In 1912, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its first gallery dedicated to the work of a living artist: the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. The museum is celebrating its collection of the artist’s work and the centenary of his death (in 2017) with the show Rodin at the Met, partly closing this weekend (until 4 February). One gallery display of around 50 sculptures from the museum’s collection in marble, bronze, plaster and terracotta—including well known crowd-pleasers like The Thinker as well as works that have not been shown for decades—will remain on view long term. The gallery also shows paintings by the Rodin’s contemporaries (most of which will remain on view after the show), such as Claude Monet, a friend. And a concurrent display in an nearby gallery looks at the artist’s career through drawings, prints, letters, photographs and other archival materials.
See LaToya Ruby Frazier's photographs at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in Harlem in her solo show (until 25 February) and you will understand why she was named a MacArthur “genius” in 2015. Frazier’s works keenly capture place and social conditions in beautiful black and white compositions. The show, the artist's largest in New York to date, presents three recent series, including Flint Is Family (2016-17). The artist spent five months in the rustbelt Michigan city—where the contaminated water crisis continues—shooting captivating images of everyday life, such as a mother pouring bottled water into her daughter’s mouth so that she can brush her teeth. This Saturday (3 February), the gallery will host a conversation between Frazier, the curator and critic Yael Lipschutz and the artist Abigail DeVille, who took a trip to Joshua Tree with Frazier that led to another series in the show, A Pilgrimage To Noah Purifoy’s Desert Art Museum (2016-17).
The Second Buddha: Master of Time at the Rubin Museum (until 7 January 2019) explores the life of the Indian Buddhist guru Padmasambhava, who according to tradition taught the Bardo Thodol (the Tibetan Book of the Dead) and introduced tantric Buddhism to Tibet in the eighth century. The show features more than 40 works of art, including one important 18th-century painting on cloth showings scenes from Padmasambhava’s life, which is on loan from the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich and is being displayed for only the second time since the Swiss museum acquired it in the 1960s. Some works can be activated with augmented reality technology and are flanked with an iPad that visitors can aim at specific points to reveal kaleidoscopic spheres of light as well as the option to see the hidden verso of the work.
