Home Delivery
A bi-weekly digital digest of news, resources, and stories from the New Museum. Sign up here to receive future editions of “Home Delivery.”
Our hearts go out to the people of Beirut who have been affected by a catastrophic explosion on Tuesday evening. The blast leveled entire sections of the city and wounded thousands of people. Many galleries, museums, foundations, and non-profit art spaces, which make Beirut a vibrant artistic community, have been gravely affected. We are thinking of the many Lebanese artists who have shown at the New Museum including Etel Adnan, Rheim Alkadhi, Ziad Antar, Marwa Arsanios, Fouad Elkoury, Simone Fattal, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Rana Hamadeh, Lamia Joreige, Mazen Kerbaj, Rabih Mroué, Walid Raad, Marwan Rechmaoui, Mounira Al Solh, Rayanne Tabet, and Akram Zaatari, among others, and many more friends, writers, curators, gallerists, and supporters.
If you can, please support the following organizations working on disaster relief and providing essentials and housing for those affected including Impact Lebanon, Basmeh and Zeitooneh, Smile and Olive Foundation, Lebanese Food Bank and the Lebanese Red Cross.
SCREENS SERIES ONLINE
“Screens Series Online: Artor Jesus Inkerö” continues the New Museum’s Screens Series, a platform for the presentation of new video works by emerging contemporary artists. While we are closed to the public, we’re pleased to present BUBBLE (2017), originally screened as part of “Screens Series: Artor Jesus Inkerö,” which was on view at the New Museum from April 18–June 10, 2018.
Artor Jesus Inkerö’s large-scale photographs, videos, and performances are part of what the artist terms a “holistic bodily project”: a series of rigorous, evolving self-transformations that transgress boundaries between Inkerö’s art and life. Through bodybuilding, dieting, supplements, dress, posture, and digital post-production, Inkerö manipulates the material, external qualities of the self to consider how it might be projected into the world.
IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Although the New Museum remains closed to the public, there is still much art to see in our neighborhood at the numerous galleries and project spaces. This week we recommend Jennifer Bolande at Magenta Plains, Rochelle Goldberg at Miguel Abreu Gallery, and Emmanuel Louisnord Desir at 47 Canal. We also recommend the digital exhibition, “A Language for Intimacy,” co-organized by our neighbors at the Abrons Art Center with the Boston Center for the Arts.
ARTIST CONVERSATION
Join us on Thursday, August 6 at 7 p.m. for a special conversation between artist Lynn Hershman Leeson and New Museum Curator Margot Norton. Known for her groundbreaking contributions to media art, Lynn Hershman Leeson has created an innovative and prescient body of work that mines the intersections of technology and the self.
Next year the New Museum will open “Twisted,” Lynn Hershman Leeson’s first solo museum exhibition in New York.
ENSAYOS: HYDROFEMINIST METITATIONS
As part of their digital residency at the New Museum, Ensayos practitioners have created a series of podcasts, the second of which is now available on our website. Drawing from Ensayos’s transdisciplinary work, these podcasts focus on waters in different archipelagic regions, including Tierra del Fuego, New York, eastern Australia, and Norway.
“METitations” combines “MET” (an acronym for Mechanical Electrical Transduction) with “meditations,” a playful portmanteau Ensayos developed in collaboration with gender studies scholar Astrida Neimanis to emphasize their work’s material-somatic inquiries. Journalist Catalina Jaramillo guides listeners through four acts that mirror Ensayos’s field research: fiction, fact, somatic exercise, and care ethics. Each concludes with a song.
Launching today is the third and final podcast, Hydrofeminist METitation: The Americas, which includes the following acts: 1) Selk’nam know-what; 2) A wooden house is a ship in a bog; 3) A conversational road map through peatlands; 4) Olfactory exercise; 5) Seafaring song ¿’Onde va la lancha? (Where is the boat going?).
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Early in her career, Lynn Hershman Leeson developed the Roberta Breitmore series (1973–78), in which she transformed her identity into a fictional persona—going so far as to acquiring a signature appearance and style, opening a bank account, seeing a psychiatrist, and renting an apartment as the character.
Work from the Roberta Breitmore project appeared in the 1981 New Museum exhibition “Persona,” and included the Roberta’s Transformation (1975) comics, as well as Roberta’s Construction Chart (1975), a diagram outlining the character’s makeup application.
Read more about “Persona,” an exhibition which featured the work of artists who, in making or presenting their work, assumed specific alter-egos or personae that served as vehicles for greater freedom of expression.
SCREENS SERIES ONLINE
“Screens Series Online: Fern Silva” continues the New Museum’s Screens Series, a platform for the presentation of new video works by emerging contemporary artists. While we are closed to the public, we’re pleased to present Ride Like Lightning, Crash Like Thunder (2017), originally screened as part of “Screens Series: Fern Silva,” which was on view at the New Museum from May 24–July 16, 2017.
Rooted in histories of experimental film and ethnography, Silva’s works are sensuous, polyvocal montages of people and places, natural and unnatural worlds. Silva uses his own field recordings, clips from widely viewed films, and footage from obscure or pedestrian broadcast sources to upend the progressive linearity of conventional storytelling in a move toward narrative disorder; he does this by surfacing various historical moments within more contemporary ones and venturing into narratives of darkness, destruction, and the paranormal.
ARTIST CONVERSATION
Join us on Thursday, August 6 at 7 p.m. for a special conversation between artist Lynn Hershman Leeson and New Museum Curator Margot Norton. Known for her groundbreaking contributions to media art, Lynn Hershman Leeson has created an innovative and prescient body of work that mines the intersections of technology and the self.
CARE PACKAGE: BOWERY AUDIO TOUR BY GESSO
The New Museum is proud to be located on the Bowery, one of New York City’s iconic neighborhoods. While physical gatherings are restricted, we are appreciating anew the area’s strong legacy, which our Bowery Artist Tribute celebrates.
This week, NEW INC member Gesso is launching a new walking guide of the Bowery, detailing the area’s layered histories through legendary locations like Bowery Theatre, CBGB, and Cooper Union’s Great Hall. You can listen to the audio guide for free here.
ENSAYOS: HYDROFEMINIST METITATIONS
As part of their digital residency at the New Museum, Ensayos practitioners have created a series of podcasts, the second of which is now available on our website. Drawing from Ensayos’s transdisciplinary work, these podcasts focus on waters in different archipelagic regions, including Tierra del Fuego, New York, eastern Australia, and Norway.
“METitations” combines “MET” (an acronym for Mechanical Electrical Transduction) with “meditations,” a playful portmanteau Ensayos developed in collaboration with gender studies scholar Astrida Neimanis to emphasize their work’s material-somatic inquiries. Journalist Catalina Jaramillo guides listeners through four acts that mirror Ensayos’s field research: fiction, fact, somatic exercise, and care ethics. Each concludes with a song.
Launching today is the second podcast, Hydrofeminist METitation: Norway, which includes the following acts: 1) A glaciorhythmic audio collage from the Arctic; 2) On law and poetry; 3) Walk along the Holsbekken Creek leading to a canyon of controversies; 4) A rowing journey; 5) Song sung by farmed sea salmon.
PETER SAUL: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Peter Saul’s “Crime and Punishment“ opened at the New Museum on February 11, not long before the museum’s temporary closure due to COVID-19. There’s still plenty of ways to enjoy the show with a variety of content available on our website, digital archive and new microsite.
WATCH a virtual tour of “Crime and Punishment.”
LISTEN to the artist and curators discuss the show in our audio guides.
READ an interview between the artist and curators in this catalogue excerpt.
WATCH Peter Saul and curator Massimiliano Gioni in discussion in this public program.
L.E.S. GALLERIES SUMMER NIGHT
On Thursday, July 30, join 24 galleries on the Lower East Side as they stay open late to celebrate their current exhibitions. Galleries will be open from 6–8 pm and visitors can plan their visit by checking out this interactive map and list of participating galleries.
JORDAN CASTEEL: WITHIN REACH
While the city’s museums remain closed, we look back at “Jordan Casteel: Within Reach,” which opened on February 19 and was on view for twenty days before the New Museum’s temporary closure. Casteel has developed a distinctive figurative language permeated by the presence of her subjects, who are typically captured in larger-than-life depictions that teem with domestic details and psychological insights.
WATCH a virtual tour of the exhibition with voiceover by Casteel along with the exhibition curator Massimiliano Gioni.
LISTEN to audio guides on our website featuring commentary from the artist and curator.
READ an interview excerpt from the exhibition catalogue.
LISTEN to Casteel’s contribution to our “Bedtime Stories” project.
WATCH the artist and curator in a conversation at the New Museum from earlier this year.
SCREENS SERIES ONLINE
“Screens Series Online: Eva Papamargariti” continues the New Museum’s Screens Series, a platform for the presentation of new video works by emerging contemporary artists. While we are closed to the public, we’re pleased to present Factitious Imprints (2016), originally screened as part of “Eva Papamargariti: Factitious Imprints,” which was on view at the New Museum from May 1–June 19, 2016.
In her practice, Eva Papamargariti uses time-based mediums to explore the relationship between digital images and our material reality. Her works delve into issues related to simultaneity, visual doubling, the merging of our surroundings with digital space, and the constant diffusion of images that define our everyday experience.
NEW MUSEUM KIDS MENU
Look, learn, and create together with New Museum Kids Menu! Kids Menu provides families with activities to learn about contemporary art and ideas at home. Each hands-on, art-driven activity is designed for young children working with teachers or caregivers.
Sign up here to receive future editions of the Kids Menu newsletter or click here to view, download or print past Kids Menu activities.
ENSAYOS: HYDROFEMINIST METITATIONS
As part of their digital residency at the New Museum, Ensayos practitioners have created three podcasts. Drawing from Ensayos’s transdisciplinary work, these podcasts focus on waters in different archipelagic regions, including Tierra del Fuego, New York, eastern Australia, and Norway.
“METitations” combines MET (an acronym for Mechanical Electrical Transduction) with meditations, a playful portmanteau Ensayos developed in collaboration with gender studies scholar Astrida Neimanis to emphasize their work’s material-somatic inquires. Journalist Catalina Jaramillo guides listeners through four acts that mirror Ensayos’s field research: fiction, fact, somatic exercise, and care ethics. Each concludes with a song.
Launching today is Hydrofeminist METitation: Eastern Australia, which includes the following acts: 1) A lesson in water care drawn from a “creekulum”; 2) A speculative mystery: “The Bringers of the Viral Red Dust”; 3) A somatic exercise in “Mangrove Tuning”; 4) A sorrowful interview with an ichthyologist; 5) A song about tiny crustaceans and microplastics.
ENSAYOS: DISTANCIA SEASON 2
As part of their digital residency, Ensayos has also premiered Season Two of DISTANCIA, a short-form, online video series that uses fictive and sensual qualities to illuminate human connections with a fraught landscape. Tierra del Fuego is remote to many in both physical distance and in the imagination, yet the archipelago is deeply entangled with global social, political, and ecological conditions.
Imagined and realized by Carolina Saquel and Camila Marambio, DISTANCIA contemplates life in and with Tierra del Fuego, offering a generative counter-narrative to the assumption that meaning should be found primarily through scientific observation, ethnographic interpretation, and geographic analysis.
CARE PACKAGE: MARGUERITE HUMEAU
In a time of upended routines, artist Marguerite Humeau (who had a solo show at the New Museum in 2018) is focusing on her surroundings and paying particular attention to plants that often go unnoticed and unremarked: weeds. In the artist’s words:
“At the moment I am investigating the conceptual and physical power of ‘weeds.’ During lockdown I have been collaborating with Lucia Stuart (@luciathewildkitchen), a mystic forager based in Kent. Her knowledge does not belong to the official discourse or to written history, and it may go extinct when she disappears. This is the introduction for an ongoing project, a celebration of ‘weeds,’ and by extension of all forms of existence that have been excluded from the official arena, buried, thrown to the fringes or simply unheard.”
Journey alongside Marguerite Humeau and Lucia Stuart in their new video, which you can view here.
THE THING BBS: RESTORED & CONTEXTUALIZED BY RHIZOME
Founded in New York City in 1991, The Thing was a Bulletin Board System—a forum where users could post and exchange messages—focusing on contemporary art and cultural theory. Among the tens of thousands of BBSes that flourished from the late 1970s to the 1990s, The Thing was notable for its design and community dynamics. Considered by its founder Wolfgang Staehle a kind of social sculpture, The Thing became one of the first digital platforms for art, but its history is little known since most of the messages posted have been lost or otherwise have become inaccessible for many years.
With the support of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, New Museum affiliate Rhizome has undertaken a project to recover, make accessible, and study this landmark BBS.
On the occasion of an online exhibition of newly excavated materials from The Thing, RSVP to join us online for two live events:
July 21, 2PM: Consensual Hallucinations: Early Online Writing from The Thing BBS Archives
July 23, 2PM: Phantom Threads: Restoring The Thing BBS
SCREENS SERIES ONLINE
“Screens Series Online: Rodrigo Valenzuela” continues the New Museum’s Screens Series, a platform for the presentation of new video works by emerging contemporary artists. While we are closed to the public, we’re pleased to present Diamond Box (2013), originally screened as part of “Screens Series: Rodrigo Valenzuela,” which was on view at the New Museum from May 21–July 21, 2019.
In his videos and photo-based works, Rodrigo Valenzuela addresses issues and experiences common to working-class people living in the United States, paying special attention to recent immigrants and those of Latinx heritage. Valenzuela, who immigrated to the US and worked odd jobs as an undocumented laborer before returning to school to study art, brings to his works a keen awareness of the challenges faced by people who have entered the country in the hope of a better life.
STUDIO VISIT: PAWEŁ ALTHAMER
For his virtual studio visit, artist Paweł Althamer, who had a solo show at the New Museum in 2014, gives us a peek at his latest sculpture created for the Foksal Gallery Foundation in Warsaw.
SCREENING & CONVERSATION WITH WONG PING
Thursday, July 16 at 8 PM EST
Join us for a screening and discussion with Wong Ping and curator Gary Carrion-Murayari. This program is held in conjunction with Wong Ping’s forthcoming exhibition “Wong Ping: Your Silent Neighbor.”
Before his colorful and sometimes disturbing stories of life in Hong Kong received mainstream attention from the art world, Wong Ping worked in television broadcasting and commercial animation. Although his videos may at first recall children’s cartoons, Wong’s work emerges from his own written stories and journals, revealing the aspirations and anxieties of everyday residents of Hong Kong through surreal narratives and a bizarre cast of anthropomorphic characters. His video Wong Ping’s Fables 1 was a highlight of the 2018 New Museum Triennial.
NEW MUSEUM NOW
While the Museum is temporarily closed, visit New Museum Now, our new online platform for the New Museum’s digital programs, featuring virtual exhibition tours, digital residencies, artist talks, virtual studio visits and selections from our “Bedtime Stories” project, along with “First Look: New Art Online” exhibitions and much more. The microsite was built by NEW INC alumni Channel, a design and technology studio based in NYC.
BOWERY MISSION SUPPLY DRIVE
The Bowery Mission has been the New Museum’s neighbor to the south since we opened on the Bowery in 2007. For several years, the Museum has partnered with the Mission to provide free art-making opportunities and tours for Mission guests, and each year the Museum serves as a donation site for the Mission’s annual winter coat drive.
Currently, the Mission is experiencing much greater demand as they work to meet the needs of those experiencing homelessness and food insecurity in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The barricades in front of the Museum belong to the Mission, which has set up tents and stations for food distribution which takes place multiple times a day to serve the surge of people in need. The barricades help manage the lines and necessary social distancing while allowing clear passage to pedestrians.
Please participate in our online drive for the Mission’s most-needed items here. If you would like to purchase these items from your preferred retailer, we are accepting items in person as well. Please e-mail marketing@newmuseum.org to coordinate your drop-off, and please see here for a list of needed items with specifications:
- Travel size shampoo
- Travel size liquid body wash
- Travel size shaving cream
- Razors
- Toothbrushes
- Travel size toothpaste
- Travel size deodorant
- Travel size mouthwash (nonalcoholic)
- Travel packages of body wipes
- Travel size hand sanitizer
- New men’s underwear (sizes M/L-XXXL)
- New or gently used men’s pants (sizes M/L-XXXL)
SCREENS SERIES ONLINE
“Screens Series Online: Gregory Kalliche” continues the New Museum’s Screens Series, a platform for the presentation of new video works by emerging contemporary artists. While we are closed to the public, we’re pleased to present The Greatest Arrogance (2016), originally screened as part of “Screens Series: Gregory Kalliche,” which was on view at the New Museum from July 18–September 24, 2017.
In Gregory Kalliche’s works, crossings between manmade and natural worlds occur in vibrant high definition. Riffing on the conventions of blockbuster movies and trailers, the videos are splashy affairs, with jump cuts, pulsing countdowns, and awesome catastrophes looming just around the corner. They conjure abundance: plants snake out of the ground, flowers erupt in full bloom, and droplets of water slide down poolside cocktail glasses.
BEDTIME STORIES
For the last installment of our Bedtime Stories project, Michael Stipe reads from The Book of Joy by Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Carlton Abrams.
“Bedtime Stories” is a project initiated by the artist Maurizio Cattelan, who invited friends and other artists and performers he admires to keep us company by reading their favorite books and stories. Imagined as a way of staying together during the lockdown, the series included readings by Black Thought, David Byrne, Jordan Casteel, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Minerva Cuevas, Cheryl Donegan, Jimmie Durham, Nicole Eisenman, Camille Henrot, Thomas Hirschhorn, Rashid Johnson, Joan Jonas, Jeff Koons, Gabriel Kuri, Maya Lin, Ibrahim Mahama, Takashi Murakami, Raymond Pettibon, Iggy Pop, Laure Prouvost, Ugo Rondinone, Wu Tsang, Adrian Villar Rojas, Jordan Wolfson, and many more. Our thanks go to all the artists for their incredibly generous participation. Listen on our IGTV channel (@newmuseum on Instagram) or on our website.
CARE PACKAGE: THE BLACK SCHOOL
In 2018 the New Museum hosted a duo residency and exhibition focusing on the past, present, and future of Black-led learning spaces, with Kameelah Janan Rasheed: Ecosystems and The Black School.
Black School Co-founders Joseph Cuillier and Shani Peters are now working to launch the first physical space for their experimental art school educating Black, PoC students and allies in radical Black politics through workshops, a design firm, and festivals.
Currently a NEW INC member, Black School is crowdfunding to build a 21st century schoolhouse to expand their art programming into a community center providing civic engagement activities for New Orleans 7th Ward.
To learn more and support, visit their 
NARI WARD: WE THE PEOPLE AT MCA DENVER
“Nari Ward: We the People,” which travelled from the New Museum, is now on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. Watch a timelapse of the installation of We the People on the MCA Denver’s facade.
Tune in to a conversation with Nari Ward and New Museum’s Kraus Family Curator Gary Carrion-Murayari on Tuesday July 7 at 2 PM EST/12 PM MST. Register here.
SCREEN TALK BY NEÏL BELOUFA
Originally shot in 2014, Neïl Beloufa’s Screen Talk is a web-based mini-series that depicts a world afflicted by a major pandemic, presented in an interface that introduces almost childish gameplay and spam-like distractions into the experience.
This online-only exhibition is copresented by Rhizome and the New Museum as part of First Look.
SCREENS SERIES ONLINE
“Screens Series Online: Ahaad Alamoudi” continues the New Museum’s Screens Series, a platform for the presentation of new video works by emerging contemporary artists. While we are closed to the public, we’re pleased to present NIUN (2018), originally screened as part of “Screens Series: Ahaad Alamoudi,” which was on view at the New Museum from July 30–September 15, 2019.
In her videos and performances, Ahaad Alamoudi engages with the traditional symbols and images that have shaped and defined contemporary Saudi culture. Alamoudi uses the desert as a backdrop for constructed, vividly charged scenarios in which she incorporates this symbolism into personal narratives that address her experience as a young female artist living and working in Saudi Arabia today.
PRIDE MONTH: EXTENDED SENSIBILITIES
“Extended Sensibilities: Homosexual Presence in Contemporary Art“ opened at the New Museum in the fall of 1982. The show addressed an important question: in what way and to what extent has some of the most interesting contemporary art of the 1980s addressed and reflected the concerns of the gay and lesbian community at that time? Guest curator Dan Cameron engaged a variety of artists to contribute to a show that may have been the first of its kind in the United States, at a time when the HIV/AIDS epidemic had been taking a devastating toll on the community.
LISTEN to the related panel “What is the Impact of Homosexual Sensibility on Contemporary Culture?” here.
LISTEN to the related panel “Is there a Homosexual Aesthetic in Contemporary Art?” here.
BEDTIME STORIES
This week we continue “Bedtime Stories,” a project initiated by the artist Maurizio Cattelan in which he’s invited friends, artists, and performers he admires to keep us company with nightly readings, helping us stay together during these days of isolation.
Kicking off this week’s “Bedtime Stories” is artist Cheryl Donegan reading from Kenneth Goldsmith’s “Soliloquy.”
CARE PACKAGE: ARTIST KAARI UPSON
Artist Kaari Upson, whose work was featured in the New Museum’s exhibition “Kaari Upson: Good Thing You Are Not Alone,” is also a fantastic quesadilla maker. Today, she’s generously sharing the recipe for one of her favorite comfort foods with us: Brie and Papaya Quesadillas.
Ingredients:
- 8 smaller flour tortillas
- 1 papaya
- 3 poblano chilies
- Chunk of Brie cheese
Instructions:
- Cut equal parts Brie to papaya.
- Add in poblano to taste (please char it on stove, peel skin, deseed, and take stem off.)
- Heat up flour tortilla with cheese in pan.
- Serve with sour cream and salsa!
SCREENS SERIES ONLINE
While we are closed to the public, we’re pleased to present The Print of Sleep (2016), originally screened as part of “Screens Series: Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa.” Accompanying his solo exhibition “Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa: The House at Kawinal,” the work was on view at the New Museum from June 6 to September 9, 2018. Working in performance, sculpture, drawing, and printmaking, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa creates dreamlike scenes that build on references to literature, folklore, magic, and childhood memories. Ramírez-Figueroa’s installations and performances combine sculpture and experimental theater to transfigure everyday images and objects into symbolic tableaux.
You can find our latest Screens Series on New Museum Now— our new online platform for the New Museum’s digital programs, featuring virtual exhibition tours, digital residencies, artist talks, virtual studio visits and selections from our “Bedtime Stories” project, along with First Look works of net art and much more. The microsite was built by NEW INC alumni Channel, a design and technology studio based in NYC.
PRIDE MONTH: CARMELITA TROPICANA & DAVID WOJNAROWICZ
In 1990, the New Museum collaborated with the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art and The Studio Museum to present “The Decade Show,” an exhibition of art produced in the 1980s. This exhibition explored identity across a variety of themes—including class, gender, race, religion, sexuality, and politics—bringing together more than 200 works by ninety-four artists of African-American, Asian, European, Hispanic, and Native American heritage.
As part of the exhibition-related series of performances, performance artist Carmelita Tropicana debuted a new piece that pulled from older works such as Memorias de la Revolución and also featured new, more autobiographical content. Later in the evening, artist David Wojnarowicz read from his essay _Living Close To The Knives_—a painful recounting of his friend Peter Hujar’s struggle with AIDS.
WATCH their performance from “The Decade Show” here.
CARE PACKAGE: RAGNAR KJARTANSSON & KRISTÍN ANNA
Artist Ragnar Kjartansson, whose work was featured in the New Museum exhibition “Me, My Father, My Mother, and I,” joined frequent collaborator Kristín Anna to create an acoustic recording of “On Death” especially for this New Museum Care Package. The duo wrote the song to the words of artist Sophie Calle about her cat Souris, who passed away, for the album “Souris Calle.” To hear the full song, click here.
BEDTIME STORIES
This week we continue “Bedtime Stories,” a project initiated by the artist Maurizio Cattelan in which he’s invited friends, artists, and performers he admires to keep us company with nightly readings, helping us stay together during these days of isolation.
We’re kicking off this week with the artist Damián Ortega, who reads La princesa y el chícharo (The Princess and the Pea) by Hans Christian Andersen with his daughters.
PRIDE MONTH: HOMO VIDEO
In 1986, the New Museum presented the first New York exhibition to be comprised exclusively of video works by openly gay and lesbian artists titled “HOMO VIDEO: Where We Are Now.“ The exhibition not only addressed issues of that era in the homosexual community, but also highlighted the ways in which gay men and lesbians were making art with a powerful social dimension.
Here is a description of the exhibition in the words of the exhibition’s curator, William Olander:
“While the political and social conditions for homosexuals become worse, gay men and lesbians continue to resist and, in fact, have escalated their resistance in the Reagan era-in response to AIDS, the Supreme Court ruling against homosexuals in Hardwick vs. Bowers, the Meese Commission on Pornography. What is most promising is that there seems to be a genuine acknowledgment that the issues confronting us are not exclusive to gay men or lesbians but are our collective concern. What has begun to occur, as our lives are threatened from within and our freedom threatened from without, is that we have begun to address our ‘differences,’ at least those which we have constructed within our own movement, and have shifted the counter-cultural emphasis of the earlier sexual liberation movements to a new politics which can more effectively link gay and lesbian concerns to each other and to the broader struggle against patriarchy, discrimination, and repression. Today’s goal, as evidenced not only by these videotapes but equally by gay and lesbian fiction, history and theory, film and photography, is neither to affirm the dominant heterosexual practice nor the institutionalized subculture of gay life, whether female or male, but rather, to challenge the various ideological apparatuses which continue to harass, contain, and suppress the condition of homosexuality.”
READ more about this exhibition.
CARE PACKAGE: REIMAGINING PUBLIC MONUMENTS
In recent days, public monuments have crystallized as primary sites of contested values. Alongside the New Museum’s Hans Haacke exhibition earlier this year, artist Paul Ramírez Jonas; Kendal Henry, Director of Percent for Art at the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs; and J. Meejin Yoon, Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University gathered to consider the forms and functions of monuments and memorials.
As commemorative monuments face heightened scrutiny, how might architects and artists consider liberatory, performative, or ephemeral modes of monument-making? What civic structures can best support new visions for public commemoration? How might a diverse public be ethically and productively engaged in these considerations?
Watch the full conversation here.
EMORY DOUGLAS: BLACK PANTHER
In honor of Juneteenth, we’re sharing Emory Douglas’s exhibition “Black Panther,” which was shown at the New Museum in 2009. Douglas was the Revolutionary Artist of the Black Panther Party and subsequently became its Minister of Culture, part of the national leadership. He created the overall design of the “Black Panther,” the Party’s weekly newspaper, and oversaw its layout and production until the Black Panthers disbanded in 1979–80. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, Douglas made countless artworks, illustrations, and cartoons, which were reproduced in the paper and distributed as prints, posters, cards, and even sculptures. All of them utilized an incisive graphic style and a vocabulary of images that would become synonymous with the Party and the issues it fought for.
LISTEN to a special audio guide for the exhibition by founding chairman of the Black Panther party, Bobby Seale, and former Black Panther and Black Panther historian, Billy x Jennings.
STREAM the documentary “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution,” available for free on PBS, to learn more about Douglas and the Black Panther movement at large.
CARE PACKAGE: MIRROR/ECHO/TILT CURRICULUM
Last summer, the work of artists Melanie Crean, Shaun Leonardo, and Sable Elyse Smith, in collaboration with individuals affected by the justice system, was featured in the residency and exhibition Mirror/Echo/Tilt. This residency included a living curriculum practiced with court-involved youth, formerly incarcerated adults, and individuals otherwise vulnerable to the justice system. The curriculum focuses on undoing the language around culturally-embedded conceptions of criminality and continues to serve as an open resource that lives beyond the artists and the exhibition. During the residency, Shaun Leonardo held workshops with members of New Museum staff and those who signed up through the Museum’s partner organizations, including The Door, Fortune Society, Hetrick Martin Institute, and CASES (Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services). Leonardo continues to adapt this curriculum, alongside many other initiatives, in his work as Director of Recess Assembly program.
To learn more about this visual, performance-based curriculum that reframes personal narratives, promotes individual agency, and breaks down the myth of the criminal, explore the Mirror/Echo/Tilt site.
During Pride Month, we will present a series of highlights from our digital archive, delving into our deep history of engagement with the LGBTQIA+ community.
SILENCE = DEATH
In March 1987, the collective ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) was formed in New York City with the aim of bringing attention, through direct political action, to the AIDS crisis and the federal government’s ignorance about the disease. Inspired by posters made by the Art Workers Coalition and the Guerrilla Girls, the group created their own poster to be wheatpasted widely on the streets of New York. They chose the phrase SILENCE = DEATH alongside a pink triangle, a reclaimed symbol of pride, which was historically used to identify queer members in concentration camps in Nazi Germany.
That same month, New Museum curator, William Olander, himself a participant in ACT UP, invited members of the group to create an installation as part of the Window Series, in the window of the New Museum on Broadway. The result was the exhibition “Let the Record Show…” for which the SILENCE = DEATH sign was produced. Throughout the years, the sign has been reinstalled at the New Museum multiple times. While the original poster and sign were created specifically in response to the AIDS epidemic, their content resonates with other forms of activism and resistance as a call to political action and warning of the deadly effects of passivity in crises.
READ more about the exhibition in the words of curator William Olander and an associated text presented with SILENCE = DEATH with statistics and government information related to the AIDS crisis.
BEDTIME STORIES
This week in “Bedtime Stories,” Russell Tovey reads a letter to Cookie Mueller from her friend, the filmmaker Gordon Stevenson, who died of complications related to AIDS in 1982. Reprinted in Nan Goldin, Cookie Mueller, Pace/MacGill Gallery, 1991.
CARE PACKAGE: SCOPE OF WORK
Scope Of Work (SOW), an Organizing Committee member for New Museum’s 2019 Youth Summit, was founded by NEW INC alumni Eda Levenson and Geneva White to establish equity in the creative industry for underrepresented young people.
Over the past month, Scope Of Work (SOW) commissioned 20 SOW Members to create a digital coloring book for adults to both motivate and inspire as society reimagines new systems of support, new methods of problem-solving, and new ways to care for one another. It’s time to go back to the drawing board. DRAWING BORED was designed by SOW Member Rey Carlson.
You can support Scope of Work and download DRAWING BORED here.
Summer Online Artist Residency
Ensayos: Passages
For its first online artist residency, our Department of Education and Public Engagement has invited international collective Ensayos (translated as “inquiries,” “essays,” or “rehearsals” in English) to develop and present new work through their digital residency “Ensayos: Passages.”
Ensayos is a collective research practice that includes artists, scientists, activists, policymakers, and local community members. Initiated in Tierra del Fuego, Chile, an archipelago known for its remoteness, biodiversity, and extreme conditions, Ensayos first focused on past and present issues impacting the region at the southern tip of Patagonia. In recent years, Ensayos practitioners have explored the shared and localized extremes of the land, water, and life of archipelagos on three additional continents, through inquiries in Eastern Australia, Norway, and New York.
Sustaining their focus on the ecopolitics of archipelagos for the past decade, they have developed distinct inquiries into extinction, human geography, and coastal health. Opening their intimate methodologies to a larger public, Ensayos’s multifaceted residency will include a web series, podcast series, public programs, and an experimental performance.
Ensayos: Passages Programs
DISTANCIA Season Two
Premiered June 15
This video series uses fictive and sensual qualities to illuminate connections between humans and a fraught landscape. DISTANCIA contemplates life in and with Tierra del Fuego, countering narratives that presume meaning should be sought primarily through scientific observation, ethnographic documentation, and geographic analysis.
Ecofiction at the End of the World
Tuesday, June 23, 2 PM EDT
A conversation on DISTANCIA, Season Two, focusing on ethical dimensions of storytelling and situated identity in relation to the landscape. Featuring Carolina Saquel and Camila Marambio, who imagined and realized the web series set in Tierra del Fuego; Ariel Bustamante, sound artist; and Michael Taussig, anthropologist.
Hydrofeminist METitations Listening Series
New episodes launch July 20, July 27, and August 3
A podcast series that focuses on waters in different archipelagic regions, including Tierra del Fuego, New York, Eastern Australia, and Norway. The episodes are structured in four movements that mirror different aspects of Ensayos’ field research: fiction, fact, somatic exercise, and water care ethics. Each concludes with a song.
Fortunes of the Forest: Divination, Dance, and Story
August 18, 8 PM EDT
This participatory performance encourages slowness, plant knowledge, movement, listening, observing, and response-ability. Drawing from her divination card deck (created with collaborator Man Cheung), artist Caitlin Franzmann is joined by aboriginal legal scholar Dr. C.F. Black and dancer Amaara Raheem to respond to the cards and audience questions. The program also celebrates the launch of Ensayos’ online periodical—_Más allá del fin/ Beyond the End_, issue # 3.5.
Cucú and Her Fishes, Act I Premiere
Tuesday, September 1
Screenings at 6 AM, 2 PM, and 8 PM EDT
Ensayos’ experimental ecofeminist drama Cucú and Her Fishes casts their undisciplined research methods into cyberspace. Sharing a passion for ocean advocacy, nine characters plan a second expedition to the bottom of the sea.
Saturation: Race, Art, And The Circulation Of Value
The New Museum and MIT Press announce our co-publication of Saturation: Race, Art, and the Circulation of Value, an anthology of essays, conversations, and artist portfolios that confront questions at the intersection of race, institutional life, and representation. The fourth installment in the Museum’s Critical Anthologies of Art and Culture series, Saturation is edited by C. Riley Snorton and Hentyle Yapp.
While controversies involving race and the art world are often discussed in terms of diversity and representation, Saturation offers another approach, taking into account not only questions of racial representation but also issues of structural change.
Through a range of essays and conversations, the book suggests that current paradigms cannot encompass the complex realities of race, whereas the term “saturation” is better able to provide aven