Derek Henderson, whose solo exhibition, Mercy Mercer will open at Jen Bekman Gallery in September, has a book of the same name, available for purchase. The book is only available in the United States through the gallery and is a publication of the New Zealand-based gallery Michael Lett. If you’re a lover of printed matter, we invite you to come into the gallery and take a look at this stunning 140-page publication, Henderson’s photographic examination of the Waikato River in New Zealand and of the people who live there.

For details and any further inquiries about Mercy Mercer please email info@jenbekman.com. The books are priced at $100.

Parturient, by Holly Lynton

Just a short (LIRR accessible!) jaunt from Manhattan, in East Islip, NY is the Islip Art Museum. An ambitious and enormous new group show, curated by Jason Paradis and titled All in the Family opened there on June 23rd, and features amazing work by JBG artist Holly Lynton, among many others.

Taken from the All in the Family press release:

What exactly is a family? Simply stated it is a group of related members. However, as most of us will attest to, there is nothing simple with family. We have all seen and experienced it from various vantage points. Who are those members? What is their relation? What is this group? The answers seemed too expansive to be determined by one point of view. So, the Islip Art Museum decided to look in the form of an Open Call and turning the point of view to artists, we waited to see what was submitted.

Seventy-six artists were selected from an overwhelming response to this overwhelming question. From the group, similar concepts emerged from distinct sources, and the show was hung accordingly.

If you’re free on Sunday July 25th, try to make it out for the show’s (belated) reception. If you have a prior engagement, no worries! The show runs until September 5th.

All in the Family
The Islip Art Museum
On view: June 23 to September 5, 2010
Reception: July 25
50 Irish Lane, East Islip, NY 11730
Museum Hours: Wednesday through Saturday: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday: Noon to 4:00 p.m.

Placed Places by William Wegman | 42” x 46” | oil and postcards on panel

Please join us on Wednesday, June 30th from 6 to 8 p.m. at the opening reception for Land Use Survey, featuring photographs, paintings and works on paper by twenty-seven artists.

Land Use Survey functions as a critical appraisal of land use across the country, as a document of the changing landscape vernacular, and as a celebration of the artists who take diverse approaches to capturing this genre. The show opens with a series of landscapes that remain untouched by man. Slowly, signs of human intrusion begin to appear: car tracks, empty bottles, a retaining wall and piles of dirt. As one progresses through the exhibition, both in the gallery space and within the areas described by the works, increasingly more land turns over to commercial and residential development, before finally giving way to the dizzying geometries of the modern metropolis.

The exhibition features work by Ian Baguskas, Chris Ballantyne, Beth Dow, Christoph Gielen, Todd Hido, Liz Kuball,Nick Lamia, Scott Lawrence, Michael Lundgren, Alex MacLean, David Maisel, Paho Mann, Louisa McElwain, Sarah McKenzie, Joel Meyerowitz, Dana Miller, Brad Moore, Matthew Moore, Michelle Muldrow, Justin Newhall, Ross Racine, Tyson Anthony Roberts, Andrew Scott Ross, Aili Schmeltz, Bryan Schutmaat, Alec Soth and William Wegman.

The exhibition will be on view from July 1 through August 14, 2010. (The gallery will be closed on July 3rd, 4th and 5th for the holiday).

The Tabernacle, 2007 by Christine Callahan

JBG artist Christine Callahan is included in the forthcoming exhibition, reGeneration 2 – Tomorrow’s Photographers Today.

The show asks:

What are young photographers up to in the Twenty-first century? How do they see the world? How much do they respect, build on, or reject tradition? As the digital revolution continues its relentless advance, demolishing longstanding practices in every domain of our field, curiosity builds as to how the new generation of photographers will operate.

The exhibit follows up on the success of the original reGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow 2005-2025 book and exhibition from 2005, which highlighted the work of fifty emerging photographers who demonstrated great potential. This second incarnation of the project features eighty arising talents from over thirty countries, selected based on where curators imagined they might be in twenty years.

The show will travel to to Arles, France and to the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in Cape Town, South Africa before coming to Aperture in NYC in January 2011.

Callahan also has three images included in the reGeneration 2 book (Aperture), currently available for pre-order (to be published in August 2010).

Always After (The Glass House), 2006 by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle

The video, Always After (The Glass House), currently up at Mass MoCA as part of the exhibit Gravity is a Force to be Reckoned With stands as an amazing example of really how great of an art-viewing facility this museum really is. Projected on a massive screen that you reach after a long walk through one of the exhibition halls, the video piece is something to experience. You are able to stand in the room alone and watch a striking visual of a glass pane shattering to a haunting soundtrack of echoing breaking glass. The soundtrack is the cherry that makes the space truly transform the work. Also key, is being in an uncrowded room, so you can surrender to the rhythm of the glass being swept up.

The absence of knowing in the piece—of what has caused the pane to break and who the responsible accomplices are, combined with the empty room you are ideally in, heighten the experience that catalog describes as “making you palpably aware you have arrived too late.” If perhaps you had just moved faster maybe you would have made it in time to see the responsible action. (It is worth noting that the glass breaking is actually caused by Mies Van Der Rohe’s grandson breaking windows with a gilded hammer.)

Born Madrid in 1961, Manglano-Ovalle was raised in Bogotá and Chicago. He studied art and art history, and Latin American and Spanish literature at Williams College, and received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1989. He currently lives and works in Chicago, and has been featured on the always-terrific Art 21. They write of his work:

Manglano-Ovalle’s technologically sophisticated sculptures and video installations use natural forms such as clouds, icebergs, and DNA as metaphors for understanding social issues such as immigration, gun violence, and human cloning. In collaboration with astrophysicists, meteorologists, and medical ethicists, Manglano-Ovalle harnesses extraterrestrial radio signals, weather patterns, and biological code, transforming pure data into digital video projections and sculptures realized through computer rendering. His strategy of representing nature through information leads to an investigation of the underlying forces that shape the planet as well as points of human interaction and interference with the environment.

You can check out more of Manglano-Ovalle’s work on his website. He also currently has work on view at the Williams College Museum of Art. The exhibit Gravity is a Force to be Reckoned With remains on view through October 10, 2010. I highly recommend a visit, and you can also view the Sol Lewitt retrospective while you’re out there.

Zermatt (2007) | 18” x 13” | Archival Pigment Print

Sarah Fones of the The New York Times T Magazine Blog, The Moment writes about Gregory Krum’s ...Practice… exhibition.

Photographic evidence — say, the kind of indefatigable proof that one has, in fact, visited the Great Wall of China — typically suffices as testament to having actually been there and done that. The photographer Gregory Krum (who is also the director of retail for the shop at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum) has been to the base of the Matterhorn and has seen the tombstones erected there in a climbers’ cemetery. The photos he took are on display as part of his first solo exhibition, “…Practice…,” at Jen Bekman Gallery in SoHo. These images, along with shots of flowers, dust, still-lifes and interiors also seek to illuminate something inherently more tenuous: devotion. “The idea behind the show is those things that become true solely by belief,” he says.

Belief is twofold in this instance, with Krum both exploring the confines of his own (in the guise of photographer) and that of others (embodied in inanimate objects left behind). The tombstone portraits, for example, are literal markers of a failed endeavor. Five interior shots evocative of Dutch still-lifes, including a tiny bedside porcelain skull (a nod to the tradition of vanitas) and a copy of Alcoholics Anonymous, examine the extent to which all manmade objects more literally communicate meaning. An orange rind might imply a sense of inevitable decay, while Ettore Sottsass’s Memphis-style lamp — not to mention Krum’s own corkboard of inspirations — impart the boundless capacity for human innovation and endurance. Finally, a series of 24 small photographs of devotional, sculpturelike offerings convey the idea of repetition and quotidian ritual, or as Krum puts it, “the daily practice.” Just as the spiritually inclined are compelled to participate in these rituals, so the artist is consumed by the desire to create.

Such belief systems are self-reflexive, Krum explains, and in fact the show itself became a sort of meta example of his own devotion. It also coincided with Krum’s fascination with the kind of books that act as personal bibles, outlining an artist’s rules of conduct and recasting the process as a daily spiritual/intellectual/aesthetic regimen. “A particularly good one is Gerhard Richter’s The Daily Practice of Painting,” Krum notes, “from which I ultimately stole the title of the show and postcard design.”

Read the article full article and view the accompanying slideshow here. ...Practice… is on view through June 27th, 2010.

On the surface, Gregory Krum’s photograph, Cherifa Tree, made with his Blackberry, may seem to be just another picture of a plant, but in reality, it denotes the complicated and fascinating relationship between Jane Bowles and her Moroccan lover.  Bowles, considered one of America’s most prolific fiction authors and playwrights of the 20th century, had quite the interesting love life. Krum’s series references the lesbian love affair the author engaged in with her Moroccan servant, Anima Bakalia, more commonly known as Cherifa.

The saucy romance began when Jane moved with her husband—yes husband—Paul Bowles, to Tangier, Morocco in 1948. The story goes that Cherifa controlled Jane through a voodoo “spy plant”, which Krum alludes to in Cherifa Tree. Through the spy plant, the housekeeper utilized a talisman of blood and pubic hair to keep Jane under her charge. The author did not relinquish her loyalty to Cherifa, over a lifetime of alcoholism and serious partying, until her death in 1973. Paul Bowles maintained that Cherifa was responsible for his wife’s mental and physical deterioration and rumor has it that she poisoned Jane. For pictures of Jane Bowles and Cherifa, take a look at these photographers on her husband’s website and to see Chrerifa Tree in-person, come into the gallery to see Krum’s exhibition, ...Practice….

Sand No. 98 (2006/10) by Gregory Krum | 18” x 13” | Archival Pigment Print

A few treasures from the Internet to get you through the week:

The Frick has a bowling alley!

Check out the installations and paintings by Jacob Dahlgreen.

I just have to post this- Jeffrey Deitch after getting a bloody nose at the Shepard Fairey (yawn) swan song Deitch opening- the video. I think a little blood helps butch up a pink suit.

Dave Harper is killing it with awesome clips for Best Link Ever at Art Fag City. This week is good but nothing beats this!

Donald Judd library online! All I know is intern Casey G. spent the better part of a night on this site.

Reverse volume bowls by Mischer Traxler are the perfect thing to add to my odd fruit/vegetable mold collection. (not kidding)

Flying Spaghetti Monster or Spaghetti Cat?

Mamma Andersson at Zwirner. Go see it.

Great new Darren Almond photogravures at Crown Point Press. They are not on the site just yet, but you can catch a glimpse in the new Artforum.

William Powhida is giving a lecture on Surviving the Art World Using the Art of Sorcery on May 14.

It’s no secret that my love for photographer Zoe Strauss knows no bounds. And this weekend, photo-loving friends, you should walk/bike/drive/take-a-train/what-have-you to experience a photo event of epic proportions: Strauss’s 10-year project, I-95, is having its final show this Sunday, May 2nd, from 1 p.m.-4 p.m. under I-95 at at Front and Mifflin Streets in Philadelphia, PA.

If you’re not familiar with the I-95 project, here’s the skinny: in short, Strauss has been making images of denizens and place in her hometown of Philadelphia, in worthy succession to a street photography lineage echoing Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand and even William Eggleston, for more than 10 years, and annually holding a public art installation of these images on the concrete supporting slabs in the same underpass of I-95 every first Sunday in May. May 2nd, 2010, marks the 10th anniversary of this annual exhibit, and will be THE LAST time that this work is exhibited in this venue, coinciding with the last year Strauss will have made images directly for this body of work.

Untitled by Zoe Strauss

Read our recent gallery post about Zoe Strauss and what Zoe has to say about the grand finale event.

And most of all, Go To The Show! Showing up in person is among the best, easiest and most fulfilling things you can do to support the arts, an artist herself, and to quickly and beatifically expand your aesthetic world-view.

I-95
May 2nd, 2010 from 1pm—4pm
Under I-95 at Front and Mifflin Streets, Philadelphia, PA
Septa Trip Planner: click here and type S. Front St. and Mifflin St. as destinations

Trick Candles, 2008 by Clare Grill

We are absolutely thrilled to report yet another upcoming solo show for Clare Grill, whose stunning paintings graced our very own walls, barely two months ago.

Her new exhibition, The Forest for the Trees is opening at Sloan Fine Art in New York. The reception is tomorrow, Wednesday, April 21st, from 6-8 p.m., and the show will run through May 15th.

The Forest for the Trees
Sloan Fine Art
Opening Reception: Wednesday, April 21st, 6 – 8 p.m.
128 Rivington St. (between Essex and Norfolk)

If you didn’t manage to make it to What You’re Told, or if you saw (and undoubtedly loved) it, be sure to take this new opportunity to check out her incredible work. And, if you don’t expect to find yourself in the New York area in the next several weeks, it’s very worthwhile to note that Clare also has several fantastic prints available at 20×200.

Untitled, from the series Lost Rivers in the Cause and Effect project by Alejandro Cartagena

2009 Second Edition Hot Shot Alejandro Cartagena has been awash in publicity lately, all of the sort that any practicing artist loves to get.  In February he won the Critical Mass 2009 book award, and his first monograph will be co-published by Photolucida and Daylight Books.  He was  recently named a finalist in the prestigious 2009 Aperture Portfolio Prize, whose purpose is to identify trends in contemporary photography and bring the work of under-recognized artists to a wider and more supportive audience.  In the last week he was just named one of PDN’s 30, an industry-watched list of promising new photographers engaged in sustained and dynamic work.

Yesterday, Design Arts Daily published a profile of Cartagena and his 3 year long Suburbia Mexciana photographic investigation, showing him at last Friday’s Hey Hot Shot 2009 Second Edition exhibition opening where his work is currently on display.  Writing for DART, Peggy Roalf identifies Cartagena’s vision as both “heroic and poignant,” singling out his ability to visually describe a desecrated landscape in a manner that is aesthetically appealing while simultaneously calling attention to the ethical misjudgments that create such panoramas.

Untitled, from the Fragmented Cities series, part of the Suburban Mexicana project by Alejandro Cartagena

While there are numerous artists working with great success on themes of industrial interests in landscape, developing first nation growing pains and the ongoing hangover of an American-driven obsession with consumer culture, what makes Cartagena’s work unique is his ability to create a conversation in images that encompasses political and capitalist interests, the toll each takes on both environment and the populations it is meant to serve, and an awe-inspiring capacity to make landscapes into a new kind of portraiture, one that describes, with brutalistic beauty, the effects of a very specific kind of hardship brought to bear on the lives directly impacted by an ill-conceived housing boom.  On his website, which I highly encourage you to spend some quality time, Cartagena lays a map to twelve separate bodies of work that are all intertwined with the notion of Cause and Effect as it has affected his home town of Monterrey, Mexico.  Coming out of a tradition that might have more in common with the early Magnum creed of “concerned” photography, Cartagena writes:

After photographing these landscapes for the past 3 years I have now returned to many of the finished housing complexes and learned of many misfortunes the new inhabitants are facing, the ecological impact and the increasing distance being formed between the well-urbanized city and these new fragmented cities in the peripheries; a new chaotic ambient to which México is growing into. Expectantly what I strive for with these aesthetic representations is to point out and open relationships between issues created by an economy-driven State and how our society resides in the dilemma of living as capitalists but wishing for a fairer World.

Weaving together photographic threads including housing projects that are seemingly abandoned mid-construction which evoke stacked tombstones in a cemetery, or focusing upon a series of dried out and/or paved over riverbeds, Cartagena manages his aim of producing work that is both “beautiful and thoughtful” while trafficking in decidedly un-sexy terrains such as urban disintegration and cultural homogenization.

untitled, from the series Fragmented Cities, part of the Suburban Mexicana project by Alejandro Cartagena

His work can currently be seen at Exposed: Critical Mass in Seattle, online at Circuit Gallery out of Toronto, or right here at Jen Bekman Gallery during our Hey Hot Shot! Second Edition exhibition (on view through March 20th).

Landscape Missing a Byte (2009) by Jessica Eaton

We hope you’ll join us at the gallery this Friday, March 5, 2010 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the opening reception for the Hey, Hot Shot! 2009 Second Edition Exhibition, featuring fifteen works by the five photographers newest to our Hot Shot roster: Marisa Aragona, Leah Tepper Byrne, Alejandro Cartagena, Jessica Eaton and Justin James King. All five photographers will be present at the opening, so stop on by to say hello in person!

The exhibition will remain on view from March 6 through March 20, 2010.

We had the chance to do Q&As with each of these talented photographers a few months ago over on the HHS! blog, but in case you missed them, head on over there to learn a bit more about the artists:
+ Marisa Aragona
+ Leah Tepper Byrne
+ Alejandro Cartagena
+ Jessica Eaton
+ Justin James King

We’re also celebrating the fifth anniversary of the competition in 2010 and offering photographers more opportunities than ever before. HHS! 2010 will open for submissions on March 15, 2010. To be automatically notified of the competition’s opening, sign up for the low-volume newsletter, keep your eye on the HHS! site and follow us on Twitter.

Marine Wedding by Nina Berman

Jen Bekman Gallery is pleased to announce that represented artist and 2007 Hot Shot Nina Berman and 2005 Hot Shot Curtis Mann have been selected as 2010 Whitney Biennial artists.

Berman’s first solo show with Jen Bekman Gallery in 2007, Purple Hearts, the ground-breaking work that placed Berman in the Biennial, received international attention and acclaim. In a review for The New York Times, critic Holland Cotter proclaimed, “the images add up to a complex and desolating anti-war statement.” Purple Hearts received a tremendous response both locally and internationally. The gallery presented Berman’s second exhibition, Homeland, in October 2008.

Both Berman and Mann have released editions on Jen Bekman Projects’ online print program, 20×200.

The 2010 Whitney Biennial is being curated by Francesco Bonami, in collaboration with the Whitney’s Gary Carrion-Murayari, who will be associate curator. This will be the 75th in the series of Whitney Annual and Biennial exhibitions, inaugurated in 1932 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. The show—which is scaled back to exhibit just 55 artists at only one location in 2010—opens to the public on February 25th and runs through May 30th.

Tree Tops, from the series Somewhere in Israel by Curtis Mann

Exterior 1 by Sarah McKenzie

In Miami? Come visit us at the PULSE Miami Contemporary Art Fair. We’ll be featuring paintings by Sarah McKenzie and also have work by Ian Baguskas, Mara Bodis Wollner, Christian Chaize, Beth Dow, Joseph O. Holmes, Gregory Krum, Holly Lynton, Carrie Marill, Brad Moore, Hosang Park, Colleen Plumb, Jason Polan, Kent Rogowski and Carlo Van de Roer on view. The fair opens with a VIP preview at 10 a.m. on Thursday, December 3rd and remains open through Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 7:00 p.m. Please come visit us!

Location: Booth I-107.
On View: December 3 – 6, 2009

PULSE Miami
Booth I-107
The Ice Palace
1400 North Miami Avenue
Miami, FL 33136

Hope to see you there!

Album 01 by Paul Madonna

Don’t forget to come to the gallery tonight, November 20, 2009! Jen Bekman Gallery will proudly open Mixtape, a group exhibition featuring forty-five original works and limited-edition prints from 20×200, by thirty-six artists. In the spirit of what Geoffrey O’Brien declared the “most widely practiced American art form,” Mixtape brings the studio soundtrack to the gallery walls.

Participating artists include: Michelle Arcila, Ian Baguskas, Kate Bingaman-Burt, Christine Callahan, Christian Chaize, Jorge Colombo, William Crump, Jessica Eaton, Scott Eiden, Clare Grill, Chad Hagen, Nick Hardeman, Joseph O. Holmes, Jason Jagel, Roel Knappstein, Gregory Krum, Liz Kuball, Jeff Lewis, Yijun (Pixy) Liao, Scott Listfield, Paul Madonna, Sarah McKenzie, Mike Monteiro, Jane Mount, Tommy Perman, Gary Petersen, Colleen Plumb, Jason Polan, Tyson Anthony Roberts, Mike Sinclair, Jessica Snow, Trey Speegle, William Swanson, Amy Talluto, Ann Toebbe and Matthew Tischler!

See you soon! If you are out of town, please visit the Mixtape exhibition page here.

Mixtape
Opening Reception: Friday, November 20th, 2009, 6 to 8 p.m.
On View: November 21st – January 9th, 2010*
Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring Street
(between Elizabeth + Bowery)
New York, New York 10012

Gallery Hours:
Wednesday – Saturday | Noon – 6 p.m.*

*The gallery will be closed for the holidays: Nov. 26 – 27 | Dec. 24 – 26 | Jan. 1, 2010

Site by Sarah McKenzie

Jen Bekman Gallery is exhibiting at the PULSE Miami Contemporary Art Fair, Thursday, December 3 – Sunday, December 6, 2009. Please join us!

PULSE Miami — Booth I-107
The Ice Palace
1400 North Miami Avenue
Miami, FL 33136

On view:
Paintings by Sarah McKenzie.

Additional featured artists:
Ian Baguskas, Nina Berman, Mara Bodis Wollner, Christian Chaize, Beth Dow, Joseph O. Holmes, Karolina Karlic, Gregory Krum, Holly Lynton, Carrie Marill, Brad Moore, Hosang Park, Colleen Plumb, Jason Polan, Kent Rogowski, and Carlo Van de Roer.

Howon-dong | 40” x 50” | Edition of 5 | Digital C-Print
Larger views and image details are available on our Flickr page

Jen Bekman Gallery is pleased to announce the extension of  A Square through November 14th. Hosang Park is one of two artists to be awarded representation by Jen Bekman Gallery in 2008 through the international photography competition, Hey, Hot Shot!

Park, a Korea-based artist, began taking aerial photographs of parks that are often developed alongside luxury apartment buildings in Seoul. His resulting images in A Square flatten the spaces into geometric surfaces reminiscent of modernist abstraction.

Recently DLK Collection posted a review of the exhibition; there is more to Park’s photographs than meets the on-screen eye. Associate Director of the gallery, Jeffrey Teuton, also talks about the subtle details of Park’s work in the 20×200 reprise of the artist’s two editions.

Leaning Tower by Beth Dow

Jen Bekman Gallery artist Beth Dow will be participating in a group exhibition, entitled The Minnesota Eye: Contemporary Photography, at CVA Gallery in Saint Paul, Minnesota, along with several other talented photographers. You can read more on the exhibit in this week’s StarTribune article. The show is currently up until November 14th. Don’t miss it!

Rocks by Jason Polan

In Raleigh, North Carolina, there will be an opening November 6th 7-10pm for Jason Polan’s solo show, Please Trust Me, at Lump Gallery . It sounds like it will be a fantastically eclectic exhibition, with source material ranging from comic book panels, to pages from LIFE Magazine, to notes found on the street. It will be up until November 28th.

If you happen to be in either of those areas be sure to check these shows out! I’m sure they will not fail to impress.

Randall Clunen by Nina Berman

Come this Friday, October 23, Jen Bekman Gallery artist (and 2007 Hot Shot!) Nina Berman will have three shows up simultaneously! Two solo shows are already on view in New York, and this Friday another show will open in Potsdam, Germany.

Kunstraum Potsdam
Purple Hearts/Marine Wedding
October 23, 2009 – December 6, 2009
Potsdam, Germany

Suffolk County Community College
Purple Hearts
October 14 – November 10, 2009
Artist’s talk November 9, 11 AM
Brentwood, New York

Media Alliance
Homeland/Purple Hearts
September 26 – December 18, 2009
Troy, New York

Nina has had two editions on 20×200, both of which are from her Homeland series: 9-11-02 and G.I. Goat. View more of Nina’s work on her website.

Your House, 2006 by Olafur Eliasson

Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing the Museum of Arts and Design’s (aka MAD) newest exhibition, Slash: Paper Under the Knife, which shows an array of beautifully intricate, masterful sculptures, videos, site-specific installations and drawings created through awe-inspiring manipulation and cutting of paper. Though the medium is consistent throughout, the techniques in which the pieces are created range from burning, laser-cutting, hand-cutting, tearing, folding and shredding—to name a few.

A History of Flight by Lizzie Buckmaster Dove

I could have easily imagined Summer Reading’s Lizzie Buckmaster Dove’s hand-cut book, A History of Flight or one of Michael Mandiberg’s laser-cut books sitting perfectly amongst  the other pieces in the show.

Coast to Coast by Michael Mandiberg

Paperwork #701G (In the Beginning) by Andreas Kocks

The show is currently open to the public, though it won’t be completely installed until the 14th—some artists’ works are in the process of being installed/created, giving the public a chance to view the creative building process—an exciting opportunity not often offered by museums and galleries. I recommend going Thursday nights between 6 and 9 p.m., when admission is “pay-what-you-wish”. While you’re there, you can head up to the 6th floor to check out the museum’s Open Studios program and get the chance to meet and talk with talented artists as they work.