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Dates: 9 Oct 09 - 3 Jan 10
Categories: 1800-1900 (Impressionism, etc)
Address: Paulus Potterstraat 7 Amsterdam 1070 CX
Tel: +31 (0)20 570 5200 Website

This exhibition celebrates the publication of definitive, six-volume edition of the artist’s correspondence (see p49). The Van Gogh Museum is marking the book launch by showing 120 letters, nearly all from the family collection. These are rarely exhibited, for conservation reasons, and never have so many been on show before. Three recently acquired letters with sketches addressed to Van Gogh’s artist friend Emile Bernard are being lent by the Morgan Library in New York. Presented in the museum’s original Rietveld building, the letters are shown alongside paintings from the permanent collection. Altogether there are 340 artworks, including The Potato Eaters and The Bedroom. Light levels will be lowered for the works on paper, with the paintings spotlit, giving a different feel to a museum that is normally filled with daylight. The display of letters will also flow over into the print gallery. Some of the letters include small drawings (above). Once Van Gogh became a full-time artist he would make rough sketches of his pictures to show his brother Theo what he was working on. The letters, mostly in Dutch and French, provide an intimate and revealing account of his development as an artist. Another show (with almost completely different artworks) will be presented at the Royal Academy, London (“The Real Van Gogh: the Artist and his Letters”), from 23 January- 18 April 2010. Martin Bailey

Dates: 9 Oct 09 - 9 Feb 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Plaza dels Àngels, 1 Barcelona 08001
Tel: +34 (0)93 412 0810 Website

This show brings together 15 international artists to present their views on the role of text and narrative in contemporary art. The exhibition consists of proposals from each of the artists that will, along with talks and seminars, create a forum in which words and their relationship to the modern art production are discussed. Artists including Will Holder, the founder of DotDotDot magazine, Falke Pisano, whose work engages with problems of language and text, conceptual New York artist Seth Price, and the Bernadette Corporation collective, whose work investigates strategies of art production, all present text pieces. The museum has created an “active space for reading” where visitors will be able to take in the written proposals from the artists involved. Rob Curran

Dates: 10 Oct 09 - 28 Mar 10
Categories: Photography
Address: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Invalidenstrasse 50-51 Berlin D-10557
Tel: +49 (0)30 3978 3412 Website

Echoing through the ordinarily hushed halls of the Hamburger Bahnhof come the competing sounds of “Rule Britannia” and “Deutschland über Alles”, as American artist Paul Pfeiffer launches his ArtAngel commission The Saints (video still shown right) in Germany. The sound and video installation focuses on the World Cup Final between England and Germany at Wembley in 1966. A constellation of speakers and screens relays the match and the reactions of the crowd, from tense anticipation to a deafening roar of mass celebration. Laid over the original crowd reactions are the passionate chants of a new set of spectators, a group of young Filipinos from Manila that the artist brought together to watch the match for the first time. For this German showing, Pfeiffer has added the original match commentary in English, adding a new layer of sound to the experience. Curator Britta Schmitz expects “a tremendous reaction” to the project, because the “memory of the loss is still so fresh” for Germans. (England won 4-2 after extra time.) Pfeiffer, who trained at Hunter College, New York, first realised the project in London in 2007, inspired by the opening of the new national stadium at Wembley. C.B.

The Saints (video still)

Dates: 26 Sep 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Post-War (1945-70) Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Lendkai 1 Graz A-8020
Tel: +43 (0) 316 8017 9200 Website

The place of Andy Warhol as the leading figure of late 20th century art is explored in this show of 20 works by the late American artist dating from the 1960s, which are shown with art by Barnett Newman and Christopher Wool. Curator Peter Pakesch has focused on a period in the 1960s when Warhol was looking particularly towards work from the previous decade by Newman. The works on show include Warhol’s disaster paintings, which are seen as owing a debt to Newman’s monochrome pieces. Chicago-born artist Christopher Wool is represented by about 20 word paintings seen as being influenced by Warhol. Items have been loaned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tate, London, and private collections. James Hobbs

Andy Warhol, Flowers (Large Flowers 1 Orange, One Purple), 1964

Dates: 13 Sep 09 - 3 Jan 10
Categories: Far East
Address: 1001 Bissonnet Houston 77005
Tel: +1 713 639 7300 Website

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, hosts a landmark exhibition of ancient Vietnamese art this month. This ambitious, large-scale show—the first of its kind to be staged in the US—is the culmination of 20 years of research, planning and negotiations with Vietnamese institutions and government officials. The wide variety of works on display, many of which have never before been exhibited outside Vietnam, are drawn from the country’s leading museums in Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Ha Noi, Hue and Dong Nai. “We aim to introduce Vietnamese art and culture to an American audience,” says San Francisco-based independent curator Dr Nancy Tingley. She adds: “Most people in the US are unfamiliar with Vietnamese history prior to the 20th century and associate the country primarily with the Vietnam War.” The Houston museum’s in-house curator for the exhibition, Christine Starkman, adds: “People are familiar with Chinese, Indian and, to a certain degree, Korean art, but Vietnamese art is still a bit of mystery and we hope to change this.” The exhibition will show that Vietnam was a central hub for exchange between Asia and the West from as early as the first millennium BC. The 110 sculptures, bronzes, terracottas and jewellery on display originated from countries including India and China and places as far west as Rome. “As the exhibition develops, visitors will see an increase in material goods and exchange of ideas between countries,” says Tingley. The display is divided chronologically into sections. The first is entitled “Early Cultures” and covers the country’s first “Golden Age” from 1000 BC to the second century AD when the Sa Huynh and Dong Son civilisations dominated the landscape in the centre/south and north respectively. Most of what remains from this period are grave goods such as large funerary jars, ornamental bronze drums, axes and beads. The next section concentrates on the Fu Nan people who inhabited the Mekong River Delta in the southwestern part of the country from the first to eighth centuries AD. The seafaring Champa people are explored in the third section. From the fifth to the 15th century this kingdom flourished, controlling the highly profitable spice trade in Southeast Asia. Cham objects on display include sculpture and metalwork from Indonesia, Butuan and India. The final section covers the 12th to the 15th centuries and concentrates on the ceramic trade in the port of Hoi An. Several of the works on display have been unearthed within the past two decades. “Vietnam is incredibly rich in cultural remains. There are at least 75 archaeological excavations every year, which is an extraordinary amount of digs for a country of its size,” notes Tingley. Some of the most interesting objects come from a shipwreck excavated in the 1990s off the coast of Cu Lao Cham Island in the central province of Quang Nam. Archaeologists discovered a cache of 150,000 to 200,000 ceramic pieces. This find illustrates not only the varied types of ceramics produced in Vietnam, but also the obvious demand for these wares. The exhibition will travel to the Asia Society in New York (2 February-2 May 2010). Emily Sharpe

Female, probably fifth century

Dates: 11 Jul 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Avenida de los Reyes Leoneses, 24 Leon 24008
Tel: +34 987 09 00 00 Website

Swiss-born, New York-based artist Ugo Rondinone’s only museum show of 2009 is also his solo debut in Spain. Curated by Augustín Pérez Rubio, Musac’s acting director, the show encompasses many aspects of Rondinone’s eclectic practice—with sculpture, painting, video, collage and installation—and consists of more than 50 objects arranged across five rooms. “He’s never shown anything in Spain, so that’s why it’s such a huge presentation,” Mr Rubio told The Art Newspaper. The overriding theme is of fantasy, poetry and ritual, and the exhibition begins with an installation of six ancient olive trees, painted white. This is a new version of Get Up Girl a Sun is Running the World shown at the 2007 Venice Biennale when Rondinone represented Switzerland with Urs Fischer. Because of the generous scale of Musac’s exhibition spaces, the trees reach up to 4.5 metres in height, compared to the three-metre forms in Venice. In the centre a giant sculpture of a light bulb hangs from the ceiling, and strong white light fills the room to create the sensation of “white night”, says Mr Rubio. In another room Rondinone is showing his Star paintings, a brand new series of 13 works, all around 4x3 metres. “He wants to install them altogether as a tribute to Rothko’s chapel,” Mr Rubio told TAN. “Each painting is like a cosmos, showing the stars by night. He wanted to create the feeling of night and loneliness, and in the middle of the room is the sculpture of a clown lying on the floor. For Ugo, the idea of the clown is somebody who looks human but is also a creation. You never know if it’s a man or a woman—it’s like a human being in process.” In the final room is Still.Life (John’s Fireplace), a 2008 installation showing a replica of US poet John Giorno’s fireplace from his apartment in New York. Poetry is a strong influence: the show weaves together disparate elements that build up poetic layers of symbolism and personal narrative, at times menacing, at times more dreamlike. On a different register, one of Rondinone’s bright rainbow sculptures, Hell, Yes!, 2001, adorns the façade of the New Museum, New York, until 19 July. Rosie Spencer

Get Up Girl a Sun is Running the World

Dates: 25 Oct 09 - 17 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: Duke of York, King's Road London SW3
Tel: +44 (0)20 7823 2363 Website

Dates: 16 Jul 09 - 8 Feb 10
Categories: Archaeology & Ancient art
Address: 17985 Pacific Coast Highway Los Angeles 90265-5708
Tel: +1 310 230 7075 Website

Inaugurating the long-term partnership between the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Florence is the display of the fourth-century BC Etruscan masterpiece The Chimaera of Arezzo. On loan from the Florence museum, which according to Getty museum director Dr Michael Brand “houses one of the most important collections of Etruscan art in the world”, this sculpture forms the centrepiece of an exhibition exploring six centuries of representations of the mythical beast described by Homer as “a thing of immortal make…lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle, and breathed forth flames of fire”. Accompanying the 80cm bronze are antiquities from the museum’s permanent collection as well as loans from such institutions as the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Villa Giulia, Rome, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The work was unearthed in the Tuscan town of Arezzo in the 16th-century and entered the collection of ruler and art patron Cosimo I de’Medici. This is the first time the sculpture has travelled to the US. E.S.

The Chimaera of Arezzo

Dates: 15 Oct 09 - 24 Jan 10
Categories: Post-War (1945-70) Modern (1900-1945)
Address: Piazza del Duomo 12 Milan 20121
Tel: +39 (0)2 88 46 59 31 Website

This exhibition celebrates the prominent American realist painter and printmaker Edward Hopper (1882-1967), renowned for his visions of modern American life and the subtleties of human interaction. Following recent major shows in his native country, this presentation, curated by Carter Foster of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, is the first of its kind in Italy with more than 160 works from public and private collections spanning his entire career. Organised chronologically and thematically, it includes works such as Second Story Sunlight, 1960, and A Woman in the Sun, 1961 (above), both of which depict subjects from life in tranquil, middle-class apartments. Produced by the Palazzo Reale, Fondazione Roma and Artemisia, the show travels next to the Museo del Corso in Rome (16 February-13 June 2010). Katelyn Kucey

Dates: 23 Oct 09 - 5 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 525 West 22nd Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 255 1121 Website

Dates: 22 Oct 09 - 5 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 547 West 21st Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 255 1121 Website

Dates: 23 Oct 09 - 5 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 547 West 21st Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 255 1121 Website

Dates: 21 Oct 09 - 19 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: New York University, 80 Washington Square East New York
Tel: Website

Dates: 28 Oct 09 - 28 Nov 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 132 Tenth Avenue New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 367 7474 Website

Dates: 6 Oct 09 - 6 Sep 10
Categories: Post-War (1945-70) Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 45 West 53rd Street New York 10119-5401
Tel: +1 212 265 1040 Website

Dates: 20 Oct 09 - 18 Oct 10
Categories: Curious
Address: 45 West 53rd Street New York 10119-5401
Tel: +1 212 265 1040 Website

Dates: 20 Oct 09 - 18 Oct 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 45 West 53rd Street New York 10119-5401
Tel: +1 212 265 1040 Website

Dates: 29 Sep 09 - 7 Mar 10
Categories: 1800-1900 (Impressionism, etc)
Address: 45 West 53rd Street New York 10119-5401
Tel: +1 212 265 1040 Website

Dates: 6 Oct 09 - 13 Sep 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present) Curious
Address: 45 West 53rd Street New York 10119-5401
Tel: +1 212 265 1040 Website

Dates: 14 Nov 09 - 15 Aug 10
Categories: Far East
Address: Central Park West at 79th Street New York 10024
Tel: +1 212 769 5100 Website

Dates: 23 Oct 09 - 3 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 525 West 24th Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 627 6000 Website

Dates: 22 Oct 09 - 28 Nov 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 532 West 20th Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 367 9663 Website

Dates: 6 Oct 09 - 7 Feb 10
Categories: Far East
Address: 725 Park Avenue New York 10021
Tel: +1 212 288 6400 Website

Dates: 10 Sep 09 - 3 Jan 10
Categories: Middle East Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 725 Park Avenue New York 10021
Tel: +1 212 288 6400 Website

Dates: 1 Nov 09 - 22 Nov 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 725 Park Avenue New York 10021
Tel: +1 212 288 6400 Website

Performa 09 is the third biennial of new visual art performance, held in collaboration with 80 institutions, and featuring more than 150 international artists in about 110 events organised by 40 international curators—all in just three weeks. That dizzying set of statistics is being overseen by director RoseLee Goldberg, who set up the non-profit arts organisation Performa in 2004 and has done much to bring performance art and its history to the fore, as much through her writings as through her teaching and curatorial work, turning the public eye on to such performance artists as Marina Abramovic and Laurie Anderson. “The major difference for Performa 09 compared with previous biennials is that we’re commissioning from all disciplines, encompassing art, music, dance, poetry, fashion, architecture, film, television, design, food—it’s crossing all disciplines, and that is the big leap forward this year,” said Goldberg. Her major contribution this year is the “Performa Commissions” series, which forms the nerve centre of the biennial, alongside, for the first time, a “Performa Premieres” programme featuring six pieces never before seen in New York. The 11 new commissions are by Guy Ben-Ner, Candice Breitz, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Omer Fast, Yeondoo Jung, Mike Kelley, Arto Lindsay, Wangechi Mutu, Christian Tomaszewski, Futurist Life Redux and Music for 16 Futurist Noise Intoners (a group of experimental musicians and composers). South African video and installation artist Candice Breitz is presenting New York New York, 2009, her first live performance work. The piece features two casts, made up of identical twins performing on identical sets, spontaneously responding to scripts given to them on the spot. Unlike the performers, viewers will be able to take in both performances in real time. Other highlights in this programme include Yeondoo Jung’s Cinemagician, 2009, at the Asia Society—a theatre piece, commissioned with the Yokohama Festival for Video and Social Technology, that looks at the relationship between magic and cinema—and Omer Fast’s first live performance piece, commissioned with the Artis Contemporary Israeli Art Fund, which looks at history and memory through the re-enaction of a childhood storytelling game. The six artists chosen for the “Performa Premieres” programme are Keren Cytter, Tacita Dean, Alicia Framis, Loris Gréaud, William Kentridge and Joan Jonas. British artist Tacita Dean is presenting Craneway Event, 2009, at Danspace Project in the Bowery. This feature-length work shows the choreographer Merce Cunningham and his company in rehearsal in a deserted Ford motor factory in California, marking Cunningham’s last appearance on film before his death in July. South African artist William Kentridge is showing I Am Not Me, the Horse is Not Mine, 2009, a work related to his current opera-in-progress inspired by Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1928 satirical opera “The Nose”, and French artist Loris Gréaud is showing a video of a fireworks display in Abu Dhabi that he co-designed with Groupe F. There are related events across the city involving architecture, design, dance, film, music and food. Berlin-based architecture collective An Architektur is creating a “living think-tank” about the future of architecture in New York, Spanish designer Marti Guixé is staging Mealing, a three-hour performance involving 200 people and “edible microsnacks”, and Jennifer Rubell stages Creation on the opening night of the biennial, with a series of food installations at X Initiative. Rosie Spencer

A performance still from the Korean artist Yeondoo Jung’s theatrical work Cinemagician, showing at the Asia Society, New York

Dates: 17 Sep 09 - 3 Jan 10
Categories: Decorative
Address: 18 West 86th Street New York 10024
Tel: +1 212 501 3000 Website

Dates: 17 Sep 09 - 28 Nov 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 41 East 57th Street New York 10021
Tel: +1 212 517 3766 Website

Dates: 12 Nov 09 - 19 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 508 West 26th Street, 11C New York 10001
Tel: +1 212 989 7074 Website

Dates: 18 Sep 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Archaeology & Ancient art
Address: 200 Eastern Parkway New York 11238-6052
Tel: +1 718 638 5000 Website

Dates: 23 Oct 09 - 17 Jan 10
Categories: 1800-1900 (Impressionism, etc)
Address: 200 Eastern Parkway New York 11238-6052
Tel: +1 718 638 5000 Website

Dates: 19 Nov 09 - 2 Oct 11
Categories: Archaeology & Ancient art
Address: 200 Eastern Parkway New York 11238-6052
Tel: +1 718 638 5000 Website

Dates: 5 Jun 09 - 24 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 200 Eastern Parkway New York 11238-6052
Tel: +1 718 638 5000 Website

Dates: 30 Oct 09 - 31 Jan 10
Categories: Photography
Address: 200 Eastern Parkway New York 11238-6052
Tel: +1 718 638 5000 Website

Dates: 29 Oct 09 - 19 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 525 West 21st Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues) New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 645 7335 Website

Dates: 19 Nov 09 - 19 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 547 West 25th Street New York 10001
Tel: +1 212 242 7727 Website

Dates: 24 Sep 09 - 13 Dec 09
Categories: Photography Far East
Address: 125 East 65th Street New York 10021-7088
Tel: +1 212 744 8181 Website

The China Institute unveils a glance of China that has never before been seen in the US. Unlike most Chinese contemporary art’s tendency toward the glamorous and commercial, the new documentary photography exhibit will feature photographs from 1951 through 2003 that present intimate portraits of rural and urban daily life in China, beyond the glossy veneer of the economic boom. This exhibit will feature Dr Jerome Silbergeld’s (Professor of Chinese Art History, Princeton University) selected 100 photographs by more than 80 photographers, a version that narrows the original exhibit organized by the Guangdong Museum of Art which contained 600 images by 248 photographers, the first large-scale collection of photography acquired permanently by any museum in China. From photographs of a tragic husband remembering a deceased wife and a fearful crowd of victims fleeing the floodwaters to an elated lottery-winner displaying his wads of cash, the exhibit’s themes span the vast array of human emotions that is present in daily life. The Director of China Institute Gallery, Willow Hai Chang, notes, “The medium and language of photography provide an exceptional opportunity to foster a dialogue, enhancing communication and understanding about everyday life in China.”

Dates: 16 Oct 09 - 4 Apr 10
Categories: Design
Address: Smithsonian Institution 2 East 91st Street New York 10128
Tel: +1 212 849 8400 Website

Dates: 5 Nov 09 - 12 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 527 West 29th Street New York 10001
Tel: +1 212 925 6190 Website

Dates: 5 Nov 09 - 23 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 525 West 19th Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 727 2070 Website

Dates: 5 Nov 09 - 19 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 18 Wooster Street New York 10013
Tel: +1 212 343 7300 Website

Dates: 23 Sep 09 - 18 Apr 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 155th Street and Broadway New York 10032
Tel: +1 212 926 2234 Website

Dates: 18 Sep 09 - 18 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 35 Wooster Street New York 10013
Tel: +1 212 219 2166 Website

Dates: 17 Oct 09 - 28 Feb 10
Categories: Latin American Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 1230 Fifth Avenue New York 10029
Tel: +1 212 831 7272 Website

Following an extensive renovation, El Museo del Barrio opens with two inaugural exhibitions. The first, “Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis”, looks at how Latin American and Caribbean artists worked with and influenced American-born artists in New York in the early 20th century, helping to form the avant-garde movements of this period. Around 75 works are on show alongside various documentation. The second, “Voces y Visiones: Four Decades Through El Museo del Barrio’s Permanent Collection”, is a display of El Museo’s permanent collection held in the new Carmen Ana Unanue Galleries, which traces El Museo’s history as one of the oldest and largest collections of modern Latin American art in the US. H.S.

Dates: 6 Oct 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Old Master 1800-1900 (Impressionism, etc) Modern (1900-1945)
Address: 1 East 70th Street New York 10021
Tel: +1 212 288 0700 Website

Dates: 23 Oct 09 - 5 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 535 & 537 West 22nd Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 680 9467 Website

Dates: 23 Oct 09 - 5 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 537 West 22nd Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 680 9467 Website

Dates: 5 Nov 09 - 23 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 980 Madison Avenue New York 10021
Tel: +1 212 744 2313 Website

Dates: 23 Oct 09 - 21 Nov 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 620 Greenwich Street New York 10014
Tel: +1 212 627 5258 Website

Dates: 7 Nov 09 - 23 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 530 West 21st Street New York 10011
Tel: 212-206-7606 Website

Dates: 30 Oct 09 - 5 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 515 West 24th Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 206 9300 Website

Dates: 1 Sep 09 - 5 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present) Far East
Address: New York University, 100 Washington Square East New York 10003
Tel: +1 212 998 6780 Website

Dates: 9 Sep 09 - 21 Nov 09
Categories: Curious
Address: 47 East 60th Street New York 10022
Tel: +1 212 838 6690 Website

Dates: 1 Oct 09 - 28 Nov 09
Categories: Photography
Address: 537 West 24th Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 627 0006 Website

Dates: 6 Nov 09 - 24 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 32 East 69th Street New York 10021
Tel: +1 212 794 49 70 Website

Dates: 11 Nov 09 - 25 Apr 10
Categories: Archaeology & Ancient art
Address: New York University, 15 East 84th Street New York 10028
Tel: +1 212 992 7843 Website

The Lost World of Old Europe brings to the US for the first time more than 160 objects recovered by archaeologists from the graves, towns, and villages of Old Europe, a cycle of related cultures that achieved a precocious peak of sophistication and creativity in what is now southeastern Europe between 5000 and 4000 BC, and then mysteriously collapsed by 3500 BC.

Dates: 18 Sep 09 - 3 Jan 10
Categories: Photography Biennials
Address: 1133 Avenue of the Americas New York 10036
Tel: +1 212 857 0045 Website

Dates: 1 Oct 09 - 24 Oct 10
Categories: Modern (1900-1945) Post-War (1945-70)
Address: 36-01 43rd Avenue, Long Island City New York 11101
Tel: +1 718 204 7088 Website

Dates: 19 Nov 09 - 23 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 513 West 20th Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 645 1701 Website

Dates: 13 Sep 09 - 7 Feb 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 1109 Fifth Avenue New York 10128
Tel: +1 212 423 3271 Website

Dates: 15 Nov 09 - 14 Mar 10
Categories: Modern (1900-1945) Photography
Address: 1109 Fifth Avenue New York 10128
Tel: +1 212 423 3271 Website

Dates: 19 Nov 09 - 13 Feb 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 19 East 70th Street New York 10021
Tel: +1 212 794 0550 Website

Dates: 15 Oct 09 - 12 Dec 09
Categories: Post-War (1945-70)
Address: 45 East 78th Street New York 10075
Tel: +1 212 861 0020 Website

Dates: 5 Nov 09 - 19 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 201 Chrystie Street New York 10002
Tel: +1 212 254 0054 Website

Dates: 5 Nov 09 - 19 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 540 West 26th Street New York 10001
Tel: +1 212 255 2923 Website

Dates: 9 Oct 09 - 25 Nov 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 26 Greene Street New York 10013
Tel: +1 212 334 3347 Website

Dates: 7 Nov 09 - 19 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 531 West 24th Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 206 9100 Website

Dates: 7 Nov 09 - 9 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 24 West 57th Street New York 10019
Tel: +1 212 977 7160 Website

Dates: 20 Nov 09 - 19 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 509 West 24th Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 680 9889 Website

Dates: 21 Oct 09 - 28 Nov 09
Categories: Old Master
Address: 40 West 57th Street New York 10019
Tel: +1 212 541 4900 Website

Dates: 29 Oct 09 - 16 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 522/526 West 22nd Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 243 0200 Website

Dates: 29 Oct 09 - 5 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 519 West 24th Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 206 7100 Website

Dates: 22 Sep 09 - 29 Nov 09
Categories: Medieval
Address: 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street New York 10028-0198
Tel: +1 212-535-7710 Website

Dates: 13 Oct 09 - 24 Jan 10
Categories: Modern (1900-1945)
Address: 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street New York 10028-0198
Tel: +1 212-535-7710 Website

Dates: 18 Jun 09 - 29 Nov 09
Categories: Far East
Address: 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street New York 10028-0198
Tel: +1 212-535-7710 Website

Dates: 10 Sep 09 - 29 Nov 09
Categories: Old Master
Address: 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street New York 10028-0198
Tel: +1 212-535-7710 Website

The Milkmaid, 1658, perhaps the most celebrated painting by Johannes Vermeer, goes on Vermeer’s Masterpiece The Milkmaiddisplay in the US for the first time in 70 years. The work is being loaned to the Metropolitan Museum by the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, to mark the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s voyage from that city to New York. The exhibition places the painting alongside all five of the Metropolitan’s canvases by Vermeer together with engravings and drawings illuminating the theme, as well as works by other Delft artists including Pieter de Hooch, Gabriël Metsu, Hendrick van Vliet and Hendrick Sorgh, who were all active during the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century. Hannah Keck

The Milkmaid, 1658

Dates: 10 Sep 09 - 21 Mar 10
Categories: Peaceful Conquerors: Jain Manuscript Painting
Address: 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street New York 10028-0198
Tel: +1 212-535-7710 Website

Dates: 22 Sep 09 - 21 Mar 10
Categories: Decorative
Address: 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street New York 10028-0198
Tel: +1 212-535-7710 Website

Dates: 22 Sep 09 - 27 Dec 09
Categories: Post-War (1945-70)
Address: 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street New York 10028-0198
Tel: +1 212-535-7710 Website

Dates: 21 Oct 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Art of the Samurai: Japanese Arms and Armor, 1156–1868
Address: 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street New York 10028-0198
Tel: +1 212-535-7710 Website

Dates: 5 Sep 09 - 7 Feb 10
Categories: Curious Far East
Address: 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street New York 10028-0198
Tel: +1 212-535-7710 Website

Dates: 22 Sep 09 - 3 Jan 10
Categories: Medieval
Address: 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street New York 10028-0198
Tel: +1 212-535-7710 Website

The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry

Dates: 6 Oct 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Far East
Address: 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street New York 10028-0198
Tel: +1 212-535-7710 Website

The first comprehensive exhibition of 18th-century Chinese artist Luo Ping organised in the US. The exhibition includes a loan of around 60 works from China, as well as a smaller selection of pieces from American collections. One of the highlights of the show is the handscroll Ghost Amusements, around 1766, depicting a haunted world of ghosts that the artist claimed he could see. Luo created the images by first wetting the paper before painting on it with ink, resulting in blurred, phantom-like figures. H.S.

Paul Gauguin, Breton Girls Dancing, Pont-Aven, 1888.

Dates: 6 Aug 09 - 21 Feb 10
Categories: Far East Decorative
Address: 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street New York 10028-0198
Tel: +1 212-535-7710 Website

Dates: 29 Oct 09 - 3 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 4 East 77th Street New York 10075
Tel: +1 212 988 1623 Website

Dates: 19 Nov 09 - 9 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 534 West 26th Street New York 10001
Tel: +1 212 744 7400 Website

Dates: 2 Oct 09 - 3 Jan 10
Categories: Old Master Archaeology & Ancient art
Address: 225 Madison Avenue New York 10016-3405
Tel: +1 212 685 0008 Website

Dates: 15 Sep 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: 1800-1900 (Impressionism, etc)
Address: 225 Madison Avenue New York 10016-3405
Tel: +1 212 685 0008 Website

Dates: 11 Sep 09 - 3 Jan 10
Categories: 1800-1900 (Impressionism, etc)
Address: 225 Madison Avenue New York 10016-3405
Tel: +1 212 685 0008 Website

Dates: 2 Oct 09 - 3 Jan 10
Categories: Old Master
Address: 225 Madison Avenue New York 10016-3405
Tel: +1 212 685 0008 Website

Dates: 30 Sep 09 - 31 Jan 10
Categories: Curious Decorative Design
Address: 40 West 53rd Street New York 10019
Tel: +1 212 956 3535 Website

Dates: 7 Oct 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Curious Decorative
Address: 40 West 53rd Street New York 10019
Tel: +1 212 956 3535 Website

Dates: 20 Oct 09 - 10 Feb 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present) African Post-War (1945-70)
Address: 11 West 53rd Street New York 10019-5497
Tel: +1 212 708 9400 Website

Dates: 24 Jun 09 - 4 Jan 10
Categories: Modern (1900-1945)
Address: 11 West 53rd Street New York 10019-5497
Tel: +1 212 708 9400 Website

Dates: 16 Sep 09 - 4 Jan 10
Categories: Photography
Address: 11 West 53rd Street New York 10019-5497
Tel: +1 212 708 9400 Website

Dates: 17 Jun 09 - 30 Nov 09
Categories: Video & New Media Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 11 West 53rd Street New York 10019-5497
Tel: +1 212 708 9400 Website

Dates: 16 Sep 09 - 11 Jan 10
Categories: Photography
Address: 11 West 53rd Street New York 10019-5497
Tel: +1 212 708 9400 Website

Dates: 13 Sep 09 - 12 Apr 10
Categories: 1800-1900 (Impressionism, etc)
Address: 11 West 53rd Street New York 10019-5497
Tel: +1 212 708 9400 Website

One of the museum’s most popular canvases, a monumental triptych of Monet’s garden pond at Giverny, is the centrepiece of this show, which brings together all of the impressionist’s late works in the collection. Other paintings on view include The Japanese Footbridge, 1920-22, and Agapanthus, 1918-19, as well as loans from other museums. Organised by MoMA’s chief curator of painting and sculpture, Ann Temkin, the display opened at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta this summer as part of an ongoing collaboration between the two institutions, with support from Bank of America. H.S.

Water Lilies, 1914-26

Dates: 15 Nov 09 - 26 Apr 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 11 West 53rd Street New York 10019-5497
Tel: +1 212 708 9400 Website

Dates: 8 Nov 09 - 25 Jan 10
Categories: Modern (1900-1945)
Address: 11 West 53rd Street New York 10019-5497
Tel: +1 212 708 9400 Website

Dates: 15 Oct 09 - 15 Feb 10
Categories: Modern (1900-1945)
Address: 1048 Fifth Avenue New York 10028
Tel: +1 212 628 6200 Website

Dates: 8 Aug 09 - 30 Jun 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 235 Bowery New York 10002
Tel: +1 212 219 1222 Website

Dates: 28 Oct 09 - 2 Feb 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 235 Bowery New York 10002
Tel: +1 212 219 1222 Website

Dates: 28 Oct 09 - 24 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 235 Bowery New York 10002
Tel: +1 212 219 1222 Website

For the first time ever, the New Museum has invited one artist to completely take over the museum. Swiss artist Urs Fischer, working with organising curator Massimiliano Gioni, will transform the entire gallery space in what Gioni calls an “introspective” (rather than retrospective) exhibition, which he hopes will “feel like stepping inside the artist’s mind”. The exhibition came about after Gioni worked with Fischer for a 2005 solo show at the Trussardi Foundation in Milan, where he is the director. “For that show, Urs realised this gigantic iron tree, which is now in the collection of François Pinault, and his famous House of Bread,” says Gioni. “At the time I was very impressed by Urs’ ability to stage large interventions and solve them as sort of magical gestures…So when I started working at the New Museum, it only came natural to think of Urs as an ideal candidate for taking over the whole museum. The scale and the ambition of his work also needs space to resonate. And after more than a year in our new home we felt the New Museum was ready to change gear and try out a new format.” Gioni promises this will be an exhibition unlike traditional solo shows, where a wish-list of works to include is drawn up and existing pieces are borrowed from public and private collections. “The show grew as a sort of living creature,” says Giono. “To tell you the truth, we are one month away from the show and we don’t even have a complete checklist and I have a feeling we will get to one only once the show opens.” Instead, Gioni says 90% of the works on view are new or pieces Fischer has been working on for the past four years and have only recently been completed. Some previously shown pieces will be included, such as Noisette, 2009, a large fleshy tongue that pops out of a hole in the wall as visitors walk by, triggering a motion sensor. But the main display on the second floor is an installation Fischer has been working on and expanding for year. Consisting of more than 50 chrome box sculptures, the tallest at around 12 feet high, arranged like miniature buildings filling the gallery, with images of everyday objects silk-screened on their mirrored surfaces. “The effect will be like walking in a city grid,” says Gioni. “It will be like walking through a collage that unravels in front of your eyes, a maze of images of which the visitors will also become a part as their bodies get reflected onto the boxes.” Not surprisingly, this ambitious show is a one-off. “The vast majority of the works has been realised for the New Museum and the whole show is pretty much site specific. Both Urs and I were clear from the beginning that this show was not going to travel, that it would exist in this configuration only here.” Above, Marguerite de Ponty, 2006-08. Helen Stoilas

Marguerite de Ponty, 2006-08

Dates: 7 Sep 09 - 3 Jan 10
Categories: Decorative
Address: 2 West 77th Street at Central Park West New York 10024
Tel: +1 212 873 3400 Website

Dates: 17 Nov 09 - 27 Feb 10
Categories: Old Master
Address: 645 Fifth Avenue New York 10022-5910
Tel: +1 212 486 4448 Website

Tracing the influences of Byzantine and Renaissance art on artist workshops in 15th- and 16th-century Crete—the background in which the old master painter El Greco was trained—this exhibition brings together 46 works that demonstrate the relationship of Cretan icon painters with Western European art. The show includes early works by El Greco as well as panel paintings by his immediate predecessors and contemporary on loan from public and private collections in Greece, Europe, the US and Canada, and many of them traveling to the States for the first time. The show is curated by Dr Anastasia Drandaki, curator of the Byzantine collection at the Benaki Museum, Athens.

Dates: 6 Nov 09 - 5 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 545 West 22nd Street New York 10001
Tel: +1 212 989 4258 Website

Dates: 29 Oct 09 - 24 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 534 West 25th Street New York 10001
Tel: +1 212 929 7000 Website

Dates: 23 Oct 09 - 24 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 32 East 57th Street New York 10022
Tel: +1 212 421 3292 Website

Dates: 6 Nov 09 - 12 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 534 West 21st Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 255 1105 Website

Dates: 29 Oct 09 - 2 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 99 Wooster Street New York 10012
Tel: +1 212 343 0441 Website

Dates: 20 Nov 09 - 9 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 99 Wooster Street New York 10012
Tel: +1 212 343 0441 Website

Dates: 5 Nov 09 - 23 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 560 Broadway Suite 602-3 New York 10012
Tel: +1 212 966 5154 Website

Dates: 25 Oct 09 - 5 Apr 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City New York 11101
Tel: +1 718 784 2084 Website

Dates: 25 Oct 09 - 4 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City New York 11101
Tel: +1 718 784 2084 Website

Dates: 1 Oct 09 - 5 Apr 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City New York 11101
Tel: +1 718 784 2084 Website

Dates: 1 Nov 09 - 5 Apr 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City New York 11101
Tel: +1 718 784 2084 Website

The idea behind “100 Years”, which is is held in conjunction with the Performa 09 biennial, is to outline a history of performance art, marking the 100 years that have passed since the futurist manifesto was published. Images, documentation and films of performances, happenings and events trace such key works as Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 Parts, 1959, Yves Klein’s Anthropométrie de l’Epoque Bleue, 1960, Yoko Ono’s Bed In (Bed Peace), 1969, Matthew Barney’s Drawings Restraint, 1987-present, Tilda Swinton’s The Maybe, 1995, and Tino Sehgal’s Kiss, 2004. A different version of the show is at the Julia Stoschek Collection in Düsseldorf, Germany (until 31 July 2010). This show, curated by Klaus Biesenbach, PS1 chief curatorial adviser and MoMA chief curator of media and performance art, and RoseLee Goldberg, Performa’s director, is supported by the Annual Exhibition Fund of PS1 Contemporary Art Center and the Julia Stoschek Foundation.

Tilda Swinton’s The Maybe, 1995

Dates: 1 Oct 09 - 30 May 10

Address: One East 53rd Street New York 10022
Tel: +1 212 980 4575 Website

Dates: 15 Jul 09 - 30 Mar 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: One East 53rd Street New York 10022
Tel: +1 212 980 4575 Website

Dates: 1 Nov 09 - 13 Mar 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: New York City Building, Flushing Meadows Corona Park New York 11368-3398
Tel: +1 718 592 9700 Website

Dates: 9 Oct 09 - 24 Nov 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 1018 Madison Avenue, 4th floor New York 10075
Tel: +1 212 472 8787 Website

Dates: 29 Oct 09 - 5 Feb 10
Categories: Old Master
Address: 34 East 69th Street New York 10065
Tel: +1 212 628 0700 Website

Dates: 18 Sep 09 - 15 Feb 10
Categories: Far East
Address: 150 West 17th Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 620 5000 Website

Dates: 14 Aug 09 - 11 Jan 10
Categories: Far East
Address: 150 West 17th Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 620 5000 Website

Dates: 14 Aug 09 - 25 Jan 10

Address: 150 West 17th Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 620 5000 Website

Dates: 14 Aug 09 - 10 May 10
Categories: Curious
Address: 150 West 17th Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 620 5000 Website

Dates: 30 Oct 09 - 5 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 528 West 29th Street New York 10001
Tel: +1 212 239 1181 Website

Dates: 18 Sep 09 - 17 Jan 10
Categories: Modern (1900-1945)
Address: 1071 Fifth Avenue New York 10128
Tel: +1 212 423 3500 Website

Dates: 21 Oct 09 - 28 Mar 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 1071 Fifth Avenue New York 10128
Tel: +1 212 423 3500 Website

Dates: 18 Sep 09 - 13 Jan 10
Categories: Photography
Address: 1071 Fifth Avenue New York 10128
Tel: +1 212 423 3500 Website

Dates: 24 Oct 09 - 19 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 536 West 22nd Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 627 1018 Website

Dates: 7 Nov 09 - 19 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 415 West 13th Street New York 10014
Tel: +1 212 999 7337 Website

Dates: 12 Nov 09 - 13 Mar 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 144 West 125 Street New York 10027
Tel: +1 212 864 4500 Website

Dates: 12 Nov 09 - 13 Mar 10

Address: 144 West 125 Street New York 10027
Tel: +1 212 864 4500 Website

Dates: 30 Oct 09 - 19 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 521 West 21st Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 414 4144 Website

Dates: 29 Oct 09 - 12 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 145 East 57th Street New York 10022
Tel: +1 212 223 1059 Website

Dates: 31 Oct 09 - 23 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 544 West 26th Street New York 10001
Tel: +1 212 274 9300 Website

Dates: 9 Nov 09 - 9 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 20 West 57th Street New York 10019
Tel: +1 212 397 6780 Website

Dates: 17 Sep 09 - 17 Jan 10
Categories: Post-War (1945-70)
Address: 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street New York 10021
Tel: +1 800 944 8639 Website

Dates: 30 Sep 09 - 29 Nov 09
Categories: Post-War (1945-70) Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street New York 10021
Tel: +1 800 944 8639 Website

Dates: 25 Sep 09 - 3 Jan 10
Categories: Photography
Address: 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street New York 10021
Tel: +1 800 944 8639 Website

Dates: 6 Nov 09 - 24 Jan 10
Categories: 1800-1900 (Impressionism, etc) Modern (1900-1945) Post-War (1945-70)
Address: 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street New York 10021
Tel: +1 800 944 8639 Website

Dates: 6 Nov 09 - 24 Jan 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present) Post-War (1945-70)
Address: 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street New York 10021
Tel: +1 800 944 8639 Website

Dates: 29 Oct 09 - 20 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 550 West 21st Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 242 3611 Website

Dates: 5 Nov 09 - 23 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present)
Address: 524 West 19th Street New York 10011
Tel: +1 212 517 8677 Website

Dates: 1 Nov 09 - 22 Nov 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present) Video & New Media
Address: Various venues NewYork
Tel: Website

P erforma 09 is the third biennial of new visual art performance, held in collaboration with 80 institutions, and featuring more than 150 international artists in about 110 events organised by 40 international curators—all in just three weeks. That dizzying set of statistics is being overseen by director RoseLee Goldberg, who set up the non-profit arts organisation Performa in 2004 and has done much to bring performance art and its history to the fore, as much through her writings as through her teaching and curatorial work, turning the public eye on to such performance artists as Marina Abramovic and Laurie Anderson. “The major difference for Performa 09 compared with previous biennials is that we’re commissioning from all disciplines, encompassing art, music, dance, poetry, fashion, architecture, film, television, design, food—it’s crossing all disciplines, and that is the big leap forward this year,” said Goldberg. Her major contribution this year is the “Performa Commissions” series, which forms the nerve centre of the biennial, alongside, for the first time, a “Performa Premieres” programme featuring six pieces never before seen in New York. The 11 new commissions are by Guy Ben-Ner, Candice Breitz, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Omer Fast, Yeondoo Jung, Mike Kelley, Arto Lindsay, Wangechi Mutu, Christian Tomaszewski, Futurist Life Redux and Music for 16 Futurist Noise Intoners (a group of experimental musicians and composers). South African video and installation artist Candice Breitz is presenting New York New York, 2009, her first live performance work. The piece features two casts, made up of identical twins performing on identical sets, spontaneously responding to scripts given to them on the spot. Unlike the performers, viewers will be able to take in both performances in real time. Other highlights in this programme include Yeondoo Jung’s Cinemagician, 2009, at the Asia Society—a theatre piece, commissioned with the Yokohama Festival for Video and Social Technology, that looks at the relationship between magic and cinema—and Omer Fast’s first live performance piece, commissioned with the Artis Contemporary Israeli Art Fund, which looks at history and memory through the re-enaction of a childhood storytelling game. The six artists chosen for the “Performa Premieres” programme are Keren Cytter, Tacita Dean, Alicia Framis, Loris Gréaud, William Kentridge and Joan Jonas. British artist Tacita Dean is presenting Craneway Event, 2009, at Danspace Project in the Bowery. This feature-length work shows the choreographer Merce Cunningham and his company in rehearsal in a deserted Ford motor factory in California, marking Cunningham’s last appearance on film before his death in July. South African artist William Kentridge is showing I Am Not Me, the Horse is Not Mine, 2009, a work related to his current opera-in-progress inspired by Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1928 satirical opera “The Nose”, and French artist Loris Gréaud is showing a video of a fireworks display in Abu Dhabi that he co-designed with Groupe F. There are related events across the city involving architecture, design, dance, film, music and food. Berlin-based architecture collective An Architektur is creating a “living think-tank” about the future of architecture in New York, Spanish designer Marti Guixé is staging Mealing, a three-hour performance involving 200 people and “edible microsnacks”, and Jennifer Rubell stages Creation on the opening night of the biennial, with a series of food installations at X Initiative. Rosie Spencer

A performance still from the Korean artist Yeondoo Jung’s theatrical work Cinemagician, showing at the Asia Society, New York, as part of Performa 09

Dates: 21 Oct 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Modern (1900-1945)
Address: 26th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway Philadelphia 19130
Tel: +1 215 763 8100 Website

The Philadelphia Museum of Art launches a major show of abstract expressionist Arshile Gorky, which tours to Tate London and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles next year. The show examines Gorky’s entire career from the early 1920s until his suicide in 1948, and includes 180 works of art. It includes work in so-called “creation chambers”, based on descriptions of the artist’s studio in Union Square, New York, where some of his best-known paintings are shown alongside preparatory drawings.

Dates: 6 Nov 09 - 31 Jan 10
Categories: Design Medieval
Address: 2 Stratou Avenue Thessaloniki GR-546 46
Tel: +30 231 0868571-4 Website

Many exhibitions have been dedicated to Byzantine art and culture, but this is the first to focus on the architecture of the empire and how it was reflected in the visual arts. While few buildings remain from the early centuries of the empire, the forms and ideals of Byzantine architecture can still be seen in icons, stone carvings, mosaics and other works of art. Co-organised by the European Center for Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Monuments in Thessaloniki and the Princeton University Art Museum (where it goes on display next year), this show brings together about 80 objects from international collections, including the Benaki Museum, Athens, and the Metropolitan Art Museum, New York. The icons, manuscripts, ivories, carved stone and metal objects on view describe a highly spiritual society with a clearly defined religious hierarchy, reflected in the design and use of space in church and secular buildings. Princeton curator Slobodan Curcic says the show is unique in that “the subject of representation of architecture in Byzantine art has never been articulated as such in scholarship. While it will include some well-known works of Byzantine art, it will also put on display many objects never previously seen in an international context.”

Dates: 15 Sep 09 - 10 Jan 10
Categories: Old Master
Address: Maria Theresien-Platz Vienna A-1010
Tel: +43 (0)1 525 240 Website

The favourite impresa or heraldic emblem of Charles the Bold was a device showing the flint, steel and flames. With hindsight, this piece of armorial self-promotion ironically summarises the duke’s essential weakness, rather than the power and energy he intended it to project. The English and German translations of his posthumous epithet “le Téméraire”—“the Bold”, “der Kühne”—fail to convey the harmonics of the French: foolhardy, rash or overreaching, as well as brave and daring. Sparks flying from steel and stone can set fires that run out of control as well as provide heat and light. Charles’s reign brought the Duchy of Burgundy to its white-heat culmination as one of the most brilliant, aesthetically refined European courts of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, and finally to cinders and dust with his ignominious death on the battlefield of Nancy. The four Valois Dukes of Burgundy, a branch of the French royal house, built up their territories from the accession of Philip the Bold (“le Hardi”) in 1363 by inheritance, marriage, conquest and purchase. Over four generations, their territories expanded from an area of about a 100-mile radius around Dijon and Besançon to a state that also included all of present-day Alsace-Lorraine, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and most of north-eastern France. Until Charles the Bold, the dukes had—not without dollops of good luck—advantageously manipulated their geographical position between France, the Holy Roman Empire and England (for example, Charles married Mary of York, the sister of Edward IV, to whom Charles had made massive loans, thus binding England to Burgundy with ties of marriage and money). The dukes were also lavish patrons of the arts, none more so than Charles’s father, Philip the Good (1396-1464) as well as Charles himself. This exhibition, having been seen in Bern and Bruges, places intimately connected with Charles’s death and life, now comes to its final stage in the city most closely associated with the heirs to the bulk of the Burgundian wealth and power, the Habsburgs. On show are some of the most magnificent works created for the court of Charles the Bold (1433-77), who reigned from his father’s death in 1467. It features paintings by artists patronised by the Burgundian dukes, most notably Roger van der Weyden, Hans Memling, Hugo van der Goes and Jan van Eyck, textiles including Arras and Tournai tapestries, embroideries, vestments, court costumes and other luxury fabrics, and arms and armour (some tailor-made for Charles). Also included is metalwork and jewellery by Parisian, Bruges and Augsburg goldsmiths, among which are several precious gold chains with jewelled and enamelled pendants of the Order of the Golden Fleece, founded by Charles’s father in 1430. A highlight is the reliquary of St Lambert’s finger presented by the figure of Charles the Bold in his Milanese parade armour, supported by his patron, St George (Charles belonged to the Order of the Garter)—modelled on the figure of the same from Van Eyck’s Van der Paele altarpiece. The reliquary had been commissioned by Charles in 1467 and presented by him to the cathedral in Liège in 1471. Illuminated manuscripts (including Charles’s Book of Hours from the Getty) and other documents, medals and medallions, tableware, plate and ceramics round out the display. The show is divided into six sections covering: Burgundian court culture; political administration and trade in the mid-15th century; objects directly related to Charles the Bold and Margaret of York; materials relating to the ceremonies of the meeting of the Emperor Frederick III and Charles in Trier in 1473; Charles’s ill-judged gamble on a war with the Swiss Confederation, 1474-77, which brought the break-up of the Valois hegemony with Charles’s death on the battlefield where, plundered, his naked corpse, ravaged by wolves, was later found (one of his favourite jewels, “The Three Brothers”, a setting of three rubies and three diamonds that was looted, eventually found its way into the hands of Elizabeth I, who prized it highly and is shown wearing it in Nicholas Hilliard’s The Ermine Portrait, 1585); and, finally, the Habsburg heritage (Charles’s daughter, Mary, married Maximilian I, bringing the Low Countries into the Habsburg sway). The exhibition’s extremely well and intelligently designed catalogue has an English edition published by Mercatorfonds (£45, $80 hb ISBN 9789 061538592). Donald Lee

Reliquary of St Lambert’s finger

Dates: 3 Oct 09 - 27 Dec 09
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present) Post-War (1945-70) Modern (1900-1945)
Address: 1451 South Olive Avenue West Palm Beach 33401
Tel: +1 561 832 5196 Website

Dates: 10 Oct 09 - 3 Jan 10
Categories: Decorative Far East
Address: Exhibition Square York YO1 7EW
Tel: +44 (0)1904 687 687 Website