9 Art Events to Attend in New York City This Week

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 30

Activation: Alexander Calder’s Cône d’ébène at Whitney Museum
As part of a series of Alexander Calder mobile activations related to the Whitney Museum’s current “Calder: Hypermobility” exhibition, the Calder Foundation’s president, Alexander S. C. Rower, will spring his grandfather’s 1933 sculpture Cône d’ébène into action this week. The kinetic work, a standing mobile made with wood, rod, wire, and paint, will be viewed the way Calder had intended it to be—in motion.
Whitney Museum, 99 Gansevoort Street, 1 p.m.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 31

Talk: Kaari Upson at New Museum
Tied to its show “Kaari Upson: Good Thing You Are Not Alone,” which is the artist’s first New York museum exhibition, the New Museum presents a conversation between Upson and Leslie Dick, who are both based in Los Angeles. Expect talk of the New Museum exhibition, which includes a new body of work loosely themed around the idea of the American Dream gone wrong.
New Museum, 235 Bowery, 7 p.m. Tickets $10/15

Talk: Duane Linklater at Art in General
As part of a lecture series that considers “the politics of land,” according to a release, Duane Linklater will present a talk in the form of an open letter to the Metropolitan Museum of Art regarding its display of a 19th-century Cree beaded hood. Linklater, who is a member of the Moose Cree First Nation, will use the address to question the origins of the hood and other concerns related to how it eventually ended up in the museum’s permanent collection. Following his lecture, Linklater will talk about the tangled relationship among geography, history, and ethics with artists Malik Gaines, Alan Michelson, Nicholas Mirzeoff, Jackson Polys, and Maya Valladares.
Art in General, 145 Plymouth Street, Brooklyn, 7–9 p.m.

Screening: Stalker at Metrograph
This week, Metrograph kicks off “Gotta Light?,” a series of films that inspired the eighth episode of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: The Return, with Andrei Tarkovsky’s sepia-toned Stalker (1979), a science-fictional allegory that reimagines the Soviet Union as a totalitarian dystopia. The film stars Aleksandr Kaidanovsky as the Stalker, a guide who takes a writer and a scientist through a wasteland known as the Zone. Episodes of Twin Peaks have also name-checked a place known only as “the Zone,” making Tarkovsky’s slow, meditative film a definite influence on the Showtime series.
Metrograph, 13 Ludlow Street, 7 p.m. Tickets $15

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1

Opening: Eva O’Leary “Happy Valley” at Meyohas
This exhibition features new photographs from Eva O’Leary, a young artist who uses the tricks and tactics of high-end commercial photography to explore a range of subjects and narratives. Their look is glossy and seemingly sunny, but their dark subject matter—a child covered with sheets of paper and cradling a blue balloon, for example—often hints at something much more sinister below their surface. The end result is a complex and at times eerie version of contemporary life.
Meyohas, 43-01 21st Street, 223B, Queens, 6–8 p.m.

Screening: Cinema Novo at Anthology Film Archives
In recognition of the Cinema Novo movement’s legacy, Eryk Rocha, the son of the director Glauber Rocha, has compiled recorded testimony and snippets of scenes from films of that time to craft an eponymous tribute. During the 1960s and 1970s, Cinema Novo put Brazilian cinema on the map, propelling filmmakers such as Rocha, Paulo Cesar Saraceni, and Joaquim Pedro de Andrade to international fame. Eryk Rocha’s ode to the movement screens here as part of a series about de Andrade.
Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue, 7:30 p.m. Tickets $7/$9/$11

Screening: Black Meteoric Star — No More White Presidents at Knockdown Center
Drawing on her practices as both an artist and a musician, Gavin Russom, who often works under the moniker Black Meteoric Star, will screen her film Black Meteoric Star — No More White Presidents this week at Knockdown Center. Russom describes the work, a long-form music video of sorts, as “a complex of evocative and energetic themes gathered around the necessity for abolition and reparations.” This event will be the first-ever screening of the film and will be followed by a panel discussion about Russom’s work.
Knockdown Center, 52-19 Flushing Ave, Queens, 8 p.m. Tickets $10

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2

Event: Warm Up at MoMA PS1
For the final Warm Up concert of the year, MoMA PS1 presents an inspired paring of the Southern African musician and producer DJ Lag with Odwalla1221, the Los Angeles–via–Baltimore art punk duo who, since 2013, have cut a singular path within the American underground music community. Among those rounding out the bill is the New York–based GHE20GOTH1K affiliate LSDXOXO and the Swedish band Little Dragon.
MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Queens, 12–9 p.m. Tickets $18/22

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 3

Screening: Raiders of the Lost Ark at Museum of the Moving Image
Harrison Ford stars in this Steven Spielberg–directed classic as Indiana Jones, a swashbuckling action hero who is tasked with getting his hands on the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis do. The film is famous for, among other things, its special effects, in particular a much-memed sequence where a Nazi’s face melts. For obvious reasons, this Steven Spielberg classic seems especially timely in our twisted current reality, so why not see it on the big screen? It is, after all, part of the “See It Big! Spielberg Summer” program, the Museum of the Moving Image’s celebration of all things Spielberg, which wraps up next week.
Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35th Avenue, Queens, 7 p.m. Tickets $15