According to the curatorial statement for this show, "tattoo art has been clasped to the bosom of the art world precisely because of its intercession between the arenas of popular and high culture. The symbolism and impact of tattoos varies in different places and cultures. Anglicized from the Polynesian tatau and Tahitian tatu, tattoos have served as rites of passage, marks of status and rank, symbols of religious and spiritual devotion, decorations for bravery, sexual lures and marks of fertility, pledges of love, punishment, amulets and talismans, protection, and as the marks of outcasts, slaves and convicts."

"When the imagery of the tattoo is isolated from the human canvas, or when the “tattooed” becomes the subject of art, the ink can become a distinct portrait of the subject, revealing histories, ethnicities, personality quirks, fetishes, addictions, conquests, allegiances, and tragedy. This show presents the tattoo and the tattooed within the realm of fine art, "

The exhibition will include works by Max Snow, Crumb, Tom of Finland, Patrick Lee, Lina Bertucci, Richard Renaldi, Aaron Cobbett, Assume Vivid Astro-Focus, Ted Nemeth, Ron Athey, Kiki Smith, Alix Lambert,

The exhibition Iran Inside Out features 35 artists living and working in Iran alongside 20 others living in the Diaspora. The result is a multifarious portrait of 55 contemporary Iranian artists challenging the conventional perceptions of Iran and Iranian art. In Iran Inside Out, 210 works comprising painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation come together, in a rare moment which allows visitors an intimate look into the people, both inside and outside a country that is more complex than images of veiled women, worn out calligraphy and what a handful of other emblematic images would suggest.

Curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, Iran Inside Out offers an insight into the artistic energy of a culture that is constantly evolving as Iranians living both in and out of the country, come of age living and working in contentious societies. While half of these artists such as Vahid Sharifian, Barbad Golshiri, Farideh Lashai and Jinoos Taghizadeh reside in Iran, the other half including artists such as Shirin Neshat, Shahram Entekhabi, Mitra Tabrizian and Shoja Azari has been interspersed in the Diaspora.

Iran Inside Out explores the process of deconstruction and reinvention of both, self and art that has resulted from this cultural schism, often swinging between openness and dialogue, or seclusion and separatism.

New Perspectives in Contemporary Art is curated by Chessia Kelley and features artists Per Bilgren, David Brooks, Gabriel Martinez, Virginia Poundstone, and Gilad Ratman.

Bilgren's color photographs provide a glimpse into the world of conventions. His work reveals what is typically considered outsider personalities, at intimate moments. Concrete with Eggs by Brooks changes our perspective to one that is more long-term, conscious of our future effect on the environment. Martinez's chalkboard wall uses the gallery architecture as a descriptive receptacle for his Lucky Day project that occurred elsewhere in New York. His flower box sculptures also refer to inside/outside gallery space transforming the dividing tool of the police barrier into a cheerful pedestal for flowers. A site specific mobile by Poundstone proposes new ways to look at the world we live in. Ratman's video experiments with new, organic visual forms. The Boggyman presents the descent of the boggyman into a deep pool of mud recalling primeval, and strangely sexual imagery that is eerily familiar.

The Grady Alexis Gallery at Taller Latino Americano has mounted a show entitled Images of CUBA: Three Photographers, an exhibition of the photographs of Paul Stetzer, Jay Potter and Paul Typaldos.

Jay Potter's colorful images are well composed, often humorous, often ironic views of Havana. He has photographed throughout Australia, Peru, Spain, the US and Cuba.

Paul Stetzer uses his technique to bring Cuban faces into focus with the friendly air of a well-liked neighbor. His images - landscapes, portraits, and documentaries - have been exhibited in the U.S., Mexico and Havana.

Film-maker and photographer, Paul Typaldos, brings together gesture, light and open space that allows the viewer to consider the way that people occupy the environment. Most recently, his images have been shown at the Center for Experimental Art and Architecture in Los Angeles, CA.

Thw exhibition is curated by Jennifer Pliego.

Négritude, an experimental multi-disciplinary exhibition at Exit Art, explores the visionary 20th century political and artistic movement of the same name — coined by the Martinican poet, playwright, and politician Aimé Césaire in the 1930s — which flourished among Black intellectuals in post-World War I Paris and later spread to Africa, the United States and the Caribbean.

Négritude was a celebration of shared black heritage and an affirmation and valorization of pan-African identity and was a direct response to the effects of the African slave trade, French colonization of West Africa, and the New World plantation system. The beginnings of the Afro-Caribbean movement can be traced to literary movements in Puerto Rico and Cuba through the writing of Puerto Rican poet Luis Pales Matos, whose poem Black Town was published in 1927, and the Cuban Nicolas Guillen, although Cesaire's version of Négritude would eventually eclipse them. Under the influence of Césaire, the Guianan Léon Damas, and Léopold Sédar Senghor, the future president of Senegal, Négritude became a global movement, ultimately becoming radicalized and re-envisioned as a strict rejection of the domination of “the West”.

Showcasing several generations of African-American, Caribbean, South American and African artists, performers and writers, Négritude features work that examines the history, impact, and transmutations of this cultural movement. It looks beyond the historical Négritude movement to investigate also the emergence of the Harlem Renaissance and Modernism in the 1920s and 30s and contemporary responses to the concept of “blackness, highlighting the post-Civil Rights generation of black artists who have new perspectives on racial identity and politics.

Through a series of mini-exhibitions, film screenings, performances, readings, stories and discussions, Exit Art will examine the historical effects and contemporary impact of Négritude by exploring its archipelago, island by island.

Conceived by Papo Colo. Produced by Papo Colo, Tânia Cypriano, Rose Réjouis, Franklin Sirmans, and Greg Tate.  

Participating Artists
Papo Colo, Thornton Dial, Jr., Thornton Dial, Sr., Bessie Harvey, Lonnie Holley, Arthur Jafa, Andre Justé, Vladimir Cybil Charlier Justé, Ronald Lockett, Tierney Malone, Mario Cravo Neto, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Xaviera Simmons, Purvis Young, François Ziliff

Fifty years after the realization of Frank Lloyd Wright’s renowned design, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum celebrates the golden anniversary of its landmark building with the exhibition Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward, co-organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

The 50th anniversary exhibition brings together 64 projects designed by one of the most influential architects of the 20th century, including privately commissioned residences, civic and government buildings, religious and performance spaces, as well as unrealized urban mega-structures. Presented on the spiral ramps of Wright’s museum through a range of media—including more than 200 original Frank Lloyd Wright drawings, many of which are on view to the public for the first time, as well as newly commissioned models and digital animations—Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward illuminates Wright’s pioneering concepts of space and reveals the architect’s continuing relevance to contemporary design.

During his 72-year career, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959), who died just six months before the opening of the Guggenheim, worked independently from any single style and developed a new sense of architecture in which form and function are inseparable. Known for his inventiveness and the diversity of his work, Wright is celebrated for the awe-inspiring beauty and tranquility of his designs. Whether creating a private home, workplace, religious edifice, or cultural attraction, Wright sought to unite people, buildings, and nature in physical and spiritual harmony. To realize such a union in material form, Wright created environments of simplicity and repose through carefully composed plans and elevations based on consistent, geometric grammars.

Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward is organized in a loosely chronological order and is installed to be viewed from the rotunda floor upwards. Off the first ramp in the High Gallery is an original curtain depicting Wright’s native Wisconsin landscape from the 1952 Hillside Theater at Taliesin, Wright’s home and studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin (1911–59). On loan from Taliesin, this curtain creates the backdrop for a sound installation of recorded oral histories from the collection of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, which feature the voices of clients, friends, apprentices, and architects reflecting on the revelatory experience of living and working in Wright-designed spaces.

Highlights of Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward include newly created three-dimensional scale models that examine the internal mechanics of functional space in relation to exterior form in a variety of Wright’s projects. Among these are an exploded version of the Herbert Jacobs House (Madison, Wisconsin, 1937); a mirrored model for Unity Temple; and a sectional model of Beth Sholom Synagogue (Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, 1953). Large-scale models of unrealized urban schemes for projects, including his Plan for Greater Baghdad (1957), the Crystal City for Washington, D.C. (1940), and the Pittsburgh Point Civic Center (1947), provide insight into Wright’s visions for the landscapes of the city. The models were developed by Michael Kennedy of New York–based Kennedy Fabrications Inc., which specializes in architectural models and prototyping, and Situ Studio, a Brooklyn-based firm focused on research, design, and fabrication.

Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward is accompanied by a fully illustrated exhibition catalogue published by Skira/Rizzoli.

An exhibition of three early sculptures by Charles Ray are on view here for the first time in over twenty years.

Ink Line, 1987, is a continuous stream of black ink traveling from a dime-size opening in the ceiling into a similar hole in the floor. At first glance, the narrow stream appears static, but when carefully observed, the viewer is able to detect subtle fluctuations in the ink’s flow. Ink Line relates to the artist’s iconic Ink Box from the previous year, in which a steel cube is precipitously filled to the brim with black ink. Although Ink Line has been widely reproduced, this is the first time it has been exhibited publicly.

Spinning Spot was made in 1987. In this work, a section of the floor measuring 24 inches in diameter is set spinning at 33 RPM. The third work in the exhibition is Moving Wire, from 1988, consisting of a single 8.5 foot length of wire. Both ends of the wire protrude from the wall and are set 14 inches apart. As one end of the wire extends out from the wall at random intervals, the other retracts.

Charles Ray is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of his generation. Ray has been included in two Venice Biennale (1993, 2003), Documenta IX (1992), and four Whitney Biennials. His monumental sculpture, Hinoki, 2007, will be exhibited in the new wing of the Art Institute of Chicago this May. In June, Ray’s first commissioned outdoor work will be permanently installed at the edge of the Grand Canal at the Punta della Dogana in Venice. The artist currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Mark Morris Dance Group

Bedtime

All Fours

V

The Metropolitan Opera launches its free Summer Recital Series with a special performance of opera arias and popular songs headlined by the Tony Award-winning baritone Paulo Szot and featuring Lisette Oropesa (soprano), Alek Shrader (tenor), and Vlad Iftinca (piano).

Baritone Paulo Szot won a 2008 Tony Award for his performance as Emile de Becque in the Broadway revival of South Pacific. He has appeared with major American and European opera companies, including New York City Opera, where he was heard in Carmen, L’Elisir d’Amore, and Le Nozze di Figaro. He recently made his Met debut in the leading role of William Kentridge’s new production of Shostakovich’s The Nose, conducted by Valery Gergiev.

Free tickets are required for entry. Tickets will be available at the Met Opera box office from 6 - 10 July 2009. For more information on how to obtain free tickets for this event, please visit metopera.org/parks beginning 1 June or call 212-362-6000. There will be no rain dates for these performances. No one will be admitted without a ticket.

Grammy Award-nominated Puerto Rican singer Jerry Rivera grew up surrounded by salsa music and musicians. After the release of his first full length album Empezando A Vivir, Rivera was given the title "El Bebe de la Salsa." Since then, he has gone on to carve out a career for himself as one of the world's most famous Latin pop stars. Rivera’s newest single “Quien de los Dos” is currently Top 10 on Billboard’s Tropical chart.

N’Klabe is a Puerto Rican salsa group formed in 2003 by Héctor Torres, Félix Javier Torres, and Ricardo Porrata. The group has been nominated for several awards during its short career and is hailed "the future of Salsa music" by such pioneers of the genre as Cheo Feliciano. Both N'Klabe's albums -- and two of their most well-known songs -- feature collaboration with reggaeton artist Voltio. The group also recently collaborated with R.K.M. & Ken-Y. In 2008, N'Klabe began an international promotional tour, organizing performances in Peru, Colombia and the United States.

Sting has been an undeniable force on contemporary Pop music ever since he first came on the scene with his band The Police. With over 100 million records sold, sixteen Grammys, Sting's influence on music today shows no signs of waning. To celebrate the power of this Pop sensation's music, former Sting bandmates will join forces to perform unique versions of his music at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York.

Included in this all-star event, produced by impresario Charles Carlini and musical director Butch Thomas, are vocalist Vinx, trumpeter Lew Soloff, keyboardist Delmar Brown, guitarist Jeff Lee Campbell, bassist T.M. Stevens and drummer Kenwood Dennard. A portion of the proceeds will go to help the Rain Forest Foundation.

Formed in 1985, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs is a Latin rock band from Buenos Aires, Argentina. With a unique sound that is a mix of rock, ska, jazz, folk, reggae, funk, and big band, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs is one of the most influential and referenced bands of the Latin rock world. Although the band’s lineup has changed throughout the years, the co-founders, singer Gabriel Fernandez Capello (known as Vicentico) and bassist Flavio Cianciarulo (known as Sr. Flavio), have always been the core members. The Cadillacs received a 1998 Grammy Award for Best Latin Rock/Alternative Album and were nominated in 2000 for two Latin Grammy Awards for Best Band and Best Music Video for "La Vida.” After a seven year hiatus, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs regrouped in late 2008 to create La Luz del Ritmo, their sixteenth full length album.

Throughout his career Eric Bobo has been known for recording and performing with a large variety of leading artists including The Black Crowes, 311, Gnarls Barkley, Rage Against The Machine, Smashing Pumpkins, Soulfly, Ella Fitzgerald, and Psycho Realm. In 2008 Bobo released his debut album, Meeting of the Minds, which is an eclectic collection of songs that represent what Eric Bobo is all about.

Before Susan Boyle, there was Paul Potts.

The first winner of "Britain's Got Talent," and YouTube sensation (to date over 74 million hits), Paul Potts takes the stage at the Beacon Theatre.

Juana Molina is a singer, songwriter, and actress from Argentina who learned to play the guitar at the age of five. Sung in her native Rioplatense Spanish, Molina’s lyrics are intertwined with complex structures recalling ambient masters Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, and modernist John Cage. While her music features elements of ambient and electronica, her voice is often compared to Björk, Beth Orton, and Lisa Germano. Molina usually writes, mixes tracks, and performs solo, intricately layering sound and rhythms performed on the spot.

Curumin, a São Paulo singer/composer/multi-instrumentalist of Spanish and Japanese heritage, was first discovered in September 2005 by hip hop duo Blackalicious while touring in Brazil. Curumin’s music is a head-spinning amalgamation of “música popular Brasileira” (MPB), Brazilian roots, samba-reggae, dub, hip hop, electronica, funk, rock, and pop along with hints of Brazilian jazz and the kind of samba-rock pioneered by Tropicália stars like Jorge Ben and Tim Maia.

Born to singer Aminata Diakité, Oumou Sangare is a Malian musician known as "The Songbird of Wassoulou.” She writes and composes her songs to bring about social awareness, especially concerning the place of women within society.

French-Cameroonian sisters Hélène and Célia Faussart created an international sensation with the 1998 release of Princesses Nubiennes, their debut CD. The duo’s sophisticated, alluring mélange of Afro-pop, bass ’n’ drums, electronica, hip-hop, and jazz influences has helped make them the most successful French-language act in the U.S. in more than a decade. They received a 2004 Grammy nomination in the Best Urban Alternative R&B category, along with Erykah Badu, Outkast, and Kelis, and have collaborated with the Black Eyed Peas, DJ Krush, Talib Kweli, and Youssou N’Dour. Les Nubians is known for their jazzy nuances, hard hitting drum 'n' bass lines, harmonious melodies, and conscientious proclamations.

Born to Nigerian parents in Paris, France, Asa moved to Nigeria when she was just two years old. Immersed in the cultural and religious quagmire of her homeland, Asa became inspired by Afrobeat musicians like Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, Raphael Saadiq, Lauryn Hill, Femi Kuti, and Angélique Kidjo.

Featuring fossils and other specimens from the Museum's collections, vivid reconstructions, and live animals, the exhibition examines the ancestry and evolution of numerous species, ranging from huge to tiny, from speedy to sloth-like, and displays animals with oversized claws, fangs, snouts, and horns.

Through the use of dynamic media displays, animated computer interactives, hands-on activities, touchable fossils, casts, taxidermy specimens, and a colony of live sugar gliders —extreme marsupials from Australia — the exhibition will highlight distinctive mammalian qualities and illuminate the shared ancestry that unites these diverse creatures.

The exhibition is divided into nine sections—Introduction, What is a Mammal?, What is Extreme?, Head to Tail, Reproduction, Mammals in Motion, Extreme Climates, Extreme Isolation, and Extreme Extinction—and offers extensive detail on the evolutionary history and family tree of mammals.

David Seidner: Paris Fashions, 1945 presents photographs of a collection of couture-clad dolls made for the Théâtre de la Mode, a creative effort by the French fashion industry to broadcast to the world that they were back in business after World War II. In 1990, contemporary fashion photographer David Seidner (1957–1999) was asked to photograph the dolls for a reconstruction of the original project. Fifteen of these color photographs from the David Seidner Archive, along with one of the original dolls are on view at the International Center of Photography  in New York.

After the liberation of 1944, the French couture industry was badly weakened. Shortages of food, electricity, and supplies brought production to a virtual standstill. During the Occupation, strict fabric rations were imposed on the couture houses, which faced the constant threat of foreclosure. To help revive the international stature of the business, the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne conceived of a small exhibition, Théâtre de la Mode. With limited access to materials, the organizers commissioned wire-frame dolls just over two feet tall as the models and invited the major fashion designers of the day, including Balenciaga, Jacques Fath, Lucien Lelong, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Pierre Balmain, to create exquisite miniature dresses.

The exhibition of over 230 dolls, displayed in artist-designed sets, opened in Paris on March 27, 1945 in the Pavillon Marsan at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. The international creative talent involved in the project included the Frenchmen Jean Cocteau, Christian Bérard, and Éliane Bonabel; the Russian Boris Kochno; and the Catalan Joan Rebull. The show was an instant sensation, and traveled to London, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Vienna, New York, and, finally, San Francisco. Within the year, French fashion industry had been revived. The dolls had completed their work spectacularly and were donated to the Maryhill Museum near Portland, Oregon, where they disappeared from public view.

In 1990, the dolls were rediscovered and returned to Paris, where they were recoiffed and restyled for an exhibition at the Musée de la Mode. Because of his pioneering work photographing French fashion and historical gowns, David Seidner was asked to photograph the little dolls.

Like the postwar fashion photographs made in front of bombed buildings, the coiled ropes, splintering wood, shards of glass, and exposed wire in Seidner’s photographs attest to the precariousness of life and fashion at the time.

David Seidner (February 18, 1957–June 6, 1999) was born in Los Angeles and worked as a photographer for twenty-five years, spending much of his time in Paris. Among the world’s top fashion photographers, he was perhaps best known for his work with the fashion house of Yves Saint Laurent, his striking formal portraiture and nude photographs, and for his orchid series, the final project before his death in 1999. His artwork and portraiture were largely inspired by the chance-based philosophy of composer John Cage, whose work considered the classical Chinese book the I Ching as the basis for musical pieces.

In the Heights is a musical about three days in the life of Washington Heights, a vibrant and tightly knit, but diverse Latino community at the top of the island of Manhattan. It's a place where the coffee from the corner bodega is light and sweet, the windows are always open, and the breeze carries the rhythm of three generations of music. In the Heights is the tale of a community at a crossroads. Find out what it takes to make a living, what it costs to have a dream, and what it means to be home In the Heights.

With music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and a book by Quiara Alegria Hudes, In the Heights is directed by Thomas Kail and choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler. Alex Lacamoire is music director, and music arrangements and orchestrations are by Alex Lacamoire and Bill Sherman. Miranda and Kail are both members of the hip-hop improv troupe Freestyle Love Supreme and head a 22-member cast.

Andrea Burns, Janet Dacal, Robin De Jesus, Carlos Gomez, Mandy Gonzalez, Christopher Jackson, Priscilla Lopez, Olga Merediz, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Karen Olivo, Seth Stewart

Fight Night Fights originated in the basement space of the Church Street Boxing Gym in lower Manhattan. The limited seating capacity and ever growing demand prompted Fight Night Fights to move to a larger venue, the basement of St. Paul the Apostle's Church behind Columbus Circle. This old school fight club has become popular with everybody from blue collar toughs to Wall Street investment bankers to New York style editors and hipsters.

The Friday Night Fights NYC Series features a variety of fighting styles. Muay Thai Boxing, Amateur Boxing and White Collar Boxing are just some of the types of fights that are featured at fight nights.

Michael Longoria 
Christian Hoff - Tony Award Winner
Sebastian Arcelus
J Robert Spencer

Book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice
Music and Lyrics by Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe
Directed by Des McAnuff
Choreography by Sergio Trujillo