March 2012

                                                                        Art Week Takes Over Manhattan

AMNH Exhibit Examines Nature’s Mysterious Light-Producing Organisms

In late March The American Museum of Natural History is presenting a new exhibition--Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence--about the extraordinary organisms that

produce light, from the flickering fireflies found in backyards across the Northeast to the alien deep-sea fishes that illuminate the perpetually dark depths of the oceans. Rare among plants and animals that live on land, the ability to glow—that is, generate light through a chemical reaction—is much more common in the ocean, where up to 90 percent of animals at depths below 700 meters are bioluminescent, including many unknown to science. Like the crystal jelly whose glow led to a revolution in cell biology, these animals may hold important clues to essential questions, but scientists are in a race against time as habitats are increasingly threatened by pollution, overfishing, and global climate change.

In Creatures of Light, visitors will move through a series of re-created environments, from the familiar to the extreme, to explore the diversity of organisms that glow and how they do it; discover the variety of ways in which light is used to attract a mate, lure unsuspecting prey, or defend against a predator; and learn how, where, and why scientists study this amazing natural phenomenon. Throughout the exhibition, iPads featuring videos, infographics, photo albums, and animations will provide opportunities to hear directly from researchers about their work.

Starting in a local meadow on A Summer’s Night, where fireflies use unique patterns of flashing light to communicate with potential mates, visitors will descend into A Mysterious Cave in New Zealand to watch a fantastic spectacle of luminescent “fishing lines” strung by larval gnats, glowworms, to trap prey.

A unique interactive environment in A Sparkling Sea will introduce the brilliant light displays of Mosquito Bay on Puerto Rico’s Vieques Island, where high concentrations of microscopic dinoflagellates, a type of plankton, create a halo around anything that moves through the water. Visitors will activate the bioluminescent bay as they move through this section.

The Night Dive will feature a large-scale, day-and-night interactive image of the Cayman Islands’ Bloody Bay Wall, a remarkable coral wall that is home to both bioluminescent and biofluorescent animals, which glow only after exposure to light.

In Altered Light, visitors will encounter the jellyfish Aequorea victoria, which combines bioluminescence with biofluorescence (in which an organism’s molecules absorb blue light, then radiate it at a lower energy, longer wavelength) to emit flashes of green light. The protein found in its light organs, known as the green fluorescent protein (GFP), has become a critical tool in cellular and developmental biology, used for mapping neural circuits, observing cancer cells, and much more.

Borrowed Light will feature live flashlight fishes, which harbor bioluminescent bacteria in an organ under their eyes, and highlight symbiotic relationships. The Deep Ocean will take visitors into the perpetually dark deep ocean, which comprises the vast majority of the planet’s habitable space. A Deep Sea Theater will reveal the diversity of animals that marine biologists have captured on camera, including female anglerfishes waving bioluminescent ”lures” to attract prey and mates, and jellyfishes that light up like a flashing pinwheel when threatened.

Creatures of Light will open on March 31, 2012, and remain on view until January 6, 2013.  The exhibition is curated by John Sparks, associate curator and curator-in-charge in the Department of Ichthyology, whose seeks to determine the role of organismal light in the aquatic realm—specifically, is the ability to produce light or to fluoresce correlated with increased species richness in the ocean?

Website: www.amnh.org

The Whitney Museum Biennial Returns In March

The Whitney Museum of American Art opens March 1 through May 27, 2012. This is the

76th in the ongoing series of Biennials and Annuals presented by the Whitney since 1932, two years after the Museum was founded. The Whitney Biennial gauges the current state of contemporary art in America.

The Biennial comprises work—including paintings, sculptures, photographs, and installations—from both emerging and established artists. In addition to visual artists, the exhibition includes a select group of filmmakers, choreographers, musicians, and playwrights. These multidisciplinary arts will be presented in a large open space in the Museum’s fourth floor galleries.

The 2012 Biennial is being curated by Elisabeth Sussman, Curator and Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney, and Jay Sanders, a freelance curator. Fifty-one artists have been selected. The curators are working on the Biennial’s film program with Ed Halter and Thomas Beard, the co-founders of Light Industry, a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn. The exhibition will be accompanied by an innovative catalogue designed by Joseph Logan with contributions from each Biennial artist.

Artists in the 2012 Biennial include

Kai Althoff, Thom Andersen, Charles Atlas, Lutz Bacher, Forrest Bess (paintings selected by artist Robert Gober), Michael Clark, Dennis Cooper and Gisèle Vienne, Cameron Crawford, Moyra Davey, Liz Deschenes, Nathaniel Dorsky, Nicole Eisenman, Kevin Jerome Everson, Vincent Fecteau, Andrea Fraser, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Vincent Gallo, K8 Hardy, Richard Hawkins, Werner Herzog, Jerome Hiler, Matt Hoyt, Dawn Kasper, Mike Kelley, John Kelsey, John Knight, Jutta Koether, George Kuchar, Laida Lertxundi, Kate Levant, Sam Lewitt, Joanna Malinowska, Andrew Masullo, Nick Mauss, Richard Maxwell, Sarah Michelson, Alicia Hall Moran and Jason Moran, Laura Poitras, Matt Porterfield, Luther Price, Lucy Raven, The Red Krayola, Kelly Reichardt, Elaine Reichek, Michael Robinson, Georgia Sagri, Michael E. Smith, Tom Thayer, Wu Tsang, Oscar Tuazon, and Frederick Wiseman.

Brucennial 2012 Opens March 1

If needing an antidote to the Whitney Biennial, then the anti-establishment Brucennial 2012 art event may be for you. The popular and well reviewed by art critics biennial --BRUCENNIAL 2012: Harderer. Betterer. Fasterer. Strongerer -- moves to a different locale this year at 159 Bleecker Street between Thompson and Sullivan Streets in the Village. The show runs for seven weeks from March 1 to April 20 with more than 300 works on display. There is an opening-night party on February; 29 from 6 to 9 pm. Details are sketchy at this time of writing, but check the website for more emerging news. Website: http://www.thebrucehighqualityfoundation.com/Site/  

Dresden Philharmonic Performs At Lincoln Center March 11

Musical America’s 2011 Conductor of the Year, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, returns to

Great Performers with the storied, 141-year-old Dresden Philharmonic for the first time since 2004 to lead a concert at Avery Fisher Hall on Sunday, March 11 at 3 PM. The program will feature Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Weber’s Overture to Der Freischütz, and the Lincoln Center debut of Gautier Capuçon in a performance of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto.

 Tickets start at $35 and are available online at www.LCGreatPerformers.org,  by calling CenterCharge at 212.721.6500, or by visiting the Avery Fisher Hall Box Office at Broadway and 65th St. Ticket prices are subject to change.

Asia Society Presents First Exhibit On Artwork From India’s Late Mughal Period

A new show at Asia Society, Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707–1857,  brings together 100 masterpieces created during an artistically rich period in India’s history. This major international loan exhibition provides a new look at an era of significant change during which the Mughal capital in Delhi shifted from being the heart of the late Mughal Empire to becoming the jewel in the crown of the British Raj. The exhibition focuses on the reigns of the last four Mughal emperors: Muhammad Shah (reigned 1719–1748), Shah Alam II (reigned 1759–1806), Akbar Shah II (reigned 1806–1837) and Bahadur Shah II Zafar (reigned 1837–1857). It includes jewel-like portrait paintings, striking panoramas, and exquisite decorative arts crafted for Mughal emperors and European residents alike, as well as historical photographs. On view through May 6, 2012. Website: http://asiasociety.org/new-york

Met Museum Enhances Online Access To Its Collections With Google Goggles

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is collaborating with Google to allow users to search the Web via pictures they take on their mobile phones, to increase access to information online about its encyclopedic collections. The image-based searches on Google Goggles for works of art in the Met’s collections—whether from reproductions in books, posters, or postcards, for example, or in the galleries themselves—will produce direct links to extensive information about works of art on www.metmuseum.org, the Museum’s website.

More than 76,000 works of art from the Met’s collections are currently recognizable when searching with Google Goggles, including works from the Museum’s significant holdings of American art, Asian art, photographs, drawings and prints, European paintings, and Islamic art.  Sculptures and other objects that Google’s technology is not optimized to recognize were not included in the Met’s participation; the Museum also excluded works under copyright.

Google Goggles uses machine vision technology to try to match portions of any photo submitted by a user against Google’s corpus of images. When a match is found, search terms relevant to the matched image are presented, and when a match is not found, similar images (based on texture and color) from the image search database are suggested. Google’s database currently includes more than 76,000 works of art from the Met’s collections that have been provided by the Museum, a number that will increase in the months ahead. A total of more than 340,000 of the Museum’s works of art are now generally accessible on metmuseum.org, including all works currently on view in the galleries.

The 32^nd AIPAD Photography Show Opens March 29

The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) will hold the 32nd edition of The AIPAD Photography Show New York, one of the world’s most important annual photography events, March 29 – April 1, 2012, at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.

Seventy-five of the world’s leading fine art photography galleries will present a wide range of museum-quality work, including contemporary, modern, and 19th-century photographs, as well as photo-based art, video, and new media. The AIPAD Photography Show New York is the longest running and foremost exhibition of fine art photography.

 AIPAD 2012 will present four new member exhibitors: David Zwirner, New York; Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York; Paul Cava Fine Art Photographs, Bala Cynwyd, PA; and 798 Photo Gallery, Beijing. In addition to galleries from New York City and across the country exhibiting work, a number of international galleries will be featured from France, Germany, Great Britain, Argentina, Japan, and China. The Show will commence with an opening night gala on March 28, to benefit inMotion, which provides free legal services to low-income women.An exhibitor list is available at www.aipad.com/photoshow. Website: www.aipad.com 

NYBG 2012 Orchid Show Features Vertical Wall Creations of Orchids

In March, The New York Botanical Garden located in the Bronx is presenting its tenth orchid exhibition from March 3 to April 22. This year  The Orchid Show: Patrick Blanc’s Vertical Gardens t will be unlike any other orchid show ever seen. That is because the guest designer is Patrick Blanc, world-renowned French botanist and artist who will transform the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory with his spectacular vertical walls of living foliage. Using thousands of orchids and companion plantings as his palette, Blanc introduces towering spectacles of tropical life to the landmark Conservatory. Blanc, celebrated for his innovative vertical gardens and signature “green walls,” abandons the constraints of gravity in his cutting- edge approach to horticulture. In an explosion of alluring design and fragrance, exotic plant walls rise high above, creating this season’s not-to- be missed exhibition for garden lovers, orchid fans, and those desiring a one-day tropical retreat.

This year The Orchid Show begins with a dramatic 8’ x 16’ wall erected in the Reflecting Pool of the Palms of the World Gallery and planted with vibrant orchids such as Psychopsis Kalihi (butterfly orchid), ferns and other foliage, interspersed with ribbons of trickling water. The journey continues through the Lowland Tropical Rain Forest Gallery, where orchids grow in the canopies of tropical trees, and then past a display of miniature orchids, some with thousands of tiny flowers on a single plant, in the Upland Tropical Rain Forest Gallery.

Upon entering the Seasonal Exhibition Galleries, The Orchid Show’s main galleries, visitors will encounter Blanc’s astounding 13’ x 13’ “cube” of orchids, a square of four vertical walls of plants with two doorways and six windows. Outside, the “cube” will be festooned with a remarkable array of orchids. Inside, visitors will be treated to Blanc’s images and drawings, reflecting how his fascination with the remarkable adaptations and diversity of plants sparked his innovative approach to vertical gardens and his creative flair for growing plants in urban environments.

The show’s artist Patrick Blanc, known internationally as the “Green Man” for his groundbreaking living tapestries. Through 35 years of studying the adaptive properties of plants in the world’s most primitive forests, Blanc’s process allows plants, flowers, mosses, and vines to grow without soil along the face of a wall. His passionate fascination with plants that grow in unusual places has made Blanc a pioneer in this emerging form of horticultural art. The concept of the green wall dates back to 600 B.C. with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Blanc has modernized the larger green wall concept with his innovative brand of hydroponics technology.

In venues across the Garden’s 250 acres, The Orchid Show offers visitors opportunities to learn about the Garden’s historic and ongoing orchid research, embark on an audio tour, purchase top-quality orchids at Shop in the Garden, receive care information from experts, take orchid-related courses, and more. The NYBG is just a 20 minute train ride from Manhattan. Website: www.nybg.org

New Show At China Institute Gallery Explores Theater, Art And Afterlife

A new exhibition at China Institute Gallery explores how theater and art intersected in the

realm of the Chinese afterlife. The first exhibition in the U.S. to showcase the traditional folk art of brick carving, Theater, Life, and the Afterlife: Tomb Décor of the Jin Dynasty from Shanxi is on view through June 17, 2012. A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition.

 Since the 1950s and as recently as a few years ago,

hundreds of brick tombs from the Jin dynasty (1115-1234) have been excavated in Shanxi province, located in the north

Opera Figures, Detail from the South Wall of the Tomb

Jin dynasty (1115–1234)

central region of China. The exhibition presents more than 80 beautifully sculpted objects revealing a passion for theater and opera in this region during the Jin dynasty. One of the highlights, a re-creation of a newly excavated tomb, will enable visitors to see how thoughtfully prepared art patrons were for the afterlife.

The ancient Chinese believed in an afterlife and imagined they would have needs similar to those they’d had in their lives on earth. Not only were the nobles buried in elaborate tombs filled with household goods, but the tomb décor in Shanxi province, like that of many tombs found in China, featured numerous references to entertainment.

 Famed for their brick carving, artists in Shanxi developed sophisticated techniques, creating lively sculptural images in the grey bricks, some of them painted with vibrant colors. The most intriguing of the dozens of intricate and dramatic brick carvings found in these tombs are those depicting theatrical performances. The carvings serve as evidence of the popularity of the theater in ancient Shanxi, said to be the cradle of Chinese opera and drama, and illustrate two kinds of popular entertainment: Za Ju, formal performances of written plays; and San Qu, performances related to village festivals.

 China Institute Gallery is located at 125 East 65th Street (between Park and Lexington Avenues). Gallery hours are daily Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Tuesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Admission

Website: www.chinainstitute.org/gallery

French Film Festival Opens March 1 At Lincoln Center

The best in contemporary French film festival returns with two dozen New York premieres, including French box-office sensation The Intouchables, which opens the

festival at Alice Tully Hall on March 1. Other offerings during the festival include new works from master directors André Téchiné, Benoît Jacquot and Alain Cavalier. Delicacy, the latest film from French actress Audrey Tautou (photo) will close the festival on March 11 with the actress in attendance and will be shown at the Walter Reade Theater located at 165 West 65th St.

This year also marks the first collaboration with Emerging Pictures on a select number of titles including 17 Girls, Moon Child, Smugglers' Songs, Pater, The Last Screening, The Well-Digger's Daughter and The Screen Illusion. The films will show in over 50 venues across the country contemporaneously with their showings at Lincoln Center via Emerging's network of digital theaters. Q&As from the Film Society venues will be broadcast live to many of those locations.

There are also additional programs presented at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center including a selection of recent French documentaries, short films, and rarely screened classics. More information and film schedules at www.rendezvouswithfrenchcinema.com.

Paul Taylor Troupe Returns To Lincoln Center In March

Paul Taylor is the last living member of the pantheon that created America’s indigenous art of modern dance. Now, the Paul Taylor Dance Company moves to the David H. Koch Theater for a magnificent three-week season in 2012. Paul brings 22 masterworks spanning more than a half-century of creativity. Among them: three New York premieres including Uncommitted, Gossamer Gallant, Big Bertha, and House of Joy; major revivals; and the 50th Anniversary of Aureole, the dance that launched a Golden Age. To purchase tickets, please call 212.496.0600 or visit http://tickets.davidhkochtheater.com/single/psDetail.aspx?psn=2667