An exhibition of three early sculptures by Charles Ray are on view here for the first time in over twenty years.

Ink Line, 1987, is a continuous stream of black ink traveling from a dime-size opening in the ceiling into a similar hole in the floor. At first glance, the narrow stream appears static, but when carefully observed, the viewer is able to detect subtle fluctuations in the ink’s flow. Ink Line relates to the artist’s iconic Ink Box from the previous year, in which a steel cube is precipitously filled to the brim with black ink. Although Ink Line has been widely reproduced, this is the first time it has been exhibited publicly.

Spinning Spot was made in 1987. In this work, a section of the floor measuring 24 inches in diameter is set spinning at 33 RPM. The third work in the exhibition is Moving Wire, from 1988, consisting of a single 8.5 foot length of wire. Both ends of the wire protrude from the wall and are set 14 inches apart. As one end of the wire extends out from the wall at random intervals, the other retracts.

Charles Ray is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of his generation. Ray has been included in two Venice Biennale (1993, 2003), Documenta IX (1992), and four Whitney Biennials. His monumental sculpture, Hinoki, 2007, will be exhibited in the new wing of the Art Institute of Chicago this May. In June, Ray’s first commissioned outdoor work will be permanently installed at the edge of the Grand Canal at the Punta della Dogana in Venice. The artist currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Fifty years after the realization of Frank Lloyd Wright’s renowned design, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum celebrates the golden anniversary of its landmark building with the exhibition Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward, co-organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

The 50th anniversary exhibition brings together 64 projects designed by one of the most influential architects of the 20th century, including privately commissioned residences, civic and government buildings, religious and performance spaces, as well as unrealized urban mega-structures. Presented on the spiral ramps of Wright’s museum through a range of media—including more than 200 original Frank Lloyd Wright drawings, many of which are on view to the public for the first time, as well as newly commissioned models and digital animations—Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward illuminates Wright’s pioneering concepts of space and reveals the architect’s continuing relevance to contemporary design.

During his 72-year career, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959), who died just six months before the opening of the Guggenheim, worked independently from any single style and developed a new sense of architecture in which form and function are inseparable. Known for his inventiveness and the diversity of his work, Wright is celebrated for the awe-inspiring beauty and tranquility of his designs. Whether creating a private home, workplace, religious edifice, or cultural attraction, Wright sought to unite people, buildings, and nature in physical and spiritual harmony. To realize such a union in material form, Wright created environments of simplicity and repose through carefully composed plans and elevations based on consistent, geometric grammars.

Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward is organized in a loosely chronological order and is installed to be viewed from the rotunda floor upwards. Off the first ramp in the High Gallery is an original curtain depicting Wright’s native Wisconsin landscape from the 1952 Hillside Theater at Taliesin, Wright’s home and studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin (1911–59). On loan from Taliesin, this curtain creates the backdrop for a sound installation of recorded oral histories from the collection of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, which feature the voices of clients, friends, apprentices, and architects reflecting on the revelatory experience of living and working in Wright-designed spaces.

Highlights of Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward include newly created three-dimensional scale models that examine the internal mechanics of functional space in relation to exterior form in a variety of Wright’s projects. Among these are an exploded version of the Herbert Jacobs House (Madison, Wisconsin, 1937); a mirrored model for Unity Temple; and a sectional model of Beth Sholom Synagogue (Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, 1953). Large-scale models of unrealized urban schemes for projects, including his Plan for Greater Baghdad (1957), the Crystal City for Washington, D.C. (1940), and the Pittsburgh Point Civic Center (1947), provide insight into Wright’s visions for the landscapes of the city. The models were developed by Michael Kennedy of New York–based Kennedy Fabrications Inc., which specializes in architectural models and prototyping, and Situ Studio, a Brooklyn-based firm focused on research, design, and fabrication.

Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward is accompanied by a fully illustrated exhibition catalogue published by Skira/Rizzoli.

National Museum of African Art
950 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, D.C. 20560

Négritude, an experimental multi-disciplinary exhibition at Exit Art, explores the visionary 20th century political and artistic movement of the same name — coined by the Martinican poet, playwright, and politician Aimé Césaire in the 1930s — which flourished among Black intellectuals in post-World War I Paris and later spread to Africa, the United States and the Caribbean.

Négritude was a celebration of shared black heritage and an affirmation and valorization of pan-African identity and was a direct response to the effects of the African slave trade, French colonization of West Africa, and the New World plantation system. The beginnings of the Afro-Caribbean movement can be traced to literary movements in Puerto Rico and Cuba through the writing of Puerto Rican poet Luis Pales Matos, whose poem Black Town was published in 1927, and the Cuban Nicolas Guillen, although Cesaire's version of Négritude would eventually eclipse them. Under the influence of Césaire, the Guianan Léon Damas, and Léopold Sédar Senghor, the future president of Senegal, Négritude became a global movement, ultimately becoming radicalized and re-envisioned as a strict rejection of the domination of “the West”.

Showcasing several generations of African-American, Caribbean, South American and African artists, performers and writers, Négritude features work that examines the history, impact, and transmutations of this cultural movement. It looks beyond the historical Négritude movement to investigate also the emergence of the Harlem Renaissance and Modernism in the 1920s and 30s and contemporary responses to the concept of “blackness, highlighting the post-Civil Rights generation of black artists who have new perspectives on racial identity and politics.

Through a series of mini-exhibitions, film screenings, performances, readings, stories and discussions, Exit Art will examine the historical effects and contemporary impact of Négritude by exploring its archipelago, island by island.

Conceived by Papo Colo. Produced by Papo Colo, Tânia Cypriano, Rose Réjouis, Franklin Sirmans, and Greg Tate.  

Participating Artists
Papo Colo, Thornton Dial, Jr., Thornton Dial, Sr., Bessie Harvey, Lonnie Holley, Arthur Jafa, Andre Justé, Vladimir Cybil Charlier Justé, Ronald Lockett, Tierney Malone, Mario Cravo Neto, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Xaviera Simmons, Purvis Young, François Ziliff

Together, some 75 works illustrate the use of luxurious armor in projecting an image of royal power in Imperial Spain. The exhibition includes several full suits of armor, helmets, shields, and equestrian armor—worn in battle but more often in Renaissance parades, pageants, and jousting tournaments. The works of art on view date from the reigns of the Holy Roman Emperors Maximilian I of Austria (1508–1519) and Emperor Charles V (1519–1558), to those of his successors, King Philip II (1556–1598), King Philip III (1598–1621), and King Philip IV (1621–1665). This is the first time that the armor has been exhibited together with the portraits in which it is depicted.

The works of more than 50 African-American artists from the late 1800s to the present comprise this exhibition. The Kelley collection is one of the most esteemed private collections of African-American art, and the special exhibition features more than 90 works on paper by more than 50 African-American artists from the late 1800s to the present. Artists such as Elizabeth Catlett, William H. Johnson, Alison Saar and Charles White are among those whose works are on view.

Two significant eras are the focus of the exhibition: the 1930s and 1940s, a period which saw the birth of African-American regionalism, and the 1960s and 1970s, which saw the rise of politically motivated and African-inspired themes; subjects range from racism and its related hardships to family, music and religion.

The Kelleys have been collecting art since the mid-1980s, when they saw the exhibition Hidden Heritage: Afro-American Art, 1800–1950 at the San Antonio Museum of Art. Realizing they did not recognize any of the artists’ names, they vowed to educate themselves about this aspect of their heritage and built a collection to advance the legacy of African-American art.

In addition and concurrent to this exhibition, the one-gallery exhibition African-American Art: Selections from the Amon Carter Museum’s Collection is also on view. This exhibition showcases some of the museum’s landmark prints and drawings from the same era as those in the Kelley show. Artists featured include Charles Alston, Grafton Tyler Brown, Elizabeth Catlett, Will iam H. Johnson, Jacob Lawrence, Will iam E. Smith, Dox Thrash, Charles White and John Wilson.

In the sixteenth century, Venice was one of the largest and richest cities in Europe, and steady demand for paintings from both local and international clients fostered a climate of exceptional competition and innovation.

Artistic rivals, Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese together created a body of work that defined a "Venetian style" through loose technique, rich coloring, and often pastoral or sensual subject matter. These elements inspired countless later artists, promoting a Venetian current in painting up to the twentieth century.

The exhibition includes approximately sixty paintings from the most important museums in Europe and the United States, as well as pictures that have remained over the years in the settings for which they were painted--churches in Venice.

Juxtapositions of two, three, and sometimes four paintings demonstrate how much these three artists were influenced by one another and how they used their paintings as critiques.

As the first recipient of the Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography at the Peabody Museum, Guy Tillim traveled through Angola, Mozambique, Congo, and Madagascar, documenting the grand colonial architecture and how it has become part of a contemporary African stage. Tillim told an interviewer in 2008: “The buildings are very much inhabited, but many are decaying, so the challenge was not to become a connoisseur of decay, or come up with some sort of Havana-esque vision. I’d thought about this project for quite a number of years, wondered how I’d ever get around to it. Then the Fellowship came.”
(a. magazine, July 2008.)

Guy Tillim’s photographs reveal the decay and detritus of colonialism in Western and Southern Africa on a scale both monumental and slight. He exposes the stains, cracks, and filth of huge, crumbling institutional structures—post offices, school, offices, hotels, and banks. He winds around their staircases and looks through their windows, finding offices and classrooms void of basic equipment and furniture. While the people in these images are almost peripheral—at the frames’ edges, with turned backs, or slightly out of focus—there is an acute sense of humanity in the images, shown through the personal objects left behind: an umbrella, a house plant, a purse, a book.

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
11 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge, Mass.

The outdoor presentation at 425 Market Street, a private plaza in downtown San Francisco, is the site of four horse sculptures by Deborah Butterfield. The compositions, larger than life, made from wood pieces and stone and cast in bronze, aim to provide an environment of contemplation and retreat in the contrast of their contained expression of rest against the urban architecture and activity. Butterfield uses the horse form as a figure for the other, the unknown that defines human experiences of curiosity, empathy and understanding.

Deborah Butterfield's sculptures are represented in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Denver Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Dallas Museum of Art, among other noted institutions.

Featuring 80 prints which provide insight into Driskell’s artistic process and development, the exhibition will be presented in conjunction with the fifth anniversary of the High’s David C. Driskell Prize for achievement in African American art and scholarship.

Evolution  featurse woodcuts such as the Bakota Girl series (1972-1974) and Benin Woman (1975), which reveal the influence of the artist’s travels to Africa and his desire to enrich his own connection to African culture. In Bakota Girl 1, Driskell draws inspiration from a Kota reliquary, while also referencing Byzantine Christian iconography through his use of gilt and jewel tones.

Over the course of his career, Driskell has explored the intersection between African sculpture, Modernist aesthetics, and the tradition of Western art. In his Reclining Nude (2000), Driskell references Matisse’s Blue Nude of 1906, reclaiming the African imagery which served as a key source of inspiration to 20th-century modernists.

Examples of Driskell’s self-portraits will also play an important role in the exhibition. Spanning more than thirty years, these works reflect the artist’s wide range of stylistic approaches, from the traditional pose and naturalistic representation of Self Portrait (1970), to Pensive (2004), in which Driskell transforms his own features into to those of an African mask.

Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated 120-page catalogue published by Pomegranate Communications. It includes a curatorial essay by Dr. Adrienne Childs; an essay by Ruth Fine, Curator of Special Projects in Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and an introduction by Deborah Willis, Professor of Art, Tisch School of Arts, New York University. The catalogue is among the very few that document the medium of printmaking by African American artists, and it is the most comprehensive exploration of Driskell’s work to date.

David C. Driskell

Born in 1931 in Eatonton, Georgia, Driskell is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland, College Park. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Howard University in 1955 and his Master of Fine Arts degree from Catholic University in 1962. He also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine in 1953, and studied art history at The Hague, The Netherlands, in 1964. In 1976, Driskell curated the groundbreaking exhibition “Two Centuries of Black American Art: 1750–1950,” which laid the foundation for the field of African American art history. Since 1977, he has served as cultural advisor to Camille O. and William H. Cosby and as the curator of the Cosby Collection of Fine Arts. In a White House ceremony in 2000, Driskell received the National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton, and in 2007 he was elected as a National Academician by the National Academy.

David C. Driskell Center

The David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park, celebrates the legacy of David C. Driskell by preserving the rich heritage of African American visual art and culture. Established in 2001, the Center provides an intellectual home for artists, museum professionals, art administrators and scholars of color, broadening the field of African diasporic studies. The Driskell Center is committed to preserve, document and present African American art as well as to replenish and expand the field of African American art. More information about the Driskell Center is available at www.driskellcenter.umd.edu


Organized by the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park, “Evolution” premiered at the Driskell Center and traveled to the Wichita Art Museum before its exhibition at the High. It will subsequently travel to the Portland Museum of Art, where it will be on view October 27, 2009, through January 17, 2010.

Illuminating the Sea: The Marine Paintings of James E. Buttersworth, 1817-1894 is a major retrospective exhibition highlighting the work of famed 19th-century marine artist James Edward Buttersworth (1817-1894). A ship portraitist who meticulously illustrated America’s Golden Age of Sail, Buttersworth captured a realistic view of sea and sky while incorporating the human element into his work. Buttersworth has long been recognized as a premier maritime artist distinguished by his story telling prowess, as well as his meticulous attention to detail with the brush and palette.

His paintings detailed packet ships, ocean steamships, clipper ships, naval frigates, harbor craft and most especially, the remunerative world of American yachting.

Paintings in the exhibition span Buttersworth’s entire career, beginning with his early British period works and ending with the 1893 America’s Cup series, completed a year before his death.

Bruce Museum
One Museum Drive
Greenwich, CT 06830

The Grady Alexis Gallery at Taller Latino Americano has mounted a show entitled Images of CUBA: Three Photographers, an exhibition of the photographs of Paul Stetzer, Jay Potter and Paul Typaldos.

Jay Potter's colorful images are well composed, often humorous, often ironic views of Havana. He has photographed throughout Australia, Peru, Spain, the US and Cuba.

Paul Stetzer uses his technique to bring Cuban faces into focus with the friendly air of a well-liked neighbor. His images - landscapes, portraits, and documentaries - have been exhibited in the U.S., Mexico and Havana.

Film-maker and photographer, Paul Typaldos, brings together gesture, light and open space that allows the viewer to consider the way that people occupy the environment. Most recently, his images have been shown at the Center for Experimental Art and Architecture in Los Angeles, CA.

Thw exhibition is curated by Jennifer Pliego.

The exhibition Iran Inside Out features 35 artists living and working in Iran alongside 20 others living in the Diaspora. The result is a multifarious portrait of 55 contemporary Iranian artists challenging the conventional perceptions of Iran and Iranian art. In Iran Inside Out, 210 works comprising painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation come together, in a rare moment which allows visitors an intimate look into the people, both inside and outside a country that is more complex than images of veiled women, worn out calligraphy and what a handful of other emblematic images would suggest.

Curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, Iran Inside Out offers an insight into the artistic energy of a culture that is constantly evolving as Iranians living both in and out of the country, come of age living and working in contentious societies. While half of these artists such as Vahid Sharifian, Barbad Golshiri, Farideh Lashai and Jinoos Taghizadeh reside in Iran, the other half including artists such as Shirin Neshat, Shahram Entekhabi, Mitra Tabrizian and Shoja Azari has been interspersed in the Diaspora.

Iran Inside Out explores the process of deconstruction and reinvention of both, self and art that has resulted from this cultural schism, often swinging between openness and dialogue, or seclusion and separatism.

According to the curatorial statement for this show, "tattoo art has been clasped to the bosom of the art world precisely because of its intercession between the arenas of popular and high culture. The symbolism and impact of tattoos varies in different places and cultures. Anglicized from the Polynesian tatau and Tahitian tatu, tattoos have served as rites of passage, marks of status and rank, symbols of religious and spiritual devotion, decorations for bravery, sexual lures and marks of fertility, pledges of love, punishment, amulets and talismans, protection, and as the marks of outcasts, slaves and convicts."

"When the imagery of the tattoo is isolated from the human canvas, or when the “tattooed” becomes the subject of art, the ink can become a distinct portrait of the subject, revealing histories, ethnicities, personality quirks, fetishes, addictions, conquests, allegiances, and tragedy. This show presents the tattoo and the tattooed within the realm of fine art, "

The exhibition will include works by Max Snow, Crumb, Tom of Finland, Patrick Lee, Lina Bertucci, Richard Renaldi, Aaron Cobbett, Assume Vivid Astro-Focus, Ted Nemeth, Ron Athey, Kiki Smith, Alix Lambert,

New Perspectives in Contemporary Art is curated by Chessia Kelley and features artists Per Bilgren, David Brooks, Gabriel Martinez, Virginia Poundstone, and Gilad Ratman.

Bilgren's color photographs provide a glimpse into the world of conventions. His work reveals what is typically considered outsider personalities, at intimate moments. Concrete with Eggs by Brooks changes our perspective to one that is more long-term, conscious of our future effect on the environment. Martinez's chalkboard wall uses the gallery architecture as a descriptive receptacle for his Lucky Day project that occurred elsewhere in New York. His flower box sculptures also refer to inside/outside gallery space transforming the dividing tool of the police barrier into a cheerful pedestal for flowers. A site specific mobile by Poundstone proposes new ways to look at the world we live in. Ratman's video experiments with new, organic visual forms. The Boggyman presents the descent of the boggyman into a deep pool of mud recalling primeval, and strangely sexual imagery that is eerily familiar.

Skullphone is an artist who works anonymously in city streets and deserted highways, incorporating his artwork into the detritus of the urban environment. While ten foot tall posters loom high above building walls, small supporting incarnations of his image blend into utilitarian spaces. In these, Skullphone's image immediately cuts through the typically mundane environment of gas stations, public bathrooms, parking meters, roll-up gates, and trash dumpsters, the unique platforms and non-blank canvases from which Skullphone “speaks”.

According to the press release, "Skullphone’s installation at RAM, Skullphone History Museum creates an environment reminiscent of a natural history museum’s dioramas. Replacing nature with entirely man-made objects, this unnatural exhibit monumentalizes the quotidian objects of our world."  

Skullphone's signature image may also bring to mind and "monumentalize" the news media's on-going reports that some health advocates worry that excessive use of cell phones can be harmful to one's health. CNN's Larry King raised the question "Do cell phones cause brain cancer?" earlier this week to Dena Cochran, the widow of lawyer Johnnie Cochran and to a group of physicians. Johnnie Cochran died of brain cancer. And while various studies researching the health effects of cell phone use have yielded mixed results, "skullphone" may look like food for thought.

Guest curator Jesse Hulcher presents Smoke & Mirrors, an exhibition of works by artists Cory Arcangel, Matt Barton, Chris Beauregard, Robin Brasington, Jacob Ciocci, Olivia Ciummo, Thad Kellstadt, Ladyboy, Guthrie Lonergan, Spencer Longo, Eileen Maxson, Jesse Mclean, Alex Miller, Jae Ruberto, Michael Smith, Ed P. Steck, Scotty Vera, Jeffrey Vulture, JD Walsh, and David Wightman. Artists invited to contribute to the exhibition were asked to submit works which saw them 'faking it' in some way.

According to a curatorial statement sent to the press:

"A seemingly uncontrollable ascent into the hyperconsciousness of irony leads current artistic practices in the direction of extreme emotional states, transcendently playful acts with technology and the self indulgence of reveling in one's own actions. Works in the exhibition cover themes such as the authentic versus the inauthentic, achieving the impossible through the use of media or other apparatus and the notion of presented identity versus actual identity. These artists who, in varying degrees, perform, impersonate or hide behind an alias or a contrived level of intellect or artistic skill appropriate the landscape of the new modernity. These works and artists exist in alternate realities in order to comment on media, pop-culture and their effects on the human mind through a fictional, fantasy authorship, trading pride or reputation for indefinite amounts of behind-the-scenes detail. In this way the character of the artist can be as much a work of art as the supposed output of their alias. The exhibition consists of original works in video, sound, sculpture, print, drawing, painting, collage, kinetics and installation. These 20 artists unite for an exhibition of tricks, fakes and lies in a world that is sincere."

Guest curator Jesse Hulcher presents Smoke & Mirrors, an exhibition of works by artists Cory Arcangel, Matt Barton, Chris Beauregard, Robin Brasington, Jacob Ciocci, Olivia Ciummo, Thad Kellstadt, Ladyboy, Guthrie Lonergan, Spencer Longo, Eileen Maxson, Jesse Mclean, Alex Miller, Jae Ruberto, Michael Smith, Ed P. Steck, Scotty Vera, Jeffrey Vulture, JD Walsh, and David Wightman. Artists invited to contribute to the exhibition were asked to submit works which saw them 'faking it' in some way.

According to a curatorial statement sent to the press:

"A seemingly uncontrollable ascent into the hyperconsciousness of irony leads current artistic practices in the direction of extreme emotional states, transcendently playful acts with technology and the self indulgence of reveling in one's own actions. Works in the exhibition cover themes such as the authentic versus the inauthentic, achieving the impossible through the use of media or other apparatus and the notion of presented identity versus actual identity. These artists who, in varying degrees, perform, impersonate or hide behind an alias or a contrived level of intellect or artistic skill appropriate the landscape of the new modernity. These works and artists exist in alternate realities in order to comment on media, pop-culture and their effects on the human mind through a fictional, fantasy authorship, trading pride or reputation for indefinite amounts of behind-the-scenes detail. In this way the character of the artist can be as much a work of art as the supposed output of their alias. The exhibition consists of original works in video, sound, sculpture, print, drawing, painting, collage, kinetics and installation. These 20 artists unite for an exhibition of tricks, fakes and lies in a world that is sincere."

This presentation features more than sixty exceptional objects that large embassies, diplomatic missions, and trade delegations from Ottoman Turkey and Safavid Iran offered to the tsars of Russia. Ranging in date from the early sixteenth to the late seventeenth century, these lavish gifts and tributes include rarely seen arms and armor and jeweled ceremonial vessels and regalia intended for the Russian court or the Orthodox church.

Some of the objects were given by Ottoman sultans and the shahs of Iran, and others were offered by wealthy merchants to the Russian tsars and patriarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church. All were originally bestowed on Russia by neighboring powers hoping to advance their economic and political agendas. In exchange, Russia typically offered sought-after raw materials, including rare ermine and sable furs.

Launching the Newark Museum's Centennial celebration, Unbounded: New Art for a New Century showcases art created over the past fifteen years by forty artists from Africa, America, Asia and Europe. All are recent acquisitions from the Museum's collection. The Newark Museum's definition of "contemporary art" is broad and inclusive, encompassing painting, sculpture, ceramics, fashion, jewelry, textiles, photography and new media.

Artists represented in Unbounded include: Sandy Benjamin-Hannibal, Dawoud Bey, Jim Campbell, Chunghie Lee, Willie Cole, Sokey Edorh, Victor Ekpuk, Dahlia Elsayed, Arline Fisch, Samuel Fosso, Gonkar Gyatso, Hong Zhu An, Pieter Hugo, William Kentridge, Sun Wuk Kim, Wosene Worke Kosrof, Nicholas Lovegrove, Lu Wen Xia, Lu Jian Xing, Rossinah Maepa, Senzeni Marasela, Franco Mondini-Ruiz, Louis Mueller, Magdalene Odundo, Kwesi Owusu-Ankomah, Grayson Perry, Peter Pierobon, Martin Puryear, Damien Repucci, Diego Romero, Red Weldon Sandlin, Deganit Stern Schocken, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Lorna Simpson, Vivan Sundaram, Susan Thayer, Bill Viola, Wang Jin, and Sue Williamson.

In the decades following the Constitution of 1917, Mexico became a powerful magnet for foreign artists and intellectuals drawn to its ideal climate, dramatic landscapes, and inexpensive cost of living.

In the mid-1920s a vibrant photography movement in Mexico City centered around Weston and his Italian-born lover, Tina Modotti, and, during the 1930s, on the Surrealist-inspired work of Mexican native Manuel Alvarez Bravo, as well as the American photographer and documentary filmmaker Paul Strand.

Viva Mexico! draws heavily on the The Lane Collection of photographs on long-term loan at the MFA and features about 35 rare works by Edward Weston taken during the pivotal years of 1923 through 1926. The work covers a wide range of subjects: heroic portrait heads, avant-garde nudes, starkly abstract urban views and landscapes, and images of Mexican toys and folk objects. Also included is a select group of pictures by Weston's contemporaries--Modotti, Strand, Bravo, and his young son, Brett, who made some of his first serious photographs during his brief visit to Mexico with his father.

Mark Morris Dance Group

Bedtime

All Fours

V

The Metropolitan Opera launches its free Summer Recital Series with a special performance of opera arias and popular songs headlined by the Tony Award-winning baritone Paulo Szot and featuring Lisette Oropesa (soprano), Alek Shrader (tenor), and Vlad Iftinca (piano).

Baritone Paulo Szot won a 2008 Tony Award for his performance as Emile de Becque in the Broadway revival of South Pacific. He has appeared with major American and European opera companies, including New York City Opera, where he was heard in Carmen, L’Elisir d’Amore, and Le Nozze di Figaro. He recently made his Met debut in the leading role of William Kentridge’s new production of Shostakovich’s The Nose, conducted by Valery Gergiev.

Free tickets are required for entry. Tickets will be available at the Met Opera box office from 6 - 10 July 2009. For more information on how to obtain free tickets for this event, please visit metopera.org/parks beginning 1 June or call 212-362-6000. There will be no rain dates for these performances. No one will be admitted without a ticket.

Featuring fossils and other specimens from the Museum's collections, vivid reconstructions, and live animals, the exhibition examines the ancestry and evolution of numerous species, ranging from huge to tiny, from speedy to sloth-like, and displays animals with oversized claws, fangs, snouts, and horns.

Through the use of dynamic media displays, animated computer interactives, hands-on activities, touchable fossils, casts, taxidermy specimens, and a colony of live sugar gliders —extreme marsupials from Australia — the exhibition will highlight distinctive mammalian qualities and illuminate the shared ancestry that unites these diverse creatures.

The exhibition is divided into nine sections—Introduction, What is a Mammal?, What is Extreme?, Head to Tail, Reproduction, Mammals in Motion, Extreme Climates, Extreme Isolation, and Extreme Extinction—and offers extensive detail on the evolutionary history and family tree of mammals.

The Georgia Aquarium opened in downtown Atlanta, Georgia on 23 November 2005, as the world’s largest aquarium. With more than 8 million gallons of marine and fresh water, and more than 100,000 animals of 500 different species, the Georgia Aquarium is a gift to the people of Georgia from Bernie Marcus, co-founder of The Home Depot, and his wife Billi, through the Marcus Foundation. The $200 million building, designed to look like a ship breaking through a wave. The facility hosts five viewing galleries along with a 4-D movie theater.

Wolfgang Puck Catering operates exclusive special event catering services at the Aquarium.  Chef Puck and his staff serve seafood at the Aquarium and participate in the Seafood Watch Program, pioneered by the Monterey Bay Aquarium to raise consumer awareness about the importance of buying seafood from sustainable sources.

In the Heights is a musical about three days in the life of Washington Heights, a vibrant and tightly knit, but diverse Latino community at the top of the island of Manhattan. It's a place where the coffee from the corner bodega is light and sweet, the windows are always open, and the breeze carries the rhythm of three generations of music. In the Heights is the tale of a community at a crossroads. Find out what it takes to make a living, what it costs to have a dream, and what it means to be home In the Heights.

With music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and a book by Quiara Alegria Hudes, In the Heights is directed by Thomas Kail and choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler. Alex Lacamoire is music director, and music arrangements and orchestrations are by Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman. Miranda and Kail are both members of the hip-hop improv troupe Freestyle Love Supreme and head a 22-member cast.

Andrea Burns, Janet Dacal, Robin De Jesus, Carlos Gomez, Mandy Gonzalez, Christopher Jackson, Priscilla Lopez, Olga Merediz, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Karen Olivo, Seth Stewart

This new center documents Muhammad Ali's odyssey from then-segregated Louisville, Kentucky and his youth as Cassius Clay, to a Gold Medal at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome to his conversion from Christianity to Islam and to the pinnacle of the boxing world.

Through five floors and 93,000 square feet, the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville (which opened in November  2005) is no typical sports museum; it is equal parts elegance (the prominent atrium display of his Presidential Medal of Freedom) and kitsch (the equally prominent display of the bejeweled robe,a gift from Elvis Presley before a fight in Las Vegas.) It is pluck - his youthful boasting of how pretty he was - and pathos- his Parkinsons' wracked body painstakingly lighting the torchat the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. It is crass commercialization - his 1977 Rolls Royce Corniche - and the best of the human spirit- a collage by children from 141 countries in which they express their hopes and dreams.

The National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Mo., opened to the public on 2 December 2006 as the first American, and only national, museum dedicated to preserving the artifacts, history, and experiences of what was deemed “the war to end all wars.” Designed by Ralph Appelbaum, the National WWI Museum houses a collection of more than 49,000 artifacts.

The 30,000-square-foot core exhibit is built directly beneath the existing Liberty Memorial. Beginning with a surreal walk across a glass-floored bridge, beneath which lie 9,000 poppies, each representing 1,000 fallen military fatalities, visitors pass into an vast interactive museum that seeks to tell the story of the war through the experiences of those who lived it.

Born to singer Aminata Diakité, Oumou Sangare is a Malian musician known as "The Songbird of Wassoulou.” She writes and composes her songs to bring about social awareness, especially concerning the place of women within society.

French-Cameroonian sisters Hélène and Célia Faussart created an international sensation with the 1998 release of Princesses Nubiennes, their debut CD. The duo’s sophisticated, alluring mélange of Afro-pop, bass ’n’ drums, electronica, hip-hop, and jazz influences has helped make them the most successful French-language act in the U.S. in more than a decade. They received a 2004 Grammy nomination in the Best Urban Alternative R&B category, along with Erykah Badu, Outkast, and Kelis, and have collaborated with the Black Eyed Peas, DJ Krush, Talib Kweli, and Youssou N’Dour. Les Nubians is known for their jazzy nuances, hard hitting drum 'n' bass lines, harmonious melodies, and conscientious proclamations.

Born to Nigerian parents in Paris, France, Asa moved to Nigeria when she was just two years old. Immersed in the cultural and religious quagmire of her homeland, Asa became inspired by Afrobeat musicians like Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, Raphael Saadiq, Lauryn Hill, Femi Kuti, and Angélique Kidjo.

Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Center operates the world's largest collection of waterfowl, including many rare and endangered species. The 8 acre avian breeding preserve in Scotland Neck, North Carolina is now home to over 170 species of birds-- more than half of the world’s known species of ducks, geese and swans--along with cranes, pheasants, parrots and many other birds.

Sylvan Heights has now embarked on a new and exciting mission--providing conservation-oriented programs and avian exhibits to the public. Building on an adjacent 18-acre property owned by the North Carolina Zoological Society, the new Waterfowl Park & Eco-Center has been open to the public since October 7, 2006.

Scotland Neck is only a few miles from the Roanoke River, an environmentally protected waterway that attracts many thousands of migrating ducks, geese and swans to the North Carolina coastal plain.  The cypress-tupelo swamp forests and wetlands surrounding Scotland Neck are a wintering home for many bird species, and provide opportunities for waterfowl, raptor and songbird observation. In fact, this area was named one of the top 500 most important bird areas by the American Bird Conservancy Guide.

Festivalgoers can dance and sing along with leading names in entertainment—rhythm and blues, classic soul, hip-hop, neo-soul and jazz—all on five stages within the Louisiana Superdome.

Beyoncé, Maxwell, Lionel Richie, Anita Baker, John Legend, En Vogue,  Eric Benet, Ledisi, Raphael Saadiq, Zap Mama, Ryan Leslie, Dan Dyer, Gospel greats The Blind Boys of Alabama, Al Green, Salt-N-Pepa  among others will also perform at this year’s Essence Music Festival.

Sting has been an undeniable force on contemporary Pop music ever since he first came on the scene with his band The Police. With over 100 million records sold, sixteen Grammys, Sting's influence on music today shows no signs of waning. To celebrate the power of this Pop sensation's music, former Sting bandmates will join forces to perform unique versions of his music at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York.

Included in this all-star event, produced by impresario Charles Carlini and musical director Butch Thomas, are vocalist Vinx, trumpeter Lew Soloff, keyboardist Delmar Brown, guitarist Jeff Lee Campbell, bassist T.M. Stevens and drummer Kenwood Dennard. A portion of the proceeds will go to help the Rain Forest Foundation.

The Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas displays the work conducted at the Nevada Test Site and its impact on the Unitied States.

The 8,000 square foot permanent exhibit hall includes artifacts on loan from personal collections, the Smithsonian Institution, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and pieces of the Berlin wall and World Trade Centers. Designed to be a highly interactive experience, the exhibits include touch screens, motion-sensitive plasma TV presentations, audio interviews with former workers from the test site and various other multi-media components.

In addition to the permanent exhibits, the museum also has a 2,000 square foot changing exhibit hall, a museum store and a History Walk. Adjacent to the museum are the Nuclear Testing Archives, a collection of over 310,000 documents related to radioactive fallout from U.S. testing of nuclear devices.

Photo courtesy of Atomic Testing Museum

Fight Night Fights originated in the basement space of the Church Street Boxing Gym in lower Manhattan. The limited seating capacity and ever growing demand prompted Fight Night Fights to move to a larger venue, the basement of St. Paul the Apostle's Church behind Columbus Circle. This old school fight club has become popular with everybody from blue collar toughs to Wall Street investment bankers to New York style editors and hipsters.

The Friday Night Fights NYC Series features a variety of fighting styles. Muay Thai Boxing, Amateur Boxing and White Collar Boxing are just some of the types of fights that are featured at fight nights.

Grammy Award-nominated Puerto Rican singer Jerry Rivera grew up surrounded by salsa music and musicians. After the release of his first full length album Empezando A Vivir, Rivera was given the title "El Bebe de la Salsa." Since then, he has gone on to carve out a career for himself as one of the world's most famous Latin pop stars. Rivera’s newest single “Quien de los Dos” is currently Top 10 on Billboard’s Tropical chart.

N’Klabe is a Puerto Rican salsa group formed in 2003 by Héctor Torres, Félix Javier Torres, and Ricardo Porrata. The group has been nominated for several awards during its short career and is hailed "the future of Salsa music" by such pioneers of the genre as Cheo Feliciano. Both N'Klabe's albums -- and two of their most well-known songs -- feature collaboration with reggaeton artist Voltio. The group also recently collaborated with R.K.M. & Ken-Y. In 2008, N'Klabe began an international promotional tour, organizing performances in Peru, Colombia and the United States.

Michael Longoria 
Christian Hoff - Tony Award Winner
Sebastian Arcelus
J Robert Spencer

Book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice
Music and Lyrics by Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe
Directed by Des McAnuff
Choreography by Sergio Trujillo

David Seidner: Paris Fashions, 1945 presents photographs of a collection of couture-clad dolls made for the Théâtre de la Mode, a creative effort by the French fashion industry to broadcast to the world that they were back in business after World War II. In 1990, contemporary fashion photographer David Seidner (1957–1999) was asked to photograph the dolls for a reconstruction of the original project. Fifteen of these color photographs from the David Seidner Archive, along with one of the original dolls are on view at the International Center of Photography  in New York.

After the liberation of 1944, the French couture industry was badly weakened. Shortages of food, electricity, and supplies brought production to a virtual standstill. During the Occupation, strict fabric rations were imposed on the couture houses, which faced the constant threat of foreclosure. To help revive the international stature of the business, the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne conceived of a small exhibition, Théâtre de la Mode. With limited access to materials, the organizers commissioned wire-frame dolls just over two feet tall as the models and invited the major fashion designers of the day, including Balenciaga, Jacques Fath, Lucien Lelong, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Pierre Balmain, to create exquisite miniature dresses.

The exhibition of over 230 dolls, displayed in artist-designed sets, opened in Paris on March 27, 1945 in the Pavillon Marsan at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. The international creative talent involved in the project included the Frenchmen Jean Cocteau, Christian Bérard, and Éliane Bonabel; the Russian Boris Kochno; and the Catalan Joan Rebull. The show was an instant sensation, and traveled to London, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Vienna, New York, and, finally, San Francisco. Within the year, French fashion industry had been revived. The dolls had completed their work spectacularly and were donated to the Maryhill Museum near Portland, Oregon, where they disappeared from public view.

In 1990, the dolls were rediscovered and returned to Paris, where they were recoiffed and restyled for an exhibition at the Musée de la Mode. Because of his pioneering work photographing French fashion and historical gowns, David Seidner was asked to photograph the little dolls.

Like the postwar fashion photographs made in front of bombed buildings, the coiled ropes, splintering wood, shards of glass, and exposed wire in Seidner’s photographs attest to the precariousness of life and fashion at the time.

David Seidner (February 18, 1957–June 6, 1999) was born in Los Angeles and worked as a photographer for twenty-five years, spending much of his time in Paris. Among the world’s top fashion photographers, he was perhaps best known for his work with the fashion house of Yves Saint Laurent, his striking formal portraiture and nude photographs, and for his orchid series, the final project before his death in 1999. His artwork and portraiture were largely inspired by the chance-based philosophy of composer John Cage, whose work considered the classical Chinese book the I Ching as the basis for musical pieces.

The Jonas Brothers World Tour 2009 presents the band’s most ambitious production yet and includes a massive 140-foot plus stage centered in the arena, a one-of-a-kind circular water screen, multi-color laser effects, motion automated video screens, a giant crane levitating over the audience plus other surprises.

Jordin Sparks and the Honor Society open for this concert.

Juana Molina is a singer, songwriter, and actress from Argentina who learned to play the guitar at the age of five. Sung in her native Rioplatense Spanish, Molina’s lyrics are intertwined with complex structures recalling ambient masters Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, and modernist John Cage. While her music features elements of ambient and electronica, her voice is often compared to Björk, Beth Orton, and Lisa Germano. Molina usually writes, mixes tracks, and performs solo, intricately layering sound and rhythms performed on the spot.

Curumin, a São Paulo singer/composer/multi-instrumentalist of Spanish and Japanese heritage, was first discovered in September 2005 by hip hop duo Blackalicious while touring in Brazil. Curumin’s music is a head-spinning amalgamation of “música popular Brasileira” (MPB), Brazilian roots, samba-reggae, dub, hip hop, electronica, funk, rock, and pop along with hints of Brazilian jazz and the kind of samba-rock pioneered by Tropicália stars like Jorge Ben and Tim Maia.

Formed in 1985, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs is a Latin rock band from Buenos Aires, Argentina. With a unique sound that is a mix of rock, ska, jazz, folk, reggae, funk, and big band, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs is one of the most influential and referenced bands of the Latin rock world. Although the band’s lineup has changed throughout the years, the co-founders, singer Gabriel Fernandez Capello (known as Vicentico) and bassist Flavio Cianciarulo (known as Sr. Flavio), have always been the core members. The Cadillacs received a 1998 Grammy Award for Best Latin Rock/Alternative Album and were nominated in 2000 for two Latin Grammy Awards for Best Band and Best Music Video for "La Vida.” After a seven year hiatus, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs regrouped in late 2008 to create La Luz del Ritmo, their sixteenth full length album.

Throughout his career Eric Bobo has been known for recording and performing with a large variety of leading artists including The Black Crowes, 311, Gnarls Barkley, Rage Against The Machine, Smashing Pumpkins, Soulfly, Ella Fitzgerald, and Psycho Realm. In 2008 Bobo released his debut album, Meeting of the Minds, which is an eclectic collection of songs that represent what Eric Bobo is all about.

Before Susan Boyle, there was Paul Potts.

The first winner of "Britain's Got Talent," and YouTube sensation (to date over 74 million hits), Paul Potts takes the stage at the Beacon Theatre.

Presidents in Waiting is an exhibition that focuses on the office of the vice presidency and the individuals who first served in that office and then later became president.

The office of the vice president was created by the framers of the Constitution to provide a quick and peaceful succession in the event of the president’s death or incapacity. Fourteen of the men who were vice presidents became president either by winning election on their own, upon the death of an incumbent or, in one case, by the resignation of the president. This exhibition examines the role of the vice president throughout American history and how the office evolved.

Originally, the runner-up in a presidential election became vice president. This process was changed by the 12th Amendment, as a result of the 1800 election, in which a tie vote between the candidates threw the election into the House of Representatives, resulting in the nation’s first constitutional crisis. The development of political parties and straight party-line voting was not foreseen by the framers of the Constitution and forced the change.

The show examines the vice presidencies of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. It includes video of interviews granted exclusively for the exhibition with former vice presidents Walter Mondale, Bush and Dan Quayle and the current vice president, Richard Cheney.

The exhibition uses portraiture in its many forms to portray these vice presidents. On view are a painting of Jefferson as secretary of state during the Washington administration by Charles Willson Peale, on loan from Independence National Historical Park; a Roosevelt-Truman campaign poster; a photograph of Johnson being sworn in as president on Air Force One; campaign buttons from Reagan-Bush campaigns; and the original letter from Adams to Abigail Adams in which he makes his often-quoted lament about the vice presidency: “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”