Summer Culture Calendar: Art All Around

Title: Summer Culture Calendar: Art All Around [music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we'll end today with another installment in our pledge-drive miniseries. Looking ahead to the cultural events coming up this summer in New York City. Today, we're joined once more by WNYC and Gothamist arts and culture reporter Ryan Kailath, who is going to tell us about some of the great artwork to see in local museums and galleries this summer. Hello again, Ryan.

Ryan Kailath: Hey, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Let's aim high and start with the summer rooftop exhibit at the Met. What's on view this summer, weather permitting?

Ryan Kailath: Yes, the Met's got a ton of exciting stuff this summer. The highlights probably before we get to the roof are obviously the Sargent show, I think that's a blockbuster. The Caspar David Friedrich show also. I think this is going to be one of the last rooftop shows that they have this summer. I do want to bring people to something I think is even the most interesting show at the Met right now, which is pretty small, tucked into a corner, which is this new American photography exhibit they have.

This is when photographs were becoming an interesting medium in America. As you can imagine, there's a lot of Civil War stuff in there, but also some really striking, if you believe it or not, three dimensional images that you look at through these special viewers that are vivid in a way that you can't imagine. It blows current day 3D technology out of the way. This is all from a private collection that has been promised to the museum but not shown yet. It's very cool.

Brian Lehrer: What other exhibits at the Met should we make note of?

Ryan Kailath: I think those are the highlights for the summer. They will be reopening, I think, in just a couple weeks. The Rockefeller Wing, which is-- this is the sub-Saharan Africa, the Oceania and the ancient South American art wing. It's been closed for, I believe, three years now. While they refigure the whole space, they're also rethinking the presentation and the way they curate it. The way we think about art from these places has changed rapidly over recent years. I think some works in that are promised that they haven't been seen for decades because the canon didn't think of them the same way as it does now. They're going to have some new visibility in that wing.

Brian Lehrer: Anything at MoMA that you want to shout out?

Ryan Kailath: Yes. An interesting show that actually, coming out of the Rockefeller Ring, it ties what's happening there to a great exhibit at MoMA is this African art show at a very interesting Carriage House on the Upper east side, designed by the star architect David Adjaye, who did the Smithsonian African American History Museum. There's an art show there tied to the reopening of the Mets Rockefeller Wing that also features some rare pieces by Jack Whitten, who has a retrospective at MoMA right now. I believe it's one of the first to do 60, 70 years of this groundbreaking Black American artist's career. Almost 200 works or something like that. He's really innovative, cool, hip dude. I think Jack Whitten at the moment would be my highlight for them.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, I'm seeing it. Jack Whitten through August 2nd. The Guggenheim features a new exhibit by Rashid Johnson. I see throughout the rotunda in the Guggenheim and it includes performances. Yes?

Ryan Kailath: Yes. I haven't been able to catch one yet, but every weekend you can look up the hours on their site. They've installed a piano at the top of the ramp there in this sort of site-specific garden artwork piece. Apparently, performances range from 15 to 45 minutes or so at certain times on the weekend. You can just pop by when you're seeing it. Very cool.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe we should just say for people who don't know it or forgot, the Guggenheim has this weird layout. Creatively, it's really fun to go to the Guggenheim because it's a spiral, most of it, right?

Ryan Kailath: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: You walk down the spiral from top to bottom or you walk up from bottom to top. I think there's one direction or the other, I forget which it is, that people are usually supposed to do, but that makes it really a fun museum experience. You're telling me there's a piano at the top?

Ryan Kailath: Yes. I'm lazy. My preferred approach is elevator to the top and then stroll down.

Brian Lehrer: Onto galleries. Maybe smaller spaces, but usually free. Unless you're actually planning to buy some of the work, which is often on sale. What are one or two must see gallery shows?

Ryan Kailath: Yes. I'll take this opportunity to proselytize one of my favorite tools. It's an app called Seesaw. Spelled just like the playground toy. I promise I don't work for them, but I tell people about this all the time. It is the perfect tool for planning or even spontaneous exploring of galleries, which can be pretty overwhelming. There's so many. They're so spread out. This app, it shows you every gallery show that is on now with images and short descriptions. You can star things. It'll make you even a little map if you want. You can search by neighborhood or by artist. Wherever you happen to be, you can see what cool shows are going on a few minutes away.

Definitely some of the highlights this summer. Two at Gagosian Galleries, different locations. One, a pretty unusual Picasso show curated by his daughter in part, Paloma Picasso, and then Willem de Kooning, also at a different Gagosian location with some great late abstraction stuff. Fans of de Kooning will enjoy these pieces which they may not have seen before because it takes a while to get through galleries.

Brian Lehrer: There are some inside outside opportunities to see artists with work in galleries and outside in public spaces. Tell us about those.

Ryan Kailath: Yes, I love public art in the summer in New York. It's such a fun chance to get to different neighborhoods just for the sake of seeing something. A piece that's been getting a lot of conversation weirdly in conservative media for reasons we don't have to talk about, but there's a sculpture up in Times Square, a 12-foot-tall sculpture of a anonymous Black woman right in the middle of Father Duffy Square there by the English artist Thomas J. Price. It's very cool. The public reaction is great and Price has a concurrent show at Hauser & Wirth with many other sculptures from this series of anonymous or perhaps related to friends or people he knows. Sculptures, life size, 12, 18ft tall, very much worth seeing.

Brian Lehrer: Let me sneak in two things here in our last 30 seconds. One is just since you mentioned the Caspar Friedrich at the Met, I'm told that it did close last Sunday, just so people don't go to see that thinking it's still there. Last thing, you have a secret weapon I see for keeping up on what's where in the galleries, and you're willing to share this secret weapon, right?

Ryan Kailath: [laughs] Well, that's the Seesaw app that I mentioned. Another thing that I found there that I think is going to be pretty good, I haven't gone to see it yet, but another piece of public art at Brooklyn Bridge Park, this is by the Black artist Torkwase Dyson. It's a huge installation that you can walk through and around and about. It touches on Black geography and it's water themed.

Brian Lehrer: 10 seconds.

Ryan Kailath: Called Akua. It's got a sound component which I love. If people remember Janet Cardiff's thing at the Cloisters where you walked around, it does that as well. I'm looking forward to the audio piece.

Brian Lehrer: Ryan Kailath, WNYC and Gothamist arts and culture reporter. Thanks for the art tips. Keep it up.

Ryan Kailath: Hey, thanks, Brian.

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