Culture Calendar: 18 Things to Do in February 2018

Feb. 2-May 13

Over barely two decades, Tennessee Williams wrote The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof—the plays that would establish him as one of the most important American playwrights of the century. Yet as anyone who’s deeply read Williams knows, his plays reflected a great deal of his own private turmoil, from alcohol and drug addiction to stormy romantic relationships. A wide-ranging new exhibit on Williams at the Morgan Library & Museum reveals how, even as he battled critics and censors, the author found solace in his writing and in his ability to weigh in on the theatrical productions of his work. Peek into Williams’ mind via private diaries, original drafts, personal letters, photographs, and other ephemera that constituted his real and inner worlds.

225 Madison Ave.; themorgan.org.

Through Feb. 10 (Part 1); Opening Feb. 15 (Part 2)

Few artists truly merit the polymath label, but Gordon Parks—photographer, composer, writer, film director—certainly more than earned the honor. While Parks is particularly revered for his indelible images of the civil rights era, he was also for years an active freelancer, shooting portraits of artists like Helen Frankenthaler, Alberto Giacometti and Alexander Calder for varied publications, and an avid observer of fashion as well, placing models in couture gowns amidst lively street scenes of the 1950s and 60s New York. Those lesser-known works—as elegant and imaginative as any in Parks’ canon—get the spotlight in this two-part exhibition, assembled in collaboration with the Gordon Parks Foundation.

Jack Shainman Gallery, 524 W. 24 St.; jackshainman.com.

Feb. 1-4

Merging the movement languages of African, hip-hop, jazz, and tap with modern dance, choreographer Camille A. Brown has created a vibrant style all her own. Case in point: her latest major project, a trilogy highlighting African-American contributions to dance history, the last segment of which debuts at Montclair State University following a Kennedy Center run late last year.

1 Normal Ave.; peakperfs.org.

Feb. 10-May 13

Over his astounding 60 year career, artist Jasper Johns has experimented with mediums, themes and techniques, most notably in his found-material collages, to create thoroughly new takes on sculpture and graphic arts and rethink how traditional media may be used. In collaboration with London’s Royal Academy, the Broad presents the most comprehensive survey of Johns’ work in two decades, assembling over 100 of his most significant paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings, many never before seen in L.A.

221 S. Grand Ave.; thebroad.org.

Feb. 10-Apr. 29

Before she became a feminist literary icon, Virginia Woolf spent childhood summers in St. Ives, Cornwall; as an adult, she returned to the evocative seaside town and found inspiration for To The Lighthouse.  In tribute to Woolf, the Tate St. Ives has assembled works by over 80 artists from the past 160 years who explore the same ideas Woolf illuminated. The show is divided into two sections, the first juxtaposing pieces centered on landscape and nature with paintings, photographs and sculpture touching on the public performance of gender and identity; the second focusing on the still life and the “room of one’s own” in Woolf’s words, within, as seat of creativity.  Woolf herself would no doubt approve of the show’s setting at the newly refurbished museum, overlooking the ocean.

Porthmeor Beach; tate.org.uk.

Feb. 11-May 20

It’s easy to enjoy Edgar Degas’ ballet and opera scenes for their surface beauty, but it would be a mistake to engage with Degas’ work on such a superficial level only.  The prolific French painter was a relentless experimenter who developed innovative techniques changing how light was portrayed in modern painting and obsessively revisited subjects in a quest to portray contemporary cosmopolitan life as realistically as possible. In association with Cambridge, England’s Fitzwilliam Museum–which holds the most Degas works across multiple media in the U.K.—the Denver Art Museum puts the artist’s 60-year career on display, showcasing his classic nudes, theater scenes, and much more. 

100 W. 14^th Ave. Pkwy.; denverartmuseum.org.

Feb. 14-May 13

The idea of artists as brands unto themselves, and of their work as a hot (and pricey) commodity, may feel as contemporary as the last Art Basel fair, but it was three decades ago that the borders between art, commerce, and entertainment first started to blend and blur.  In an expansive new show bringing together over 70 artists—including Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Sarah Charlesworth, and Richard Prince, among others—the Hirshhorn Museum creates a focused and vivid history of the decade when a group of groundbreaking artists in New York redefined how art related to a burgeoning culture of consumerism.

Independence Ave. and 7th St.; hirshhorn.si.edu.

Feb. 14, 16 and 17

There’s rarely an acceptable reason to miss a production of the masterpiece of American musical theater that is West Side Story—but the fact that this year is composer Leonard Bernstein’s centennial is pretty good extra impetus to catch any live performance of his iconic score. Happily, the Kennedy Center has organized a concert performance with an excellent house band, the National Symphony Orchestra Pops (get excited for those “Dance at the Gym” horns), and a talented young cast of Broadway up-and-comers, highlighted by the electric Ephraim Sykes as Riff and the always fierce Krysta Rodriguez as Anita. 

2700 F St. NW; kennedy-center.org.

Feb. 15-May 13

Over three different generations, Robert Colescott, Kerry James Marshall, and Mickalene Thomas have redefined historical painting from a contemporary, black artist’s perspective, bringing to the forefront of modern art voices and faces often obscured or forgotten. In this landmark exhibition drawing from several collections, the vibrant works of all three, including Colescott’s Les Demoiselles d’Alabama: Vestidas and new works by Thomas made specifically for the show—tell a uniquely American story, from Colescott’s canvases delving into a dark colonial past to Marshall’s politically-engaged tableaux to Thomas’ explorations of female identity.

Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave.; seattleartmuseum.org.

Feb. 16-May 5

Almost forty years ago, artist Michele Oka Doner had her first solo museum show at the Detroit Institute of Arts, featuring the large-scale floor installation Pages I and II inspired by ancient civilizations’ development of a writing system. Now a renowned artist known for her highly evocative and conceptual integration of the natural world into her work, Oka Doner returns to the city, recreating that installation and adding on to it with Pages III and IV, featuring a new “object-based alphabet” Oka Doner developed over years, inspired by the materials of the ocean and the beach. Taken together, the installations invite viewers to, as Oka Doner puts it, tread the “initial neural pathways traveled by remote ancestors,” considering the ancient relationship between nature and language.

Wasserman Projects, 3434 Russell St. #502; wassermanprojects.com.

Feb. 17-May 27

Louis Comfort Tiffany was far more than a maker of gorgeous lamps: a decorative arts innovator, he translated natural forms into designs that, starting in the late 19^th century, influenced American tastes for four decades and remain highly covetable today. For the first time, Chicago’s Richard H. Driehaus Museum, which possesses one of the country’s foremost Tiffany collections, shares its wares in another city, at Cincinnati’s Taft Museum of Art. Yes, there will be stained-glass lamps aplenty, but also Tiffany’s leaded-glass windows and objects like andirons, inkwells, jewelry boxes, vases, and candlesticks—all showcasing Tiffany’s talent for taking the efflorescent forms of flowers and plants and transforming them into fine art.

316 Pike St.; taftmuseum.org.

Feb. 18-Apr. 29

In January of 2015, the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin received a singular gift: the design and concept for the only building the modern master Ellsworth Kelly designed. Austin (named, as was Kelly’s wont, after the place for which it was intended), is an over 2,700-sq ft. structure comprising vibrantly colored glass windows, a wood sculpture, and fourteen black-and–white stone panels in marble and granite. As such, it’s a perfect amalgamation of several recurring motifs in Kelly’s work, which are the focus of an exhibition opening concurrently with Austin itself. Visitors can view Kelly’s paintings exploring the color grid, the sculptures that inspired his towering “totems,” and his black-and-white works—then step into Austin to see them all reflected in one magnificent structure.

Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. at Congress Ave.; blantonmuseum.org.

Feb. 23-July 1

Simply put, Tony Kushner’s two-part “gay fantasia on national themes” is one of the great epics in modern theater history, as penetratingly funny, wise and heartbreaking as when it opened in 1993.  After a sold-out run at London’s National Theater, a new production comes to Broadway with a cast of stellar returning stars and enticing new additions, including Nathan Lane as the monstrous Roy Cohn, Andrew Garfield as Prior Walter, Denise Gough and Lee Pace as Harper and Joe Pitt, and Beth Malone as the Angel. Kushner’s original won a Pulitzer and seven Tonys; with this group assembled, history could very well repeat itself.

Neil Simon Theatre, 250 W. 52^nd St.; angelsbroadway.com.

Feb. 24-May 13

The Dutch designer Iris van Herpen’s creations seem like feats of fashion magic: stunningly intricate designs created with 3D printers in collaboration with architects and scientists, and yet somehow unmistakably wrought by van Herpen’s own hand.  Her fusion of old-fashioned craftsmanship and very modern technology has made its way from the runway to music videos, movie red carpets, ballet stages and beyond—and now it gets a close-up, via 45 ensembles, shoes and film footage—at the Phoenix Art Museum, the last stop on the exhibition’s North American tour.  

1625 N. Central Ave.; phxart.org.

Feb. 25-May 28

The gilded, rosily erotic figures of Gustav Klimt and the haunted, haunting inhabitants of Egon Schiele’s paintings might seem to have little in common. But in fact, the two Austrian modernists—who were admirers of each other—followed strikingly parallel paths, veering away from traditional techniques in an effort to depict the human body in an unconventional way, creating tension in the viewer and hinting at a subject’s complex inner life. In honor of the 100^th anniversary of both artists’ deaths, Vienna’s Albertina Museum has loaned rarely seen drawings by both artists for a show in which 60 works on paper serve to trace Klimt’s and Schiele’s career paths and the ways in which the two flouted convention, from their ever-so-slightly disturbing nudes to their visceral portraits to their vivid depictions of the natural world. The Museum of Fine Arts is the only U.S. venue to see the show.

465 Huntington Ave.; mfa.org.

Feb. 27-May 27

In the mid-nineteenth century, the Civil War and the country’s expansion created a need for easily reproduced and distributed photographs—images that not only documented seminal historical moments in the nation’s development, but which would become central to how the United States was portrayed here and abroad. After a slow adoption of Europe’s negative-positive photographic technique, paper negatives and photographs finally became more widespread here, capturing revolutionary thinkers and historic moments even as they inspired skepticism (for instance, inspiring reports that photo negatives were being used to counterfeit money). At the Getty Center’s transportive exhibit, the era of paper photography’s arrival lives again, via rarely seen salted paper prints, Civil War scenes, memorialized treaty signings, and powerful portraits of the likes of Frederick Douglass.

J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center; getty.edu.

Previews begin Feb. 27

The Laurie Metcalf Renaissance is upon us! Far along in a much-lauded but quietly simmering career that started at Steppenwolf in Chicago, Metcalf seems to finally be getting her due as one of the most complex and gifted actors in film and theater — winning a Tony for her performance in last year’s A Doll’s House, Part 2 and recently earning a much-deserved Oscar nomination for Lady Bird.  Far be it from Metcalf to rest on her laurels: she’s already back on Broadway in a much-anticipated revival of Edward Albee’s 1994 Pulitzer-winner, alongside Oscar-winner Glenda Jackson and talented young Broadway regular Alison Pill.

John Golden Theatre, 252 W. 45^th St.; threetallwomenbroadway.com.

Feb. 28-Aug. 27

How do the most gifted artists actually bring the people they paint to thrilling life? The British painter Lucian Freud once said, “I want the paint to work as flesh does,” hinting at technique’s influence in creating a sense of sensuality and intimacy in his work. Freud wasn’t alone, as a wide-ranging new show at the Tate Britain amply demonstrates: figurative painters including Freud’s contemporary Francis Bacon have endeavored above all to depict an ultra-expressive and raw reality. Freud and Bacon are the focus, but the 100 works on display here show forebears like Walter Sickert and Chaim Soutine, the influence of teachers William Coldstream and David Bomberg, and the women breaking into the male-dominated figurative painting world, like Cecily Brown, Celia Paul, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

Millbank, Westminster; tate.org.uk.