A Master’s Tapestries
“Written in Fire: Tapestries and Works on Paper From the Estate of Jan Yoors” is the third solo exhibition of the master tapestry artist’s work at reGeneration Furniture in West Soho. Yoors completed all of his works, with the help of his wife and sister-in-law, on a fifteen-foot loom in the West Village. The four tapestries currently on display were done in the late seventies, near the end of Yoors’s life, and feature his signature color-saturated, graphic images against deep-black backgrounds. The namesake work, Written in Fire, looks like a fragment of sanskrit (38 Renwick St., nr. Spring St.; 212-741-2102; regenerationfurniture.com).
The Two-Headed Hyatt
As part of the Grand Hyatt New York’s $130 million renovation, the hotel has commissioned new sculptures from the artist Jaume Plensa for the lobby. Plensa’s previous New York exhibition was Echo, the popular sculpture of an elongated female head that stood in Madison Square Park earlier this year. The Grand Hyatt sculptures, named Awilda and Chloe, follow the same idea, although smaller in scale and with a more childlike aspect. The hotel will dedicate the sculptures this Thursday evening at a private unveiling of the renovation and the opening of a new lobby bar, the Grand Club (109 E. 42nd St., nr. Lexington Ave.; 212-883-1234; grandnewyork.hyatt.com).
Thank God for the Grid
The Manhattan street grid turned 200 this year, and to honor the anniversary, the Museum of the City of New York is putting on “The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011,” which includes rare archival maps and photographs of the island as it looked before the grid, as well as an original, hand-drawn map of the commissioners’ vision. The museum will host a talk about the grid this Saturday, in conjunction with the Architectural League, with Amale Andraos of the architectural firm WORKac, landscape architect Ken Smith, and Mark Robbins, dean of the Syracuse University School of Architecture (1220 Fifth Ave., nr. 103rd St.; 4 p.m.; $12 nonmembers, $8 students and seniors, $6 members; reservations required; 917-492-3395; mcny.org).
The Thumbable High Line
The High Line as we know it is just barely two years old and already there’s a book on it: High Line: The Inside Story of New York City’s Park in the Sky, by Friends of the High Line co-founders Joshua David and Robert Hammond. They’ll be in the store of the Whitney Museum of American Art this Friday evening to sign copies of the book, which features over 200 photographs of the High Line’s transformation from industrial relic to verdant oasis (945 Madison Ave., at 75th St.; 6:30–8 p.m.; 212-570-3600; whitney.org).