NIGHT LIGHTS

The Friday night lights of Nuit Blanche New York’s 3D moving collage with a live score presentation at the St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on Mott Street tonight is just a visual appetizer to the spectacle of tomorrow evening’s building-size installation “Change of State.” NBNY will project a series of 12 site-specific pieces onto the New Museum’s all-white façade, which already looks a bit like a canvas, or in this case, screen. See pieces from artists, including Agathe de Bailliencourt, Krzysztof Wodiczko, and others, as part of the museum’s Ideas City at Night program.

Change of State 2013

photo via

HAPPY MAY DAY

Have big ideas for May? Get inspired and explore your best thoughts with the third annual Ideas City festival starting today at the New Museum. Dedicated to fostering the future of cities through art and culture, the festival is geared toward finding ways to make metropolises better places to live, work, and play. Running through May 4, this year’s theme is Untapped Capital, focusing on which urban resources are under-recognized or underutilized, through conferences, workshops, and projects. On Saturday, the four-day event culminates with a StreetFest on the Bowery.

Ideas City Festival

NEXT-GEN PARTY

Awards and gala season is kicking off now and while it’s exciting to watch the A-list walk down the red carpet, it’s also fun to party like a celeb yourself. Celebrate the future of art and technology with the New Museum’s Next Generation party this Friday, January 11 (tickets for non-members are $150). Benefitting the 2015 Generational Triennial, this downtown art event will feature red-carpet services by DIS Magazine, as well as expected guests like hockey star Sean Avery, Charlotte Ronson, and Chloë Sevigny, among other hipsters-about-town. 

The New Museum’s Next Generation Party

photo via

NEW MUSEUM TURNS 35

Last night, art luminaries, fashion icons, filmmakers, and trustees
turned up to fete the New Museum’s 35th Anniversary Spring Gala at
Cipriani Wall Street with honorary chairs Chloë Sevigny and Nadja
Swarovski. Guests arrived in a stylish palette of coral and jade to
celebrate the colors of 35-year anniversary gifts (coral for
traditionalists and jade for modernists), which just so happen to be
some of hottest colors of spring. Honoring Paul McCarthy, an artist
best known for his work depicting whimsical icons like Santa Claus and
Snow White, the evening kicked off with cocktails and music by
D’Marquesina, followed by dinner, and then a performance by The Pimps
of Joytime. Mirror, mirror, who was the fairest of them all?
newmuseum.org

photo by Dean Kaufman via

GET WEIRD
The New Museum’s monthly series “Get Weird: Experimental and Freaky Jams”
isn’t just a showcase for under-the-radar acts—but a totally
off-the-radar roundup: “Expect anything from dusted-off salsa to
psychedelic harmonies, performed by unknown legends and young-gun
mavericks,” says the New Museum. So far, this night has hosted
everyone from Andrew WK to Main Attrakionz, and now the Keyboard Kid
takes over the space for a night of his brand of “ethereal, spacious
hip hop.” Yep, it’s time to “Get weird!”
Check it out at the New Museum

photo via

THE UNGOVERNABLES

The New Museum’s 2012 Generational Triennial kicked off with an opening-night soiree for “The Ungovernables” followed by a VIP after-party at The Top of the Standard. However it was the all-important party bag that garnered some of the evening’s most attention: Some museum staffers walked away with a bag full of groceries as a part of Bona Park’s artwork “The box in a plastic bag (la boîte-en-sac plastique) New York version (2012).” (Considering the lines at Trader Joe’s that sounds like a score!) Featuring 34 artists born between the mid-’70s and mid-’80s from around the world, the showcase curated by Eungie Joo is the only recurring exhibit of its kind in the U.S. You might not get a free bag of groceries with your admission ticket, but there is a Whole Foods right down the block.
Check out the Exhibition at the New Museum

Photo via NewMuseum.org

Rita Ponce de León, Untitled, 2009. India ink on paper, approximately 1.6 x 0.6 in (4 x 1.5 cm). Courtesy the artist. Photo: Amáury Gutiérrez

CARSTEN HOLLER

Ready for a funhouse unlike anything you’ve ever experienced? The New Museum’s latest exhibition presents an environment that is part Chelsea art gallery, part Coney Island attraction, and part Columbia laboratory. Opening to the public today, Belgian artist Carsten Höller’s first New York survey is on view throughout the main galleries and lobby until January 15, 2012. Over his 20 year career, Höller has turned galleries into test sites that push the limits of human sensorial perception and logic through carefully controlled experiences—house of mirrors-like illusions included. Along with a mirrored carousel, there’s a 102-foot-long slide that will run from the museum’s fourth to second floors and a giant sensory deprivation pool. (Viewers who want to float weightlessly in the Giant Psycho Tank, can throw on bathing suit—or not.) A re-creation of Höller’s Experience Corridor filled with participatory tests and a light installation round out the big top on the Bowery art experience.

See the exhibit at The New Museum

Photo Credit Above: Lichtraum (Light Room), 2008