Anybody who lives here knows that New York is a Leviathan. How do you sum up a city that generates nearly a millennium in collective memory every hour? We met that gargantuan task with a behemoth of a list — more than 30 (!) exhibitions — of the best NYC shows of 2024. I’m pleased to say that Queens is well represented, from Aki Sasamoto’s humor-meets-existentialism (which I also practice) to Auriea Harvey’s archeology of the early internet. Elsewhere, we’ve got Apollinaria Broche’s whimsical bronze sculptures. Kay WalkingStick’s retort to the Hudson River School. The living sculptures of Suchitra Mattai. But no more spoilers — read the rest yourself.
As we wrap up the year, let’s honor those we lost during it. Julie Schneider was in California when she heard that the centenarian artist Richard Mayhew had died. In her review this week, she describes bee-lining to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to be in the presence of his art. When she returned to the city to see the first posthumous show of his work — for which he picked out each piece, and painted new works — it felt, to her, like a chapel. “You can get lost in these paintings,” she writes, mesmerized, “and find your way back home again, too.”
Indeed, this week’s theme — fittingly, for this most late date — seems to be how we remember, make sense of, or honor the past. That ranges from the lyrical, as in Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña’s recreations of nearly five-decade-old drawings that have been lost or destroyed, reviewed by Clara Apotsolatos, to the, uh, nonsensical, as in the Guggenheim’s show on Orphism. Alice Procter’s frustration comes through in her hilarious yet academically rigorous review, which systematically dismantles each premise of the exhibition. “Trying to reclaim Orphism as a distinctive movement doesn’t work,” she gripes in her conclusion. “It’s at most an adjective, borrowed from a poet.” — Lisa Yin Zhang, Associate Editor | |
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| | | Our staff and contributors look back on the city’s year in art, from blockbusters to under-the-radar art heroes and unsung histories. |
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SPONSORED | | | | Alvin C. Hollingsworth was a versatile artist who vividly represented the Black experience in America. His work explores a fascination with jazz, his celebration of Black women, and his origins in illustration. This exhibition, the first in 50 years, presents a slice of the artist’s career through paintings, prints, and comics.
Learn more |
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SPONSORED | | | | In Barrier, 12 artists evoke Angela Davis’s transformative abolitionist vision that “walls turned sideways are bridges.” On view through January 26, 2025, in Frenchtown, New Jersey. Learn more |
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WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING? | | | Months after the museum terminated three workers for wearing keffiyehs, Noguchi Museum workers moved to unionize. The Met Museum unveiled Mexican architect Frida Escobedo’s vision for its new modern and contemporary art wing. Tonight, Dec. 17, celebrate the launch of Katherine Bradford’s new monograph at CANADA gallery. [instagram.com] Also tonight, Trenton Doyle Hancock will be in conversation with David Norr at 52 Walker. [jamescohan.com] On Thurs., Dec. 19, artist David MacDonald’s giving a talk related to his work on Black radical tradition and civil rights activism at Eric Firestone Gallery. [instagram.com] Catch Joyce Kozloff’s work in a newly opened exhibition at Argosy Book Store running though Jan. 25. [instagram.com] |
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