Weekend Update: 04.10.2025
Friday, April 11: Bravin Lee’s The Golden Thread 2
Bravin Lee Programs, known for their longtime commitment to fine rugs by artists, opens its second major exhibition on the larger subject of textile arts, off-site at South Street Seaport.
A practice that encompasses embroidery, tapestry, quilting, carpet design, and much, much more, textile art has undergone a renaissance over the past century. Artists of all types and from every corner of the planet have pushed hard on what can be termed textile, and even harder on the ways in which textile can be considered art. Once marginalized from the hidebound concept of “fine art” because of its functional origins, textile art now appears poised to take advantage of its previous outsider status—principally by asking questions of art’s presumed hierarchies.
The exhibition takes up every floor of the 18th-century building it’s situated in, from dedicated displays of Rasheed Johnson’s geometric compositions to enormous, site-specific installations like that of Tomo Mori (detail above).
Seaport Museum, 207 Front Street (Between Fulton + Beekman, west side of street), New York, NY Info
The Hyundai Terrace Commission by Marina Zurkow at the Whitney
The River is a Circle, on the Museum’s fifth floor terrace gallery, features a new site-specific work that engages with the ecologies of the Hudson River and the neighborhood surrounding the Whitney. The software-driven animation presents a view of the Hudson River in a horizontal split between the world above and below the water. The dynamic composition of the animated elements is driven by algorithmic probability and reflects the current weather and season in New York City. The installation extends the underwater environment to the terrace with maritime wreckage and oyster reef balls, devices used to provide habitat for oysters.
Marina Zurkow is a media artist focused on near-impossible nature and culture intersections, researching “wicked problems” like invasive species, superfund sites, and petroleum interdependence. She has used life science, bio materials, animation, dinners and software technologies to foster intimate connections between people and non-human agents. Her work spans gallery installations and unconventional public participatory projects. Currently, she is working on connecting toxic urban waterways to oceans, and researching the tensions between maritime ecology and the ocean’s primary human use as a capitalist Pangea.
Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY Info
Sunday, April 13, Reception, Noon-4pm: Scribbles | The Art of Emerging, at Great Hall Gallery
What are Scribbles? Just doodles, cartoons, meanderings, jottings, wanderings of thoughts or chattering lines? They are more than a language of lines. They are an artist’s response to an “Urge.” There's an Urgency: an “Emerge-ncy” of automatic, instinctive mark-making. The immediacy is triggered by the artist’s heart, mind and inner or observing eye. It feasts on one’s inner life or on the vistas before one’s eyes. Mindlessness is inspired by multiple prompts in the moment or from memories, observation, the subconscious and any muses the artist calls upon. Like acrobats, feats of scribblings play, flow, leap and meet, all emerging.—Lois Bender, curator
Artists respond to this theme with humor or profundity, conscious or unconscious wanderings, spontaneity or improvisation, revealing creative thinking, style, processes and personal connections to their inspirations. The show, curated by Lois Bender, assisted by Laurey Bennett-Levy and Stacy Bogdonoff, includes works by Ellen Alt, Emily Barnett, Fran Beallor, Alli Berman, Walter Brown, Arcadia Caraballo, January Yoon Cho, Diane Churchill, Stephen Cox, Elisa Decker, Bonnie C. Epstein, Madeline Farr, Jodie Fink, Lynne Friedman, Robin Glassman, Norma Greenwood, Barbara Griffiths, Ellen Grossman, Susan Grucci, Alice Harrison, Sarah Hauser, Paula Heisen, Janet Morgan, Cathy O’Keefe, Carol Paik, Cade Pemberton, Joyce Raimondo, Peggy Roalf, Maria Mimma Scarpini, Barbara Swanson Sherman, Regina Silvers, Darcy Spitz, Anne Stanner, Geoffrey Stein, Miriam Stern, Danielle Warren.
Join the artists this Sunday for a walk-through and reception. Preview the show here. The exhibition is open to visitors during gallery hours 12 - 4pm from March 5 to April 24; on Sundays, March 2 and April 13; and on Wednesdays and Thursdays from March 5 to April 24, from 12–4 PM. [You can call ahead to confirm hours: 212-675-6150].
The Great Hall Gallery at First Presbyterian Church, 12 West 12th Street, New York, NY Info
Sunday, April 13, 7:30–9:30pm: Pink Moon Gazing Under a Night Sky
Join nature photographer Jeanne Yan and amateur astronomers for this moongazing and night photography demonstration! Meet at the Malin Abrahamsson’s Moonfinding sculpture for a close-up view of the full moon—this month it’s a Pink Moon! This event is part of the Art Students League of New York's Works in Public program, and features an opportunity to meet artists Patricia Espinosa and Malin Abrahamsson
Hudson River Park, 145th Street & Hudson River, New York, NY
Looking ahead: Saturday, April 19, 11am-noon: Neighborhood Tour | Public Voices, Public Art at New Museum
Explore the neighborhood around the Bowery and delve into the lives of downtown artists who made work in the streets and for public spaces from the 1960s to the 1980s. This tour is led by Rosed Serrano (she/her), a poet—born and raised in the Bronx—currently living, working, and creating in New York. Serrano is a PhD candidate in English and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and she holds a BA in African American Studies and Creative Writing from Princeton University. Artists discussed include Mark Rothko, John Giorno, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
This tour meets, rain or shine, in front of the New Museum at 235 Bowery. Please come dressed ready to explore the neighborhood streets. Note: these tours sell out fast!
To learn more about artists on the Bowery, explore the Bowery Artist Tribute from the New Museum’s archive.
New Museum, 235 Bowery, New York, NY Tickets