Self-taught photographer Lucien Hervé began working with the maverick architect Le Corbusier in 1949. As the "official" Le Corbusier photographer, Hervé documented the architect's work and projects until Le Corbusier's death in 1965. Le Corbusier once said, "Not only your remarkable vision of my work makes it more complete, but you have the soul of an architect and know how to look at architecture."

During the 16 years they worked together, Hervé took thousands of photographs of Le Corbusier's projects. All of the photographs in this exhibition were taken during two trips to India, one in 1955 and one in 1961. During this time he photographed the Ahmedabad Mill Owner's Association Building (1951) and the Villa Shodhan (1951). In Chandigarh, he photographed the High Court of Justice (1952), the Secretariat Building (1952) and the Palace of the Assembly (1955), which Le Corbusier considered his greatest work.

The exhibition Lucien Hervé: Le Corbusier in India explores two aspects: the humanistic vision, as well as the architectural dimension. Favoring high and side-angle views, a deliberate affinity for abstraction and the use of stark blacks and whites are characteristics of Lucien Hervé's very personal style. Noted for his sharp sense of framing and formal elegance, Hervé patiently built one of the major photographic œuvres of the 20th century.

Born on August 7, 1910 in Hungary, László Elkán moved to Paris in 1929. First attracted to painting, music and fashion, he started to work as a photographer for Marianne Magazine. Politically active in France, he joined the Conféderation Générale du Travail (CGT) union and the French Communist Party, from which he would be excluded twice, in 1938 and in 1947. Adhering to strong personal convictions, and following his escape from the Hohenstein war prisoners' camp, he joined the anti-Nazi French Resistance movement in 1941 under the pseudonym Lucien Hervé. He resumed his photography work after the war. Close to the postwar French humanistic movement, his career took a decisive turn when he met Le Corbusier in 1949, remaining his "official" photographer until Le Corbusier died in 1965.

Lucien Hervé died in Paris on June 26, 2007, at the age of 97.

Beauford Delaney's (born Knoxville 1901-died Paris 1979) depictions of the streets, parks, and jazz clubs of Harlem and Greenwich Village, dating from 1929 to 1953, convey the energy of the city, while his layered, captivating abstract compositions from his Paris years (1953-1979) demonstrate his sustained exploration of colour.

It is broadly recognized, however, that Delaney’s Paris works are among the most significant to his body of work. A number of this Paris-period works to be shown were rescued from Delaney’s apartment shortly before his death. About to be seized by the French Government and auctioned to satisfy delinquent accounts, the paintings were shipped to New York through the efforts of a coterie of the artist’s devoted friends including James Baldwin, Henry Miller, Richard Powell and Richard Long. These paintings would form the core of the 1978 retrospective.

After thirty-five years of uncertain fate, and the enormous efforts over the past seven years by the estate’s court-appointed Administrator, Derek Spratley, many of these estate paintings have been recovered and are being presented for the first time. A fully illustrated color catalog with an essay by New York-based independent curator and art critic, Lily Wei is available from Levis Fine Art. 

This exhibition highlights the nearly fifty-year career of ceramicist Edward Lycett (American, 1833–1910), creative director of the Faience Manufacturing Company from 1884 to 1890. The range of works illustrates Lycett’s talent and adaptability to stylistic changes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as his vision for Faience, a company based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, that earned acclaim for producing ornamental wares that introduced a new standard of excellence in American ceramics. These bold and eclectic pieces synthesized Japanese, Chinese, and Islamic influences characteristic of the Aesthetic movement and were sold in the United States’ foremost art ware emporiums, including Tiffany & Company.

Among the ceramics on view are 39 Faience pieces, including a number of large-scale vases. Also on view are Lycett’s formula books, family photographs, and other ephemera; rare examples of ceramic works by his three sons; and other Brooklyn-made ceramics from the Museum’s collection.

Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929, Stockholm, Sweden) has not only been a major artist in Pop Art, Performance Art and Installation Art but, in partnership with Coosje van Bruggen, also a strong influence on art in public spaces with his monumental Large Scale Projects in numerous major cities worldwide. With his humorous and profound depictions of everyday objects he is one of the most important and admired artists since the late 1950s. One central point of reference in Oldenburg’s oeuvre is the industrially produced object—the object as a commodity which, in ever-new metamorphoses of media and form, becomes a conveyor of culture and a symbol of the imagination, desires, and obsessions of the modern world.

Organized by the mumok, this is the largest show ever of Oldenburg’s ground-breaking and emblematic early work of the 1960s. Numerous icons of Pop art are on view in the exhibition, beginning with the installation The Street and its graffiti-inspired depictions of modern life in the big city and continuing to the famous consumer articles of The Store to the spectacular everyday objects of the modern Home: telephone, toilet bowl, bathtub, fan, saw, and light switch. Another chapter is dedicated to Oldenburg’s first designs for the colossal monuments of his consumer objects for public spaces. The exhibition concludes with mumok’s Mouse Museum a walk-in miniature museum in the form of a Geometric Mouse, for which Oldenburg collected 385 objects. With its souvenirs, kitsch objects, and studio models, the Mouse Museum demonstrates the incredible cultural variety—and mysteriousness—of capitalist society. With its reduction to abstract basic figures of formal invention, the Geometric Mouse, a central motif within the artist’s oeuvre, represents a dovetailing of high art and popular culture. It also functions as Oldenburg’s alter ego.

Curator
Achim Hochdörfer

After New York, this exhibition, organized by mumok, will travel to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (September 13, 2013–January 12, 2014).

Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity presents a revealing look at the role of fashion in the works of the Impressionists and their contemporaries. Some eighty major figure paintings, seen in concert with period costumes, accessories, fashion plates, photographs, and popular prints, highlight the vital relationship between fashion and art during the pivotal years, from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s, when Paris emerged as the style capital of the world. With the rise of the department store, the advent of ready-made wear, and the proliferation of fashion magazines, those at the forefront of the avant-garde—from Manet, Monet, and Renoir to Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Zola—turned a fresh eye to contemporary dress, embracing la mode as the harbinger of la modernité.

First on view at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, this show is quite popular with New Yorkers. Expect crowds. 

A catalogue accompanies this exhibition.

The artists in the exhibition are:
• Amar Kanwar (b. 1964, New Delhi, India)
• Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook (b. 1957, Trad, Thailand)
• Arin Dwihartanto Sunaryo (b. 1978, Bandung, Indonesia)
• Aung Myint (b. 1946, Yangon, Myanmar)
• Bani Abidi (b. 1971, Karachi, Pakistan)
• Ho Tzu Nyen (b. 1976, Singapore)
• Khadim Ali (b. 1978, Quetta, Pakistan)
• Navin Rawanchaikul (b. 1971, Chiang Mai, Thailand)
• Norberto Roldan (b. 1953, Roxas City, Philippines)
• Poklong Anading (b. 1975, Manila, Philippines)
• Reza Afisina (b. 1977, Bandung, Indonesia)
• Shilpa Gupta (b. 1976, Mumbai, India)
• Tang Da Wu (b. 1943, Singapore)
• Tayeba Begum Lipi (b. 1969, Gaibandha, Bangladesh)
• The Otolith Group (est. 2002, London)
• The Propeller Group (est. 2006, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and Los Angeles, California)
• Tran Luong (b. 1960, Hanoi, Vietnam)
• Truong Tan (b. 1963, Hanoi, Vietnam)
• Tuan Andrew Nguyen (b. 1976, Saigon, Vietnam)
• Vincent Leong (b. 1979, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
• Wah Nu (b. 1977, Yangon, Myanmar) and Tun Win Aung (b. 1975, Yalutt, Myanmar)
• Wong Hoy Cheong (b. 1960, George Town, Malaysia)

Centering on the year 1993, the exhibition NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star is conceived as a time capsule, an experiment in collective memory that attempts to capture a specific moment at the intersection of art, pop culture, and politics.

Conflict in Europe, attempts at peace in the Middle East, the AIDS crisis, national debates on health care, gun control, and gay rights, and caustic partisan politics served as both the background and source material for a number of younger artists who first came to prominence in 1993. At the same time, an increasingly active international network of artists, curators, and dealers contributed to a burgeoning global art world, amplified by the nascent tools of digital information.

NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star draws its subtitle from the eponymous album that the New York rock band Sonic Youth recorded in 1993 and captures the complex exchange between mainstream and underground culture across disciplines, which came to define the art of the era. The New Museum’s exhibition includes a number of historical reconstructions of important installations and exhibitions from 1993, while other works are revisited and reinterpreted from the vantage point of today.

The exhibition features over seventy-five artists including: Janine Antoni, Ida Applebroog, Art Club 2000, Lutz Bacher, Alex Bag, Matthew Barney, Sadie Benning, Lina Bertucci, Nayland Blake, Gregg Bordowitz, Kathe Burkhart, Peter Cain, Larry Clark with Lisa Bowman, Martin Kippenberger, and Sally Webster, Patricia Cronin, John Currin, Jessica Diamond, Devon Dikeou, Cheryl Donegan, Mary Beth Edelson, Nicole Eisenman, Andrea Fraser, Coco Fusco, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Renée Green, Michael Joaquin Grey with Randolph Huff, Peter Halley, Ann Hamilton, David Hammons, Rachel Harrison, Todd Haynes, Derek Jarman, Mike Kelley, Karen Kilimnik, Byron Kim, Jutta Koether, Alix Lambert, Sean Landers, Annie Leibovitz, Zoe Leonard, Glenn Ligon, Sarah Lucas, Kerry James Marshall, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Paul McCarthy, Marlene McCarty and Donald Moffett for Bureau, NY, Suzanne McClelland, John Miller, Frank Moore, Christian Philipp Müller, Cady Noland, Kristin Oppenheim, Gabriel Orozco, Pepón Osorio, Elizabeth Peyton, Jack Pierson, Steven Pippin, Charles Ray, Jason Rhoades, Julia Scher, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman, Gary Simmons, Lorna Simpson, Kiki Smith, Rudolf Stingel, Lily van der Stokker, The Thing, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Nari Ward, Gillian Wearing, Jack Whitten, Hannah Wilke, Sue Williams, and Andrea Zittel.

The show is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with key historical texts from 1993 by Francesco Bonami, Nicolas Bourriaud, Judith Butler, Laura Cottingham, Thelma Golden, and J. Hoberman. The catalogue also includes reflections by Massimiliano Gioni, Megan Heuer, Jenny Moore, Margot Norton, and Ethan Swan and Claire Lehmann.

In the 1970s, Anatsui began to manipulate broken ceramic fragments. With their allusions to ancient Nok terracotta sculptures, West African myths about the earth and cultural references to the use of clay, the ceramic works piece together shattered ideas and histories to form a new whole. In the same decade, he also made sculptures that brought together signs and symbols from various cultures and languages, created by chopping, carving, burning and etching wood.

In the 1990s, Anatsui made a crucial shift from working with hand tools to carving with a power saw, which enabled him to cut through blocks of wood, leaving a jagged surface that he likened to the scars left by European colonial encounters with Africa.

In his most recent metal wall sculptures, Anatsui assembles thousands of West African liquor-bottle tops into moving patterns of stunning visual impact, transforming this simple material into large shimmering forms. When I Last Wrote to You about Africa includes the largest compilation of Anatsui’s works ever assembled, including massive wall pieces and large-scale floor installations. "I think of myself as an artist," Anatsui said in an interview with Agence-France-Presse. "And I'm an African." 

The experimental music ensemble Either/Or presents its 8th annual Spring Festival of contemporary chamber music at The Kitchen. Ranging from 'post-rock reverie' to Western swing and drawing on E/O's unique instrumentation including cimbalom, komungo, and cracked analog organs, the 2013 Festival maps a broad cross-section of the ensemble's aesthetic interests - exploring the intersection of American experimentalism and the European avant-garde.

In its 2013 Festival, E/O brings its unique focus to world premiere works from New York composers Anthony Coleman, Jin Hi Kim, Miya Masaoka, and John Zorn. Also represented are recent projects from Richard Carrick, Erik Griswold, Thomas Meadowcroft, Ian Power, François Rose, and Anna Thorvaldsdottir.

Yarn/Wire performs new pieces for percussion and piano quartet by two New York musicians, composer/multi-instrumentalist Tyondai Braxton and trumpeter/composer Peter Evans. The evening features two world premieres for the quartet, a solo performance of Peter Evan's signature trumpet improvisations, and a duo set from Tyondai Braxton + LAAND, a visual & sound manipulation project by Grace Villamil.

For three decades BAM’s DanceAfrica festival has been a Memorial Day Weekend tradition in Brooklyn. A lively and diverse blend of African and African-American dance, music, film, and art devoted to preserving traditions and educating new generations, DanceAfrica’s spirit is personified by Founding Elder and Artistic Director Baba Chuck Davis.

For the Memorial Day weekend performance, DanceAfrica 2013 welcomes Umkhathi Theatre Works from Zimbabwe, Giwayen Mata from Atlanta, and Harambee Dance Company from New York, plus Brooklyn’s own BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble.

Rhythms of Africa / Giya Africa / Mandingindira e Africa
Artistic Director Chuck Davis

Umkhathi Theatre Works (Zimbabwe)
Giwayen Mata (Atlanta, Georgia)
Harambee Dance Company (Bronx, New York)
BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble

Azar Lawrence Quintet

Azar Lawrence was born 1952 in Los Angeles and by the age of 21 had worked with Ike & Tina Turner, War, and Charles Wright’s Watts 103rd Street Band (“Express Yourself”). He joined drum- mer Elvin Jones for two years, and for the next eight years moved between Jones’ group and that of McCoy Tyner. Azar then briefly joined the Miles Davis band, appearing on the live album Dark Magus (recorded 3/30/1974); he also recorded with Roberta Flack and Marvin Gaye, appearing on Gaye’s Here My Dear. He released three albums as a leader, and had his songs recorded by Stanley Turrentine and Earth Wind & Fire, among others. In 2010, Azar Lawrence released Mystic Journey (Furthermore Recordings), his first album in nearly 30 years.

Azar Lawrence, tenor & soprano saxophone
Freddie Hendrix, trumpet
Benito Gonzalez, piano
Essiet Essiet,  bass
Billy Hart,  drums

Lee Ritenour with The Les Paul Trio - In celebration of Les Paul's 98th birthday

In the 90s, Ritenour was a founding member of Fourplay, the most successful band in contemporary jazz, with keyboardist Bob James, bassist Nathan East and drummer Harvey Mason. The first Fourplay album in 1991 spent an unprecedented 33 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s contemporary jazz chart. Adding to this legacy is his latest CD Smoke ‘n’ Mirrors; the recently completed Grammy nominated recording Amparo, (a followup with Dave Grusin to their highly successful 2001 Grammy Award nominated contemporary classical crossover CD) and producer of Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band’s latest CD Act Your Age (which is nominated for 3 Grammys.

Jazz Standard and Blue Note Records celebrate the May 28 release of Magnetic, the new album by Terence Blanchard and his great quintet. His first release since the critically acclaimed Choices in 2009, Magnetic contains ten new compositions written by Terence or a group member. Magnetic also showcases special guest appearances from legendary bassist Ron Carter, as well as Blanchard’s Blue Note label–mates, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane and guitarist Lionel Loueke. Leader and group take a strikingly wide array of approaches throughout the album, from the blistering bop of “Don’t Run” to the fragile ballad “Jacob’s Ladder,” from the psychedelic electronic haze of “Hallucinations” to the urgent edginess of “Another Step.” In Terence Blanchard’s words, “It’s a wide range of musical ideas that come together through the efforts of the guys in the band.”

In 2007, Terence Blanchard took a giant step on his continuing creative odyssey with his Blue Note album, A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina). This beautiful and impassioned song cycle about the physical and emotional ravages launched by Hurricane Katrina upon Blanchard’s native city of New Orleans won the Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album. Also in 2007, Terence composed and recorded his forty-first career movie score, this one for the Kasi Lemmons film Talk to Me starring Don Cheadle.

Terence Blanchard Quintet

Terence Blanchard, trumpet
Brice Winston, tenor saxophone
Fabian Almazan, piano
Derrick Hodge, bass
Kendrick Scott, drums

The Giacomo Variations is a chamber opera play written by Michael Sturminger. The music concept is by Martin Haselböck and based on opera scenes by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte. This is a story about the late Giacomo Casanova (John Malkovich), who, in the face of his approaching death, is still trying to find out, what he was living for, if not only to be coveted and desired by the woman he loves.

John Malkovich (Dangerous Liaisons, Burn After Reading, The Infernal Comedy) portrays the master scoundrel and seducer  in The Giacomo Variations, making its New York debut following the world premiere in Vienna.

Under the direction of Austrian Michael Sturminger, Malkovich and co-star Ingeborga Dapkünaité perform scenes from Casanova’s 1790 memoir, Histoire de ma vie. As Casanova reminisces about one of his close friends, Mozart’s librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, we hear excerpts from some of Mozart’s best-known operas – Cosí fan tutte, Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro – performed live by the Wiener Academy Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Martin Haselböck.

Zakk Wylde has won nearly every guitar award imaginable, and is a major influence on a new battalion of rock guitarists currently popular today.

The 2013 edition of the Governors Ball Music Festival on Randall's Island in the East River features Kanye West, Kings of Leon, Guns N' Roses, Bloc Party, Feist, Nas, Thievery Corporation, Crystal Castles among others.

Henrik Ibsen: The Master Builder
Translated by David Edgar
Directed by Andrei Belgrader
Produced by BAM

Ruthless and revered architect Halvard Solness (John Turturro) is obsessively driven—until a young woman from his past stops him in his tracks. Hilde (Wrenn Schmidt, Boardwalk Empire), a force of unbridled sexual energy coupled with childlike willfulness, enters the master builder’s home and head, trailing mysterious talk of past promises. As she urges the megalomaniacal Solness to ever greater and less sustainable heights, his tragedy-haunted wife Aline (Katherine Borowitz) watches from the sidelines, an unwilling participant in an off-kilter love triangle.


Cast:

Katherine Borowitz (Aline Solness)
Ken Cheeseman (Dr. Herdal)
Julian Gamble (Knut Brovik)
Kelly Hutchinson (Kaja Fosli)
Max Gordon Moore (Ragnar Brovik)
Wrenn Schmidt (Hilde Wangel)
John Turturro (Halvard Solness)

Costume design by Marco Piemontese
Lighting design by James F. Ingalls
Sound design by Ryan Rumery

BAM Harvey Theater
30 Lafayette Avenue
Brooklyn, NY

Another year, another scandal at the Cannes Film Festival. Contemporary filmmakers take heart—among the directors who have felt the wrath of the French festival’s fickle audiences are titans like Antonioni, Bresson, Truffaut, and Fellini. Many of their works, now heralded as masterpieces, were first met with incomprehension, disdain, and deafening jeers.

In this series, BAMcinématek gathers some of the most notorious films maudits, many of which are now revered as masterpieces. Two notable American examples are Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and David Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990).  

Horton Foote: The Trip to Bountiful

Directed by Michael Wilson

The Trip to Bountiful tells the story of Carrie Watts, an elderly woman who dreams of returning to her small hometown of Bountiful, Texas one last time, against the wishes of her overprotective son and domineering daughter-in-law.

Cast

Carrie Watts: Cicely Tyson
Ludie Watts: Cuba Gooding Jr.
Thelma: Condola Rashad
Jessie Mae Watts: Vanessa Williams
Sheriff: Tom Wopat
Written by  
Horton Foote
 
Set Designer: Jeff Cowie
Costume Designer: Vsn Broughton Ramsey
Lighting Designer: Rui Rita
Sound Designer: John Gromada

Douglas Carter Beane: The Nance
Directed by Jack O'Brien

In the 1930s, burlesque impresarios welcomed the hilarious comics and musical parodies of vaudeville to their decidedly lowbrow niche. A headliner called "the nance" was a stereotypically camp homosexual and master of comic double entendre - usually played by a straight man.

Douglas Carter Beane's The Nance recreates the naughty, raucous world of burlesque's heyday and tells the backstage story of Chauncey Miles and his fellow performers. At a time when it is easy to play gay and dangerous to be gay, Chauncey's uproarious antics on the stage stand out in marked contrast to his offstage life.

Cast

Jenni Barber , Andréa Burns , Cady Huffman , Mylinda Hull , Nathan Lane , Geoffrey Allen Murphy , Jonny Orsini , Lewis J. Stadlen

Sets: John Lee  Beatty
Costumes: Ann Roth
Lighting: Japhy Weideman
Sound: Leon Rothenberg
Original Music: Glen Kelly
Orchestrations: Larry Blank
Conductor: David Gursky
Hair/Wigs: David Brian Brown
Choreography: Joey Pizzi

Tina Packer: Women of Will, The Complete Journey

Directed by Eric Tucker
Featuring Nigel Gore and Tina Packer

A combination of riveting scenes and trenchant analysis, Women of Will, The Complete Journey explores themes of love, loss, freedom, control, violence and power through the heroines of Shakespeare’s text. Using performance and discussion, Packer traces the chronological evolution of Shakespeare’s female characters, and examines Shakespeare’s own journey and growth as a writer

Today nearly 4,000 former players are suing the National Football League (NFL) over the link between American football and long-term brain damage. A joint investigation between ESPN's Outside the Lines and PBS FRONTLINE reveals that years before the NFL publicly acknowledged a connection between football and long-term mental disease, the NFL’s disability board was quietly paying more than a million dollars in benefits to several players with brain-related illnesses.

Based on reporting by ESPN reporters Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada, the year-long effort will examine the latest research on brain injuries and football, the impact on players, and the NFL’s effort to deal with a crisis that threatens the long-term health and popularity of the sport.

The collaboration kicks off Friday, 16 November 2012 with a segment on ESPN’s Outside the Lines (3 p.m. ET, check local listings) focusing on late Hall of Famer, Mike Webster. The former Pittsburgh Steelers center was the first NFL player officially diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy – or “football brain disease.”

The collaboration includes online companion stories published on November 16 at 9 a.m. ET on ESPN.com and PBS.org/FRONTLINE. A podcast with the brother reporting team can be found at http://www.espnfrontrow.com.

Concussion Watch, an extensive website tracking each concussion officially identified by the NFL this season will launch later this month on PBS.org/FRONTLINE. ESPN and FRONTLINE will also invite fans online to help report questionable hits and possible concussions.