Playing the Building May 31st – August 10th Weekends, 12 PM – 6 PM Free Yesterday Bwog attended the opening of David Bryne’s Playing the Building, an amazing, interactive art exhibit by the South Street Seaport. The installation is located in the Maritime Building, an expansive and beautiful abandoned space located right on the water. […]

Bwog staffer Julia Butareva reviews Ignacy Witkiewicz’s show of contemporary drawings at the Ubu gallery. In the corner of drawings by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, you find letters and numbers assembled in what looks like an obscure mathematical formula: NP, NTT 7 m. What do they mean? Apparently, they’re abbreviations that indicate the drugs that the […]

Bwog staffer Kabir Singh reviews the Asia Society’s Rockefeller exhibit. In 1919 Lucy Aldrich wrote to her sister Abby Aldrich Rockefeller from Japan: “I’m not sure I shan’t become a Buddhist…the whole thing appeals so much more to my temperamental—or is it emotional—love of color. The gold and lacquer, the beat of the drums and […]

Bwog staffer Julia Butareva reviews the Whitney Museum of American Art’s exhibit featuring drawings by Raymond Pettibon. As I walked into the Raymond Pettibon exhibition at the Whitney, a well-dressed mother walked in with her toddler. The kid babbled and squealed while I was trying to watch the video. “If you want culture,” I thought, […]

Bwog staffer Julia Butareva reviews the Freight and Volume Gallery’s exhibit featuring works by Alexia Stamatiou, Elizabeth Huey, Todd Herbert, Daniel Rich, and Scott Anderson. Elizabeth Huey’s painting “The Inquisition” easily dominates the small space that is the Freight and Volume Gallery. The gallery really is tiny and makeshift: two employees sit at their computers […]

Bwog staffer Julia Butareva reviews the Marian Goodman Gallery‘s exhibit featuring William Kentridge’s preparatory drawings for his production of the opera The Magic Flute. In Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Sarastro, priest of Osiris and Isis and champion of the Enlightenment, triumphs over the mysterious and irrational Queen of the Night. Sarastro is first presented as […]

Bwog staffer Kabir Singh reviews the Metropolitan Museum’s exhibit featuring Emperor Akbar’s lavishly illustrated Khamsa (quintet of tales). Although a little hard to navigate at first, I grew to love the true to its provenance right-to-left organization of Pearls of the Parrot of India: The Emperor Akbar’s Illustrated ‘Khamsa,’ 1597–98. Spanning this one-room exhibition at […]

Bwog staffer Juliya Butareva reviews Alexander Valdman’s show of contemporary painting at the InterArts gallery. Alexander Valdman’s wife tells a story about how, while waiting to meet a friend on a street corner in Manhattan, she and her husband were suddenly accosted by a cop. As she politely answered the policeman’s questions, Valdman suppressed a […]