You’d expect that the suit used to protect Neil Armstrong from the harsh atmosphere of the moon would endure a little wear and tear. But it may surprise you that nearly 30 years in a display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (NASM) has also taken its toll on this iconic piece of American history.
Art Galleries & Museums
A pair of exhibitions–Art after Stonewall at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery and Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art and Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall at the Brooklyn Museum–mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Separately they manage just that balancing act. Together, they connect the past and present in striking ways, while pointing to a future in which the spirit established that night on Christopher Street will continue to move with the times.
In this summer’s sweeping fashion exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, a notoriously difficult to pin-down concept is on display. Camp: Notes on Fashion, on view through September 8, is an exuberant, colorful exhibition that simultaneously addresses and artfully dodges the question, “What is ‘Camp’?”
Ursula von Rydingsvard is a master of translating the complex emotional world of the human condition into physical, sculptural form. Her most ambitious solo exhibition to date, The Contour of Feeling, now at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), showcases this talent.
500 years after his death on May 2, 1519, the accomplishments of Leonardo da Vinci, the quintessential Renaissance man, are still astounding. In a year marked by exhibitions and celebrations around the world, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science is commemorating the 500th anniversary of da Vinci’s death with the most comprehensive exhibition ever presented on his life's work.
It’s an enormous monochromatic oil on linen composition featuring a jumble of figures, some consuming media, newspapers, TV screens, all crushed to near abstraction, suggesting a cacophony of sound. Painted by George Condo in 2018, its title, What’s the Point?, also happens to be the title of his new show at Sprüth Magers in Los Angeles through June 1.
The rising curves of the Adirondack Mountains become a repeated motif in the early 20th century landscape paintings of Harold Weston (1894-1974), now featured in a career spanning solo exhibition at Vermont’s Shelburne Museum.
Such transformative moments, big and small, make up the core of the new show, Black Is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite, at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles through Sept. 1, curated by his son, Kwame Jr. On display are over 40 black-and-white images of everyday people as well as jazz legends like Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln, Dizzy Gillespie or Art Blakey taking five with a smoke and a drink.
Since March 2, the Driehaus Museum has been imbued with new, electric energy courtesy of British Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare CBE, whose ongoing solo show marks the first time contemporary art has filled its spaces. It’s also the first in a new series of exhibitions at the Driehaus collectively titled A Tale of Today, a name that nods to Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s eponymous novel that critiques the corrupted politics of the Gilded Age.
This week, the Met debuts a large new exhibition sure to please the summer the crowds. Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll is the first exhibition at a major museum to tell the history of rock and roll through its instruments.
