The exhibitions this week show us how we form ourselves in the image of history, and vice versa. Lotus L. Kang’s Assemblies on 52 Walker Draw from Diasporic Memory, but her draped film sculptures are an ongoing document of the peculiarities of Light and Movement of the exhibition. In the meantime, Rashid Johnson’s research in the Guggenheim Museum draws from a dense network of black intellectual thinking and in turn offers a contemporary visual vernacular.
Dan, two group shows – Home At Cooper Hewitt and Super fine With the with – compete against the ways in which ordinary people construct identities, whether because of our domestic institutions or our individual style. As you can see, although three of the four shows are only blocks apart at the museum of the Upper East Side, they include continents and centuries and radically different thinking systems. But that is the miracle of New York and the miracle of art. –Lisa Yin Zhang, Associate Editor
Lotus L. Kang: Al
52 Walker52 Walker Street, Tribeca, Manhattan
Up to and including 7 June
‘[Lotus L.] Kang evaluates which new possibilities and temporalities can arise from the alien or forbidden processes, such as exposing film to sunlight. ” –Danielle Wu
Read the full review here.
Home Making Home – Smithsonian Design every year
Cooper Hewitt2 East 91st Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Up to and including 10 August
“With a broad medley of 25 newly imposed installations with flexible interpretations of both home and design, Home Takes visitors through the heads of artists and designers from the US, American areas and tribal nations. ” –Julie Schneider
Read the full review here.
Superfine: Customize Black Style
Metropolitan Museum of Art1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Up to and including 26 October
‘Superfine: Customize Black Style Is a triumph, not only because of the expansion of black fashion history and visual culture, but also because of the moving and substantive approach that concentrates ordinary individuals and their clothing practices. ” –Imani Wiliford
Read the full review here.
Rashid Johnson: a poem for deep thinkers
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum1071 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan
Up to and including January 18, 2026
‘[Rashid Johnson’s] A distinction is the key to this exhibition of 95 works of art that are full of references to black identity, the rhetorical construction and historical antecedents, and his visual codes, the dense bush of meanings in the forest that is black. ” –Seph Rodney
Read the full review here.
