New York: Ming Smith’s Transcendent Photography

There’s movement on the Upper West Side: the Theodore Roosevelt statue at the American Museum of Nat

New York Jun 23, 2021 • View in browser

There’s movement on the Upper West Side: the Theodore Roosevelt statue at the American Museum of Natural History, long protested for its racist composition, is finally being removed. Staff writer Valentina Di Liscia has the full story. Further downtown, Rachell Morillo delves into the eclectic photographs of Ming Smith, who’s thankfully been getting more of her due these days. Don’t miss her solo show, now in it’s final week at Nicola Vassell Gallery, Chelsea’s newest space. In that same vein, fellow editor Natalie Haddad dives into the under-sung sculptures and drawings of Rosemary Mayer, now nearing the end of a run at Gordon Robichaux. As Haddad writes, Mayer’s works are “at once ethereal and unruly.”— Dessane Lopez Cassell, Editor, Reviews

Electric Images: Ming Smith’s Transcendent Photography Evidence, the inaugural show at Nicola Vassell Gallery, emphasizes Smith’s track record as a photographer who both loves and riffs on the language of her medium. Rachell Morillo

News This Week

The NYC Public Design Commission unanimously approved a proposal to finally move a racist Theodore Roosevelt statue from the American Museum of Natural History to an institution dedicated to his life and memory. Collages inspired by Langston Hughes’ poems have been acquired by Morgan Library, marking the Morgan’s first major acquisition of work by a Black children’s author and illustrator. The Brooklyn Public Library’s newest initiative examines six decades of Black-led activism in the borough from Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter.

Latest Reviews

Matthew Wong’s Indelible Impressions Just three years after he first devoted himself to art, Wong assembled an abstract vocabulary to create an entire world that is parallel to ours. John Yau

Rosemary Mayer’s Art of the Unseen For Mayer, the passage of time is imbued with a sense of melancholy, of something already lost to the past. Natalie Haddad

The Gallery Dealer as Tightrope Walker Rather than identifying with a style or brand, Klaus Kertess was remarkably independent in his choices, and was not averse to risks. John Yau

At SVA, MFA Grads Look Beyond the Pandemic With Resonant Projects While the pandemic dominated their final year, these artists nonetheless explore broader issues. Here are some highlights. Billy Anania

In Manhattan, a Makeshift Forest Is Haunted by the Ghosts of Imperialism The location of Maya Lin’s Ghost Forest next to the Flatiron building evokes for me, a Filipina American, the legacy of the architect Daniel Burnham. Vina Orden

Closing Soon

Terry Winters, “Magic Architecture” (2020) in "Table of Contents" at Matthew Marks Gallery

Do It Yourself: an introduction to the cardboard slave kits at Geary Gallery through June 26 Terry Winters: Table of Contents at Matthew Marks Gallery through June 26 Don Voisine at McKenzie Fine Art through June 27 Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art through June 27 Shoshanna Weinberger: Fragments of Perception and Gyun Hur: So we can be near at Wave Hill through June 27 Return to Color: Ha Chong-Hyun at Tina Kim Gallery through June 30

On View in Museums

Lorraine O'Grady: Both/And at the Brooklyn Museum through July 18 See It Big: The Return! at the Museum of the Moving Image through July 18 Alice Neel: People Come First at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through August 1 Open Call at the Shed through August 1 Felipe Ehrenberg: Testamento at the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) through August 7 Julie Mehretu at the Whitney Museum through August 8 Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life at MoMA PS1 through September 6 Born in Flames: Feminist Futures at the Bronx Museum of the Arts through September 12 Louise Bourgeois, Freud’s Daughter at the Jewish Museum through September 12 Estamos Bien — La Trienal 20/21 at El Museo del Barrio through September 26 Off the Record at the Guggenheim Museum through September 27 Deana Lawson, Centropy at the Guggenheim Museum through October 11 Kusama: Cosmic Nature at the New York Botanical Gardens through October 31 Liza Lou’s “Kitchen” at the Whitney Museum through February 2022

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