If you thought your New York art calendar was going to slow down during the summer months, well, we hate to break it to you … Our list of must-see exhibitions in June features standout shows across the boroughs, including artworks made on book covers in Brooklyn, Chinese flower-and-bird paintings in Manhattan, and vanessa german’s reinterpretation of “Washington Crossing the Delaware” at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey. As with ice cream flavors, there’s something for everyone, so dig in and stay cool.
Toca La Sopa: Umbrales Infinitos
Look up “Chino Latino” and most of the results will make your mouth water — the term is a popular descriptor for the Chinese-Cuban fusion restaurants that emerged everywhere from Havana to New York City starting in the mid-20th century. The convergence of Chinese and Cuban culinary traditions was accompanied by a parallel phenomenon in the visual, performance, and literary arts. This exhibition and event series at the arts and community center Chinatown Soup makes the case that the movement was under-studied, and seeks to redress this through presentations of dance, textile, photography, and more. — Valentina Di Liscia
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Chinatown Soup (chinatownsoup.nyc)
16B Orchard Street, Chinatown, Manhattan
Through June 11
Madeline Hollander: Hydro Parade: Watercolors
When I first saw Madeline Hollander’s watercolors on view in a tranquil upstairs gallery at Bortolami, I didn’t know what I was looking at but I was completely transfixed — always a good sign. The delicate forms in some of these works, evocative of Rorschach inkblots or Rubin’s vases, are based on outlines of vessels housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where this month Hollander will stage three choreographic performances charting its various sources of water, from majestic fountains to unseen circuits deep in the earth. The artist made these watercolors, whose beauty belies a complex dance notation system, using water from a natural spring beneath the museum. — VD
Bortolami Gallery (bortolamigallery.com)
39 Walker Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan
Through June 17
Library Group Show
Someone here at the office said the other day that the books you buy don’t represent who you are, but rather who you want to be. That’s something to think about when you visit this exhibition, in which a striking number of artists (136) make paintings on book covers. What’s more, the book-paintings are organized alphabetically on bookshelves, like a proper bookworm would do. What a lovely concept by this young Gowanus gallery and curator Glenn Goldberg. — Hakim Bishara
Tappeto Volante Projects (tvprojectspaceship.com)
126 13th St, Brooklyn
Through June 18
No Bios
In this simultaneously serious, lighthearted, and moving presentation, the New York-based nonprofit dedicated to supporting the work of artists with HIV/AIDS looks introspectively, asking the question: “Does an exhibition need to be ‘about’ HIV and AIDS to make it ‘on mission’ for Visual AIDS?” The vast breadth of works in the show — from HIV-positive photographer D’Angelo Lovell Williams’s intimate self-portraits to the late artist and trans activist Chloe Dzubilo’s uncanny assemblages — offer a layered and nuanced response to this important query. — VD
No Bios (visualaids.org)
323 W 39th St, 2nd Floor, Midtown, Manhattan
Through June 24
Lee Friedlander Framed by Joel Coen
If you’re a fan of Lee Friedlander’s photography and Joel Coen’s films, this is the show for you. There’s no overarching theme for the exhibition, except for Coen’s proclivity for odd and unusual compositions. That should be good enough, but you’ll also get a snapshot of American life and a mini-retrospective of Friedlander’s six-decade career. Actor Frances McDormand, who’s also Coen’s wife, had a hand in selecting the 45 photos on view. — HB
Luhring Augustine (luhringaugustine.com)
531 West 24th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan
Through June 24
Flowers on a River: The Art of Chinese Flower and Bird Painting
At the center of this fascinating exhibition is a breathtaking painted scroll by the most famous monk painter Zhu Da (1626–1705, known as Bada Shanren), which comes to New York from the Tianjin Museum. American audiences have long enjoyed the art of Zhu Da, who has many works in US museum collections, but this masterpiece is rarely seen outside China. The last time it traveled was for a 2013 exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Painted when he was 72 years old, the scroll, titled “Flower of a River” (1697), illustrates the life of a lotus flower. The gestural brushwork will appeal to any lover of abstract art, and it’s only one of 100 stunning works by 59 artists highlighting the long tradition of bird-and-flower painting in Chinese art. — Hrag Vartanian
China Institute Gallery (chinainstitute.org)
100 Washington Street, 2nd Floor, Hoboken, New Jersey
Through June 25
vanessa german: …please imagine all the things i cannot say…
Female power figures dominate artist vanessa german’s solo exhibition. In her visions of accumulation, german appears to borrow from the long history of altarpieces, toys, dioramas, American commercialism, as well as West African folk practices and the contemporary Black Arts movements. She’s a polymath, and each work demonstrates her sweeping interests and the material universe she finds herself immersed.
The large “LaQuisha Washington Crosses the Day Aware” (2018) is a standout piece, playing with the well-known 19th-century “Washington Crossing the Delaware” (1851) painting and updating it in a manner that would be familiar to lovers of Betye Saar’s art. If you attend, check out “Can I Love You Without Capitalism? How?” (2020), a personal favorite as it demonstrates how she can create wonderful silhouettes with her sculptures, while surprising you through color, material, or form. She is stupendously talented at finding a way to connect what might appear to be very disparate and unrelated objects, and it is that care and sensitivity that makes her work so powerful. — HV
Montclair Art Museum (montclairartmuseum.org)
3 South Mountain Avenue, Montclair, New Jersey
Through June 25
Cathy Josefowitz: Forever Young
For artist and dancer Cathy Josefowitz, connecting with one’s body could take many forms. In one of her paintings, a joyful figure swathed in lush bedding drinks from a clear blue glass; in another, a man performs the mundane yet satisfying of routine of cleaning his ears with a swab. A gouache on paper work portrays a couple in a loving embrace, sinewy limbs entwined. If you love Maria Lassnig or Egon Schiele, this expansive show — which also includes footage of Josefowitz’s choreographies — is a good opportunity to discover the work of the New York-born and Swiss-bred artist, who received less recognition in her lifetime. — VD
Hauser & Wirth (vip-hauserwirth.com)
32 East 69th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Through July 22
Something Beautiful: Reframing La Colección
El Museo del Barrio, the East Harlem institution dedicated to Latinx and Nuyorican artists, will breathe new life into almost 500 works from its permanent collection in a year-long series of rotating presentations also featuring recent commissions and acquisitions. Historical works by major figures of Latin American art history, such as Puerto Rican masters Augusto Marín and Myrna Báez, coexist alongside contemporary gems like Brazilian artist Dalton Paula’s oil and gold leaf portrait “Esperança Garcia” (2022); together, they tell a story of El Museo’s collecting practices over the course of 50 years — and the many lacunae and efforts to address them. — VD
El Museo del Barrio (elmuseo.org)
1230 5th Avenue at 104th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Through March 10, 2024
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Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch
Spanning Shelley Niro’s five-decade career, this retrospective (her first) includes works knitting together the artist’s Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) lineage, womanhood, and joy in the midst of colonial legacies. In one section of the show, paintings reimagine Sky Woman’s story and assemblage “thinking caps” map Mohawk women’s life stages, while beadwork critiques the commercialism of Niagara Falls, a Haudenosaunee spiritual site. Shining through for me was her photography, often coupled with embroidery or adorned matboard in its depiction of matrilineal bonds, women in her family, and sometimes herself with humor and deep affection. — Lakshmi Rivera Amin
National Museum of the American Indian (americanindian.si.edu)
1 Bowling Green, Financial District, Manhattan
Through January 1, 2024
Closing Soon
- Pola Sieverding: Contact Zone, signs and symbols, through June 10.
- Nature, Crisis, Consequence, New-York Historical Society, through July 16.
- A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, Brooklyn Museum, through June 25.
Source: Hyperallergic.com