“Terminal 5”
Artists take over New York’s sexiest empty building.
MoMA Reopens
The Museum of Modern art returns from Queens bigger and better.
Kerry James Marshall and Kehinde Wiley
Two accomplished African-American artists come into their own with major solo shows.
“Automatic City”
Painter Benjamin Edwards transforms soul-crushing sprawl into a landscape of seduction.
Portraits of George Washington
A retrospective of Gilbert Stuart’s renderings of the first George W.
Isamu Noguchi
The sculptor’s pieces are highlighted by exhibition and a dance performance.
“East Village USA”
Work from more than 50 artists from eighties Alphabet City art scene.
5 Shooting Stars
Young women photographers storm the galleries.
What are you looking forward to this fall? Ask a museum guard.
Sean Oquendo, 23, P.S. 1 security guard
Taste: I do tattoos, I draw tribals, I do graffiti, I draw anime characters. If something doesn’t compel me to draw, I just go to the next artist.
Looking forward to: Jacob Lawrence’s “War Stories” at the Whitney. It features paintings by a black man who went into the Coast Guard in 1943. “The Aztec Empire” at the Guggenheim—old Mexican art and jewelry, bones, shells, feathers, musical instruments, ceremonial artifacts. I might take my nephew on my day off. He’s getting sick of aquariums. And William Kentridge at the Met.
Wish list: A collaboration between Dieter Roth and Lee Lozano. A Van Gogh painting of 9/11. And more art you can touch. Exhibits shouldn’t be so hands-off.
Best of the Rest
September
“Building the Unthinkable”
Artists, designers, and researchers weigh in on weapons of mass destruction.
ApexArt. September 8 to October 9.
Gary Simmons
A new series of his Erasure paintings, on the theme of criminal slang.
Metro Pictures. September 9 to October 23.
“Innovator, Activist, Healer: The Art of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis”
A celebration of the Bauhaus artist and teacher who mentored children in the Terezín ghetto and concentration camp.
The Jewish Museum. September 10 to January 16, 2005.
“Brooklyn Gravity Racers”
The Williamsburg gallery Pierogi celebrates its tenth anniversary with an exhibition of pine race cars leading up to a weekend-long competition.
Pierogi. September 10 to October 6.
Marc Handelman
Fresh from the Columbia M.F.A. program, this young painter specializes in radiant landscapes inspired in equal measure by the Hudson River School and by mall artist Thomas Kinkade.
Lombard-Freid. September 10 to October 9.
Ellen Gallagher
New paintings, animations, and works on paper, with imagery appropriated from mid-century black journals.
Gagosian. September 14 to October 23.
Bjørn Melhus
The Roebling empire, with spaces in Williamsburg and Soho, stakes its claim in Chelsea with the solo debut of a promising video artist.
Roebling Hall. September 24 to October 25.
Quartet of Fall ICP shows
ICP goes retro in a trio of shows—“JFK for President: Photographs by Cornell Capa,” “Looking at Life” (i.e., the magazine), and “Ant Farm Presents: Media Burn and the Eternal Flame”—then follows them with a fourth exhibition, “Inconvenient Evidence: Photographs From Abu Ghraib,” that’s unflinchingly contemporary.
International Center of Photography. September 17 to November 28.
Giorgio Morandi
A rare, museum-quality show of his beloved still-life paintings, the first since a 1981 retrospective at the Guggenheim.
Lucas Schoormans. September 24 to December 4.
Bridget Riley
Recent paintings by the grande dame of Op Art, in her first New York show since the 2001 Dia retrospective.
Pace Wildenstein. September 24 to October 23.
October
Josef and Anni Albers: Designs for Living
The first retrospective of their little-known designs for everyday objects, including furniture and textiles.
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. October 1 to February 27, 2005.
The Rubin Museum of Art
New York’s only museum dedicated to Himalayan art opens in a former Barneys New York building on West 17th Street.
Opening October 2.
John Singer Sargent: Painting Children
Some 40 images of children by the legendary nineteenth-century portraitist, from society commissions to sketches of friends.
The Brooklyn Museum. October 8 to January 16, 2005.
China: Dawn of a Golden Age, 200–750 A.D.
Art and artifacts revealing China’s transformation in the years between the late Han and the high Tang dynasties, including recently excavated objects never before seen in the West.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. October 12 to January 23, 2005.
Romare Bearden
The renowned collage artist is the subject of two major shows and a citywide celebration. The Whitney Museum, October 13 to January 9, 2005.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 19 to March 6, 2005.
The Aztec Empire
A sprawling portrait of Aztec civilization from its earliest days through the European conquest, with more than 450 objects including new archaeological finds.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. October 15 to February 13, 2005.
Comic Grotesque: Wit and Mockery in German Art
An exhibition exploring the humorous side of early-twentieth-century German art, with works by Max Ernst, Hannah Höch, Paul Klee, and others.
Neue Galerie. October 15 to February 14, 2005.
Alfred Leslie
Paintings by the New York School artist and filmmaker, along with screenings of Pull My Daisy (1959) and The Cedar Bar (2002).
Allan Stone. October 16 to December 22.
Katharina Sieverding
Three decades of photography, film, and video, including billboard-size portraits, by a German artist largely unknown in this country.
P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center. October 19 to January 31, 2005.