What’s going on in New York’s world of art? What are the hottest art gallery shows in town? Who are the artists everyone’s talking about? Merrily Kerr, your personal art critic and guide, answers these questions and more on her private walking tours of New York’s galleries and museums.

Betty Woodman's sculptures/ceramics/paintings bring beauty back to the art world. (You will need the free Flash Player 8 or later).

 

October is the perfect month for gallery visits, when the season is back in full swing and great weather makes it irresistible to get out and see what’s new. Among the best shows is Doug Aitken’s latest solo at both locations of 303 Gallery, where the mesmerizing video ‘Migration,’ stars American migratory animals confined in rooms at a series of down-at-the-heel motels. A bison knocking down chairs, a deer sipping from the pool and beaver in the bathtub suggest that animals can survive our encroachment – but can we? Speaking of animal nature, Cecily Brown is back with more paintings exploring her signature subject matter – sex. The act is discernable in a few canvases but most are abstract, allowing viewers to make their own conclusions about where her writhing brushstrokes take us. Ernesto Neto’s social spaces are decidedly more public. For his sixth solo show at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, a cave resembling a giant caterpillar takes up residence on the ground floor while upstairs, architectural maquettes allow visitors even more intimacy with the artist’s ideas for the space around us.

 

Obama-mania has swept the art world this fall with myriad auctions and other fundraising events. At David Zwirner Gallery, you can do more than buy art or hobnob with politically like-minded art lovers. You can take home a piece of history from ‘The Voting Booth Project,’ an exhibition of artwork made from actual voting booths used in the 2000 election in Florida. If the memory of the faulty booths makes you a little queasy, at least the lineup of participating artists promises to sex up the symbols of disenfranchisement by including the campy, carnivalesque assume astro vivid focus, Mickalene Thomas, liberal user of rhinestones in her images, and Fred Tomaselli of drugs-as-collage-materials fame.

The Rema Hort Mann Foundation presents The Voting Booth Project at David Zwirner Gallery, 525 West 19th Street, Oct 14 – 25 and at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 540 West 26th Street, November 7-8.

Coming soon...

 

Every month, New York City art galleries exhibit a new selection of work by emerging and established artists. Planning a visit to the gallery districts is the best way to sample cutting edge contemporary art. What could be better than to be accompanied by your own personal art critic, writer Merrily Kerr? Whether you are a newcomer to the scene or a veteran art lover, my gallery and museum tours are a way to easily and enjoyably sample from the best art that New York City has to offer.