New York Art Tours

Home
New York Art Tours

Merrily Kerr, a professional art critic and licensed NYC tour guide, offers private and scheduled gr So how do you choose what to see?

New York City art galleries are world class, and its museums house some of the finest art collections in the world, from antiquities to contemporary art. Join art critic, college educator and professional tour guide Merrily Kerr for inside access to New York's art scene on a custom designed private tour or a scheduled, small group tour. Please contact [email protected] for more information.

23/12/2024

Though based in Los Angeles, the mid-century Light and Space movement is well represented in New York galleries, a happy circumstance aided by Pace Gallery’s Pace Gallery long-term relationships with key artists. ‘Irwin/Bell: The ‘60s’ at Pace’s Tribeca offshoot, ‘125 Newbury,’ 125 Newbury presents work by Larry Bell and Robert Irwin that revisits their early shows in New York, including the premier of Irwin’s aluminum disc paintings in 1968. Installed in a back gallery with a bench inviting visitors to sit and contemplate, this untitled piece from 1967 presents a circular aluminum form that exists materially but appears to be composed entirely of light and shadow. (On view in Tribeca through Jan 11th. Check gallery holiday hours before visiting during the holiday season.)

Robert Irwin, Untitled, sprayed lacquer on aluminum disc, 62” diameter, 1967.

20/12/2024

Amid the holiday throngs in the Met Museum’s The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Great Hall, renowned Taipei-based artist Tong Yang-Tze’s monumental calligraphic installation stands out for its stark clarity and gracefully energetic form. Two canvases present phrases that encourage self-reflection and engagement with the new. Here, the saying ‘Stones from other mountains can refine our jade’ derives from a 3,000-year-old classical Chinese text originally intended to encourage an embrace of talent from another country. (On view through April 8th, 2025).

Tong Yang-Tze, installation view of ‘Stones from other mountains can refine our jade,’ ’24 in ‘Dialogue’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nov 2024.

18/12/2024

It’s always a pleasure to encounter British abstract painter Ian Davenport’s colorful cascades of paint, artworks that result from pouring vividly colored acrylic paint down an aluminum surface. In new work at Chelsea’s Kasmin Gallery Kasmin Gallery vertical lines give way to a looser order toward the bottom of each painting, or here, on a panel placed on the floor below. Intending to evoke natural forces including air currents and tides while pointing to the colors of Renaissance paintings by artists including Fra Angelico and Caravaggio, the paintings offer both formal and optical enjoyment. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 20th).

16/12/2024

Malaysian artist Anne Samat’s monumental family portrait at Marc Straus Gallery Marc Straus Gallery is a memorial to her late mother, brother and sister. At center, an abstracted figure bearing a ‘no smoking’ sign alludes to Samat’s brother’s fatal illness, yet his form towers protectively over a small standing figure before a small pond. Constructed in everyday materials ranging from rakes to plastic swords and woven with a mix of yarn and rattan sticks, Samat updates Malaysian and SE Asian artistic practices in a powerful installation acknowledging the importance of family and, as the title ‘Never Walk in Anyone’s Shadow’ suggests, self-reliance. (On view in Tribeca through Dec 21st).

Anne Samat, Never Walk in Anyone’s Shadow 2, rattan sticks, kitchen and garden utensils, beads, ceramic, metal and plastic ornaments, handwoven tapestry, 151 ½ x 285 x 77 inches, 2024.

13/12/2024

Pace Gallery’s Pace Gallery current exhibition of Irving Penn’s photographs from the ‘40s to 2000, curated by supremely image-savvy artist Hank Willis Thomas, is compact but impactful, featuring juxtapositions of photos with often radically different subject matter that nevertheless have some affinity. A 1947 studio portrait of New Yorker cartoonists poised on a scaffold hangs near a photo of a careful arrangement of blocks, immediately conveying careful arrangement and balance rather than humor or play. Around the corner, two models in Issey Miyake echo the form of a neighboring image of two weathered cigarette butts, a parallel that crashes together the fashionable and the discarded. Hung on gallery walls constructed to recall the temporary structures Penn used as sets, photos are positioned near each other but on different walls, similar yet different. Here, tangled members of a wrestling family appear opposite an arrangement of seafood, both shot in 1948, demonstrating the ‘visual muscle memory’ that Willis Thomas argues ties together Penn’s 70-year career. (On view through Dec 21st).

Irving Penn, Dusek Brothers (1 of 3), vintage gelatin silver print, 7 11/16 x 9 5/8, image, ed of 41, New York, 1948.

Irving Penn, Bouillabaisse, chromogenic print, 24 x 20 inches, images, ed of 7, Barcelona, 1948.

11/12/2024

Complex and colorful, Jiha Moon’s ceramic vessels at Derek Eller Gallery Derek Eller Gallery entice with their cheeky updates to historic forms and their contemporary subject matter. Dumplings and succulent fruits allude to pleasure while forming the two eyes on this pot dominated by a fake grin. Moon explains that this work is autobiographical, the dark clouds representing the impact on her life of the weather (specifically hurricanes) in Tallahassee, where she lives. The pagoda, boat and two birds refer to Blue Willow Pattern, an English take on blue and white Chinese porcelain with an accompanying love story that alternates between tragedy and happy ending. (On view in Tribeca through Dec 21st).

Jiha Moon, Banana Thunderhead, porcelain, underglaze, glaze, 16.5 x 11 x 9 inches, 2024.

09/12/2024

There’s less than a week left to see Marian Goodman Gallery’s Marian Goodman Gallery huge group exhibition in its new Tribeca location, a beautifully renovated 35,000 square foot industrial building from 1875. Just inside the first room, an iteration of Pierre Huyghe’s ongoing ‘Timekeeper Drill Core’ series involved removing a circular portion of the gallery wall from the old 57th Street location and sanding down a circle at center to reveal the many times the space had been painted in its over forty years uptown. Smartly installed, the show encourages conversations among circular forms in its initial room – Gabriel Orozco’s bike-wheel sculpture and Nairy Baghramian’s cylindrical abstraction are placed near Huyghe’s piece – suggesting that the gallery’s current manifestation is the beginning of a new cycle. (On view through Dec 14th).

Pierre Huyghe, Timekeeper Drill Core (MGG 57th St), paint, plasterboard, 2 ½ x 23 3/8 inches, 2024.

06/12/2024

Jessie Henson’s sewn works at Tribeca’s Broadway Gallery resemble elements of the natural world - water, wind smoke, arial overviews of landscape, or segments of the atmosphere - yet remain fully and enticingly abstract. The suggestion of movement created by curving masses of stitches is made complicated by rips in the paper support, torn in the process of repeated handling on Henson’s industrial sewing machine. Further evidence of the process of making appears in holes pierced by a needle but not filled with thread, a device which adds shadow and patterning. Contingent yet complex, Henson’s compositions arrest the eye with their dynamism. (On view through Dec 14th).

Jessie Henson, Where are you now?, polyester and rayon thread on paper, 82 x 54 x 2.75 inches, 2024.

04/12/2024

Driven by the poetic idea of bridging the 7,7 nautical mile wide Straight of Gibraltar, Francis Alys’ solo show at David Zwirner Gallery David Zwirner pictures fanciful connections between Moroccan and Spanish territory in the form of installation, video, painting and more. One painting anthropomorphizes sea cliffs into human forms, while elsewhere a giant child stands in the Straight with two people-packed boats under her arms. In the back gallery, beyond a lightbox displaying news articles about migration across the Mediterranean, a video features a row of kids from Morrocco and a similar line of Spanish youth at the beach, heading into the water carrying toy boats made from shoes (seen here in sculptural form elsewhere in the show). Resembling both personal items lost in migration and suggesting resourceful toymaking, the boats are somber and lighthearted at the same time, expressing continued hope despite harsh realities. (On view through Dec 18th).

Francis Alys, installation view of ‘Francis Alys: The Gibraltar Projects,’ Nov 2024.

02/12/2024

A photograph of the top hat and gloves that Abraham Lincoln wore when he was assassinated and a shot of Elvis Presley’s TV pierced by a bullet hole are two images with intriguing backstories in iconic photographer Annie Leibovitz’s mini-survey at Hauser and Wirth Gallery Hauser & Wirth in Chelsea. Less dramatic but more insightful are the many portraits of artists that include Simone Leigh’s hands shaping a piece of clay near a landscape that inspired Georgia O’Keefe, or an Icelandic glacier that vaguely resembles a neighboring shot of Cindy Sherman’s head. Here, Leibovitz’s image of David Hockney, from a period in which he’d returned to the north of England, allows us an enjoyably intimate view of the artist at work. (On view through Jan 11th).

Annie Leibovitz, David Hockney, Bridlington, East Yorkshire, England, archival pigment print, 2024.

29/11/2024

Installed at a diagonal in David Zwirner Gallery’s David Zwirner huge ground floor 20th Street space, late artist Richard Serra’s 2015 sculpture ‘Every Which Way’ forces a decision from entering visitors who must opt to turn right, left or wind their way between the 16 steel panels. Regardless of how it is approached, the piece invites interaction and a physical comparison between a visitor’s body and the giant, weighty slabs of metal seven, nine or eleven feet tall that Serra likened to architecture. Unlike Serra’s rolled steel sculptures with their curving walls and warm, brown patina, this piece’s abrupt flatness and grey steel surfaces convey austerity. Their arrangement in shorter segments, however, gives visitors agency to explore this minimal but engaging arrangement of form. (On view through Dec 14th).

Richard Serra, Every Which Way, steel, 2015.

27/11/2024

Simone Leigh’s handsome show of new work at Matthew Marks Gallery Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea features several sculptures of female figures in skirts that, with their substantial size, convey power and solidity. Larger than life, the torso and head of this generalized individual is nevertheless small in comparison to her skirt. Composed of giant ceramic cowry shells, the material nods to past forms of currency and to esoteric spiritual knowledge. Resembling the domed shapes of traditional Musgum architecture, West African spiritual objects, and face jugs from the American South, and alluding to many other aspects of African and diasporic culture, Leigh’s beautiful figures manifest complex cultural heritage and histories. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 14th).

Simone Leigh, Untitled, earthenware, stoneware, and steel armature, 90 x 73 x 75 inches, 2023-24.

25/11/2024

Grenada-born British artist Denzil Forrester’s current gallery exhibitions at Andrew Kreps Gallery and Stephen Friedman Gallery Stephen Friedman Gallery in Tribeca showcase vibrantly colored moments from London’s dub reggae scene in past decades. A regular club visitor from the 1980s, Forrester sketched by night and painted by day, documenting legendary DJs like Jah Shaka, who he honors here in ‘Tribute to Shaka.’ Figures in the periphery of the painting seem to dissolve, as if the reverb was literally breaking apart form and altering the material realm. (On view through Dec 18th).

22/11/2024

Titled ‘The Generosity of Trauma,’ this painting by British artist Jade Fadojutimi is one of only two works (along with ‘Sulking is a virtue’) in her show at Gagosian Gallery Gagosian with a title. Typically colorful and energetic with areas that appear to either be plants or zones of pure abstraction, the artist’s new work explores identity through color. She has said, “When I feel emotion, I see a color and that’s how my paintings come to life.’ In tune with global challenges like climate change and displacement and the artist’s personal experience with depression, Fadojutimi’s two works with oxymoronic titles suggest that pushing her practice forward through difficulty gives it its vibrant character. (On view in Chelsea through Dec 21st).

The Generosity of Trauma, acrylic, oil, oil pastel and oil bar on canvas, 98 7/16 x 68 7/8 inches, 2024.

20/11/2024

James Cohan Gallery’s James Cohan austere, white cube front room hosts two equally minimal sculptural forms by Brazilian artist Alexandre da Cunha that allude poetically to labor and the human body. Two precast concrete manholes nestle together, aligning their openings to provide a passage through both forms and pointing to their function as portals for workers. On the wall nearby, a circular form made of shovel handles and backed with colorful fabrics from t-shirts, a cleaning cloth, a bed sheet, a tea towel, a hand towel, a sarong and more again points to the bodies and domestic routines of the individuals wielding shovels in their work life. Industrial or personal in scale, heavy or light, each set of found materials finds beauty in the built environment and its making. (On view through Dec 21st).

Alexandre da Cunha, (right) Public Sculpture (Touch I), precast concrete, 86 x 86 x 30 in, 2024 and (left) Vitral (Rosetta), shovel handles, t-shirts, cleaning cloth, bed sheet, tea towel, hand towel, sarong, fabric cut outs, 80 ¾ x 80 ¾ x 2 3/8 inches, 2024.

18/11/2024

Long inspired by Old Master painters, Cecily Brown’s latest solo show at Paula Cooper Gallery Paula Cooper Gallery engages with the fruitful collaboration between 17th century painters Jan Brueghel the Elder’s and Peter Paul Rubens. Brown’s work on paper – etchings, drawings with watercolor and monotypes – reworks aspects of the duo’s collaborative series of paintings ‘The Five Senses’ from 1617-18, abstracting and condensing the space of interior scenes. This lush and engaging painting in the gallery’s main space takes that impulse further, proffering a recognizable plate of oysters with lobster at the center of the canvas while turning the room’s other forms into a fluid, fluctuating space from which faces and forms emerge. (On view through Dec 7th).

Cecily Brown, The Five Senses, 89 x 83 inches, oil on linen, 2023.

15/11/2024

Indonesian artist Mulyana’s signature colorful crocheted coral reef sculptures give way in his latest solo show at Sapar Contemporary SAPAR Contemporary to clusters of white forms resembling bleached coral. Fashioned in plastic instead of yarn, the new work is every bit as intricately crafted and pleasingly detailed as his previous work, but the attraction is uncomfortable. Made from a material harmful to sea life and speaking to damage done by climate change, the work has an elegiac quality as sad as it is beautiful. (On view through Nov 20th. Curated by John Silvis).

Mulyana, Betty 27, plastic yarn, plastic net, cable wire, 63 x 80 ¾ x 11 ¾ inches, 2024.

13/11/2024

Being tricked is fun when it’s New York-based artist and architect Erin O’Keefe doing the fooling. O’Keefe’s new photographs at Sargent’s Daughters Sargent's Daughters in Tribeca look like paintings made with thick strokes of a brush, but what appears to be textured paint marks are actually the edges of wooden blocks that the artist paints and arranges to read like an abstract composition. Some pieces come partly into focus as photos of 3-D arrangements but continue to be ambiguous; others only make sense after some puzzling. With their bright colors and clever composition, the photographs offer an optical workout that is pure pleasure. (On view in Tribeca through Dec 21st).

Erin O’Keefe, Snake Eyes, unique archival pigment print on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag paper mounted to Dibond aluminum, 42 x 30 inches, 2024.

Address

Opening Hours

Tuesday	09:00 - 17:00
Wednesday	09:00 - 17:00
Thursday	09:00 - 17:00
Friday	09:00 - 17:00
Saturday	09:00 - 17:00

Telephone

(877) 839-4926

Website

https://www.newyorkarttours.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when New York Art Tours posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to New York Art Tours:

Shortcuts

Address
Telephone
Opening Hours
Alerts
Contact The Business
Claim ownership or report listing
Want your business to be the top-listed Travel Agency?

Country:

City: