TUESDAY, JULY 28
Performance: Alisa Baremboym and Seung-Min Lee at Luxembourg & Dayan
“When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up?
What was the name of your first pet?
What was the first car you ever drove?
Where did you lose your virginity?”
These are the kinds of questions that will be posed at Baremboym and Lee’s one-night-only performance of Memory Palace, as part of the gallery’s ongoing summer performance series “Body/Building.” Details of the performance itself remain vague, though a press release states, “This is a test in the annexation of the conscious mind, a space to experiment with our newfound adaptations.”
Luxembourg & Dayan, 64 East 77th Street, 7 p.m., RSVP requested (email info@luxembourgdayan.com)
WEDNESDAY, JULY 29
Reading: Jami Attenberg at Sean Kelly
Attenberg (author of bestseller The Middlesteins) will read from her fifth book, Saint Mazie, which will be published in the United States, the U.K., Italy, France, and Germany in 2015. The story was inspired by the life of a woman profiled by Joseph Mitchell in the famous New Yorker article Up in the Old Hotel.
Sean Kelly Gallery, 475 10th Avenue, 6—8 p.m.
Panel: “Abstraction and Figuration: Strange Bedfellows?” at the National Academy Museum
In this panel, held in honor of a Maura Reilly–curated exhibition of the same name, Donna Dennis, Roberto Juarez, Phillip Pearlstein, and Dorothea Rockburne will discuss the tension between abstraction and figuration. Abstraction and figuration have been considered polar opposites until very recently, and in this vein each artist will talk about their practice and discuss how the two styles combine in their work.
National Academy Museum, 1083 Fifth Avenue, 6:30 p.m.–8 p.m., free, RSVP here
THURSDAY, JULY 30
Opening: “Altered Appearances” at the Fisher Landau Center for Art
This group show, featuring photography owned by Emily Fisher Landau, focuses on manipulated images. Featuring a star-studded slate of artists, “Altered Appearances” includes work by Shirin Neshat, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Robert Mapplethorpe, Roni Horn, and Gregory Crewdson, and even includes a few rarely-discussed photographs by Cy Twombly that alone might be worth the trip out to Queens.
Fisher Landau Center for Art, 38-27 30th Street, Long Island City, 12 p.m.–5 p.m.
Talk: Liz Deschenes on “Sarah Charlesworth: Doubleworld” at the New Museum
As part of the New Museum’s “Outside the Box” talk series, Liz Deschenes will be talking about the museum’s Sarah Charlesworth survey. Deschenes, like Charlesworth, is a conceptual photographer interested in the nature of sight and light. Though the museum doesn’t list the subject of her talk, Deschenes will probably discuss the specific ways in which Charlesworth, like herself, is interested in images.
New Museum, 235 Bowery, 3:30 p.m., free
Talk: “Speculative Tense: A Dialogue on Futures” at the New Museum
As part of the museum’s Spring 2015 Research and Development Season, panelists including Sarah Resnick (senior editor at Triple Canopy), Vyjayanthi Rao (anthropologist and urbanist), and Constantina Zavitsanos (a New Museum artist-in-residence), “will discuss what it means to speculate on the future, approaching the subject from a range of perspectives such as ecological preservation, caregiving, techno-optimism, and market forces,” according to a press release.
New Museum Theater, 235 Bowery, 7 p.m., Tickets $8
Screening: Station to Station at the Film Society of Lincoln Center
To call Doug Aitken’s Station to Station a single film might be misleading. It’s actually a series of 62 one-minute films made over a period of 24 days, in which the Californian artist traveled across America by train with musicians and performers. Aitken documented each event or performance as they traveled, and this film is the combined result. Performers featured in the film include Thurston Moore, Cat Power, and Giorgio Moroder.
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, 9 p.m., tickets $14/$11/$9
FRIDAY, JULY 31
Performance: Will Rawls at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council
As part of their “Open Studios” series, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) will offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse at choreographer and performer Will Rawls as he works on an upcoming solo performance. The audience will be invited to give written or verbal feedback.
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, 125 Maiden Lane, Floor 2, 3:30—5 p.m.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 1
Lecture and Screening: “The Secrets of Walt Disney’s Movie Magic: A John Canemaker Lecture and Screening of Fantasia”
As part of MoMA’s current film exhibition, “Glorious Technicolor: From George Eastman House and Beyond,” MoMA will host a film screening of 1940’s Fantasia, supplemented by a lecture by renowned animator John Canemaker. Canemaker will explain the complicated optical and mechanical process that resulted in the film’s dazzling special effects, working from a recently discovered notebook belonging to photographer and effects specialist Schultheis during his employment at Disney from 1938-1941.
MoMA, Theater 2 (The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2), 11 West 53rd Street, 6:30 p.m., tickets $12