[title]
The New Museum’s fall season begins before you’ve even made it upstairs. Step into one of its glass-front elevators and AI-generated children appear on screens, offering riddles and thoughts about power as you ride. It’s part of a new work by Ho Tzu Nyen and a fitting introduction to a lineup that gets considerably weirder from there.
Four exhibitions and commissions opened at the Bowery museum last week. The biggest is Arthur Jafa: I Am Tony, the artist’s largest museum survey to date. Spread across two floors, it includes his acclaimed films Love is the Message, The Message is Death and The White Album, alongside paintings, photographs, sculptures and new work. Jafa has spent nearly four decades finding ways to capture the rhythms and realities of Black life in America. (If his images stay with you after your visit, there are two more chances to hear from him: a conversation at the museum on December 3 and a December 4 screening of Daughters of the Dust at Metrograph. Jafa was the film’s cinematographer.)
RECOMMENDED: All of the must-see art exhibitions coming to MoMA this fall
For a different sort of screen time, there’s Diego Marcon’s Arrivederci, Piggies! His films borrow from cartoons, musicals, slapstick and horror. The exhibition plays four works at once, including the newly commissioned Krapfen. In it, a child’s family takes the form of floating clothes, while a song cheerfully repeats the name of an Austrian jam doughnut.
The museum is also looking out its front door. The Bowery: Devil’s Mile covers 400 years of the street’s history, from Lenape footpath and cattle route to entertainment district, skid row and artists’ neighborhood. Among the objects and artworks are an 1830s fire engine, a nineteenth-century “Feejee Mermaid” dime-museum attraction, Jacob Riis photographs and works by Nan Goldin and Keith Haring.
There’s also more to do than look. Sky Studio offers drop-in art-making on select Saturdays, with the city skyline as a backdrop. Teens can make art for free at Bowery Art Space on October 23, November 20 and December 18. October 17 brings a Community Day with free admission for Lower East Side neighbors and Weirdo Night on December 10 takes inspiration from the street’s old variety theaters and dime museums.
Families with children ages 4 to 12 can visit for free during Family Days on November 1 and December 6. Check the New Museum’s event calendar for times and ticket details before you go.