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Hot Picks This Week

Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection

October 4, 2018 - October 6, 2019

Price: Free - $25

This landmark exhibition in the Museum's American Wing showcases 116 masterworks representing the achievements of artists from more than fifty cultures across North America. Ranging in date from the second to the early twentieth century, the diverse works are promised gifts, donations, and loans to The Met from the pioneering collectors Charles and Valerie Diker. Long considered to be the most significant holdings of historical Native American art in private hands, the Diker Collection has particular strengths in sculpture from British Columbia and Alaska, California baskets, pottery from southwestern pueblos, Plains drawings and regalia, and rare accessories from the eastern Woodlands.

Location : The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10028 US

Betye Saar: Keepin’ It Clean

Until May 27, 2019

Cost: $21 for adults, $16 for seniors, $13 for high school or college students, and $6 for kids from 5 -13 years of age.

Contemporary artist Betye Saarhas shaped the development of assemblage art in the United States, particularly as a device to illuminate social and political concerns. A key figure in the Black Arts Movement and the feminist art movement of the 1960-70s, Saar’s distinct vision harmonizes the personal and the political. Over the years, Saar has transformed the representation of African Americans in American culture by recycling and reclaiming derogatory images such as Aunt Jemimas, Uncle Toms, sambos, and mammies to confront the continued racism in American society and create representations of strength and perseverance. This exhibition focuses on one facet of her work—washboards—created between 1997 and 2017. Presented in the Joyce B. Cowin Women’s History Gallery, part of the Center for Women’s History, the exhibition is organized by the Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles.

Exhibitions at New-York Historical are made possible by Dr. Agnes Hsu-Tang and Oscar Tang, the Saunders Trust for American History, the Seymour Neuman Endowed Fund, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. WNET is the media sponsor.

Location: New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West at 77th Street, New York NY 10024 US

Currents: Basse Terre by Simone Leigh

Until December 31, 2019

Price: Free - $21

To showcase New-York Historical's continuing tradition of collecting art and objects in the present day, the Museum is proud to display recent acquisitions in Currents, on view on the first floor. 

The Brooklyn-based artist Simone Leigh draws upon forms, techniques, and visual cues from across Africa and its diaspora—the communities of descendants scattered around the globe—to reflect on continuity and change. The title of the bust on view refers to one of the Guadeloupe islands in the Caribbean. One of Leigh’s central themes is the black female body as a “repository of lived experience” containing strength, knowledge, and healing wisdom. Here, the body’s beehive shape and textured surface reference the traditional mud dwellings made by the Musgum people of Cameroon and Chad. The eyeless features suggest an inner life that we, the viewers, cannot fully apprehend.

Location: New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West at 77th Street,New York NY 10024 US

Female Remedies

November 2, 2018 - May 27, 2019

Price: Free - $21

Unregulated “patent medicines” were big business before the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 forced manufacturers to list ingredients. Limited birth control and illegal abortion drove women to buy pills and powders that promised to “restore and regulate menstrual function.” Meanwhile syrups secretly loaded with alcohol and morphine were sold to mothers, who were persuaded that happy babies were quiet. This small installation shows how these products were shrewdly marketed to women desperate to conform to social rules.

Location: New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West at 77th Street, New York NY 10024 US

Aboriginal Australia

July 25 – Ongoing

Price: Free - $21

The meaning of the first three words of the U.S. Constitution—“We the people…”—has changed over the course of our nation’s history, and who constitutes “the people” is a topic of fierce debate even today. Constructed entirely from shoelaces donated by members of the public, a new monumental artwork by artist Nari Ward honors these three words in a permanent display at the New-York Historical Society.

About the Artist: Nari Ward
Born in St. Andrew, Jamaica, Nari Ward now lives and works in New York. Nari has been greatly influenced by his geographical surroundings, which is reflected in his dramatic sculptural installations composed of systematically collected material from his urban neighborhood. Nari’s work has been widely exhibited around the United States and internationally, garnering prestigious honors and distinctions.

Acquisition of We the People generously underwritten by Diana and Joe DiMenna.

Location: New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West at 77th Street, New York NY 10024 US

Witnesses to History: African American Voting Rights

November 15, 2018 - April 28, 2019

Price: Free - $21

African American Voting Rights
 explores the struggle of African Americans to gain access to the franchise in the century after the Civil War ended. The abolition of slavery was just the beginning of a long, difficult, and sometimes dangerous fight for civil rights, including voting rights, for African Americans. Although the 15th Amendment forbade discrimination based on race, state and local governments established laws that effectively prevented African Americans from voting. Violence and intimidation on the part of white citizens further obstructed black voting rights.

This installation features materials from the Gilder Lehrman Collection that document the fight for voting rights through the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Among the highlights are letters written by Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr., two leaders in the fight for civil rights; reports on voter suppression in the South and one by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy on the federal actions taken to combat such discrimination; images of the black U.S. senators and representatives elected during Reconstruction; an evocative photograph from the March from Selma to Montgomery in 1965; and a broadside encouraging African Americans to register to vote in 1965.

Location: New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West at 77th Street, New York NY 10024 US

Women’s Voices

Ongoing

Price: Free - $21

A highlight of the Center for Women’s History, Women’s Voices is a multimedia digital installation where visitors can discover the hidden connections among exceptional and unknown women who left their mark on New York and the nation. Featuring interviews, profiles, and biographies, Women’s Voices unfolds across nine oversized touchscreens to tell the story of activists, scientists, performers, athletic champions, social change advocates, writers, and educators through video, audio, music, text, and images.

Among the many fascinating profiles featured in Women’s Voices are those of the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor; Nobel Prize-winning scientist Barbara McClintock; civil rights activist and poet Audre Lorde; the first woman to receive a medical degree in the U.S., Elizabeth Blackwell; award-winning actress Meryl Streep; Brooklyn-born opera star Beverly Sills; Seneca leader and artisan Caroline Parker Mountpleasant; trailblazing dancer and principal ballerina Misty Copeland; the Manhattan Project physicist who was snubbed by the Nobel Prize committee, Chien-Shiung Wu; Gilded Age novelist Edith Wharton; and the teacher whose 1854 lawsuit helped desegregate public transit in New York, Elizabeth Jennings Graham, among others.

Location: New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West at 77th Street, New York NY 10024 US

Dive Deeper: Stinney - Democratic Ideals and Racism

January 10, 2019 7:30pm - 9:30pm

Co-presented with the PROTOTYPE Festival and  the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF)

Price: $10

An Examination of the Cradle to Prison Pipeline, around the creative response of artists as they witness, experience and analyze the collective trauma of being Black in America. The discussion will feature members of the creative team of Stinney: An American Execution Frances Pollock (composer), Imani Mosley(dramaturg) and Wendel Patrick (project advisor for Stinney) in conversation with Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder in Residence PolicyLink and Board member of Harlem Stage.

Location: Harlem Stage Gatehouse, 150 Convent Avenue at West 135th Street, New York NY 10031 US

Apollo Music Cafe featuring Freelance and Brandee Younger Electric Quintet

January 11, 2019 10:00pm - 12:00am

Ticket Prices start at $22

Produced by Revive Music

Harlem based collective Freelance is a band of independent leaders with an expansive sound and encyclopedic knowledge of musical genres that afford them the ability to cross-pollinate styles and manipulate melody to create an aesthetic signature uniquely their own.  Influenced by the creative footprints of Mint Condition, Earth Wind and Fire, Stevie Wonder, Fela Kuti, Radiohead and Robert Glasper, founding leaders, Tim “Smithsoneon” Smith (vocals) and Chad “Ausar the Ambassador” Selph (keyboards) penned the forthcoming full-length debut album, Yes Today.

A fearless and versatile talent, contemporary harpist Brandee Younger defies genres and labels as a classically-trained musician playing in the avant-garde tradition of her sonically forward forebears Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane. Ms. Younger delivers a consistently fresh take on the ancient instrument as an educator, curator, performer and leader of the Brandee Younger Quartet. Ms. Younger has produced an impressive body of work since the 2011 debut of her seminal Prelude EP, including Brandee Younger Live @ The Breeding Ground, a breakthrough performance on Bluenote Records and Revive Music’s 2015 Supreme Sonacy Vol. 1LP, and the more recent release of her critically-acclaimed 2016 Wax & Wane LP.

Location: Apollo Theater, 253 West 125th Street, New York NY 10027 US

Story Time: Roses are Read; Flower Buds with Scottt Raven and Mikumari Caiye

January 12, 2019 3:00pm - 5:00pm

Price: Free

Scottt and MC present Roses are Read; Flower Buds, a collection of solo and group poems on food, flowers and friendship. The performance will feature poetry from Scottt Raven and Mikumari Caiye with music from songstress of light, Lena Belle. The words and wordplay will combine elements of hip-hop, stand-up comedy and theater with accents of inspirational and positive music full of the brightest of colors and cupcakes, with the merriest of melodies that glisten, painting upside down rays of rainbows on all who are lucky enough to listen.  

About Story Time: Tales on Sugar Hill

Story Time: Tales on Sugar Hill is a series of curated programs that aim to provide children with a meaningful, interactive and fun art experience.  Grounded in our curatorial mission to share stories through theater, music, dance and visual art, as well as oral and literary forms, Story Time presents tales, fables, histories, and myths that genuinely reflect the diverse ethnic and cultural milieu of our surroundings.  Story Time also leverages the Museum's own art exhibitions to foster richer engagement with, and a deeper understanding of, public art already on view.  Held every second Saturday of each month, each two-hour presentation includes a participatory art activity facilitated by teaching artists from the community, so children not only experience others’ stories, but also reflect on what they see and hear, and create and share their own stories.

Location: Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art and Storytelling, 898 St. Nicholas Avenue at 155th Street, New York NY 10032 US

Apollo Music Cafe featuring Mike Yung with Michelle Brooks-Thompson

January 12, 2019 10:00pm - 12:00am

Ticket Price: $22

Mike Yung is a 56-year-old singer from Brownsville, NY. As a teenager, he was discovered and signed as an artist to RCA and CBS and eventually landed at T-Electric, the same label held by Etta James and Luther Vandross. Yung was gearing up to be a household name when the label suddenly went bankrupt and his debut album never came out. After being forced to find a way to make a living to support his family, he took his talent underground and began busking in the subway.

For the past 37 years, Yung's voice has been reverberating throughout the walls of the NYC subway stations. It has become more difficult with the fact that people carry less cash these days. Yung continues to enjoy what he does but hopes one day he will get his chance to show the world his talent, move his family out of the projects and finally at 56 years old, get a chance to put out his long forthcoming debut album.

Location: Apollo Theater, 253 West 125th Street, New York NY 10027 US

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