From live music to film screenings to Old Masters returning home, these are NYC's hottest art happenings that don't require an invite.
Welcome to Things to Do, our weekly roundup of happenings in the ever-buzzing New York art scene. Here, we present an expertly curated list of the best goings on that don’t require an invite—but might require that you reserve a spot in advance. Be sure to check StubHub, SeatGeek and Craigslist for ticketed events that may have sold out. People in the art world are often double-booked and love secondary markets.
The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd St., various times
Though it’s not about art explicitly, the new 4k restoration of 1995s cult classic Party Girl is screening at MoMA this week, and it’s a must watch for those in or adjacent to the art world, where sometimes it’s hard to know if the parties support the culture or vice versa. Parker Posey delivers her best non-Christopher Guest-directed performance in this love letter to a bygone downtown New York directed by Daisy von Scherler Mayer.
The Shed, 545 West 30th Street, 10 p.m.
For the summer, The Shed at Hudson Yards has built a 65-foot-diameter spherical concert hall suspended in the air in the venue’s 115-foot-tall McCourt. It’s designed for “immersive, 3-D sound and light explorations of music by boundary-pushing artists.” Things kick off this week with shows by yunè pinku, praised by The Guardian for her “rare ability to warp 30 years of rave culture into melodic new shapes, with hints of Radiohead, psych and hyperpop.”
If you’ve skipped Art Basel this week—and if you’re reading this feature, odds are good that you have—you can still get a preview of the next big names in art at Perrotin’s show of the Yale MFA Painting and Printmaking Class of 2023. These artists are sure to go on to great things, and the show’s press release, written by one of the program’s co-teachers, promises a strong unifying theme: “Emerging into a post-pandemic cultural landscape, the cohort reminds us of the profound lessons learned since 2020: to dig deep roots and hold as precious our immediate worlds; to value the exploration and expression of self, extracted from conventional routines and institutional systems; and to recognize the vital need to care intensely about those who navigate these precarious times with us.”
signs and symbols gallery, 249 East Houston St., 6-8 p.m.
Taking its title from a Jenny Holzer piece, Untitled (A Real Torture Would…), from Inflammatory Essays, 1979–1982, this all-female group exhibition features the work of Rachael Catharine Anderson, Sarah Anderson, Shaqayeq Arabi, Annabel Daou, Ornella Fieres, Karen Finley, Jeewi Lee, Rachel Libeskind, Linder, Pola Sieverding and Ann Weathersby. The show concerns what it means to be a woman and an artist at the same time. A REAL TORTURE WOULD BE TO BUILD A SPARKLING CAGE WITH 2-WAY MIRRORS AND STEEL BARS, the Holzer piece begins.