Curator's Choice: Museums and Exhibitions in New York City and Vicinity

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February Arts Rambles
Philippe Entremont Conducts, With Three Outstanding Young Pianists in Mozart Concertos!, Mellon Lecture at the Morgan: Fantastic Photos of Farnese Gallery in French Embassy in Rome, Collegiate Choral Sing Bruckner's Te Deum at Carnegie: Anything But TeDious!, Too Many Unresolved Plot Lines in Instinct on Theatre Row: What's It All About?, Little Known Rossinis at Juilliard: Silken Ladders & Repudiated Marriage Contracts, Renoir's Full Length French Dancers at the Frick!, Charles Ryskamp Lives Again at the Frick!, Demented & Defeated Artist in the Desert at Repertorio…, Take Your Medicine! Primary Stages Prescribes RX at 59E59…, Mile High New Play Interlude in Denver!, Prints, Prints, & More Prints at MoMA: Even Hanging on Wash Lines!, Vistas of Endless Lottery Ticket Mosaic Space: Ghost of a Dream/forever, almost at Davidson!, NY City Opera Lives Again! Jonathan Miller's La Traviata at BAM!, Masterful Kurt Masur Master Class in Conducting at Manhattan School, THE ANNUAL: 2012—At the National Academy! Not To Be Confused with the Whitney Biennial…, Rufus Wainwright's Prima Donna Takes a Bow at BAM!, The Steins Collect & Degas Draws at the Met Museum:, What Is It about Those Art Loving Jews? A Genius for Collecting Avant Garde: Cones & Steins!, The Civil War Revisited at the Grolier: Is That the Appomattox Courthouse?, Way Out West on 42nd Street: CQ/CX—The Atlantic at the Peter Norton Space, Crushed Auto Bumpers & Colorful Crumpled Truck Bodies: Chamberlain at the Guggenheim, Learning How To Drive All Over Again: Paula Vogel's Behind the Wheel Play Revived, More Arts Treasures Up for Grabs [or Bids] at Christie's, Freshly Minted Rutherford & Son Revival at the Mint Theatre!, At the New City, "Christopher Marlowe's" Julius Caesar?, The Set Implodes & Explodes—With Some Assistance—in Assistance at Playwrights Horizons, Gingerbread Ahead! Amato Hansel & Gretel at the Manhattan School!

January 2012 Roundup
Digital & Design Wonders at Newly Recreated New York Historical Society!, Our Own Grandma Moses Foremost among Outstanding Outsider Artists at Galerie St. Etienne, Rosemary Harris Lives On The Road To Mecca, But Watch Out for Sudafrikaanse Dominies!, George Washington Crosses the Delware Once Again in Met's New American Wing!, On Auction at Christie's: Fugitive Treasures from the American Wing?, Free Ai Wei Wei in Bregenz Last Summer, But Now He's On Display Near Frank Ghery…, Shuffling Through The Picture Box Yields Nostalgia, But Not Powerful Plot Inspirations, Sparse Pickings in Contemporary Art at Phillips de Pury: Haring, Rauschenberg, etc, At Stanford, Be Careful With Whom You Room: Outside People May Prove a Problem!, Stage Stars' Fashionable Costumes & Hats Excited the Matinée Ladies: Play Pictorial at Bard, Dropping by Bonhams' To Check on Forthcoming Auction Treasures…, Close Up Space: Literary Editor & English Prof from Hell: Bad Dad's Daughter Speaks Russian…, Rembrandt & Friends at the Morgan: Bold Strokes in Vivid Centuries Old Inks!, Weegee Lenses Murder + Historic Magnum Contact Sheets at International Photography Show, Armory's Winter Antiques Show Echoes Met Museum's American Wing Treasures, Kevin Spacey Astonishes in Richard III at BAM: A Bum Back & a Bum Leg Don't Deter Him…, Master Scroll Painter Fu Baoshi Survives Two Revolutions, Outsider Art & Effortful Amateurs at Metropolitan Pavilion: How About Tramp Art?, Outsider Art & Self Taught Artists at the Outsider Art Fair down on West 34!, Roy Arias Sponsors International Theatre Fest, But Match Doesn't Strike a Light…, In Russian Transport, Lad Drives Under Age "Models" from JFK, Working for Russki Mafia Uncle, Cynthia Nixon Shaves Her Head for Wit, But the Brain Is Still Sharp…, Why Didn't Martin Luther King Create Porgy & Bess: Who's This White Guy, Anyway?, From William Christie & Enchanted Island at the Met to Baroque Opera at Juilliard's Tully Hall, Look Back in Anger Revived, But Young Brits Have More Cause for Anger Now Than Then…, Thundering Thunderbirds Take Over New City: Impressive Amer Ind Dances & Rituals, Cultured Pearl of a Play at the Pearl: GBS's The Philanderer: Lessons To Be Learnt!, Phantom of the Opera breaks records.

December in New York
Let's Beat Those Commie Russkis! The CIA Covertly Arms What Became the Taliban!, Shen Wei Finds Artful Ways To Fill the Park Avenue Armory with Dance Arts, Getting Falling Down Drunk & Trashing a Motel Room on Derby Day…, The Monstrous Golem Comes from Prague to East Fourth Street: Be Clay Once Again!, Rent Began Life at the New York Theatre Workshop: Will Once Move to Broadway?, Antiquities at Christie's: Headless Statues & Bronze Man Without a Leg To Stand on!, James DePriest at Carnegie Hall: Siwoo Kim Is Juilliard Orchestra Violin Soloist!, Stick Fly at the Cort: Family Problems for Prosperous Blacks on Martha's Vineyard!, One of Those Coen Brothers Returns: Happy Hour on West 42nd Not So Much Fun…, All Women Are Not Like That, Amadeus: Così fan tutte at the Manhattan School, Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape at BAM: Not Sam's Last Crap, by Any Means, Ay, Federico! Lorca's Bow Tie at the Duke: Young Artists in New York Tie It On!, Ana Tzarev Explodes Her Paint Tubes To Celebrate Russian Fairytales, For Booklovers & Others at the Grolier: Imperial French Type Dies in Many Languages…, Sex in All Its Possible Forms & Positions: Burning Down on Theatre Row!, No Calorie Counts on the Meat Pies in Titus Andronicus: Don't Eat Your Kids!, Maple & Vine Is Not Hollywood & Vine: It's a Made Up 1950s "Family Values" Town!, The Frick's New Glassed Portico: Looking Out on the Forbidden Garden, Afternoon at the Asia Society: Sarah Sze's Fine Lines, Plus Coins on the Floor…, A Moment at MoMA: Sanja Ivekovic--Women's Issues/Women's Photo Portraits!, Brooklyn Museum Library & Others at Bonham's: Librarians' Night Among Autographs, On a Clear Day, You Can See Harry Connick, Jr!, Potential Brain Damage at the Park Ave Armory: STREB…Falling on Mats from Heights!, Juilliard at Tully: From Mozart's Jupiter To Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet, Shanghai Cirque at New Vic: Everything That Streb Was Not!, Elizabeth Taylor's Jewels Dazzle at Christie's Sale: $156.8 Million, Plus Luggage!, A Bread & Puppet Christmas with Two Quite Different Shows: Attica for Xmas?, Three Met Press Previews: Renaissance Portraits, Duncan Phyfe, Plus Amer Ind Artifacts, Chopping Down The Cherry Orchard Down on East 13th! But No Axe Sounds?, Once, There Was Carmen Jones: Now We Have Lysistrata Jones, Who's No Relation…, Bonnie & Clyde: Where Is Faye Dunaway When We Need Her? Warren Beatty?

Turkey Week and End of November
Juilliard Chamber Symphony at Alice Tully: Standing Violinists, Sitting Cellos!; Peter Brook's Beckettian Fragments at Barishnikov: Gestures & Words…; Weak King Richard II Surrounded by Favorites at Court: Gay Buddies Bad Policy!; Who's Banging on That Door? Who Fucked Up on That Military Mission?; Challenge To Book of Mormon: Musical Version of Silence of the Lambs!; The Horrors & Joys of Gay Marriage! Standing on Ceremony Comes Out of the Closet!; The Great War Re Visited: The Blue Flower Sings of Lives Destroyed & Collaged.; Into the Woods with Wild Animals You Should Know: Watch Out for Feral Teenage Boys!; Japanese Narratives at the Met Museum: Plus Fabergé, Renaissance Venice + More…; Important American Paintings & Sculptures at Christie's: Rich Collectors Need Cash?; Suicide, Incorporated Appropriately Sited in the Black Box at the Pels on 46th & Sixth.; Seminar with Alan Rickman at the Golden: $5,000 Apiece To Learn How To Write Fiction?; Moses Confronts Pharaoh at Carnegie Hall: Not the Aida Legend: Rossini, Not Verdi!; Hanging Boys & Hanging Artworks In Guggenheim Rotunda + Stuffed Dead Horses!

Town Hall to MoMa and More
No Performer Mikes on stage at Town Hall: Scott Siegel's Broadway Unplugged 2011!; Into Space & Beyond Planet Earth at Museum of Natural History: Just Press the Button!; No Cantonese, If You Please: Try To Learn Ch'inglish—But It Loses In Translation…; Why Are There No Skinny Boteros? Acres of Latin American Art at Christie's!; Cowardian Comedy of Manners Elegant But Mannered: Kim Cattrall in Private Lives.; The Usual Suspects in MoMA's Contemporary Galleries: From 1980 to NOW…; New Maxwell Davies Opera: Students Under Oppression: From Hitler to Mao to Ole' Miss.; Gender Bending American Art at Brooklyn Museum: HIDE/SEEK—Who's Gay or Not?; Look Where It Comes Again! Not Hamlet's Ghost, but the Specter of GODSPELL!; Who Would Believe John Malkovich as a Viennese Serial Killer? With an Orchestra?; Lusty Dancing for Lughnasa, But Tragic Lives for Brian Friel's Ballybeg Mundys…; Musical Sunday Downhill From Riverside Church: Opera Scenes & Eschenbach.; Don't Take It Straight! Milk Like Sugar at Playwrights' Horizons!

From Diego Rivera to Orwell and more
Diego Rivera's 1930s MoMA Murals Again at MoMA: But No Frida Kahlo…, Two Nights Downhill from Grant's Tomb: Creationism from Haydn + Opera Arias!, New York City's Oldest Museum Now Its Most Digitally Modern: NY Historical Society, Art Plunderer Sherrie Levine Uses Walker Evans, Plywood, & Four Billiard Tables…, The Tower of Brooklyn Could Be Our Tower of Babble On: BAM's Brooklyn Babylon, On Forty Second Street, Once Again TAPS IS TOPS! Untapped at the New Victory, PETA Alert! Check Out Venus in Fur! Did Any Foxes Die for This S&M Romp?, Park Avenue Armory Transformed with Pavilion of Art & Design New York: Deco & More!, Atmosphere of Memory Not So Spherical--Nor Empirical…, Before 1984: George Orwell on British Imperialism in Burmese Days.

There wasn't any post-Halloween letdown
In the Depths of The Great Depression, Lefty Lenses at Work in the NY Photo League…, Which Is Worse: To Be a Foster Child or To Be Adopted? How About A Charity Case?, Stunning Auction Catalogues at Phillips de Pury: Own Your Own Art Gallery for Only $35!, Giant White Ghosts on Chicken Footed Stilts Save Shackleton Puppets at BAM!, Swedenborgian Angels Dance Once Again: Not at BAM, But at LaMaMa's Ellen Stewart…, Print Fair at Park Ave Armory: Penny Plain/Tuppence Colored Not So Cheap Anymore!, The Good Old Days at Judson Hall Live Again: Queen of the Mist Subtly Sings…, Sam Waterston Bravely Climbs That Final Actors Mountain: KING LEAR, Around the Corner from Ladurée/Paris: Mental Earth Growths & Smears at Knoedler!, Other Desert Cities, Reborn from Lincoln Center, Now in the Tiny Little Booth Theatre!, Brits Off Broadway at 59E59: Hop on Over To See Bunny!

What went on around the October snows?
Last Week, Islamic Art at the Morgan; This Week, More at the Met Museum!, Splintered Souls Over on West 43rd Street: Call Beth Israel!, Ronald Lauder's Treasures at Neue Galerie: All That Money Can Buy…, Sons of the Prophet: Not Sa'udi Arabs, But Lebanese, If You Please!, Nicole Awai's Almost Undone Show Almost Over…, Pete Gurney's 1974 Children Come Home To Roost at Beckett, Flaming Twenties Live Again in Brooklyn: Youth and Beauty!, Ingmar Bergman's Cries & Whispers Drastically Deconstructed at BAM!, Silver Screen/Silver Prints: Hollywood Glamour at the Grolier Society!, Film Noir Fashions on Parade at Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library, Chris Marlowe's Love's Labour's Not at All Lost at Public Theatre…, Master Pianist Alfred Brendel Gives a Master Class at Juilliard!

All around, it was a bad week.
Visible In the Flesh Ghost in the Machine at New City: How Did She Die?, There's the Grand Canal in Venice; Then There's the Root Canal Over on East 40th…, Woody Allen, Ethan Coen, & Elaine May Pen Plays, Relatively Speaking…, Islamic Manuscript Illuminations at the Morgan: But The Prophet Nixed Human Images!, Beijing Dance Theatre Ensemble Moves Through a Haze at BAM!, Young Gay Jewish Playwright Makes a Submission to the Humana Festival, Shtetl Tales: The Learning Play of Rabbi Levi Yitzhok, Son of Sarah, of Berditchev…, Very Athletic [Abridged] Complete World of Sports at the New Vic: Olympics, Anyone?, Meanwhile, in Future Holiday Destination, Libya, They Shot the Bad Guy!

A good "Cymbeline," Steichen's Vintage Photos and more
Broadway's Own Paul Gemignani Gives Our Regards to Broadway from MSM…, Steichen's Vintage Photos & Stieglitz's Artists Emerge from Met Museum Vaults!, Stop! Don't Take That Bus! Watch Out for Born Again Christians & Arson!, Man & Boy on 42nd Street: Father Pimps Son To Save Big Business Deal!, Thursday Gallery Night on 57th Street: So Much Art—So Little Time To See It!, AIDS Support Group Metaphorically on the Raft of the Medusa: Shark Alert!, Marta Eggerth Still Singing at 99: The Queen of Viennese Operetta Returns!, Garment Workers: Awake & Sing! Pins & Needles Revue Makes a Comeback!, Best Cymbeline Staging Ever by Fiasco Theatre Definitely No Fiasco…, Chinese Slave Labor Children Made Your iPad: Mike Daisey's Steve Jobs Takedown.

From Picassos to actress Zoe Kazan
Savoring Early Picassos at the Frick: From Collage to Cubism & Onward!, With Woodie King at the Castillo: New Federal Moves To 42nd Street!, David Smith’s Steel Constructions at the Whitney: Welders of the World Unite!, Martin Luther King’s Last Night at the Lorraine Motel: Early Check Out—, Actress Zoe Kazan Writes a Play: We Live Here at Manhattan Theatre Club, Could Edgar Bergen Have Done This: A Singing Ventriloquist in a Musical?, Nicky Silver Strikes Again: Linda Lavin Is Your Basic Jewish Mother!, Another Kind of Jewish Mother at 59E59: She Deserts Her Husband for a Paramour!

The Flowering of Art on the Lido di Venezia
Each year, OPEN, one of the most entertaining art exhibitions in the art world, peppers the beautiful island of Lido with unexpected and imaginative sculptures and installations. Essentially an outdoor walking tour with a few in-hotel installations, OPEN begins the minute you disembark from the vaporetto onto the Piazzale St. Maria Elisabetta. It continues along the shop and restaurant laden Via Lepanto, morphs into the lushly planted promenade of Lungomare G. Marconi, and ends overlooking the beach, at the very chic Hotel Westin Excelsior, the infamous hangout of the Venice Film Festival crowd. This year Madonna and George Clooney, followed by lusting hordes of screaming acolytes, was all the rage. By Ed Rubin.

Big, Bold, and Undeniably Ambitious Jonathan Prince at the Sculpture Garden
The work of Massachusetts based artist Jonathan Prince, currently on view till November 18 at the Sculpture Garden in the atrium of the old IBM building in New York City under the title Torn Steel, like the artist himself who resembles Julian Schnabel, is big, bold and undeniably ambitious. But underneath the swagger of the man and his work – this based on an in-depth studio visit, a couple of wide-ranging conversations of the inquiring kind, and of course the four, eye to mind-grabbing, sculptures on view – lives a sensitive soul, albeit it on top of a simmering volcano, whose innards house an acute and restless intellect that appears to know no bounds. By Ed Rubin.

The Extravagant Constructions of Joyce Melander-Dayton
While the title of Santa Fe based artist Joyce Melander-Dayton's current outing at the June Kelly Gallery in New York City reads Extravagant Constructions, an apt title, especially when you are standing up close and studying the artist's intricately bejeweled craftsmanship and her use of materials and patterning – think Faberge Egg or the Gobelin Tapestries – it could just as easily have been labeled, depending on where you are standing in relation to her work, where your brain is at the moment, and how well you know the artist's past history, Musical Meditations, Celestial Compositions, or How I Keep My Life Together. For the exhibition is all of this and more, the more being, quietly beautiful in the extreme, and very much alive. By Edward Rubin.

Dean Project- New York. Travellers in time, Wedding banquet, Brueghel, 2010, 17” x 24” C-print, Courtesy of Dean Project.

Riding the Crest of the Latin American Art Wave
This past November, "Pinta: The 2010 Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art Show" moved its four-day, New York City celebration of Latin American art from its Chelsea habitat to pier 92 on the Hudson River, into the same location made famous by The Armory Show. With daylight streaming in from the pier's surrounding windows, the new and improved "Pinta" with larger and brighter aisles, more galleries and art installations, a bar and café for the public, and a private, upper level VIP section--with roughly four times more space than the old Pinta--generously gifted its visitors and exhibitors alike with more breathing and thinking room, as well as strolling, eating, and oh my tired feet, resting options. Although the art of legendary artists Fernando Botero, Wilfredo Lam, Lygia Clark, and Ana Mendieta, as they did in the first three editions of Pinta, took their customary bows, for the most part, it was the work of the young contemporary Latin American artists whose fresh and unique ways at looking at life that supplied the majority of the fair's visual excitement. Though many paintings, sculptures, and a few videos were on view, it was the quietly inventive work of the photographers – digital and otherwise – that depicted life, in its myriad postures, most interestingly. By Edward Rubin.

Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera
For over half a century, Norman Rockwell chronicled American life with pictures that seemed to spring from the heartland. In fact, the pictures he created appear so natural and spontaneous it's hard to believe they were carefully set up and photographed by Rockwell and his assistants, often in his studio. Brooklyn Museum's exhibit "Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera," explores the artist not as a painter or illustrator, but as a photographer who carefully set up his scenes much as a film director must work. Curator Ron Schick has displayed these study photographs, as well as drawings and tear sheets, alongside the actual pictures to give the viewer a vivid picture of how the artist worked. By Paulanne Simmons.

What Goes Around Comes Around
It is somewhat ironic that Julian Schnabel's exhibition, "Julian Schnabel: Art and Film" (September 1, 2010-January 2, 2011), at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto's version of New York City's MoMA, is following in the footsteps of the museum's King Tut exhibition, as both men are known for doing things in a very big way, King Tut with his tomb, and Schnabel, highly in evidence here, with his titanic canvases that all but dwarf the common man. For the fifty-nine year old Schnabel, who was all the rage with his smashed plate paintings during the late 70s and early 80s, before he eventually fell off his art world pedestal, this exhibition – the largest since his 1987 Whitney Museum Retrospective – is tantamount to a Second Coming. The "ball has come back into his court" as he gratefully acknowledged during his press preview. By Ed Rubin.

Murakami @ Versailles
Once again the battle between preserving classical French culture from the ugly claws of globalization has been making headlines in France. This time around it is provocateur artist Takashi Murakami, Japan’s answer to Andy Warhol, whose recent exhibition of comic based manga and anime inspired paintings, sculptures, and one rug, at the Château Versailles and its gardens (September 14–December 12, 2010), raised the hackles of Prince Sixte-Henri de Bourbon-Parme a descendent of the French king Louis XIV and the Coordination de la Défense de Versailles, an organization specifically formed to stop artist Jeff Koons from exhibiting at the palace in 2008. The suit, intending to give Koons and his giant metal dog the boot, initiated by another Royal, the prince’s nephew, was dismissed by the court. By Ed Rubin.

In The End A Good Story Is All That Remains: Eight New York Artists Figuratively Speaking
"In The End A Good Story Is All That Remains" comprises the recent work of an eclectic group of eight New York City-based artists. As its title and subtitle imply, the human figure informs storytelling, whose attendant connotations of fantasy, intimacy, and attentiveness set the exhibition’s tone. By Earl Miller.

Cal Lane's "Ammunition"
The title of Cal Lane's show, "Ammunition,"conjured--at least linguistically--an image of the military preparing for an attack. Though it might be too fanciful, the show is a curiously elegant juxtaposition of metallic lace-like sculptures with industrial materials like steel beams, oil drums and ammunition boxes. Lane's work is hovering between loftiness of religious imagery and the poverty of the utilitarian object. All of her works have a sensual and immersive quality and like much of Lane's work, a geometric simplicity. By Eva Ostrowska.

Why not perform with a run of 33 miles?
If you are tired of superficial, quick and easy exhibitions which seem to be oriented to market desires, the work of Guido van der Werve should come as something of an antidote. A week after the N.Y.C Marathon, Dutch video artist Guido van der
Werve comes with a mission: carrying a bouquet of chamomile flowers on a run of 33 miles from the Luhring Augustine Gallery in Chelsea to composer Sergei Rachmaninov’s gravesite in Valhalla, New York. It was obvioulsy not a case of one artist running privately for over thirty miles, but truly the work of what French critic Nicolas Bourriaud could have called an "intersubjective exchange" as the "substrate" for his work. By Eva Ostrowska.

Stefanie Guthreil's "Dreckige Katze"
Stefanie Guthreil's exhibition, "Dreckige Katz," comprising installations, paintings and sculptures, felt true to her reputation for narrative vision and provocative phantasmagoria. Her new work requires an exploratory approach, as if navigating in bizarre humorous nightmares, oscillating between psychedelic violence and very bad taste. Guthreil's paintings are characterized by small and huge weird figures, caricatures of people she knows in her everyday life, that she uses to create surreal atmospheres and often grotesque pictorial stories. All her creatures, most of the time cats, are regurgitating or vomiting unexpected objects. A cow disgorging a pearl necklace, a black cat ejecting from his teeth a green, red and white rainbow; a masturbating monkey and other animals are displayed on wall-sized canvases. The whole exhibition is a muddle of sexual scatology, political references, kitchy violence and the vague depravity, giving rise to an ambiguous sense of anxiety and unease. By Eva Ostrowska.

"Yigal Ozeri: Garden of the Gods" at Mike Weiss Gallery
Yigal Ozeri explores personifications of youthful innocence, visualized as lovely young maidens cum goddesses, in his new exhibition that runs until June 11 at the Mike Weiss Gallery. Ozeri captures the essence of young girls, unaware of their true feminine nature. He masterfully transforms the Southwest landscape into a universal terrain of the mind, where red replaces green in a hot alien zone. The artist seems especially inspired by the 19th century painter Eduard Manet, who molded the subject of the female figure in the landscape with his personal stamp. Ozeri captures that indescribable time in life, when girls verge on becoming the future. By Mary Hrbacek.

Cloth Sculptures Set to Music in Anne Ferrer's "Billowing Beauty"
French-born Catalan artist Anne Ferrer presents her first exhibition in New York City "Billowing Beauty" at the LAB Gallery on Lexington Avenue and 47th Street through June 3. Curated by Edward Rubin and with musical accompaniment by Los Angeles Carol Worthey, Ferrer's new series of colorful cloth sculptures break the boundary between the gallery viewers adn the curious public who stop to wonder at the eye-catching array of indescribable shapes and forms. The organic shapes, warm harmonious hues, and rhythmic organization interact, infused with vivid joyous fun. By Mary Hrbacek.

Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L’amour fou, an intimate and new journey of Picasso's art
With "Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L'amour fou," the Gagosian Gallery, situated in Chelsea, brings us into the secret intimacy of Pablo Picasso, the man and the artist. You don't have to be French to understand "Crazy love," the meaning of "l'amour fou," and why it is a fitting title for the exhibition. The entire gallery is filled up with renderings of Marie-Thérèse in drawings, paintings and sculptures from 1927 to 1940. Picasso's love leaks out of each piece of art. By Agate Elie.

Mary Hrbacek at the CREON Gallery in New York City
Working in this naturalist mode is artist Mary Hrbacek whose anthropomorphic portraits of trees are currently on exhibit at the Creon Gallery in New York City through April 30. Curated by Richard Pasquarelli, under the title Entwined, Hrbacek's tree paintings are not only transcendent but speak directly to the heart, reminding us, a bit surreptitiously at that, that we are all walking trees. Our spines are trunks, our legs and arms are branches, and sooner or later, with twisted limbs and weathered bones, we too shall be planted. By Edward Rubin.

Painting and photo by David Fludd, 6'x5'. Acrylic on canvas 2005.

Hatch Billops Collection presents David Fludd for "Artist and Influence"
The Hatch Billops Collection is a not-for-profit research library founded in 1975. Its mission is to collect and preserve materials about Black Cultural Art for artists, scholars and the general public. Throughout the year, Hatch Billops presents "Artist & Influence." This event hosts African American, Asian and Spanish artists talking about their work in the form of an interview. These oral stories are recorded and become part of the Hatch Billops Collection archives. By Agate Elie.

No More Rights in Republicanland
Michael Patterson-Carver's new solo exhibition, "Loose Lips Do Sink Ships," is more than a dozen small drawings hanging on walls and all looking like the work of children, but only for the first quick look. As we get closer to these cartoonlike drawings, we understand that there's a childish drawing style, but the content is clearly satire against Republicanism and Right-Wing Authoritarianism of all stripes. Suddenly the work is no longer naïve. By Eve Jégou.

Exhibition by Qiu Shihua and Shi Jing, the Magic of Imagination and Interpretation's Possibilities
Entering Chambers Fine Art's gallery was like being in an empty white room. Yes, you could see painting shapes hanging on the walls but nothing visible on the actual canvases. The “Fugitive Visions” painting exhibition by Qiu Shihua and Shi Jing will surprise you along your journey. Both artists are from China: Qiu Shihua from the Sichuan Province and Shi Jing from the Yunnan Province. At first glance, their work seems to have the same monochromatic palette but the closer you get, the stronger color nuances reveal and shapes appear on the canvas. By Agate Elie.

New Solo Exhibition of California Artist Christian Vincent
When we push the door and step in to the Mike Weiss Gallery, we enter a place that is very austere, impersonal and unwelcoming, which probably influences our interpretations of "Christian Vincent: Tunnel Vision," the new solo exhibition of the California artist Christian Vincent at the Mike Weiss Gallery, 520 West 24th Street, until February 12th, 2011. By Eve Jégou.

Carlo Pittore's paintings and pastel drawings
Carlo Pittore, who died in 2005, was a gallery owner and painter who also worked as an advocate for gay artists in New York and Maine. The first major New York exhibition of his paintings and pastels is being presented through January 22 at Leslie Lohman Gay Art Foundation, 26 Wooster Street in SoHo. By Eve Jégou.

An evocative fine art installation, dedicated to the healing professions, a minyan of ten chairs within a scrim-paneled chamber provides sanctuary and reflection. An evocative fine art installation, dedicated to the healing professions, a minyan of ten chairs within a scrim-paneled chamber provides sanctuary and reflection.

Jewish Museum of Florida
One enters the 2007 restoration of the oldest synagogue in Miami Beach, originally built in 1929, and becomes surrounded by an airy inner-sanctuary of art! PSALMSONG, a multi- media Installation by Carol Hamoy, reveals itself as a multi-media, multi-cultural, Jewish feminist, post-modern sanctuary of fragile translucent fabric. One immediately becomes enchanted by a creation of visual poetry by artist Carol Hamoy. It's creation took three years from the first stitch to complete the work. Hamoy's work is hand-made; which she feel is enormously important in the computer era, in order for the viewer to feel the hand of the artist.