Welcome to This Week in Culture, a weekly agenda of show openings and events in major cities across the globe. From galleries to institutions and one-of-a-kind happenings, our ongoing survey highlights the best of contemporary culture, for those willing to make the journey.
New York
“Henry Taylor: B Side”
Where: Whitney Museum of American Art
When: October 4, 2023 - January 28, 2024
Why It’s Worth a Look: Henry Taylor’s traveling exhibition, "B Side," is named after the reverse side of a record—the side that often receives less attention and features experimental tracks. The sentiment reflects the Los Angeles-based artist's improvisational art-making process, which features quickly-executed paintings of people from all walks of life. Loose, bold-colored brushstrokes draw images from his memory, newspaper clippings, and in-person sittings.
Know Before You Go: “Henry Taylor: B Side” arranges Taylor’s paintings thematically, alongside a collection of his assemblage sculptures, early drawings, painted objects on recycled cigarette packs, and other everyday items, in addition to two new installations.
“A Metta Prayer” by Jacolby Satterwhite
Where: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
When: October 2, 2023 - January 7, 2024
Why It’s Worth a Look: Jacolby Satterwhite is known for creating immersive, kaleidoscopic installations that blend mediums to tackle contemporary issues and theory. In his new commission for the Met’s Great Hall, the Brooklyn-based artist renders over a hundred objects from the museum's permanent collection—including ancient terra cotta figures and a Noh mask—in a multichannel video designed as a surrealist landscape of New York. Accompanied by an acid house beat and projected lights, the installation includes a series of performances put on by Satterwhite and several of his frequent collaborators.
Know Before You Go: Satterwhite’s work often references art history and pop culture, particularly music videos and video games. His artistic style and aesthetic is heavily influenced by videos he used to watch as a kid, including those by Janet Jackson, Björk, Michael Jackson, and Madonna.
“Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith”
Where: Whitney Museum of American Art
When: October 4, 2023 - January 28, 2024
Why It’s Worth a Look: The Whitney will showcase the paintings, films, poetry, music, and sound recordings of artist, folklorist, and radical non-conformist Harry Smith. The exhibition—co-curated and designed by sculptor Carol Bove—traces his life story, from the Native American ceremonies of his childhood in the Depression-era Pacific Northwest to his youthful experimentation with mind-altering substances such as peyote, and intellectual investigations in postwar Northern California, all while becoming an essential figure in New York’s fringe avant-garde.
Know Before You Go: Smith’s most well-known and influential work is “Anthology of American Folk Music,” a three-album compilation of recordings from 1920s and '30s Appalachian folk songs, fiddle music, gospel, and blues, which grew a cult-like audience after its release in 1952.
“Stockholm Syndrome” by Enoc Perez
Where: Harper’s Chelsea 512
When: October 4 - November 11, 2023
Why It’s Worth a Look: Puerto Rican artist Enoc Perez explores the intersection of geography and colonialism through the aesthetics of a tropical Caribbean paradise in “Stockholm Syndrome,” a collection of new works. The artist uses printmaking and oil painting to highlight the infinite indulgence and leisure of pristine beaches, turquoise waters, and leafy palm trees, typically shown on resort brochures and travel catalogs, here meant to encourage viewers to question consumerism and the groups who are truly served by these tropical retreats.
Know Before You Go: Perez began painting at age eight, eventually leaving San Juan for New York to continue the practice at Pratt Institute. It was there that he began to question the political relationship between his native and adopted homes, and the influence of global powers on those worldwide.
Amsterdam
“This Will Not End Well” by Nan Goldin
Where: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
When: October 7, 2023 - January 28, 2024
Why It’s Worth a Look: Nan Goldin delves into the joys and sorrows of human life in her first solo exhibition as a filmmaker. The show, featuring six different slide shows of photography and moving images, highlights social issues close to the artist's heart. The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, 1981-2022, is one of Goldin's most well-known works, an ever-changing exploration of seduction and destruction at the hands of sex and drugs. Sisters, Saints and Sibyls, 2004–22, delves into the trauma incurred by relatives and friends of those lost to suicide.
Know Before You Go: Amsterdam is the first stop for this traveling exhibition, organized by Moderna Museet in Stockholm, which will head to Berlin, Milan, and Paris next.
Chicago
“Camille Claudel”
Where: Art Institute of Chicago
When: October 7, 2023 - February 19, 2024
Why It’s Worth a Look: Critic Octave Mirbeau once said of Camille Claudel's work, “We are in the presence of something unique, a revolt of nature: a woman genius.” Like many of her female artist peers, regardless of her genius, French sculptor Camille Claudel was given little recognition for her work during her lifetime. For the latter part of her life, Claudel was unjustly confined to a mental institution, cutting her career even shorter. This fall, the Art Institute showcases over 60 works from the artist from over 30 private and public collections, a testament to the scope of Claudel's oeuvre.
Know Before You Go: The exhibition comes just in time for the 130th anniversary of the first public presentation of Claudel's work stateside, which took place at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, also in Chicago.
Los Angeles
“Barbara T. Smith: Proof”
Where: Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
When: October 7, 2023-January 14, 2024
Why It’s Worth a Look: Los Angeles artist Barbara T. Smith is known as a pioneer of the late 1960s performance art movement. An expansive survey of her artwork and performance-related ephemera exploring self, sexuality, gender roles, love, life, and death, this exhibition compiles 60 years of the artist's practice. The collection also includes lesser-known objects such as her radical Xerox works, mixed media assemblages, artist’s books, paintings, photographs, and videos.
Know Before You Go: ICA LA is publishing the first survey catalogue of Smith's work in the spring of 2024, featuring an illustrated account of the artist’s life and artwork and commissioned texts by scholars Gloria Sutton, Catherine Taft, and Pietro Rigolo.
“Minute by Minute” by Tomashi Jackson
"Repro" by Rose Marcus
Where: Night Gallery
When: September 30 - November 4, 2023
Why It’s Worth a Look: “Minute by Minute” offers 10 new paintings by multimedia artist Tomashi Jackson incorporating her mother’s photography of trees, bark, leaves, and branches frozen in time during the height of the Covid pandemic, two months before her mother passed away. Running concurrently, "Repro" is a series based on a single photograph of a construction worker, taken as part of the Rose Marcus's last exhibition with the gallery. Here, it is remixed and reworked using photography, printmaking, and painting.
Know Before You Go: The title "Minute by Minute" is derived from The Doobie Brothers’s 1978 album of the same name. In commemoration of Jackson moving from LA to San Francisco to attend art college, her late mother, Aver Marie Burroughs, gifted the physical disc to the artist from her own collection.
