It’s exciting to walk into the Guggenheim’s new contemporary South Asian exhibit “No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia.” There’s the glitter of silver, the sheen of gold, and the vibrant colors of a wall-to-wall mural: and there’s the promise of a show full of that region’s new artists, fresh to many of our American eyes.

After the first excitement fades you may ask yourself how, exactly, the Guggenheim selected its artists? Who picked the rather vapid spray of volcanic ash that takes up a whole wall in the last room? (Arin Dwihartanto Sunaryo’s Volcanic Ash Series #4). And who decided that the show absolutely needed something, anything to do with the War on Terror and neo-colonialism, and then ticked both those boxes with Norberto Roldan’s F16, which juxtaposes an Afghan bombing with William McKinley’s speech about colonizing the Philippines?

Both pieces are interesting enough; but it’s hard to believe that they represent “some of the most compelling and innovative voices in South and Southeast Asia today.” Which is really all we should have in a show so small, and so geographically ambitious.

Some of the show does, indeed, live up to the hype. Navin Rawanchaikul’s mural, Places of Rebirth, tells the story of the artist’s trip to his ancestral Pakistan along with his Japanese wife and their daughter. The mural has the look of a Bollywood poster, complete with credits for the entire cast; it manages to be playful, political, and highly personal.

Four Pieces of White

, by the husband-and-wife team Wah Nu and Tin Win Aung, is another stand-out. The series shows Aung San, Myanmar’s independence hero and father of Aung San Suu Kyi, in painting and sculpture and grainy video. Whatever the format, Aung San is blurred and distant as any collective memory. You may know everything, or nothing about him; this series will make you think of your own lost heroes.

Vincent Leong’s Keeping Up With the Abdullahs #1 and #2 show two families – one ethnically Chinese, the other ethnically Indian – from Malaysia’s minority groups. Both families are dressed in Islamic clothing, hinting at the pressure to fit in with Malaysia’s Muslim majority. And yet, these photos would work regardless of what the audience knows about Malaysian clothes. The subjects stare out at us, each person a complete individual and yet completely a part of the family group. They’re universal.

The same cannot be said, alas, for Tang Da Wu’s Our Children. How you feel about this piece will probably depend on how much you like reading captions. The work is a large glass table, set with a bottle of milk; below it is a much smaller glass table. The caption helpfully explains that the piece “references a story from traditional teochow opera in which a young boy experiences a humbling moment of enlightenment at the sight of a genuflecting baby goat suckling at its mother.” For some visitors, this will appeal. Others will feel that art should not need to be decoded. Sometimes, a little bit of cleverness goes a long way.

UPPER EAST SIDE
Crossroads of the World
You don’t have to head south to the Carribean to the beach this summer, just take the subway up to the El Museo del Barrio. It, along with The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Queens Museum of Art, is presenting the culmination of the decade-long collaboration of research and scholarship Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, which includes more than 500 works of art spanning four centuries from the Caribbean islands and coasts. The exhibit covers topics such as politics, pop culture, language, the various cultures and history, among many others.
June 12 – Jan. 6, 2013, El Museo Del Barrio, 1230 5th Ave., elmuseo.org.

UPPER EAST SIDE
Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940
An artist searching for his muse is a theme that reverberates back to Greek mythology. French artist Edouard Vuillard found inspiration in his career stretching from the 1890s to the 1940s in a variety of sources, from experimental theater to urbane domesticity. This exhibit at The Jewish Museum looks at six periods of the artist’s career and the impact his friends and patrons had on his work, from his artistic beginnings to his later portraits.
Through Sept. 23, The Jewish Museum, 1109 5th Ave., thejewishmuseum.org.

UPPER EAST SIDE
Women Work
With conservative politicians intent on rehashing decades-old debates that everyone thought were long settled, it’s fitting that the National Academy Museum & School has chosen now to kick off its new exhibit, Women Work, featuring the artwork of women from the 19th century to present day. The series brings together works by Mary Cassatt, Colleen Browning and May Stevens, as well as female sculptors.
Through Aug. 26, The National Academy Museum & School, 1083 5th Ave., nationalacademy.org.

UPPER EAST SIDE
Activist New York
New York City has always been a city that thrived in the midst of social change and progress. Activist New York, the new exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, brings that history into focus, exploring the history of social activism in the city from the 17th century right up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. From picket lines to civil rights, the exhibition uses artifacts, photographs, audio and video to tell the history of agitation in the city.
Through the summer, The Museum of the City of New York, 1220 5th Ave., mcny.org.

UPPER EAST SIDE
Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective
The Guggenheim hosts this mid-career retrospective of Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra. The artist, best known for her striking portraits of humanity in transition—adolescents and new mothers have been prime subjects for her lens—has been working for more than two decades at her craft. Like all great portraitists, Dijkstra’s work captures fleeting moments and fills them with meaning. “I make normal things appear special,” she said in an interview for the book Image Makers, Image Takers. That this is not a brag but a statement of successfully fulfilled artistic intent says it all.
June 29 – Oct. 3, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Ave., www.guggenheim.org.

UPPER WEST SIDE
Beer Here: Brewing New York’s History
New York has a rich (albeit unheralded) history of brewing that stretches back to colonial times. The New-York Historical Society hopes to rectify this with its new exhibit. With artifacts and documents that showcase the city’s long-lived love of suds, Beer Here covers what the soldiers were drinking in the Revolutionary War, famous hometown brewers and the Prohibition era. When you are finished, step on over to the beer hall for a taste of New York City and state’s best local brews.
May 25 – Sept. 2, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park W., nyhistory.org.

MIDTOWN
Josef Albers in America: Painting on Paper
What better way to spend your summer than hanging out in a library, especially if you’re going to see the Morgan Library & Museum’s Josef Albers exhibit. Albers, the iconic 20th-century artist who died in 1976, is best known for his painting series Homage to the Square, in which he explored color relationships in concentric squares. This exhibit displays the less well-known studies and sketches for these paintings. The materials in this exhibit were never shown during Albers’ life and are rarely displayed since his death; The Morgan is the only U.S. stop for this exhibition before it heads back to Europe.
July 20 – Oct. 14, The Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Ave., themorgan.org.

MIDTOWN
Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist’s Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets
Filmmaking identical twins the Quay Brothers—or The Brothers Quay, in their preferred nomenclature—end the summer with a major retrospective of their work at the Museum of Modern Art. Born in Philly but developed as European surrealists in the grime of London, the Quays have been conjuring up their creepy-crawly, stop-motion animated work since the late ’70s. Featuring repurposed doll heads and other unsettling motifs of mold and decay, the Brothers’ oeuvre became a major aesthetic touchstone for the burgeoning industrial goth movement of the late ’80s and ’90s. This collection promises a rare view inside their work, with never-before-seen images, moving works, installations and artistic output, as well as screening of their best shorts and filmic output.
Aug. 12 – Jan. 8, 2013, The Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd St., www.moma.org.

DOWNTOWN
The Parade: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg
Bird is the word at the New Museum’s Studio 231 space as Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg, known for her nightmarish animations, and videographer Hans Berg show off five trippy animations and an unnerving menagerie of more than 80 free-standing bird sculptures. These hybrid, sometimes monstrous forms speak to the artist’s interest in physical and psychological transformation, as well as pageantry and perversion.
Through Aug. 26, The New Museum, 235 Bowery, newmuseum.org.

This weekend’s edition of fun around town is all about the mamas. From a two-day garden party (Mr. Sun, please stay!) to workshops for all ages and stages—

FRIDAY

Aspiring dancers ages 6-10 should head to Chinatown’s PS 124 to audition for the prestigious School of American Ballet. Boys and girls are welcome even without prior training.

FRIDAY-SUNDAY

A Year with Children 2012, the Guggenheim’s newest exhibit, kicks off this weekend. Bring kids ages seven and up for a special showcase spotlighting art from their peers. (Friday-Sunday)

SATURDAY-SUNDAY

CELEBRATE MOM: The New York Botanical Garden is hosting a weekend-long Mother’s Day Garden Party filled with croquet, kite-flying, cupcakes and live music for the entire family.

Acquaint your children with the art form of arias through an hour-long Introduction to Italian Opera workshop at the Dicapo Opera Theatre.

SATURDAY

For local kid-friendly fun, Amtrak is hosting National Train Day at Grand Central. The event will include train tours, arts & crafts and musical performances. To get on board early, check out our Q&A about family train travel, which covers everything from where to go to what to bring.

To read the full listings at New York Family click here.

John Chamberlain, Dolores James, 1962, Painted and chromiumplated steel. David Heald/Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

John Chamberlain’s sculptures of crushed automobile metal are as immediately iconic as Hokusai’s wave. Careful to explain that the material he used was not found but chosen, Chamberlain conceived sculpture as groups of semichaotic modules that could be coaxed
to fit, and the result seemed the most natural thing for sculpture to be: uncontrived, casual masterworks.

Like de Kooning, whose work he admired, Chamberlain’s subject matter was most often girls, jazz and cars. He found a way to sculpt color, and the “dynamic obsolescence” of Detroit’s industry insured he would have an unending supply of extremely sophisticated material. (At GM, Harley Earl and a staff of 75 developed color intentionally to create deluxe objects; economically and socially seductive.) It was no accident the sculptor admired the painting of de Kooning: the Dutch painter was choosing his “American” palette from the advertising of the day.

Chamberlain’s Guggenheim retrospective begins with the amazing “Doomsday Flotilla” (1982), a sevenpart, floor-hugging hellish armada of skeletal lengths of black chassis parts
fitted out with cream colored sails and chrome engines. It’s a blast of Dantesque radical imagination. On the back wall hangs the relief “Essex” (1960). Works on the ramp spiral upward in roughly chronological order, mixing wall reliefs with free-standing objects. “Calliope” (1954) is an early work borrowing its sculptural vocabulary from David Smith.

Nearby, we see “Shortstop” (1958), a breakthrough assemblage of rusty fenders. Chamberlain developed the fit by repeatedly running over them until they resembled a baseball mitt. This convergence of instinctive choice of material and random
act would inform his work for the following decades. The
hydraulic baler soon became Chamberlain’s tool of choice, although a sledgehammer
was employed for finesse work.

In the work of the early 1960s he was able to bring an organic and voluminous lightness to the steel, contradicting its actual weight. The works pulse with elusive convolutions, as do the titles. “Miss Lucy Pink” (1962) sports an eye and floppy ear.

In minimalism’s moment, Chamberlain collapsed grid, line and plane all at once. After a seven-year filmmaking break from sculpture in the ’60s, he returned with unique versions of figuration and brittle vegetal forms. During the five years before his recent untimely
death, however, he began working again with automotive metal, carefully chosen “vintage” colors from the ’40s and ’50s. These bring back scale and volume to some of his most monumental work, completing the multifaceted self-portrait of this profound artist.
John Chamberlain: Choices
Through May 13, Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, 1071 5th Ave., 212-423-3500,
www.guggenheim.org/new-york.
This article first appeared in the
March 7 issue of CityArts. For more from
New York’s Review of Culture, visit www.cityartsnyc.com

Compiled by Shilpa Agrawal

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3

Chair Pilates—This class, open to senior citizens, is being led by Laura Shapiro, dancer, choreographer and Pilate’s instructor. DOROT, 171 W. 85th St., 212-769-2850; 10:30-11:20 a.m., Free (suggested donation $5).

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4

Echoing Voices—Silver Roots, a musical ensemble, plays a soundtrack of traditional songs ranging from European to Middle Eastern and Latin American. The group fuses story, acting and music to look at waves of immigration throughout American History. David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, 70 Lincoln Center Plaza, 212-875-5000; 11 a.m., Free.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 5

Final Performance—Join Sounds of Deliverance, a gospel group, as it plays the closing day of the Harlem Meer Performance Festival at the northern end of Central Park. Charles A. Dana Discovery Center, Central Park at 110th St. (between 5th & Lenox Aves.), 212-860-1370; 2-4 p.m., Free.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6

Haunted Comes To An End—The Guggenheim ends its exhibit featuring contemporary videos, photography and performance, and an overall haunted ambience that yields a melancholy longing for the past. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Ave., 212-423-3500; 10 a.m.-5:45 p.m., $15-18.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7

Drabbles—Soho Photo Gallery kicks off its 40th season with an opening reception for William George Wadman’s Drabbles. This exhibition features photos that Wadman considers “drabbles” (short and precise works of fiction) because they let the viewer imagine a story and expound on it. Soho Photo Gallery, 15 White St., 212-226-8571; 6-8 p.m., Free.

Three Irish Widows—The 1st Irish Festival 2010 kicks off with Three Irish Widows Versus The Rest of the World, written and performed by Ed Malone. The play follows three Irish women as they journey all over the world in a search of excitement after the deaths of their husbands. Stage Left Studio, 438 W. 37th St., Ste. 5A, 212-838-2134; 8 p.m., $18.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8

A Birding Adventure—The American Natural History Museum is sponsoring bird walks throughout the fall in Central Park. Join expert Joseph DiCostanzo on a walk through the park to see more than 50 species of birds. American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West and 79th St., 212-769-5310; 7-9 a.m., $85.

Music of the Spanish Baroque—A performance by Anima, an ensemble that specializes in music from the Baroque and late Renaissance period, will feature the rich and rhythmic music of the Spanish Baroque. Immanuel Lutheran Church, 122 E. 88th St., 212-967-9157; 1:15 p.m., Free.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9

That Is Then. This Is Now—The CUE Art Foundation is exhibiting the works of nine artists who came of age during the 1970s and are continuing to produce vital work. The event is curated by Irving Sandler and Robert Storr and includes the work of Donna Dennis, professor of art at Purchase College, as well as other artists. CUE Art Foundation, 511 W. 25th St., Ground Floor, 212-206-3583; 6-8 p.m., Free.