On View

More than four decades into painting, Kenny Scharf, a visionary of Pop Surrealism and a fixture of New York’s downtown art scene, is at the pinnacle of his career. The artist’s top 30 auction sales have all transpired since 2020 and this past May, an aerosol artwork sprayed on-site for a benefit auction sold for a record $1.1 million. Now, with three major exhibitions currently on view in New York City, Scharf’s dynamic, colorful works are being celebrated like never before.
After enrolling in New York’s School of Visual Arts in 1978, Scharf became pals with street artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The rest is history, as they say. Throughout the 1980s, he spent his time orbiting Warhol, painting the streets, and getting freaky at Manhattan’s nightclubs. He became known for his vibrant, distorted faces that are usually laughing or smiling, which are exemplified in a recently unveiled show at Lio Malca’s 60 White gallery. Meanwhile, a suite of new works joyfully commemorating the year of the dragon, are on view at the Lower East Side gallery TOTAH.
A survey at New York’s Brant Foundation, however, emphasizes the angst that has been brewing just beneath his jocular figures all along.
A view of the exhibition’s final, bottom floor. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging.
Brant co-curated the three-floor extravaganza alongside dealer Tony Shafrazi. Together, they supplemented their collections with Scharf’s holdings, plus loans from museums and other collectors, like Larry Warsh and Robert De Niro. Scharf hasn’t done anything this big since his exhibition at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey in 1995.
“I’ve been wanting this, obviously, for many, many years,” he said over Zoom.
“I think some people might dismiss the art as just fun and light,” Scharf continued. “I can’t control what people think—and if they choose not to look further. But I think when you see it together in this mass, it might change your mind.”
Installation view, with The Days of Our Lives (1984) at center. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging.
At the show’s VIP preview, Scharf said it was emotional to encounter so many works he hadn’t seen in decades. “Some of this stuff goes on auction over the years, and then you don’t know who owns it,” he said. Brant located Scharf’s scattered treasures. Some, like The Days of Our Lives (1984), proved even wilder than Scharf remembered.
“I was just going nuts,” he said. “It’s so liberating to be able to make a painting and not care at all what a painting is supposed to be, or how you’re supposed to be.”
Guests are advised to start on the show’s top floor, and descend from there. Each level explores a running theme in Scharf’s practice, starting with the cartoon family the Jetsons before moving through portals, jungles, and portraits. Works from the 1970s through the ’90s appear on each floor. Casual fans, however, would have a hard time attributing some of the earliest paintings on offer to Scharf.
A view of the Jetsons floor. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging.
“I was just thinking about the painting Barbara Simpson’s New Kitchen,” he said regarding one 1978 work. He read the Guardian‘s recent interpretation that the titular character has tamed the dragon in her kitchen. “That’s not it at all,” Scharf said. “She’s just happy about her new kitchen and showing it off, despite the fact that there is a dragon right in your face. She’s ignoring it.”
Scharf was raised in California’s San Fernando Valley during the environmentalist movement’s advent, in the 1960s. “I made up my mind very early [that] we need to harness solar and wind, and we have to get off petroleum,” he said. The dinosaurs that appear throughout his work reference fossil fuels. Growing up, Scharf found the Valley’s air barely breathable. “I remember talking to my parents and going, ‘God, my lungs hurt today,’” he said. His suburban family, however, mostly cared about keeping up with the Joneses.
Kenny Scharf, Barbara Simpson’s New Kitchen (1978). Courtesy of the Brant Foundation.
“It made a strong impression on me, the hypocrisy of how you can just live and ignore stuff that’s right in your face,” he said. That message has only intensified 45 years on. “But if we got our brand new kitchen, we’re cool with that.”
Scharf has also famously upcycled the now-obsolete appliances that powered the 1980s and 1990s. This part of his practice, he said, is “like my fantasy idea of what an artist is and how an artist lives.” If you’ve ever ridden in one of his cars, then you understand how Scharf’s hand can elevate even the simple experience of sitting in traffic.
The Dino Phone. Photo: Vittoria Benzine.
Several answering machines appear among the show’s maximalist boomboxes, TVs, and calculators. One still holds a taped message from Haring, though Scharf can’t remember which. But, he definitely had regular conversations on the Dino Phone while living one block north of the Brant Foundation throughout the mid-’80s.
The Brant survey’s second floor features its banner image, and largest artwork, When the Worlds Collide (1983–84). The Whitney loaned the foundation this oil and aerosol painting, which appeared in the museum’s 1985 Biennial. Brant and Shafrazi received fellow downtown royalty like Charlie Ahearn in front of this piece during the VIP opening. But, amidst all the artwork’s excitement, Scharf pointed out one tiny detail—a Keith Haring “Radiant Baby” in its lower right corner.
The middle floor. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging.
“I had no studio,” he recalled of the moment in which he executed this tableaux. Haring, traveling in Europe, let Scharf use his SoHo space. Scharf added the baby glyph as a thank you.
One year prior, on a flight to join his Brazilian artist Bruno Schmidt for the country’s Carnival, Scharf met his wife Tereza Goncalves. He soon moved to a stretch of Brazil’s coastal rainforest. He painted there prolifically, living alongside fisherman who asked him if there was a moon in New York, too.
“I was just getting this notoriety—hanging out with Warhol and going to parties, blah, blah, blah,” he said. “Then all of a sudden, I was there in a place that had no electricity.” Scharf, who went to high school in Beverly Hills with celebrity offspring, felt leery around fame. He wanted to be taken seriously, and wasn’t sure his rockstardom helped. Neither did his authentic artist antics, though. When he and Goncalves showed up to the 1985 Whitney Biennial in a fringed outfit joined at the leg, the guests in black tie all rolled their eyes.
Kenny Scharf, Juicy Jungle (1983-84). Photo: Tom Powel Imaging
Fortunately, Scharf maintained his ties to New York while living in Brazil. Haring visited frequently. Scharf had copied Rousseau paintings extensively as a kid, dreaming of lush landscapes beyond arid SoCal. But jungle iconography entered his oeuvre afresh in the rainforest, as Scharf doubled down on environmentalism by partnering with the World Wildlife Fund. “I wish I could say we made a big difference,” he said, but matters have only worsened. Of all his tropical artworks from this era, Scharf considers Juicy Jungle (1984) the most iconic.
He moved back to L.A. in 1999. In an effort to establish community, he invited friends to sit for Old Hollywood–style portraits in his studio. Selections from this vast series round out his survey’s final floor—including the only one not painted from an original photo. Scharf pilfered his Patti Smith source image from Newsweek as a teen. At long last, he thinks, these portraits—like his early paintings—are getting their due.
One wall in the final floor’s portrait gallery, featuring Patti Smith at top. Photo: Vittoria Benzine.
“You can’t do anything about the time,” Scharf said. “Artists usually are ahead of their time.” Sure, he’s enjoyed Brant and Shafrazi’s longstanding support, but he always felt alienated by the art world’s more academic bigwigs. Based on the attendees at this survey’s dinner, this show may change that.
“Everything will catch up,” Scharf added. “Just be alive.”
“Kenny Scharf” is on view through February 28 at the Brant Foundation, 421 East 6th Street. “MYTHOLOGEEZ “is on view through December 7 at TOTAH, 183 Stanton Street. “Space Travel” is on view through January 27 at 60 White, 60 White Street. More

A 4,000-year-old tiny figurine that bears the silhouette of an elegant woman, a wine vessel in the form of a baby elephant from the 18th to 11th century B.C., and a sculpture of a mother breast-feeding an infant from the 12th century, what do they have in common besides the fact that they are ancient?
These wonders of the world are all made of bronze and hail from different parts of Asia. Thanks to Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, over 70 works are gathered together as part of “Asian Bronze: 4,000 years of beauty.” The expansive exhibition features works from India, China, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan, Nepal, and Korea, many of which left home and are being exhibited abroad for the first time, as well as objects from the Dutch museum’s own collection.
Installation view of “Asian Bronze”. Photo: Rijksmuseum/Erik and Petra Hesmerg
In Western institutions, ancient bronzes have often been shown as ethnographic objects. But the Rijksmuseum’s show positions them as part of art history and charts the trajectory of humanity’s eternal desire to tell stories from prehistoric days to contemporary times. The subject matter and aesthetics vary, the techniques and use of materials evolve, but the aspiration for beauty, harmony, and transcendence beyond the mortal realm is the same. Here, bronze is like canvas, and various casting techniques adopted by different cultures and makers in different periods are like brushes and colors.
Installation of Buddha Seated Under the Hood of a Seven-Headed Nāga, Thailand, 12th–13th century. Photo: Rijksmuseum/Kelly Schenk
“The beauty and breathtaking techniques, the differences and similarities, the unrivaled skills of their creators, bronze connects Asia and makers of contemporary and ancient times,” said Menno Fitski, head of Asian art at Rijksmueum. “People have been standing in front of these sculptures for centuries with their own private emotions. This makes them more than just a piece of metal.”
The result of meticulous research led by the museum’s exhibition team—including curators Anna A. Ślączka, Ching-Ling Wang, and William Southworth, as well as Sara Creange, the museum’s metals conservator—the show is organized by several thematic sections to tell the Asian bronze story in a more holistic way than chronologically or regionally.
Standing female, a figure from Mohenjodaro, Sindh province, Pakistan, circa 2500 to 1500 BCE. on loan from the National Museum of Pakistan in Karachi. Courtesy of Rijksmuseum.
The technique of creating bronze from an alloy of copper and tin was discovered in Asia, which is where the exhibition’s “Materials and Beginnings” section starts. The most fascinating work here is Standing female, a figure from Mohenjodaro, Sindh province, Pakistan, on loan from the National Museum of Pakistan in Karachi. Measuring only five inches tall, the work is dated to 2500 to 1500 BCE and is the oldest object on display. When it was created, bronze craftsmanship was still in its early stages, and very little is known about it.
Yet its depiction of an elegant female figure, standing upright with one hand on her hip and the other posing as if she were carrying something, makes a lasting impression. It raises questions about the perception and status of women in ancient times. For similar reasons, the anthropomorphic figure from India’s Ganges Valley (circa 1500 to 1000 BCE), on loan from Musée départmental des Arts Asiatiques in Nice, is equally fascinating.
Buddha under Naga’s hood, Thailand, 12th-13th century. National Museum, BangkokPhoto: Rijksmuseum/Erik and Petra Hesmerg
The two-part Heaven and Earth section makes up a significant portion of the show as a lot of bronze objects tended to be made with a religious or spiritual intention. Ślączka explains in her catalogue essay that bronze was broadly used across the region especially Hinduism and Buddhism because these bronze works, which represent the images of deities and sacred characters, must be strong enough to withstand the worship rituals, as these rituals ranged from offerings of food to bathing and anointing. “Wood and clay, do not last well in the hot and humid climate that characterizes many parts of Asia,” she noted.
Guhyasamaja Aksobhya, Tibet, 15th century. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
The works on view in this section showcase the remarkable skill and craftsmanship that artisans possessed centuries ago. The more than five-foot-tall statue of the Buddha seated under the hood of a seven-headed naga from 12th to 13th century Thailand is one example. On loan from National Museum in Bangkok, the highly polished work not only tells a famous story about the Buddha, its design carries aesthetic elements from beyond Thailand, such as China, Cambodia, and India.
A Tibetan Guhyasamaja Akshobhya from the first half of the 15th century is one of the highlights of the show. It offers a vivid three-dimensional depiction of the iconic personality of Tantric Buddhism. Kept in the Rijksmuseum’s collection, the enthralling gold-gilded sculpture symbolizes the unity of opposite forces and a higher state of enlightenment. Ten years ago, researchers at the museum realized it was cast from solid bronze—a technique that Europeans artisans had not yet mastered. This discovery prompted the curatorial team to question what they knew about Asian bronzes and ultimately led to this exhibition.
Wine vessel in the form of an elephant, China, 18th –11th century BC. Musée Guimet, Paris.

Ślączka noted that further scans of the work revealed that the statue contained a scroll hidden inside. What the scroll says remains a mystery as the museum did not want to extract it to avoid damaging the work.
Bronze was also used to create weapons, tools, utensils, and containers for food and drink, many of which are featured in other parts of the exhibition. A standout piece is a wine vessel shaped like a baby elephant, dating back to 12th to 11th century BCE China. Its charming depiction resembles modern toy store designs, but as Wang pointed out, it also reveals the Chinese invention of using clay molds to cast intricate abstract patterns on the vessel’s surface.

Magic mirrors by Yamamoto Akihisa. Photo: Rijksmuseum/Erik and Petra Hesmerg
The exhibition concludes with a display of mirrors set in bronze, including two works by a contemporary Kyoto craftsman, Yamamoto Akihisa, who has carried on the ancient Japanese tradition of “secret mirrors,” which were mystical objects used to project a hidden image only when light hits them at the right angle. These works were originally created in the 17th century, at a time when Christianity was forbidden by the shogunate; many contained images of the crucifix and the Virgin Mary, as well as depictions of Buddha and tree scenery.
“The Asian world is not just one thing,” said Fitski. “It’s incredibly diverse through the eye of one material, but the human element is exactly the same.”
“Asian Bronze. 4,000 years of beauty,” runs through January 12 at the Rijksmuseum, Museumstraat 1, 1071 XX, Amsterdam, Netherlands. More

A groundbreaking traveling exhibition that redefines the narrative of Native American representation through photography and lens-based art has arrived at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas. “Native America: In Translation,” curated by celebrated Apsáalooke artist Wendy Red Star, explores themes of memory, identity, and cultural preservation through the works of intergenerational Native and Indigenous artists. The show offers a vivid dialogue on the evolving role of photographic mediums in capturing Native histories and futures.
The exhibition grew from the Fall 2020 issue of Aperture magazine, which was guest-edited by Red Star and explored how photographic mediums historically have contributed to the representation of Native cultures. The artist then curated the traveling show, which was organized by Aperture and received funding from the National Endowment of the Arts.
“I was thinking about young Native artists and what would be inspirational and important for them as a road map,” Red Star said in a statement. “The people included here have all played an important part in forging pathways, in opening up space in the art world for new ways of seeing and thinking.”
Rebecca Belmore, matriarch (2018), from the series nindinawemaganidog (all of my relations), Photo: Henri Robidea. Courtesy of the artist.
The show includes works by Omaskêko Ininiwak artist Duane Linklater; Mohawk artist Alan Michelson; Musgamakw Dzawada’enuxw artist Marianne Nicolson; Martine Gutierrez, an American artist of Mayan heritage; the late Cree artist Kimowan Metchewais; Rebecca Belmore of the Lac Seul First Nation; Yup’ik artist Nalikutaar Jacqueline Cleveland; American-Ecuadorian artist Koyoltzintli; and Salvadoran artist Guadalupe Maravilla.
“There has been a gap in our transmission of our knowledge, and we used photography as a memory device,” Nicolson said of how the Native artists use lens-based mediums. The artist and land rights activist’s monumental installation projects light through etched glass boxes that reference Kwakwaka’wakw songs, stories, and spiritual connection to the land.
Installation view of Marianne Nicolson’s Widzotłants gwayułalatł? Where Are We Going…What Is to Become of Us? at the Blanton Museum of Art. Photo courtesy of the Blanton Museum of Art
Among the works in the show is a 23-image installation by Linklater that is sourced from a 1995 issue of Aperture that also spotlighted Native American photographers and an installation by Michelson that features historic maps projected onto busts of George Washington referencing his 1779 military campaign against Iroquois villages.
“My audience is the people of the villages I shoot and students of ethnobotany. I identify myself as a subsistence hunter-fisher-gatherer,” Cleveland said about her series of work “Ethnobotany” that is included in the exhibit. “That includes foraging, first and foremost. And next, as a documentary filmmaker and photographer.”
Nalikutaar Jacqueline Cleveland. Molly Alexie and her children after a harvest of beach greens in Quinhagak, Alaska (2018). Photo courtesy of Nalikutaar Jacqueline Cleveland
Altogether, the artists and their more than 60 works were chosen to present an intergenerational sample of contemporary art from various Native nations and affiliations across the Americas who use photography, video, and mixed media in their works.
“The artists and artworks Wendy Red Star has selected delve into universal themes like memory and identity with remarkable depth and creativity,” said Blanton’s director Simone Wicha. “The exhibition’s photography and other powerful visuals will no doubt be deeply moving for our visitors and foster insight and understanding of our rich American heritage.”
Koyoltzintli. Spider Woman Embrace, Abiquiu, New Mexico (2019). Photo courtesy of Koyoltzintli
It was first exhibited at the Princeton University Art Museum in 2022 and has since traveled to Haverford College in Pennsylvania, the Milwaukee Art Museum in Wisconsin, the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College in Chicago.
Hannah Klemm, the Blanton’s curator of modern and contemporary art, organized the Blanton’s presentation of the show, which boasts the special including of an additional work by Maravilla from the Blanton’s collection.
Kimowan Metchewais. Cold Lake Fishing (Undated). Photo courtesy of the Kimowan Metchewais [McLain] Collection, National Museum of the American Indian Archives Center, Smithsonian InstitutionWhile speaking about the importance of having the show travel to the American Southwest, Red Star told the Texas Standard: “Texas is a really strong place, conceptually, to have the audience walk into the Blanton and think about these issues.”
“Native America: In Translation” is on view through January 5 at the Blanton Museum of Art, 200 E Martin Luther King Jr Blvd in Austin, Texas. More

Fans of Belgian artist Hans Op de Beeck can brace for a visual feast at his latest solo show, “Whispered Tales,” in which he has taken over the entirety of Galerie Templon’s New York branch in West Chelsea. It’s his first show with Templon since the gallery announced US representation of the multidisciplinary artist late last year.
Installation view of “Hans Op De Beeck: Whispered Tales,” at Galerie Templon, New York. ©Charles Roussel
Along with dozens of new, life-size figurative sculptures and tableaux that blend storytelling and mystery, the entire gallery has been taken over by Op de Beeck’s signature monochrome gray, including the walls, painted a dark gray with custom-installed gray carpet, which creates an immersive effect that virtually envelops the viewer. The show sprawls across two floors and includes less familiar elements such as animatronic sculptures and elements, such as a string of gray birds that flap their wings up and down while a seaside ferris wheel turns slowly nearby. There is also a 20-minute animated black and white film with a compelling original score, and watercolors that are mesmerizing despite their use of a single color on white paper.
We spoke to the artist during a recent walkthrough of the show after the packed opening night on November 7.
Hans Op De Beeck, The Horseman ©Courtesy of the artist and TEMPLON, Paris —Brussels — New York.
Asked about the title of the show, “Whispered Tales,” Op de Beeck explained that it was inspired by the idea of tales passed on verbally from one generation to another. But it’s also a reference to the idea of staying up late with friends at childhood sleepovers and speaking in conspiratorial hushed tones, so as not to draw the attention or ire of adults.
He also explained that all of the large-scale watercolors are actully the most personal, as he creates them alone late at night in his studio—a stark contrast to the work that takes place during the daytime with a team of about half a dozen studio assistants on hand.
Installation view of “Hans Op de Beeck: Whispered Tales” at Galerie Templon, New York. ©Charles Roussel. Image courtesy the artist and Galerie Templon.
As for the artist’s incredibly detailed sculptures, it was somewhat surprising to hear that the elements often come to his mind quite spontaneously. Take one of the show’s largest sculptural installations, The Horseman, in which a shirtless, bearded man on a horse appears in a moment of pause, gazing behind him. A monkey with a curious expression perches on his shoulder, holding an umbrella and looking the other way.
“All of the sculptures are in a sort of a silent moment. There is something quite unspectacular about them as well,” said Op de Beeck. “They’re not in a dramatic pose. Even this horseman—which in art history are often depicting emperors or kings in a heroic perspective—is unspectacular.”
As for the monkey, “it was a very last minute addition,” he said. “By putting that little monkey on his shoulder you make him a bit more human, because you understand that he is the owner of that little pet and has to take care of that little creature.”
Op de Beeck is also fond of adding anachronistic touches he says, like the contemporary little boy, clad in underpants, who strikes a pose, seemingly playing dress up with a sword and dons a 17th-century ruffled collar and buckled shoes, or a woman in a classical-style full-length gown with a partially shaved head on whose hand perches an owl.
Installation view of “Hans Op de Beeck: Whispered Tales” at Galerie Templon. Photo by Eileen Kinsella
The mix of references “achieves a sort of timeless” effect said Op de Beeck, who says he views the characters as somewhat “frozen in time.” He emphasizes that he is a huge fan of color such as in the work of contemporary artist Peter Doig, but that for his own work, he prefers the ash grey and the sort of “petrified appearance,” it gives, “as though covered in ashes. It’s the effect you have when you wake up in the morning to a blanket of snow. Grey is not as pure as white. It’s more friendly to the eye.”
In one of the large black watercolor paintings, a house is on fire with smoke and flame billowing from the windows. Op de Beeck noted that on opening night, one viewer told him she could see the bright orange of the flames despite there being no color other than black in the work.
Installation view of “Hans Op de Beeck: Whispered Tales,” at Galerie Templon. Photo by Eileen Kinsella.
And he describes the sort of reverse engineering in painting these works that take place when the white of the untreated paper is the main light source. “You kill the light if you work on the watercolor too long.”
“Hans Op de Beeck: Whispered Tales” is on view at Galerie Templon, 239 Tenth Avenue, New York, through Saturday, December 21, 2024 More

It’s both ironic and bittersweet that broad interest in and admiration for Shaker art and culture—which marks its 250th anniversary in the US this year—has been steadily growing over the years and is at a high, even as the population of the group has dwindled close to zero.
According to a recent report in the New York Times, only two Shakers remain; they reside at Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in New Gloucester, Maine. The community, described as the longest-running Utopian experiment in the US, embraced communal living, simplicity, and celibacy (the latter because they didn’t believe in procreation and sought to emulate Jesus).
For years design aficionados and others have admired and sought their famously minimalistic and well-crafted furniture, remarkable for its clean lines. Now two well-received New York museum shows that opened almost simultaneously last month, are delving further into the art and culture to shine a light on lesser-known practices and aspects of Shaker life.
The first is “Anything But Simple: Gift Drawings and the Shaker Aesthetic,” a show of elaborate and intricate “gift drawings” at the American Folk Art Museum near Lincoln Square, that was years in the planning and originated at the Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 2022.  Gift drawings, made by mainly untrained Shaker artists, record spiritual visions,  referred to as “gifts” in Shaker culture.

Polly Jane Reed, A Type of Mother Hannah’s Pocket Handkerchief New Lebanon, New York (1851). Andrews Collection, Hancock Shaker Village, Massachusetts.
Also on view is “Cradled,” which was jointly curated by actor Frances McDormand and conceptual artist Suzanne Bocanegra, who teamed up with the Shaker Museum in Chatham, New York, for this thoughtful show that examines the community’s lifetime approach to caring for and providing comfort to individuals right up until their death. It’s on view at the Kinderhook Knitting Mill in Kinderhook, New York. Both shows are fascinating in their revelations and have some interesting overlaps in terms of approach, and organization not to mention the obvious reverence of Shaker culture and life.
At the Folk Art Museum, the “gift” drawings on display “represent a departure from the simplicity typically associated with Shaker material culture,” according to a statement. These works, made by women in the mid-19th century, are believed to represent divine messages and are filled with intricate texts and symbols that offer a unique glimpse into their interior world.
“Most people have not encountered these drawings. It’s interesting how structured these are even though they’re meant to represent the celestial world and are representative of the heavenly sphere that is not accessible when you’re on Earth,” said Emelie Gevalt,  a curator at the Folk Art Museum and curatorial chair for collections, in a phone conversation. “They are also very controlled. You see that proclivity for structure and careful planning seen in other Shaker material,” she noted.
Polly Jane Reed, Heart-shaped Cutout for Rufus Bishop, New Lebanon, New York (1844)Andrews Collection, Hancock Shaker Village, Massachusetts,
Gevalt estimated that only about 200 of these drawings may still be in existence. Others may have been destroyed out of concern or apprehension about their interpretation by outsiders. The intentions of the drawings—and whether they were meant to be exhibited—remain a matter of debate.  Gevalt pointed out that the last major exhibition of gift drawings, which took place at the Drawing Center in downtown Manhattan in the early 2000s, included a photograph of one of the Shaker elder sisters, shown sitting in a living space with a framed gift drawing visible on the wall behind her.
“There’s a lot of discussion about visuality in the Shaker community,” said Gevalt, “In the way that you see these essentially all-text versions of the drawings, like leaf or heart-shaped ones, in some ways, it’s the purest or simplest manifestation of a gift drawing where its primarily text but then the shape becomes part of the gift itself.”
Gevalt also emphasized that the works were primarily executed by women, which is notable considering the works were made in the 18th and 19th centuries when women were not typically “given center stage.”
While it’s undoubtedly a spiritual show, she noted that the Shakers were also dedicated to the idea that “even the more mundane of daily activities could represent prayer, akin to what we might call mindfulness or grounding nowadays.”
Suzanne Bocanegra, Joan Jonas, Annie-B Parson at “CRADLED,” at Kinderhook Knitting Mill. Photo by Matt Borkowski, BFA
Similarly, in a phone interview with Bocanegra and McDormand, Bocanegra shared that her interest in Shaker culture dates back to at least the early aughts when she saw the aforementioned Drawing Center show.
“The way that they’re put together, and even though they’re very complicated and detailed, they’re very symmetrically laid out,” said Bocanegra. “This whole idea that the drawing is a gift and it is not owned by anyone, it has to walk this fine line with the Shaker religion.”
Along with being a longtime admirer of Shaker Furniture, McDormand developed a performance piece with the Wooster Group a few years ago titled “Early Shaker Spirituals”  based on a recording by Shaker women that had been passed down through successive generations via an oral tradition. Earlier, in 2005, McDormand acted in a Shaker-focused project that dancer Martha Clarke created.
Of the Kinderhook show focus, which was inspired in part by research of the Shaker Museum archives, McDormand said she loved “the idea that they built something that could hold an infirm or elderly person, who was bedridden, and that it was a communal act of giving to rock them and comfort them.”
“As a piece of furniture, the cradle has to involve other people,” said Bocanegra. “One person is in it, but it has to be activated by another person, otherwise it doesn’t work.”
“Bertha” Shaker dolls with custom-designed clothes at “CRADLED” at the Kinderhook Knitting Mill. Photo by Matt Borkowski/BFA
Adding another layer of fascination to this thoughtful project, the two invited 88-year-old performance artist Joan Jonas, whose acclaimed MoMA retrospective wrapped this summer, to be part of the opening night celebration. Jonas agreed to be rocked in one of the adult cradles. McDormand and Bocanegra pointed out that there are more adult cradles in existence than child cradles, given the emphasis on celibacy and not pro-creating.
After McDormand and Bocanegra came across some dolls in the archives and found that the Shakers made doll clothes for their catalogues, along with the many other products they sold, “we commissioned Angel Malerba, a seamster in Columbia County who make ‘limited edition’ ensemble and hangars.” So far they have sold seven of them, and are planning to auction another to raise funds for the Shaker Museum. The dolls are called “Bertha” dolls but they bear a striking resemblance to another iconic doll, famous for her love of pink, and whose name also begins with a “B.”
Hannah Cohoon, The Tree of Life (1854).Andrews Collection, Hancock Shaker Village, Massachusetts, 1963.117
The Shakers were interested in creating beautiful, aesthetically pleasing, and excellent artifacts,” says McDormand. “And they were also very much selling everything. Making money was for the good of the community. They were really successful that way.”
As for “Cradled,” the show has just been extended until December 6 and there is a good chance that the show will travel to another venue. Stay tuned. More

In a rare meeting between the classical and the contemporary, Gagosian’s Paris gallery has staged a show pairing an ancient Roman sculpture with work by Jean-Michel Basquiat. The sculpture of the goddess Venus juxtaposed with Basquiat’s 1982 painting offers viewers a new lens through which to view the late artist’s still-resonant oeuvre.
The painting, Untitled, which itself features the outline of a classical Venus statue, is part of a series Basquiat painted at the age of 21 while staying in Modena in northern Italy. He had been invited there by the dealer Emilio Mazzoli to produce an exhibition but, after the pair fell out, the eight works were eventually sold by the artist’s New York gallerist Annina Nosei. They were only seen together for the first time last year, at a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler near Basel, Switzerland.
Asked about his experience in Modena years later, Basquiat likened it to “a sick factory. I hated it. I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot.” Shortly before this nightmare sojourn, however, he had enjoyed a visit to Rome with his then-girlfriend Suzanne Mallouk, who he used to refer to as “Venus.”
The ways in which the art that he saw on that trip must have informed Basquiat are particularly evident in his ambiguous Untitled. A Roman statue of Venus is paired with a typically expressive female figure with arms outstretched and a head crowned by dynamic ringlets. Above her shines a halo and to her left are pieces of fruit. The bunch of grapes evokes both classical Bacchanalian scenes and a similar still-life in Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which Basquiat often admired at MoMA in New York. This painting has also been likened to Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and canvases by Cy Twombly.
Installation view of “Jean-Michel Basquiat: Venus” at Gagosian Paris, 2024. Photo: Thomas Lannes, courtesy Gagosian, licensed by Artestar, New York; © Fondazione Torlonia, © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

“[Basquiat] had a great grasp of the history of art and visual culture and was brilliant at bringing the past to life in his paintings,” Larry Gagosian said. “His work reminds us of the common chords and resonances of beauty and identity throughout art history.”

Capturing the breadth of Basquiat’s references, Untitled has been reunited with another of its inspirations. The statue is on loan from the Torlonia Collection in Rome, the world’s largest private holding of Roman antiquities that is rarely seen in public. In turn, Gagosian is supporting the conservation of the marble figure.
“We want to bring the viewer closer to the influences that Basquiat was absorbing during his trip to Italy,” explained Gagosian’s senior director in Paris, Serena Cattaneo Adorno. “He was drawing on so many references, gathered on his travels, and he poured them back into the eight [Modena] works, in a series that is unique within his practice for its momentum, operatic emotion and overarching narrative.”
“The compositions are dominated mostly by single figures, so they give the impression of leitmotifs in an operatic narrative taking place in multiple acts,” she added, “through the characters of an angel, a devil, a prophet, a miser, a farmhand, and—of course—the goddess Venus.”
Adorno said Gagosian has chosen the Torlonia Venus for how its “complete and perfect form” provides “an evocation of classical motifs that we see strongly influencing Jean-Michel’s thoughts at the moment he created this unparalleled Modena series.”
“Jean-Michel Basquiat: Venus” is on view at Gagosian Paris through December 20.  More

A deep dive into the life and career of a dancer and choreographer might not seem like a natural fit for the Whitney Museum, but it turns out that its new exhibition on Alvin Ailey (1931–89), “Edges of Ailey,” feels perfectly at home at the New York institution.
The stunning multimedia show, which has taken over the Whitney’s entire fourth floor, is an immersive feast that seamlessly presents video, music, contemporary art, and archival material against eye-catching, sumptuous red walls. Six years in the making, it was put together in collaboration with the Alvin Ailey Foundation by Adrienne Edwards, a senior curator at the Whitney, who has skillfully blended together the mediums on view.
Ailey was born in segregated Texas at the height of the Great Depression; his father left when he was three months old. He and his mother worked in cotton fields and as servants in white households before moving to Los Angeles; he later decamped for San Francisco, then New York.
Throughout his career, Ailey engaged with questions about race, sexuality, and identity, using dance to elevate and celebrate the experience of Black people in America. “Edges of Ailey” charts Ailey’s life and legacy, using a wide variety of art and music to contextualize his achievements. The Whitney’s director, Scott Rothkopf, called it “one of the most glorious exhibitions in the history of this museum” at the opening-day press conference.
“I’ve been asked a number of times: Why is the Whitney doing an Alvin Ailey show?,” Rothkopf said. “And the short answer to that question is we believe Ailey is one of the greatest artistic geniuses of the 20th century, not just in dance but in any medium.”
“To me, Alvin Ailey’s work is everything,” he said later. “It touches on his celebration and exploration of the Black experience, from his time growing up in Texas in the South, to L.A. to Broadway, to Soul Train to the White House, to dancing all around the world . . . and sadly at the end of his life, to the AIDS crisis.”
Installation view of “Edges of Ailey” at the Whitney Museum of American Art.  Anonymous, AIDS Memorial Quilt with Alvin Ailey panel, 1987.  Photograph by Jason Lowrie/BFA.com. © BFA 2024. “Edges of Ailey” is part of the National AIDS Memorial’s efforts to bring the Quilt to communities across the United States to raise greater awareness and education about HIV/AIDS and to remember those lost to the pandemic.
Edwards said at the press conference that organizing the show was “a journey,” and involved not just the Ailey Foundation but also the Kansas City-based Allan Gray Family Personal Papers of Alvin Ailey. (The dancer entrusted his papers to Gray, a longtime friend, before he died at the age of 58. He’s now chairman of the Allan Gray Alvin Ailey Archives Family Foundation.)
The press preview had a feeling of a family reunion, with Gray present, as well as Sylvia Waters, whom Ailey asked to found his second dance company in 1974, and Bennett Rink, who’s the executive director of Ailey today.
The show has a fluid, open floor plan that invites exploration rather than prescribing a single path. Edwards described the layout as “a series of islands, an archipelago in the sense of visual connectivity” that includes 18 projectors that offer a montage of dance and music from over 200 videos.
Installation view of “Edges of Ailey” at the Whitney Museum of American Art.  Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, A Knave Made Manifest, 2024. Photograph by Jason Lowrie/BFA.com. © BFA 2024
“You could take an experience of the show that is really just looking at the archival material,”  Edwards said. “Or you could just start over and have a visual art experience, or watch video, or meander through all of it.”
Visual art fans have plenty to enjoy. There are works on display by 82 artists, many of them active during Ailey’s life, like Jacob Lawrence, Faith Ringgold, and Alma Thomas. Four artists made work specifically for the exhibition: Lynette Yiadem-Boake, Karon Davis, Jennifer Packer, and Mickalene Thomas.
One of the earliest artworks, from 1851, is Robert Duncanson’s View of Cincinnati, Ohio from Covington, Kentucky. “The question of freedom and liberation in connection to Blackness and Queerness” was an important one for Ailey, who was born in the segregated South, Edwards said. “One of the ways we foreground that” is with this work, with a view that “at that time depending on where you stood [determined] if you were free or not.”
Rashid Johnson’s Anxious Men (2016) is juxtaposed with a notebook in which a distressed Ailey wrote in 1980, “nervous breakdown, hospitalized seven weeks.”
Installation view of “Edges of Ailey” at the Whitney Museum. Photo by Eileen Kinsella.
The show has a robust dance and performance schedule, too, which Edwards described as “Uptown comes Downtown,” with the Ailey dance company in residence at the museum for one week each month during the exhibition, which runs through February 9, 2025. (A full list of performances is available here.)
“To the best of my knowledge, no art museum has ever before organized such a deeply researched, extensively programmed, or comprehensive exhibition, about the life and work of a performing artist,” Edwards said. “I’m proud that the exhibition will include all aspects of Ailey.”
Installation view of “Edges of Ailey” at the Whitney Museum. Photo by Eileen Kinsella.
“Edges of Ailey” is on view at the Whitney Museum through February 9, 2025. More

London is suddenly brimming with new public art installations ahead of its third London Sculpture Week, which runs from September 21–29. Among the biggest headline-grabbers is the annual Frieze Sculpture exhibition, which this year sees experimental pieces by artists like Theaster Gates, Yoshimoto Nara, and Zanele Muholi dotted around Regent’s Park, and the always hotly-anticipated unveiling of the latest Fourth Plinth commission.
What many of these varied artworks share this year is a sense of impermanence—which is perhaps counterintuitive for public sculpture, a genre that is traditionally meant to be able to withstand both the elements and the effects of time.
Returning as curator of Frieze Sculpture’s 12th edition, Fatoş Üstek has challenged herself to bring together an impressively wide range of artistic interpretations of sculpture as a medium, embracing a diversity of concepts, materiality, and execution. To this end, the program includes a loose mosaic by Nika Neelova, Juliana Cerqueira Leite’s intricate choreographies of movement, and even surprise performances by FOS. Speculative works like these may merely “allude to a sculptural experience,” the curator said. Guiding audio interpretations are offered via Bloomberg Connects.
Theaster Gates, The Duet (2023) at Frieze Sculpture 2024. Photo: Linda Nylind, courtesy of Frieze.
“This expandedness is really about pronouncing the difference between the monumentality that we’re very much used to seeing in our cities and the ephemerality that sometimes touches us even more,” Üstek explained at the show’s launch. “This year is for your eyes, but also for your third eye, for your introspective qualities, for your contemplative qualities, or for your forces of imagination.”
One of the most widely discussed works is Ent- (non-earthly delights) by Libby Heaney, who has gained a cult following for complex artworks emerging from her expertise in quantum computing. It is the first sculptural manifestation of an ongoing project inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights (ca. 1500) but invites viewers to step into the digital realm via two A.R. artworks accessed via Q.R. codes near the sculpture. In one, a virtual sculptural form that appears on screen against the backdrop of the park shifts between different states of completeness before exploding entirely. The artist’s semi-transparent hand can be glimpsed on the screen as well, as if it is extending into the landscape itself.
“The work continues my exploration of quantum hybrid creatures, strange entanglements of human, animal, and machine,” said Heaney. “Future quantum computers will be able to control and create new Frankenstein lifeforms on a scale never seen before.” She added that monsters excite her as “external representations of the parts of us we try to repress that could be brought into the light and celebrated.”
İnci Eviner, Materials of Mind Theatre (2024) installed at Frieze Sculpture 2024. Photo: Linda Nylind, courtesy of Frieze.
Another work that exhibits an unusual conceptual approach is Inci Eviner’s Materials of Mind Theatre, a stage-like platform holding 25 stoneware sculptures that resemble fantastical pieces of costume design. It is activated when a performer takes their place on the stage, animating the otherwise static set and ensuring that the composition is always evolving.
Albano Hernandez’s The Shadow is a particularly surprising work that could very easily be missed, or indeed trodden over. It uses water-based grass paint to darken the ground, which in this case has been applied to record the shadow of a sweet gum tree in the park exactly as it appears in mid-morning. The artist said the work serves as “a reminder that, though we as humans commodify natural resources, changing their aesthetics, their names, and even their qualities, we cannot stop time. Maybe today you are able to see the shadow, but it will soon disappear, like you, like me, like everything.”
Meanwhile, over in central London’s Trafalgar Square, the 15th commission for the Fourth Plinth, one of the city’s most important public showcases for contemporary art, has been unveiled before an expectant crowd.
Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant) by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles is a structure that at first glance appears to repeat the rectangular structure of the plinth. On closer inspection, its surface is made up of plaster casts, echoing the Tzompantili, a wooden rack once used by Mesoamerican civilizations to display the skulls of sacrificial victims.
Teresa Margolles, Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant) (2024) is the 15th Fourth Plinth commission in London’s Trafalgar Square. Photo: © James O Jenkins.
Each of the faces recorded by Margolles is that of a trans, non-binary, or gender non-conforming person, adding up to 726 participants in total. The work foregrounds the trans community at a time when their existence is often called into question, and is also a poignant tribute to the artist’s friend and collaborator Karla, a trans woman from Mexico who was murdered in 2015.
“We pay this tribute to her and to all the other people who were killed for reasons of hate,” said Margolles. “But, above all, to those who live on, to the new generations who will defend the power to freely choose to live with dignity.”
Echoing Üstek’s theme of ephemerality in sculpture, the work is expected to erode over time as it is exposed to London’s infamously wintry weather. In an age where many centuries-old monuments have been toppled by protestors, in most cases because they are not felt to represent the values of contemporary society, it appears that the artists and curators behind London Sculpture Week are excited by sculpture that reflects and exists only for the present moment.
Richard Wilson, A Slice of Reality installed at Greenwich Peninsula as part of The Line in London. Photo: Matt Cuzner.
Other events during the week include The Line, a free public art trail that weaves its way through east London from Greenwich Peninsula to East Bank, where three public art commissions include Michael Landy’s Meringue, a celebration of the region’s Cockney rhyming slang both old and new. Along the way, members of the public will spot pieces by artists like Tracey Emin and Yinka Illori.
Finally, art lovers are encouraged to check out the 13th edition of Sculpture in the City, which opened in July and runs through spring 2025. Ten sculptures by artists like Richard Mackness, Ida Ekblad, Julian Opie, and Samuel Ross are installed in and around the City of London.
London Sculpture Week runs from September 21–29 at locations across the city.  More