The Bowery and its past will be the star of “Come Closer” at the New Museum, including Arturo Vega’s self-portraits taken in a photo booth. (Courtesy of Arturo Vega)
Bloody good show! Madonna hit a home run with Thursday night’s Yankee Stadium concert—see Hardeep Phull’s review at nypost.com—and hopes to score with fans there again tonight. She’s so big in the Big Apple that an extra show has just been added at Madison Square Garden, where she will now play Nov. 12 and 13. (Splash News)
How to tell it’s autumn in New York: The days get shorter, the nights get cooler and blockbuster art shows start popping up all over town. This fall’s no different. But along with Warhol at the Met, Picasso at the Guggenheim and Tatzu Nishi’s hotly anticipated — and debated — “Discovering Columbus” at Columbus Circle, are plenty of other promising shows — and the lines won’t be as long.
“Come Closer: Art Around the Bowery, 1969–1989”
New Museum, opening Sept. 19
Before the chic hotels and hip restaurants, the Bowery of the 1970s and ’80s was a gritty place where punk rockers and graffiti artists thrived. Keith Haring created his famous mural at Houston Street and the Bowery; the Ramones gave punk-rock club CBGB icon status.
“Those two decades saw an influx of artists and creativity to the neighborhood,” says exhibit curator Ethan Swan. “This is a tribute to the artists who lived and worked on the Bowery, and how the landscape shaped and was shaped by them.”
About 40 works, plus ephemera and snapshots, will be on view, including drawings by Joey and Dee Dee Ramone, silk-screen Ramones shirts by Arturo Vega, and several pieces by Haring, including the door to his Broome Street loft that was tagged by Haring and Fab Five Freddy.
“It will be the first time the door has been seen publicly since it was taken off its hinges by the super and stored,” Swan promises. Other events include a screening of the documentary “Graffiti/Post Graffiti,” followed by a panel with Fab Five Freddy (Oct. 4).
“Mickalene Thomas: Origin of the Universe”
Brooklyn Museum, opening Sept. 28
Fans of Pam Grier and Angela Davis will dig the work of African-American artist Mickalene Thomas, whose portraits (and self-portraits) are an unlikely mix of Old Masters and blaxploitation. Her rhinestone-studded paintings of black women suggestively posing against a vibrant background of richly patterned fabrics, call to mind Matisse’s Odalisques — though Thomas’s subjects sport groovy, ’70s-era ’fros and way sassier attitude. This is the first solo museum show for the New York-based artist, whose portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.
Leo Villareal’s “Buckyball”
Madison Square Park, opening Oct. 25
Updating Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome — think Epcot — for the 21st century, Villareal brings his signature LED treatment to this towering light show. Made up of 180 light tubes arranged into hexagons and pentagons, the resulting sculpture is two illuminated spheres, one nesting inside the other, measuring an impressive 30 feet high and 20 feet wide. Lights are programmed to shift color and pattern at random — the LEDs alone can display 16 million colors — which ensures every visit will be unique. And it’s free!
“The World of Gloria Vanderbilt: Collages, Dream Boxes and Recent Paintings”
1st dibs Gallery, 200 Lexington Ave., 10th floor, Thursday to Oct. 24
Heiress, socialite, actress, denim designer, erotica writer, mom of Anderson Cooper — is there anything Mrs. Vanderbilt hasn’t done?
Apparently not, because the 88-year-old heiress is also an artist, and in fact, has been making collages and paintings — in a dreamy, colorful, almost childlike style — since she was a girl. This exhibit of about 50 pieces includes unseen works from the early 1950s up to recent renderings of famous friends like Angelina Jolie and Joyce Carol Oates.