Kay WalkingStick at the New York Historical Society

Known for its outstanding collection of paintings from the Hudson River School, an early-to-mid 19th century movement that pictured the sublime in the landscape north of New York City, the New York Historical Society’s current exhibition ‘Kay WalkingStick / Hudson River School’ invites new perspectives on what is considered the first ‘American’ school of art.  Kay WalkingStick, an artist of Cherokee descent, has for decades researched Native American histories in locations around the country, picturing specific landscapes overlaid with designs from local indigenous communities.  Here, a Haudenosaunee pattern from the New York region indicates Native American presence in the landscape despite an absence of pictured people.  The museum pairs WalkingStick’s depiction of Niagara with one foregrounding the power of the Falls by Louisa David Minot, one of the few female Hudson River artists, who referred to the scene as representative of conflict between Britain, the US and Native Americans around the War of 1812.  (On view on the Upper West Side though April 14th).

Kay WalkingStick, Niagara, oil on panel in two parts, 2022.
Louisa David Minot, Niagara Falls, oil on canvas, 1818.

Cecily Brown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Cecily Brown’s energetic brushwork comes to a boil at the center of her 2006-08 painting, Memento Mori I, a highlight of her current retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.   The museum identifies the roiling mass of white, blue and pinkish tones in the foreground as a tablecloth and place settings being yanked from the table, a reference to an English poem meant to instruct young people not to tip their chairs back.  Elsewhere, a female nude dances with death (inspired by an Edvard Munch print), a tabletop still life proffers an enormous, blood red lobster claw and the heads of two children are positioned to form a skull.  Such reminders of mortality and offers of moral instruction recall highlights from the Met’s historic European painting collections, suggesting the themes’ the continued resonance.  (On view on the Upper East Side through Dec 3rd).

Cecily Brown, Memento Mori I, oil on linen, 2006-08.

Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks at the Guggenheim Museum

Known for bringing private lives into the public realm through projects like her iconic 1992-3 ‘Signs,’ for which strangers posed with signs sharing their personal thoughts, British conceptual artist Gillian Wearing continues to probe beyond the surface in recent work on view in her career retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum.  Based on mid-to late 19th century French artist Henri Fantin-Latour’s ‘La Lecture (The Reading),’ Wearing’s update includes herself on the left, not just listening to the reading, but gazing intently upon the reader.  Fantin-Latour’s characters famously exist in their private worlds, not always connecting with each other. Wearing, on the other hand, is absorbed by the world inhabited by her companion.  (On view on the Upper East Side through April, ’22).

Gillian Wearing, Me in History – A Conversation with the Work of Fantin-Latour, oil on canvas, 2021.

Sugiura Yasuyoshi in ‘The Slipstream: Reflection, Resilience and Resistance in the Art of Our Time’ at the Brooklyn Museum of Art

Dogwood flowers are known for their ‘delicate yet tough appearance’ the Brooklyn Museum explains; Sugiura Yasuyoshi’s sculptural version of a dogwood bloom adds another contrast by presenting transient beauty in solid stoneware.  Known for his ceramic sculptures of flowers, Yasuyoshi’s blooms may seem an unusual choice for ‘The Slipstream,’ the museum’s current show of work from the permanent collection that reflects on the turbulence of 2020.  But the flower is often associated with rebirth, making it a symbol of hope.  (On view through March 20, ’22.  Masks and vaccination proof required.)

Sugiura Yasuyoshi, Dogwood Flower, stoneware with metallic glazes, 2019.

Lawrence Weiner in front of the Whitney Museum

The Whitney’s social distancing markers are more artful than most…or so it appears in front of the museum where conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner’s manhole cover aligns with the line to get in the museum.  Commissioned in 2000 by the Public Art Fund, the cover is one of many that were installed around Union Square, Washington Square Park and other downtown locations through early 2011.  Reading ‘In direct line with another and the next,’ the text relates to the city grid and its residents moving though urban spaces together, a theme never more relevant than now.