Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 21, 2020

T. REX: THE ULTIMATE PREDATOR at the American Museum of Natural History (through Aug. 9). Everyones favorite 18,000-pound prehistoric killer gets the star treatment in this eye-opening exhibition, which presents the latest scientific research on T. rex and also introduces many other tyrannosaurs, some discovered only in this century in China and Mongolia. T. rex evolved mainly during the Cretaceous period to have keen eyes, spindly arms and massive conical teeth, which packed a punch that has never been matched by any other creature; the dinosaur could even swallow whole bones, as affirmed here by a kid-friendly display of fossilized excrement. The show mixes 66-million-year-old teeth with the latest 3-D prints of dino bones, and also presents new models of T. rex as a baby, a juvenile and a full-grown annihilator. Turns out this most savage beast was covered with believe it! a soft coat of beige or white feathers. (Farago) 212-769-5100, amnh.org

WORLDS BEYOND EARTH at the American Museum of Natural Historys Hayden Planetarium (ongoing). This new space show is a bit like being thrown out of your own orbit. Surrounded by brilliant colors, the viewer glides through space in all directions, unbound by conventional rules of orientation or vantage point. Dizzying spirals delineate the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. At one point, museumgoers are taken along a journey from the perspective of a comet. In illustrating the far reaches of our solar system, the show draws on data from seven sets of space missions from NASA, Europe and Japan, including the Apollo 15 mission in 1971 and still-active ones like Voyager. With a sense of movement and scale that only a visual presentation could convey, Worlds Beyond Earth makes an unforced point about the dangers of climate change. Another celestial body might have an alien sea that contains more liquid water than all the oceans on Earth, as its narrator, Lupita Nyongo, states. But Earth itself, she adds later, is the only place with the right size, the right location and the right ingredients an easy balance to upset. (Kenigsberg) 212-769-5100, amnh.org

NOAH DAVIS at David Zwirner (through Feb. 22). The 27 canvases in this exhilarating show the largest yet for this ambitious figurative painter who died in 2015 at the age of 32 showcase a more than promising talent. Davis accomplished one of the most moving, effective fusions of paint handling, narrative and symbolism in recent American art. Ostensibly traditional but actually unbelievably subtle and rich, the paintings make everything count, from the gestures and expressions of their subjects to tiny touches of color. Daviss goal was to show African-Americans in normal scenarios. He did this, and more, creating images that speak to the human condition. (Roberta Smith) 212-727-2070, davidzwirner.com

MAKING MARVELS: SCIENCE & SPLENDOR AT THE COURTS OF EUROPE at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through March 1). This exhibition brings together nearly 170 elaborately crafted objects, many never seen in the United States: the mesmerizing 41-carat Dresden Green, an ornate silver table decorated with sea nymphs, a clock with Copernicus depicted in gilded brass. Some, like a chariot carrying the wine god Bacchus, are spectacularly inventive Bacchus can raise a toast, roll his eyes and even stick out his tongue. Some, like a charming rhinoceros, a collage created from tortoiseshell, pearls and shells, are merely lovely. The show could have been simply a display of ornamental wealth for the one percent of long ago, an abundance of gold and silver that was meant to be shown off in any way possible. But Making Marvels is about more than that. (James Barron) 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org

NICOLAS MOUFFAREGE: RECOGNIZE MY SIGN at the Queens Museum (through Feb. 23). More exceptional than this artists background was his art form: embroidery. As a gay man who openly embraced his sexual identity, Moufarrege happily took up needlepoint after discovering its potential, he said, when repairing an old pair of jeans. Moufarrege was in the vanguard in a sadder way, too. Among a close-knit group of East Village artists he was one of the first to succumb to the AIDS epidemic in the mid-1980s. This rewarding retrospective reveals Moufarreges impressive range, progressing from the small tapestries he made with a lap loom as a young man in Beirut to the scroll-like horizontal panels of his final years in New York, which combine Spider-Man, Santa Claus, and figures from Japanese prints and Picasso paintings. (Lubow) 718-592-9700, queensmuseum.org

See the article here:
20 Art Exhibitions to View in N.Y.C. This Weekend - The New York Times

Category: Jewish American Heritage Month
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