Gelatin silver print, 12.9 x 18.3 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift, The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation © 2016 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
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The Jewish Museum: “Math Bass: Crowd Rehearsal”
November 3, 2017 through March 18, 2018
Artist Talk: Thursday, November 2 from 6:30 to 7 p.m. Free, RSVP here.
As part of the Lobby Artist Commission series, the Jewish Museum will present “Math Bass: Crowd Rehearsal,” an installation in the entrance lobby.
Math Bass’s work encompasses sculpture and painting. The installation features a svelte, ladderlike sculpture draped in a coat like painting set against two canvases with nearly identical imagery. Influenced by the shrouding, pictographs and repetition of Jewish ceremonies, rituals and texts, the artist’s work alludes to human bodies and actions through form and title and “opens authorship,” according to the museum, to create a shared experience between artist and audience.
The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 5th Ave & 92nd St, New York, NY 10128. www.thejewishmuseum.org.
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The Bronx Museum: “Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect”
November 8, 2017 through April 8, 2018
The Bronx Museum will present “Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect,” a retrospective of the late artist’s work during the 1970s.
Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) is best known for his monumental cuts, holes, apertures and excisions to the facades of derelict homes and historic buildings in New York, New Jersey, Chicago and abroad, creating work that conveyed a potent critique of architecture’s role within the capitalistic system. The exhibition, which will examine the artist’s pioneering social, relational and activist approach to art, will include more than 100 artworks from the artist as well as rarely-seen materials from his archive and immersive film projections.
Featuring series of “cuts” produced in the Bronx in the early 1970s and work that further explored the city as a field of action, the exhibition highlights the political dialogue inherent in Matta-Clark’s work, ranging from his concern about the plight of the homeless to his commentary on development and socioeconomic stratification.
The Bronx Museum is located at 1040 Grand Concourse, Bronx, NY 10456. www.bronxmuseum.org.
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The Whitney Museum: “Laura Owens”
November 10, 2017 through February 4, 2018
The Whitney will present “Laura Owens,” a mid-career survey of the Los Angeles-based artist.
In the most comprehensive survey of the artist’s work to date, the exhibition will include approximately 60 paintings dating from Laura Owens’s emergence in the Los Angeles art scene during the mid-1990s to her work of today. The exhibition features the artist’s bold and experimental work challenging traditional assumptions about figuration and abstraction, and works that reveal her interest in how paintings function in a given room.
The artist’s early canvasses upended painterly abstraction by incorporating goofy personal allusions, doodles and common craft materials. New work includes large-scale paintings that use silkscreen, computer manipulation, digital printing and material exploration.
The Whitney Museum of American Art is located at 99 Gansevoort St, New York, NY 10014. www.whitney.org.
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"Untitled" by Laura Owens, 2006. Acrylic and oil on linen, 56 x 40 inches. Charlotte Feng Ford Collection. © Laura Owens.
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Museum of the City of New York: “Art in the Open: Fifty Years of Public Art in New York”
November 10, 2017 through May 13, 2018
The Museum of the City of New York will look back at the modern history of public art in the city with “Art in the Open: Fifty Years of Public Art in New York.”
The exhibition, which marks the 40th anniversary of the pioneering Public Art Fund, features work from the 1960s—when public art was allowed to become more than war memorials, civic-minded murals or the like—and highlights of the hundreds of innovative works that followed. Showcasing works that have transformed the public space of the city and also altered public expectations and the role of art outside the museums and galleries, the exhibition will include renderings, models, photographs and video footage of work by artists such as Red Grooms, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and Kara Walker, among others.
Museum of the City of New York is located at 1220 5th Ave & 103rd St, New York, NY 10029. www.mcny.org.
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The Met Breuer: “Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed”
November 15, 2017 through February 4, 2018
The Met Breuer will present “Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed,” a retrospective that looks back at the seminal Norwegian artist’s landmark compositions.
Edvard Munch (1863-1944), who is known for his depictions of human anxiety, regularly revisited subjects with renewed inspiration and intensity throughout his career. Using one of his final such works, Self-Portrait: Between the Clock and the Bed (1940-1943), as a lens for viewing the artist’s oeuvre, the Met Breuer exhibition will feature 43 of the Munch’s landmark compositions, including 16 self-portraits. Many of the works on display were part of Munch’s personal collection and remained with him throughout his life.
The Met Breuer is located at 945 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10021. www.metmuseum.org.
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The Met Fifth Avenue: “David Hockney”
November 27, 2017 through February 25, 2018
The Met Fifth Avenue will present “David Hockney,” a major retrospective of the British artist in honor of his 80th birthday.
The exhibition will look back at Hockney’s most iconic works and key moments in his career from the 1960s to the present, including his early experiments with modernist abstraction, his mid-career experiments with illusion and realism, and his current jewel-toned landscapes. The exhibition shows how Hockney examines, probes and questions the means of capturing the perceived world of movement, space and time in two dimensions, while also showing his achievements across all media, including painting, drawing, photography and video.
The Met Fifth Avenue is located at 1000 5th Ave, New York, NY 10028. www.metmuseum.org.
Click here for exhibition details.
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