New York April 5, 2023 The Metropolitan Museum of Art has just acquired the rare painting, which depicts the Dutch artist at work surrounded by her signature flora. | Elaine Velie Become a member today to help keep our reporting and criticism free and accessible to all. Become a Member ALSO IN THE NEWS NY Governor Kathy Hochul's proposed budget slashes pandemic-era arts funding by more than half. Workers rallied outside the Guggenheim during a VIP opening, pressuring the museum for better wages and job security. The Met is repatriating 15 antiquities to India, all of which were at one point sold by disgraced art dealer Subhash Kapoor. MoMA apologizes for kicking out a Black artist from the Black Power Naps installation after a White visitor called her "aggressive." SPONSORED Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’s theatrical concert chronicles the 2020 lockdown and the hope and perseverance that emerged from it. Learn more. FROM OUR CRITICS She invites the viewer to contemplate all the ways we mark and live in time, and how much of what we record and keep we will eventually dispose of. | John Yau Josephine Halvorson: Unforgotten Mar. 17–Apr. 18, 2023 Sikkema Jenkins & Co., 530 West 22nd Street, Chelsea (sikkemajenkinsco.com) SPONSORED Curated by Jennifer Samet and Andrea Belag, this group exhibition in NYC explores the feminine through aesthetics, as opposed to identity or gender. Learn more. In taking aim at contemporary corporations, especially oil companies, Cuevas draws a connection between colonization, trade, and the devastation of the natural world. | Annabel Keenan Minerva Cuevas: In Gods We Trust Mar. 3–Apr. 15, 2023 kurimanzutto, 520 West 20th Street, Chelsea (kurimanzutto.com) Bowen’s multimedia art is an alchemical mix of the sensuous and arcane, and it is more than a little witchy. | Faye Hirsch Nancy Bowen: Sometimes a Body Is Not Just a Body Jan. 16–Apr. 12, 2023 Westchester Community College Art Gallery, Hankin Academic Arts Building, 3rd Floor, 75 Grasslands Road, Valhalla (wccartgallery.com) SPONSORED The two-part exhibition features the work of 41 graduating artists across disciplines, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, and integrated practices. Learn more. NEW & UPCOMING Penguins! Past and Present Apr. 2–Aug. 6, 2023 The Bruce Museum, 1 Museum Drive, Greenwich, Connecticut (brucemuseum.org) This multifaceted exhibition delves into the incredible resilience of 10 penguin species as they navigate survival through climate change and habitat loss in the already harsh conditions in which they’ve evolved to thrive. Curated by renowned penguin expert Daniel Ksepka, the science-heavy display showcases 60 million-year-old fossils, scaled dioramas, footage of penguins in their natural environments, and information about the ways penguins and humans have influenced each others’ histories. Opening in conjunction with Gallery A, this show also marks the museum’s expansion, doubling the institution’s size and adding dedicated spaces for exhibition, community, and education. Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter Apr. 3–Jul. 16, 2023 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side (metmuseum.org) You might recognize Juan de Pareja from a 1650 portrait of him by Diego Velázquez, now hanging at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. There’s a dark history behind his iconic portrait: The Afro-Hispanic painter was enslaved at Velázquez’s studio for 20 years before regaining his freedom and embarking on his own art career. The exhibition includes Pareja’s rarely-seen paintings and works by others that chart the history of forced artisanal labor in Spain’s “Golden Age” and beyond. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map Apr. 19–Aug. 2023 Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, Meatpacking District (whitney.org) All is vanity, as the saying goes. British artist Cecily Brown takes the sentiment to heart with each bold brushstroke, disrupting all manner of strict representation — whether of beauty or beast. Brown’s solo exhibition Death and the Maid at The Met highlights her influential position within contemporary painting’s recasting of art history’s grandiose themes. SPONSORED Autumn Knight’s sculptural installation- and dialogue-based performance, Complain/Disappoint, explores affective labor, vulnerability, and who has the right to complain. On view in Purchase, NY, April 12–16. Learn more. MORE ON HYPERALLERGIC At this year’s Association of International Photography Art Dealers show, the best works offer glimpses into the personal lives of photographers and their subjects. | Elaine Velie Louis Vuitton’s collaboration with the artist raises questions of autonomy, agency, and objecthood. | Hindley Wang The Women Artists Commemorated on an NYC SidewalkThe signatures of Rosa Bonheur, Mary Cassatt, and six other historical women artists are engraved on a small stretch of sidewalk on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. | Elaine Velie |