The New Museum opens a major exhibition on the history of the Bowery.
Before Times Square or Coney Island, the Bowery was New York City’s first working-class entertainment zone. Now the street that has been a Lenape trail, a fashionable suburb, and America’s most famous skid row is the subject of “The Bowery: Devil’s Mile” at the New Museum. The show is meant to feel like a historical society display, with vintage maps, a 200-year-old marble milestone, and a portrait of Peter Stuyvesant. It then moves through riot prints, dime-museum handbills, and an enameled 1836 firefighters’ pump wagon. Jacob Riis’ documentary photographs sit alongside Martha Rosler’s people-free photo-installation, followed by work from Berenice Abbott, Weegee, and Reginald Marsh, plus late-’70s images of CBGB. One of the standouts is Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, many of its intimate portraits shot in her Bowery loft. This faces a wall of portraits by Billy Sullivan, with works by Lynda Benglis, Eva Hesse, and Tom Wesselmann nearby. Brad Kahlhamer’s sprawling found-object installation Bowery Nation anchors the final gallery.
The Loewe Craft Prize marks 10 years with the first-ever Milan ceremony.
The Loewe Foundation Craft Prize will make its first stop in Milan next year, holding its 10th-edition ceremony on April 11, the night before Milan Design Week kicks off. To mark the milestone, the foundation will also stage a major exhibition celebrating a decade of the prize, opening on design week’s first day and running through April 28. All 30 shortlisted works will be shown in Milan. Conceived by former Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson and rooted in the Spanish house’s origins as an artisanal workshop, the prize was first awarded in Madrid in 2017. It has since traveled to London, Tokyo, Paris, Seoul, New York, and Singapore, honoring work in ceramics, textiles, jewelry, lacquer, bookbinding, paper, and more.
Basic.Space partners with Virgil Abloh Foundation on a $1 design giveaway.
Basic.Space has launched The Luxury Draw, offering entrants the chance to win The Lounge, a fully furnished design set-up, for a $1 entry via Apple Pay on its digital marketplace. All proceeds benefit the Virgil Abloh Foundation’s programs for underrepresented emerging creatives. The prize centers on a never-before-seen piece by Harry Nuriev’s Crosby Studios: a business-class airplane seat reimagined as functional sculpture, upholstered in metallic silver and complete with recliner, footrest, and TV screen. Nuriev describes the plane seat as a tiny, isolated studio where many of his ideas take shape. Also included is the baby-blue Virgil Abloh c/o Vitra trio from 2019, which first sold exclusively on Basic.Space in 2020, alongside vintage and contemporary pieces from Achille and Pier Castiglioni, Mario Bellini, Cassina, and Nordic Knots. The Lounge will be installed at Basic.Space New York, a downtown take on the holiday department store, from November 13–19, where visitors can also enter on-site.
The Asian Art Biennial announces a full lineup for its 10th edition.
The Asian Art Biennial has announced the participating artists for its tenth edition, which runs November 7 through February 28 at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung. Curated by Lu Pei-Yi, the exhibition is titled “Mrahul Tminun · 共織 · Co-Weaving.” Lu uses weaving as a curatorial method, framing Asia as an interconnected web shaped by multiple, overlapping colonial histories. The show will foreground perspectives from women, Indigenous peoples, and queer communities, and will spill beyond the galleries into unconventional spaces such as outdoor venues and corridors. More than 30 artists and collectives are on the roster, spanning individual practitioners and collaborative groups from across the region. Highlights include Mounira Al Solh, Cian Dayrit, Pallavi Paul, Citra Sasmita, Yee I-Lann, Haji Oh, Hou I-Ting, and Eleng Luluan, alongside collectives such as Gudskul, HomoPleasure Collective, Inter-Asia Woodcut Mapping, and Womanifesto, the long-running Thai artist-led initiative.
A talk series “The Many Worlds of M.C. Escher” explores the math behind the art.
A new program of in-person talks and a guided tour, “The Many Worlds of M.C. Escher,” accompanies the exhibition “Mathematics and the Art of M.C. Escher,” offering fresh ways to approach the ideas and imagination behind one of the 20th century’s most distinctive artists. Next up is “The Many Guises of Symmetry in the Work of M.C. Escher,” presented by mathematician Doris Schattschneider, a leading authority on the artist, on October 13. Although symmetry is a slippery concept, Escher considers it fundamental, serving as a visual expression of order set against chaos. Mathematically, it can be described through transformations that produce balanced repetition, but in Escher’s hands it took many forms: the near-perfection of three-dimensional polyhedra, the efficiency of repeating shapes, and the satisfying closure of an image that circles back to where it began. Schattschneider’s talk will trace these varied expressions of symmetry across Escher’s prints, offering audiences a deeper look at how mathematical thinking shaped his singular visual language.
Attractive Distractions:
National Portrait Gallery unveils Tim Walker’s portrait survey of queer history.
Anthony Vaccarello’s best Saint Laurent celebrity moments of the past decade.
BFI London Film Festival turns 70 with 251 films from 88 countries.
Divers uncover a one-of-a-kind signet ring showing the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
