Contents for May 11th, 2026
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Charles Dennis, FF Alumn, In Memoriam
Weekly Spotlight: **VOICES from the FIRST FIFTY**
1. Dolores Zorreguieta, FF Alumn, publishes her first novel
2. Malcolm X. Betts, FF Alumn, at St. Mark’s Church, Manhattan, May 22
3. LAPD, FF Alumns, at Skid Row History Museum & Archive, Los Angeles, CA, May 23
4. Jessica Hagedorn, FF Alumn, at Lincoln Center, Manhattan, May 22
5. Jodie Lyn Kee Chow, FF Alumn, at Grace Exhibition Space, Manhattan, May 15
6. Sarah Schulman, FF Alumn, at The 8th Floor, Manhattan, May 25
7. Coreen Simpson, FF Alumn, at National Arts Club, Manhattan, May 11
8. Jerri Allyn, Nancy Angelo, Linda Frye Burnham, Anne Gauldin, Cheri Gaulke, Suzanne Lacy, Sue Maberry, Susan Mogul, Richard Newton, FF Alumns, now online at LATimes.com
9. Charles Yuen, FF Alumn, at The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, Manhattan, May 14
10. Marina Abramović, FF Alumn, at Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, Italy, May 6-Oct. 19
11. Robbin Ami Silverberg, FF Alumn, thru June 27
12. Michael Bramwell, FF Alumn, May news
13. Alfredo Jaar, FF Alumn, at La Biennale di Venezia, Italy, thru Nov. 22
14. Lucio Pozzi, FF Alumn, at Galerie Wachters, Knokke, Belgium, thru Aug. 7
15. Ken Butler, FF Alumn, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan, opening June 7
16. Laura Parnes, FF Alumn, at Hauser & Wirth, Manhattan, June 6
17. Vernita Nemec, FF Alumn, now online at GalleryAnd.Studio
18. Susan Mills, FF Alumn, at Vancouver Art Book Fair, BC, Canada, May 17-19
19. Terry Berkowitz, Jodie Lyn Kee Chow, Marie Christine Katz, Barbara Rosenthal, Arlene Rush, Gregory Sholette, Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga, FF Alumns, at WhiteBox Portable, Penn Station, thru May 30
20. Nina Sobell, FF Alumn, May news
21. Claudia DeMonte, FF Alumn, at June Kelly Gallery, Manhattan, opening May 21
22. Robert Wilson, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com
23. George Peck, FF Alumn, at Mission Art Gallery, Budapest, Hungary, opening May 12
24. Owen Gray, FF Member, at Blue Mountain Gallery, Manhattan, opening May 21
25. Martha Edelheit, Miriam Schapiro, Nina Yankowitz, FF Alumns, at Eric Firestone Gallery, Manhattan, opening May 12
26. Aaron Landesman, FF Alumn, at Chocolate Factory Theater, Long Island City, NY, May 17
27. Susan Bee, Mary Beth Edelson, Asia Stewart, FF Alumns, at A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, May 13-27
28. Richard H. Alpert, FF Alumn, announces candidacy for Governor of California
29. Micki Spiller, FF Alumn, at LIC Arts Open, Long Island City, NY, May 16-17
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Weekly Spotlight: **VOICES from the FIRST FIFTY**
Franklin Furnace’s Board Co-Chair David Perlmutter proposes a toast for our 50th with a take on the only AI that really matters:
“Long before there was Artificial Intelligence, there was another form of AI, ‘Artistic Intelligence.’ Although they may sometimes have hallucination in common, Artistic Intelligence requires the input of felt experience for its expression, something we will never get from a microchip. Tonight we are here to celebrate 50 years of Franklin Furnace, a paragon of Artistic Intelligence. The art forms, art and artists championed by Franklin Furnace are now and forevermore an important part of the human experience.”
While AI chatbots can generate text, they’ll never generate the kind of revolutionary, felt, lived experience that Franklin Furnace artists bring to the world. Changing our culture for the better takes human hearts, human risk, and human support.
Help us keep funding the irreplaceable AI — Artistic Intelligence — at any level you can at https://secure.givelively.org/donate/franklin-furnace-archive-inc/first-fifty-campaign.
To see scenes from the BAM jubilee gallery walk and party click here.
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Charles Dennis, FF Alumn, In Memoriam
Charles Dennis, GONE??? Such a sad flash this morning (from Mary Luft), Charles one of the legendary PS 122 Co-Founders ( with Charles Moulton and Tim Miller) who collegially shaped many of our Downtown adventures and careers. A true pioneer in centering the engagement of public community in the aims and values of the practicing artist and enabling institution. The premier Avant-Garde-Aramaist to the end. Godspeed, Charles Dennis. Heavenly Open Movement is now in session. And condolences to his wife Mona Banzer and family. We have lost a quiet hero.
David R. White, May 9, 2026
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Weekly Spotlight: **VOICES from the FIRST FIFTY**
Franklin Furnace’s Board Co-Chair David Perlmutter proposes a toast for our 50th with a take on the only AI that really matters:
“Long before there was Artificial Intelligence, there was another form of AI, ‘Artistic Intelligence.’ Although they may sometimes have hallucination in common, Artistic Intelligence requires the input of felt experience for its expression, something we will never get from a microchip. Tonight we are here to celebrate 50 years of Franklin Furnace, a paragon of Artistic Intelligence. The art forms, art and artists championed by Franklin Furnace are now and forevermore an important part of the human experience.”
While AI chatbots can generate text, they’ll never generate the kind of revolutionary, felt, lived experience that Franklin Furnace artists bring to the world. Changing our culture for the better takes human hearts, human risk, and human support.
Help us keep funding the irreplaceable AI — Artistic Intelligence — at any level you can at https://secure.givelively.org/donate/franklin-furnace-archive-inc/first-fifty-campaign.
To see scenes from the BAM jubilee gallery walk and party click here.
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1. Dolores Zorreguieta, FF Alumn, publishes her first novel
Dolores Zorreguieta, FF Alumn, publishes her first novel, “Libro Adentro.” Edited by Luz Fernández Ediciones, an independent publishing company based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. “Libro Adentro” made its debut at the Buenos Aires Book Fair, which runs until May 11, 2026, https://www.feriadellibro.ar/expositores/luz-fernandez-ediciones
It will be distributed in Buenos Aires main bookstores and it will also be available online at https://tienda.luzfernandezediciones.com/productos/dolores-zorreguieta-libro-adentro-o8kr5/
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2. Malcolm X. Betts, FF Alumn, at St. Mark’s Church, Manhattan, May 22
Please visit this link:
https://danspaceproject.org/calendar/ws2026-betts-okpokwasili/
Thank you.
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3. LAPD, FF Alumns, at Skid Row History Museum & Archive, Los Angeles, CA, May 23
Who: Los Angeles Poverty Department
What: Walk the Talk – Performance / Parade
When: Saturday, May 23, 2026, 12 Noon – 4pm PDT.
Where: Parade route begins at 250 S. Broadway, The Skid Row History Museum & Archive
COST: FREE AND OPEN TO ALL!!!
Contact: John Malpede, 310-259-1038, info@lapovertydept.org | www.lapovertydept.org
WALK the TALK
SKID ROW VISIONARIES
Celebrated in extraordinary fashion
PARADE PERFORMANCE VISUAL ART BRASS BAND
Walk the Talk 2020 is the 8th iteration of the Los Angeles Poverty Department’s biennial, peripatetic performance: an on-going chronicle of the accomplishments of Skid Row people and their transformative initiatives. Walk theTalk is a parade with a New Orleans Second line brass band and attendees dancing down the street from one performance site to the next.
This year’s honorees are Iron Donato – Skid Row artist and advocate; Stephanie Bell – Skid Row artist and font of wisdom; Al Ballesteros – Executive Director of JWCH Health Clinics; Pastor Blue and Emilia Rayno – founder and co-director of Blue Hollywood Street Sanctuary; Tom Grode – community advocate and artist; Sean Gregory – community activist, LA CAN Member, and staff Venice Community Housing; Soma Snakeoil – Co-founder and executive director, The Sidewalk Project; and Anthony Ruffin – LA County Homeless Services and Housing.
Led by a brass band, the parade will wind its way through Skid Row, stopping at eight locations determined by parade honorees as the place they associate with their work. At each stop L.A. Poverty Department actors will do a short performance, distilled from lengthy interviews with the individual(s) being celebrated. The audience is encouraged to follow this fun, funky and festive parade. Artist Van Hanos is painting portraits of this year’s honorees and collaborating sculptor Jory Rabinovitz is designing unique pickets so that the portraits will be simultaneously held high while functioning as walking sticks for those carrying them.
Van Hanos is an American painter whose work has been shown throughout the US and Europe. While Van now lives and works in Brussels, Belgium, he currently has a solo exhibition at The Chateau Shatto Gallery in Los Angeles. Jory Rabinovitz’s work has been seen at The Sculpture Center, NYC and many other galleries. He’s currently curating LAPD’s bi-monthly film series.
Parade goers are encouraged to dress festively but appropriately for the weather and wear comfortable shoes, bring water and snacks. Additional information, including the exact parade route, is available online at www.lapovertydept.org.
Our WALK THE TALK WEBSITE provides on-line access to the 90-plus people whose real-worldaccomplishments — from 1970 until today, have been celebrated in Walk the Talk. The website, created by artist /technologist Rob Ochshorn, includes hour-long video interviews and transcripts of the interviews, for each honoree as well as videos and scripts of the scenes distilled from the interviews and performed by Los Angeles Poverty Department in each Walk the Talk performance / parade.
Los Angeles Poverty Department was founded in 1985 and is made up of people who make art and live and work in Skid Row. LAPD creates performances and multidisciplinary artworks that connect the experience of people living in poverty to the social forces that shape their lives and communities. LAPD’s works express the realities,hopes, dreams and rights of people who live and work in L.A.’s Skid Row.
Walk the Talk is a manifestation of LA Poverty Department’s long process of community engagement that has included performances, exhibitions, public conversations, interviews— with the aim of enlisting community brain power to identify initiatives and people whose actions who have helped weave the social fabric of Skid Row.
Walk the Talk is a peoples’ history: the story of the community as told by the community.
Walk the Talk supports LAPD’s larger social practice methodology, a body of work widely acknowledged as “some of the most uncompromising political theater.” (Artforum) and “Best political art shows.”
The Skid Row History Museum and Archive is an exhibition /performing arts space curated by
L. A. Poverty Department. It foregrounds the distinctive artistic and historical consciousness of Skid Row and functionsas a means for exploring and supporting community stewardship in an age of immense income inequality, by mining a neighborhood’s history and amplifying effective community strategies. The space operates as an archive, exhibition, performance and meeting space.
Henriëtte Brouwers
Los Angeles Poverty Department
Skid Row History Museum and Archive
cell: 310-227.6071
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4. Jessica Hagedorn, FF Alumn, at Lincoln Center, Manhattan, May 22
Dear Friends,
The staged concert of MOST WANTED, the musical play I co-wrote with composer Mark Bennett, is coming up on Friday, May 22, as part of Lincoln Center’s American Songbook Festival. We’ve got a great cast and a kick-ass band, and we hope to see many of you there.
The event is FREE, and no reservations are necessary. Click on this link for details, especially if you require a seat:
https://lincolncenter.org/series/american-songbook/most-wanted-305
Hasta pronto,
Jessica
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5. Jodie Lyn Kee Chow, FF Alumn, at Grace Exhibition Space, Manhattan, May 15
Live performance: please visit this link:
https://graceexhibitionspace.org/events/20-years-of-grace-festival-night-3
Thank you.
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6. Sarah Schulman, FF Alumn, at The 8th Floor, Manhattan, May 25
This month at The 8th Floor
Gay Men’s Book Club by Matthew Lax
in conversation with Sarah Schulman
Thursday, May 28, doors 6pm
Details & RSVP Here
Join us for the US premiere of Matthew Lax’s Gay Men’s Book Club, an experimental documentary featuring seven diverse gay men in LA discussing Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s Elite Capture around a table in September 2023. The unscripted, intergenerational discussion is facilitated by the filmmaker in collaboration with community organizer, founding member of the Radical Faeries, and Jungian psychologist Dr. Don Kilhefner. The participants explore Táíwò’s concept of elite capture as it relates to community, privilege, organizing, and their own group dynamics. The screening will be followed by a conversation between Lax and writer Sarah Schulman on the film and the co-optation of identity politics via queer organizing histories. Learn more and rsvp here: https://www.the8thfloor.org/newevents/lax
Co-presented by MIX NYC, a non-profit organization founded in 1987 by Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard, dedicated to platforming, promoting, and supporting experimental film and moving image work rooted in the lives, politics, and experiences of LGBTQIA2S+ people.
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7. Coreen Simpson, FF Alumn, at National Arts Club, Manhattan, May 11
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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8. Jerri Allyn, Nancy Angelo, Linda Frye Burnham, Anne Gauldin, Cheri Gaulke, Suzanne Lacy, Sue Maberry, Susan Mogul, Richard Newton, FF Alumns, now online at LATimes.com
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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9. Charles Yuen, FF Alumn, at The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, Manhattan, May 14
https://www.resnickpasslof.org/upcoming-events
The Asian Factor: Abstraction Then and Now
May 14, thursday. 6:30 PM 8:00 PM
The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation
In conjunction with our current exhibition How Asian Is It?, Lilly Wei will co-moderate with Kelly Ma an intergenerational conversation about cultural histories and abstract painting.
Exhibition artists Emily Cheng, David Diao, and Charles Yuen will discuss their experiences along with guest artist Yuan Fang.
Doors open at 6:00PM. Seating is first come, first serve. https://www.resnickpasslof.org/upcoming-events
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10. Marina Abramović, FF Alumn, at Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, Italy, May 6-Oct. 19
Marina Abramović
Transforming Energy
Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, Venice, Italy
May 6 – October 19, 2026
Sean Kelly is delighted to announce that Marina Abramović is the first living female artist to be honored with a major exhibition at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. Titled Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy, this presentation coincides with the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia and will run from May 6 to October 19, 2026.
Celebrating Abramović’s 80th birthday, the exhibition establishes a profound dialogue between her pioneering performance art and the Renaissance masterpieces that have shaped Venice’s cultural identity. Curated by Shai Baitel, Artistic Director of the Modern Art Museum (MAM) in Shanghai, in close collaboration with the artist, Transforming Energy represents a historic first by integrating Abramović’s work within both the permanent and temporary exhibition spaces, positioning her work at the heart of Venice’s rich heritage.
Transforming Energy exists at the intersection between past and present, material and immaterial, as well as body and spirit. Viewers can engage with a range of interactive Transitory Objects including stone beds and crystal structures, inviting them to lie, sit, or stand, thereby activating what Abramović describes as “energy transmission.” Iconic works including Imponderabilia, 1977, Rhythm 0, 1974, Light/Dark, 1977, Balkan Baroque, 1997, and Carrying the Skeleton, 2008, will be presented alongside projections of historical performances and new works created specifically for this exhibition, reflecting Abramović’s ongoing exploration of themes of resistance, vulnerability, and transformation.
Notable to the exhibition is the presentation of Pietà (with Ulay), 1983, placed in direct dialogue with Titian’s Pietà, ca.1575–76, the artist’s last unfinished masterpiece. This significant juxtaposition reinterprets Renaissance themes of pain, transcendence, and redemption through a contemporary perspective, emphasizing the human body’s enduring role as a site of both suffering and spirituality.
For additional information on Transforming Energy, please visit gallerieaccademia.it
For additional information on Marina Abramović, please visit skny.com
For all other inquiries, please email Lauren Kelly at Lauren@skny.com
For media inquiries, please email Brandon Tho Harris at Brandon@skny.com
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11. Robbin Ami Silverberg, FF Alumn, thru June 27
BOOK. SPACE. HOUSE.
SPACE OF MOVEMENT
Exhibition opening: Thursday, May 7, 7pm
Book. Space. House. Space of Movement
The artist’s book as a three-dimensional space: forming a house, outlining, remembering, mimicking—thinking the human being within space. Between object and narrative, books unfold as architectural structures, as inhabitable thought-spaces, as reflections of individual and collective experience.
Exhibition dates: May 7 to June 27, 2026, MO – FR 11am – 6pm
The gallery will be closed on May 15 and June 5
The exhibition brings together artistic positions that expand the book as a spatial body:
Laure Catugier develops architecturally based conceptual books and objects.
Robbin Ami Silverberg questions the American dream of home ownership, countering it with misogynistic international proverbs.
Stefan Gunnesch approaches childhood memory through the outlines of the parental home.
Thorsten Baensch relates Hamburg and Venice, examining the movements of people within urban spaces.
Sian Bowen creates fragile spatial and surrounding structures through Japanese lacquer paper works and folded book objects.
Ken Campbell reflects on *The Skull and the Dome*
Yasutomo Ota focuses on the tea room as a culturally shaped space of concentration and encounter.
Emily McVarish reflects on the relationship between human beings and their surrounding space.
Marlene MacCallum explores the visual order of built environments through her structural, architecture-based photography.
….and many more
We cordially invite you to step into the book as a space—and to read the space as a book.
All books on display can also be viewed on video at www.druckundbuch.com
Exhibition dates: May 7 through June 26, 2026, MO – FR 11am – 7pm
The gallery will be closed on May 15 and June 5
We look forward to your visit, either at the gallery in Vienna or online.
We are happy to accept orders via email.
Best regards
Susanne Padberg
Galerie DRUCK & BUCH, Vienna
Berggasse 21/2
(Next to the Freud-House)
A – 1090 Vienna
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12. Michael Bramwell, FF Alumn, May news
Michael Bramwell, FF and UNC Chapel Hill MFA Alumn, recently completed an endurance performance entitled Echelon, with his graduation in May 2026 with a Ph.D. in American Studies from UNC at Chapel Hill! His specialization was in African diasporic history, art, and religious culture and the title of his dissertation is Pottery by Any Means Necessary: New Discourses on the Life of David Drake. Please visit this link for more information:
https://emergencyindex.com/volume/2019#2019-004-005
Thank you.
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13. Alfredo Jaar, FF Alumn, at La Biennale di Venezia, Italy, thru Nov. 22
Galerie Lelong, New York is pleased to announce that an installation by Alfredo Jaar, The End of the World, is now on view in the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys curated by Koyo Kouoh. Currently open for previews, the exhibition will be open to the public from May 9 through November 22, 2026.
The End of the World (2023) is the result of years of research supported by human geographer and political geologist Adam Bobbette, Jaar brings attention to the struggle for resources – a critical and increasingly significant factor in international conflicts. Central to the work is a 4×4×4 cm cube composed of layered raw materials: cobalt, rare earths, copper, tin, nickel, lithium, manganese, coltan, germanium, and platinum – ten strategic metals vital to digitalization,electromobility, high-tech applications, and storage media. Despite the growing demand for these materials, their extraction is fraught with severe human rights violations and environmental destruction.
For over 40 years, Jaar has used photographs, film, installation, and new media to create compelling works that examine complex socio-political issues and the limits and ethics of representation. By using a hybrid form of art-making, Jaar has consistently provoked, questioned, and searched for ways to heighten our consciousness about issues often forgotten or suppressed in the international sphere, while not relinquishing art’s formal and aesthetic power. Over his career, Jaar has explored significant political and social issues including genocide, the displacement of refugees across borders, and the balance of power between developing and industrialized nations.
This is Alfredo Jaar’s fifth invitation to the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia; his work has been included in the 1986, 2007, 2009, and 2013 editions.
His work has also appeared in the Biennials of São Paulo, Brazil (1987, 1989, 2010; 2021); Documenta, Germany (1987, 2002); and the Whitney Biennial (2022). In 2020, Jaar was the recipient of the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, the most prestigious award for photography in the world. He was awarded the 11th Hiroshima Art Prize in 2019, and a solo exhibition was presented in 2023. In 2025, he was the recipient of the Edward MacDowell Medal and the Prix Pictet. Recent solo exhibitions have been hosted by SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, Brazil; KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile; and Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany; among many others. In 2026, he will be inducted to the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his achievement in Art.
Jaar was born in Santiago, Chile. He lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal.
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14. Lucio Pozzi, FF Alumn, at Galerie Wachters, Knokke, Belgium, thru Aug. 7
Lucio Pozzi :
Beyond Knowing
08 May – 07 August, 2026
Galerie Wachters
Golverstraat 11
8300 Knokke, Belgium
This exhibition links large and small paintings on canvas ranging from imaginary flower arrangements to an oneiric meeting of bustling entities, from a constellation of scattered sky or deep-water spots to abstract signals in an empty field, with the posterboard of an unknown family’s deceased placed behind a carved white dragon’s head in whose mouth rests a black cosmic sphere.
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15. Ken Butler, FF Alumn, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan, opening June 7
Ken Butler’s “Mannequin Bass” from 2012 is featured in the upcoming exhibition “Musical Bodies” opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, on June 7 and running through Sept. 28. This is the first major exhibition exploring the relationship between musical instruments and the body.
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16. Laura Parnes, FF Alumn, at Hauser & Wirth, Manhattan, June 6
Hello All,
I’m excited to announce the premiere of the single-channel version of “Magic Thinking” at Hauser & Wirth (443 W 18th Street) on June 6th at 630. It’s part of a film series, “Escape from Gay Pride,” organized by Ridykeulous! The screening will be followed by a conversation with Jill Casid and Laine Rettmer. Reserve your tickets here.
Hope to see you there!
All the best,
Laura
“Magic Thinking” is steeped in the current moment when climate catastrophe, the COVID pandemic, and the rise of fundamentalism combine to contribute to an apocalyptic aura. With this aura, magical thinking can become a survival strategy, creating surprising bedfellows. In particular, the confluence of the far right and the “wellness” world.
“Magic Thinking” follows the relationship between Doug (Becca Blackwell), a human optimizer, and Nancy (Laine Rettmer), a meditation class teacher, as they grasp for certainty in the face of unrest. Their spiritual journey is tainted by hyper-masculine self-help gurus, burned-out ex-climate activists, psychedelic-pushing big tech entrepreneurs, and viciously Darwin-obsessed wellness influencers. As they search for “Truth,” the limits of self-actualization become increasingly clear.
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17. Vernita Nemec, FF Alumn, now online at GalleryAnd.Studio
Please visit this link:
https://www.galleryand.studio/2025/07/29/the-testing-results-vernita-nemec/
Thank you.
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18. Susan Mills, FF Alumn, at Vancouver Art Book Fair, BC, Canada, May 17-19
Please visit this link:
https://vancouverartbookfair.com
Thank you.
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19. Terry Berkowitz, Jodie Lyn Kee Chow, Marie Christine Katz, Barbara Rosenthal, Arlene Rush, Gregory Sholette, Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga, FF Alumns, at WhiteBox Portable, Penn Station, thru May 30
Please visit this link:
https://whiteboxny.org/2026/exhibitions/re-union-new-york-whitebox-portable
Thank you.
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20. Nina Sobell, FF Alumn, May news
May 13 Wednesday 6:00-9:00. -Gala opening. Gallery G223 Westbeth until June 7th
May 9 Saturday 2:00 -6:00 videos- Wilderness opening ECC Palazzo Mora, Venice Biennale
May 11 Monday 2:30 -3:30 GammaTime: live collective performance installation ECC Palazzo Mora with Wilderness
May 19 Tuesday 9:00 -10:00 Sound piece 4 Gender Equality The Tank Theater 312 W.36 Street
June 4th Thursday 6:00 -9:00- Solo Show, Is: Not About Various Artists Gallery 19 Essex Street through August 2
June 25th Thursday -Upstate Art weekend Artists Books of Loss and Healing Church Gallery in Staatsburg
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21. Claudia DeMonte, FF Alumn, at June Kelly Gallery, Manhattan, opening May 21
Hope you can attend my opening “Hidden Paradise” Thursday, May 21st, 5-7pm
June Kelly Gallery, 166 Mercer Street, NYC.
Thank you. Claudia DeMonte
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22. Robert Wilson, FF Alumn, now online at NYTimes.com
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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23. George Peck, FF Alumn, at Mission Art Gallery, Budapest, Hungary, opening May 12
GEORGE PECK
STUDIO UPDATE MAY 2026
From White to Black to White: An Action Etched in Memory
On Tuesday, May 12, 2026, George Peck will celebrate the opening of his exhibition From White to Black to White: An Action Etched in Memory, curated by art historian Katalin T. Nagy, at the MissionArt Gallery in Budapest. This exhibition is a presentation of the conceptual land action he performed upon first returning to Hungary in 1968, after 12 years abroad. When George and Katalin first conceived of this exhibition, they had no idea that it would coincide with Viktor Orbán’s fall from power.
From White to Black to White marked a turning point in George’s life as an artist. The audacity of this work would imbue his practice from then on. It is remarkable to celebrate this decisive moment in his life and work with this momentous political shift in Hungary.
George and Katalin decided to include a white monochrome painting in this exhibition as an acknowledgment of the future. In curator Katalin T. Nagy’s words, “This white monochrome work is a symbol of construction after deconstruction, not only in the life of the artist but also in the life of the country.”
Read about the history behind the exhibition from his original “From White Black” Studio Update.
Watch George Speak about the exhibition in this two-part video:
Part 1: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWE5jrngiSe/
Part 2: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWPanr9ggpk/
Closing Note
George Peck Studio extends its heartfelt appreciation to those who have remained connected over time, as well as to new friends joining this next phase.
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24. Owen Gray, FF Member, at Blue Mountain Gallery, Manhattan, opening May 21
Small and large beautiful landscape paintings (inexpensive) by Owen Gray, at Blue Mountain Gallery, 547 W. 27th St. 2nd floor New York, New York opening May 21 to June 13 text 646-334-5726 for info opening reception, May 21, 5 to 8 PM
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25. Martha Edelheit, Miriam Schapiro, Nina Yankowitz, FF Alumns, at Eric Firestone Gallery, Manhattan, opening May 12
Women Across America: 1945–1979
40 Great Jones Street, New York, NY
May 12 – July 11, 2026
Opening Reception: Tuesday, May 12 | 6–8 PM
Mary Abbott • Elise Asher • Janice Biala • Elaine de Kooning • Sari Dienes • Martha Edelheit • Perle Fine • Helen Frankenthaler • Jane Freilicher • Grace Hartigan • Adaline Kent • Ida Kohlmeyer • Lee Krasner • Zoe Longfield • Beatrice Mandelman • Jeanne Miles • Betty Parsons • Pat Passlof • Jeanne Reynal • Miriam Schapiro • Edith Schloss • Hedda Sterne • Alma Thomas • Lucia Wilcox • Nina Yankowitz
Eric Firestone Gallery is pleased to present Women Across America: 1945-1977, an exhibition that showcases connections between women across the country in the post-World War II period. This exhibition highlights the rich tradition of abstraction within the period across various mediums. Taking inspiration from William Gerdts’s sprawling Art Across America: Two Centuries of Regional Painting 1710-1920, the three-volume encyclopedia of art in the United States, this exhibition reimagines what an Americanist Art History of the postwar period might look like if told through women’s art. The show traces a transitional time for women within the art world, with figures such as Adaline Kent and Jeanne Reynal who forged their own paths in order to work as artists, painters like Pat Passlof and Helen Frankenthaler who fought for a place within the New York School, and artists who became outspoken in their feminism during the women’s movement like Miriam Schapiro and Nina Yankowitz. This exhibition furthers the gallery’s commitment to reexamining modern and contemporary art histories of the United States, especially championing underrecognized artists.
Over the last decade, women artists have increasingly achieved recognition for their role in post-war abstraction. This exhibition will present an expansive view of this art world: connecting now well-established names alongside reintroductions. The curation will create conversations between artists involved with Surrealism, the Studio Craft Movement, Abstract Expressionism, the Washington Color School, and Women’s Art Movement. The exhibition draws together work from artists’ estates, key paintings coming out of private collections for the first time in decades, and distinguished loans.
Taking place over the United States’s semiquincentennial, this exhibition tells various kinds of American stories: regional stories, immigrant stories, and exile stories. In the years leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War, many fled Europe for the United States. Among them were numerous artists, including Lucia Wilcox (1902–1974) and Sari Dienes (1898–1992), both of whom had trained at European academies, lived as part of the Parisian avant-garde, and found their way into surrealist circles prior to arriving in New York. These artists, though fiercely independent in their respective studio practices, generated connections among artists. Leaving behind much of what they knew, they created spaces for social interaction and artistic exchange in their new country. On the East End of Long Island, Wilcox’s home became a gathering place for the bohemian artists. In New York, Sari Dienes established the Ear Inn as an artists’ bar, which hosted performances and happenings.
Several of the artists in the exhibition are associated with Abstract Expressionism and the New York School. While the scene was dominated by men, women were an integral part of intellectual debates and the social scene that defined the movement. Mary Abbott (1921–2019), Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989), and Perle Fine (1905–1988) were some of the few women to become part of “The Club,” the legendary group of artists who would gather to discuss art and philosophy. Hedda Sterne (1910–2011), for her part, became known for being the only woman in the iconic Irascibles photograph, published in Time Magazine in 1951, introducing a new group of New York artists to a national audience and challenging the primacy of their European counterparts. Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011), Grace Hartigan (1922–2008), Pat Passlof (1928–2011), and Miriam Schapiro (1923–2015) all became fixtures of the downtown scene, frequently attending events at The Club and socializing at the Cedar Tavern. By the 1950s, Passlof began organizing the “Wednesday Night Club,” an alternative to the male-dominated Club, which was more open to younger artists and women.
Artist-run galleries played an important role in this new order with their democratic and grassroots spirit. Elise Asher (1912–2004) and Jane Freilicher (1924–2014) were members of Tanager Gallery, an artist cooperative that positioned itself as a downtown alternative to the gallery scene. Uptown, Betty Parsons (1900–1982) established her gallery in 1946. As an artist herself, she had an eye for spotting talent regardless of gender and showed Sari Dienes, Perle Fine, Adaline Kent, Lee Krasner, Jeanne Miles, and Jeanne Reynal, and Hedda Sterne.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, artists developed their own styles of modernism. Zoe Longfield (1924–2013) was one of the earliest women associated with Bay Area Abstract Expressionism. She showed at Metart Gallery, a short-lived cooperative that launched the careers of other first generation Bay Area Abstract Expressionists. Jeanne Reynal (1903–1983) brought intuition and spontaneity to the medium of mosaic, guided by her involvement with Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. Adaline Kent (1900–1957), a prominent member of the Bay Area art community, experimented throughout her career to create abstractions informed by nature. Kent and Reynal developed a close friendship at this time and both showed frequently at the San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMOMA). Reynal would leave an enduring impact on the institution by advising the museum’s first director to make several key purchases of contemporary American art.
Throughout the United States, modernism emerged wherever artists practiced. In Washington, DC, Alma Thomas (1891–1978) created work that defined the Washington Color School, with richly saturated colors and tessellated pictorial planes. Beatrice Mandelman (1912–1998) left New York for the Taos Art Colony where she was one of a few women painting. She melded the abstraction of her earlier career as a New York School artist with the influence of the desert and Native American cultures to create her Taos Modern work. Ida Kohlmeyer (1912–1997) lived and worked in New Orleans throughout her life, and only began her career as an artist in her thirties, reflecting the freedom and creativity of her city.
Still, some women did not find their place within the various art worlds in the United States and traveled or lived abroad. Edith Schloss (1919–2011), leaving a difficult marriage, fled to Italy in 1962 to find her personal freedom. Janice Biala (1903–2000), a Polish-born immigrant, returned to Europe shortly after the Second World War, and would split her time between New York and Paris for the rest of her life. For artists like Schloss and Biala, Europe allowed for greater freedom during the immediate postwar period.
The exhibition showcases artists who broke with dominant trends of modernism. Martha Edelheit’s (b. 1931) extension paintings of 1959–60, which incorporate found materials, energetically push the picture plane beyond the rectangle of the canvas. Nina Yankowitz (b. 1946) draped and folded her canvases on the walls. Guided always by her belief in community and multi-sensory experience, Yankowitz’s works are site-specific and partially determined by the person installing and interpreting the work.
This multigenerational, multipolar exhibition traces connections between women artists and their practices. It visually shows complex networks and aesthetic relationships over time, with artists who found connections across music, poetry, performance, science, and the feminist movement. In an art world that prized the idea of the individual as paramount, these stories are an important counter, showing a rich variety of experience, and highlighting the persistence of artists who refused to be excluded.
For information on available work, please email:
inquire@ericfirestonegallery.com
For press materials, please contact:
press@ericfirestonegallery.com
40 Great Jones Street, New York, NY 10012 | 646.998.3727
Tuesday–Saturday, 10AM–6PM
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26. Aaron Landesman, FF Alumn, at Chocolate Factory Theater, Long Island City, NY, May 17
Hello again,
I’d love for you to join a top-notch roster of performer-players for a workshop showing of my perpetually in-process project All the Time in the World.
Thank you to The Chocolate Factory for giving us space.
ThinAar Studio
makes
All The Time in the World
Card deck as performance score.
Cooperative game about collective self regard.
Created with Nancy Nowacek and John Sharp.
Supported by a NYSCA Commission and residencies at Worlds in Play and Saltonsall.
May 17 (Sunday)
4pm
The Chocolate Factory Theater
38-33 24th Street | LIC, NY 11101
Free – RSVP – thinaarstudio@gmail.com
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27. Susan Bee, Mary Beth Edelson, Asia Stewart, FF Alumns, at A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, May 13-27
I’m delighted to invite you to A.I.R. Gallery’s 2026 Spring Benefit exhibition and auction. The online auction opens on May 13 and runs through May 27. My painting, Heartwing is included in the auction.
Preview and bid on the works here.
A.I.R. Gallery is moving to Manhattan’s West Village in Fall 2026! Our grand Benefit Moving Party is on Wednesday, May 27, 7-10pm. Purchase tickets here. Or come to the benefit exhibition preview on Wednesday, May 13, 6–8 PM at A.I.R. Gallery, 155 Plymouth St., Brooklyn.
Please help support the gallery! Donations welcome.
All proceeds will directly support our move and the transformation of our new space.
All the best,
Susan
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28. Richard H. Alpert, FF Alumn, announces candidacy for Governor of California
I am a sculptor, filmmaker, and performance artist. I have spent over fifty years making things with my hands. I am not a career politician, a billionaire, or a lawyer. I am running for Governor because I believe California deserves leadership that knows how to build something from nothing, and because I am convinced that the absence of artists and creative thinkers in our government is not a minor oversight – it is a structural failure.
Every candidate in this race comes from the same backgrounds: law, finance, law enforcement, or party politics. Not one of them has ever stood in a studio and solved a problem that had no precedent, no playbook, and no guarantee of success. That is what artists do every single day. California was built by people who saw possibility where others saw nothing, and it is time our government reflected that spirit again.
The Case for Creative Leadership
This is not an abstract idea. Research from Harvard University, the International City/County Management Association, and programs in cities like Boston, Minneapolis, Oakland, and New York has demonstrated that embedding artists in government leads to measurable improvements in civic engagement, policy innovation, and community trust. Artists bring creative problem-solving to challenges that bureaucratic thinking alone cannot crack. They make government systems more transparent, more human, and more responsive.
History proves this is not idealism. Vaclav Havel, a playwright, led Czechoslovakia out of totalitarian rule and became one of the most admired democratic leaders of the twentieth century. Closer to home, Clint Eastwood served as mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, bringing a practical, community-first approach to local governance. Artists understand how to listen, how to observe what others overlook, and how to imagine a future that does not yet exist. These are not luxuries in leadership – they are necessities.
Who I Am
I was born in New York City in 1947. I earned my BFA from the University of Pittsburgh and my MFA in Sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1979, I received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. I have exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, the Washington Project for the Arts, and internationally in Tokyo, Cologne, and Paris. I have taught at the San Francisco Art Institute and the California College of Arts and Crafts.
In 1986, an explosion and fire at Bayview Industrial Park in San Francisco destroyed my studio and killed nine people. I survived. I rebuilt. That experience taught me something no political career ever could: that resilience is not a talking point. It is a practice. It is the willingness to start again when everything you have built has been reduced to nothing.
I have lived in California since 1971. I have called Penngrove home for years. I am not running because I want power. I am running because I believe that the people who make things – who build, who imagine, who create – deserve a voice in the rooms where decisions are made about their future.
The Write-In Choice
Writing in a candidate is a deliberate act. It requires you to remember a name, to take an extra moment, to reject the options you have been given in favor of the one you believe in. I am asking for that moment. I am asking you to believe that California’s next chapter should be written not by another politician, but by someone who has spent a lifetime making something meaningful out of raw material.
Write in: Richard H. Alpert for Governor.
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- Micki Spiller, FF Alumn, at LIC Arts Open, Long Island City, NY, May 16-17
Micki Spiller is participating in LIC Arts Open studios this coming Friday and Saturday May 16 and 17, from 12-6 pm, at 3401 38th Avenue, 4th Floor, studio S442, Long Island City, Queens, NY.
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Goings On is compiled weekly by Rohan Subramaniam, Archive Intern
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