Goings on About Town: Art

MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES

 

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM

Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. (212-535-7710)â€"“Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Through Aug. 1. |  “Doug + Mike Starn on the Roof: Big Bambú.” Through Oct. 31. |  “Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage.” Through May 9. |  “The Mourners: Medieval Tomb Sculpture from the Court of Burgundy.” Through May 23. |  “The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry.” Through June 13. |  “Side by Side: Oberlin’s Masterworks at the Met.” Through Aug. 29. |  “Vienna Circa 1780: An Imperial Silver Service Rediscovered.” Through Nov. 7. |  “Tutankhamun’s Funeral.” Through Sept. 6. |  “Epic India: Scenes from the Ramayana.” The Ramayana, a Sanskrit saga that first emerged in India in the fifth century B.C., may not feature a kraken, but its plot is every bit as juicy as that of “Clash of the Titans”â€"there’s a beautiful wife who’s been kidnapped, an arduous journey to find her, and a climactic military blowout. The objects on display here range from a fragment of a Nepalese garment embroidered with battle scenes (attributed to the fifteenth century and likely worn by a Hindu priest) to a large painting on cotton from the late eighteenth century detailing the combat of Rama (our hero) and Ravana (his nemesis). Accompanying scenes of blood and gore are images of supernatural weirdness, including one of Rama’s standing army of monkeys and bears, and a watercolor-and-gold manuscript page illuminated between 1595 and 1605, in which Ravana appears as a ten-headed demon. Through Sept. 26. (Open Tuesdays through Sundays, 9:30 to 5:30, and Friday and Saturday evenings until 9.)

 

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

11 W. 53rd St. (212-708-9400)â€"“Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century.” Some three hundred photographs make for an almost unendurably majestic retrospective, from Cartier-Bresson’s famous portly puddle-jumper of 1932 (“Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, Paris”) to views of Native Americans in Gallup, New Mexico, in 1971, one of his last visual essays as the globe-trotting heavyweight champion of photojournalism. Nearly every picture displays the classical panacheâ€"the fullness, the economyâ€"of a painting by Poussin. Any half dozen of them would have engraved their author’s name in history. Resistance to the work is futile, if quality is our criterion, but inevitable, perhaps, on other grounds. The problem of Cartier-Bresson’s art is the conjunction of aesthetic classicism and journalistic protocol: timeless truth and breaking news. His strongest works are those which take playfulness, or leisure, as their subject, from his canonical shot of workers picnicking by a pond, in 1938, to bikinied Club Med lunchers on Corsica, in 1969. An aesthete and a sensualist, Cartier-Bresson is authoritative, and even profound, in all matters and manners of pleasure. Through June 28. |  “Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present.” Through May 31. |  “William Kentridge: Five Themes.” Through May 17. |  “Picasso: Themes and Variations.” Through Aug. 30. |  “Performance 7: Mirage by Joan Jonas.” Through May 31. |  “Projects 92: Yin Xiuzhen.” Through May 31. |  “Lee Bontecou: All Freedom in Every Sense.” Through Aug. 30. (Open Wednesdays through Mondays, 10:30 to 5:30, and Friday evenings until 8.)

 

GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM

Fifth Ave. at 89th St. (212-423-3500)â€"“Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance.” Through Sept. 6. |  “Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum.” Through April 28. |  “Paris and the Avant-Garde: Modern Masters from the Guggenheim Collection.” Through May 12. (Open Fridays through Wednesdays, 10 to 5:45, and Saturday evenings until 7:45.)

 

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART

Madison Ave. at 75th St. (212-570-3600)â€"“2010 Whitney Biennial.” Through May 30. |  “Collecting Biennials.” Through Nov. 28. (Open Wednesdays, Thursdays, and weekends, 11 to 6, and Fridays, 1 to 9.)

 

BROOKLYN MUSEUM

200 Eastern Parkway (718-638-5000)â€"“To Live Forever: Art and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt.” Through May 2. |  “Kiki Smith: Sojourn.” Through Sept. 12. |  “Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864.” Through Oct. 17. (Open Wednesdays through Fridays, 10 to 5, and weekends, 11 to 6.)

 

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Central Park W. at 79th St. (212-769-5100)â€"“Traveling the Silk Road: Ancient Pathway to the Modern World.” Through Aug. 15. (Open daily, 10 to 5:45.)

 

AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM

45 W. 53rd St. (212-265-1040)â€"“The Private Collection of Henry Darger.” Through Sept. 19. |  “Women Only: Folk Art by Female Hands.” The cult of domesticity has rarely looked better than it does in this fascinating show of women’s work from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Quilts and samplers are joined by family portraits and personal sketchbooks, with an emphasis on the importance of teachers. An exquisite embroidery by Rebecca Carter, in thread and human hair, was made under the tutelage of one Mary Balch of Providence, Rhode Island; a sketchbook with verse by Thomas Gray and Alexander Pope was copied in expert script by Betty Lewis, in 1801, while studying at the Ladies Academy in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Through Sept. 12. (Open Tuesdays through Sundays, 10:30 to 5:30, and Friday evenings until 7:30.)

 

ASIA SOCIETY

Park Ave. at 70th St. (212-288-6400)â€"“Pilgrimage and Buddhist Art.” Through June 30. (Open Tuesdays through Sundays, 11 to 6, and Friday evenings until 9.)