A short list of the can’t-miss new exhibition openings (and closings) this week, by city. See last week’s list for other recent openings, and for a more comprehensive guide, see our Itinerary.
NEW YORK
“20 Years of Discovery”
R & Company
64 White Street
OPENS: June 6
On the occasion of its 20th anniversary, preeminent design gallery R & Company has put together an exhibition featuring the work of almost forty different designers (Wendell Castle, Katie Stout, the Haas brothers, and Lina Bo Bardi, among them) spanning several generations and representing four main movements the gallery has highlighted over the past two decades: Brazilian Modern Design, Postwar American Design, Contemporary Design, and “Difficult” Design. The exhibition will showcase major historical designs as well as new pieces commissioned just for the occasion, and will coincide with the release of a comprehensive new publication dedicated to the art and artists that represent, and have been represented by, the gallery.
Rachel Lee Hovnanian “Part III: Pure”
Leila Heller Gallery
568 W 25th Street
OPENS: June 8
For the third and final installment of her interactive series, The Women’s Trilogy Project, the multidisciplinary artist Rachel Lee Hovnanian invites participants to confront notions of consumerism and beauty faced by women in contemporary society by literally smashing the sculptures that comprise her installation. Entitled “Pure,” the exhibition presents plaster sculptures of ivory soap bars that participants can destroy using a variety of tools—a cathartic and symbolic act that aims to break down notions of perfect, homogeneous beauty.
(Opening image: Rachel Lee Hovnanian,“Part III: PURE,” 2018. Photo: Courtesy the artist and Leila Heller Gallery.)
Nick Cave “The Let Go”
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Avenue
OPENS: June 7
The interdisciplinary artist’s new performance work transforms the Armory’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall into an inclusive, dance-based town hall, dominated by a moving 40-foot-tall Mylar sculpture. During the day, leading New York DJs will spin a soundtrack for visitors to dance to, while dancers choreographed by Francesca Harper and Cave further engage participants in movement-based encounters. The artist’s signature “Up Right” performances, involving site-specific choreography and wearable “Soundsuit” sculptures, feature in the evenings. Read more about “The Let Go.”
Erwin Wurm “Hot Dog Bus”
Brooklyn Bridge Park
OPENS: June 9
Hot Dog Bus is an interactive public exhibition by the Austrian artist Erwin Wurm located in DUMBO’s Brooklyn Bridge Park. Originally staged in the artist’s home country as the currywurst-serving Curry Bus, the centerpiece of the exhibition, brought to the U.S. this summer by Public Art Fund, is a modified vintage Volkswagen Minibus-turned-food cart, with bulging bodywork and a bright yellow paint job that evokes ideas of consumption and consumerism. Designed to break down the traditional barriers between art and the public, the New York debut of Hot Dog Bus will, appropriately, serve free hot dogs on weekends, establishing a street food link of sorts between Austria and New York.
“Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables”
The Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street
CLOSES: June 10
Surveying the career of the seminal painter whose work illuminated the hopes and anxieties of 1930s rural America, this exhibition encompasses Grant Wood’s early decorative objects and oils, as well as his mature paintings and murals, anchored by “American Gothic,” his emblematic double portrait of Midwest America.
