Contents for June 1st, 2026
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Weekly Spotlight: **VOICES from the FIRST FIFTY**
1. Jacki Apple, Carolee Schneemann, Martha Wilson, FF Alumns, at P·P·O·W Gallery, Manhattan, opening June 12
2. Shaun Leonardo, FF Alumn, at Christine Tierney Gallery, opening July 9
3. Ed Woodham, FF Alumn, at Houghton Hall Arts Community, Manhattan, July 11
4. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel Atrib, FF Alumn, at The White Cliffs of Dover, UK, June 20-21
5. GOODW.Y.N., FF Alumn, at La MaMa Theater, Manhattan, June 13
6. Cheri Gaulke, FF Alumn, at Bentonville Film Festival, AR, June 17, and more
7. Saya Woolfalk, FF Alumn, at Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN, thru Sept. 7
8. Su Friedrich, Mona Hatoum, Betsy Hess, Joyce Kozloff, Martha Rosler, FF Alumns, at SVA Theatre, Manhattan, June 25
9. Jane Goldberg, FF Alumn, at Older Adults Center, Manhattan, June 5
10. Richard H. Alpert, FF Alumn, now online at https://richalp4gov.com/
11. Tehching Hsieh, Linda Montano, Vernita Nemec, FF Alumns, in Lisa Hsiao Chen novel
12. Đoan Hoàng, FF Alumn, receives Emmy Award 2026
13. Nina Sobell, FF Alumn, at Various // Artists Gallery, Manhattan, opening June 4
14. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Holman, FF Alumns, at Howl! Arts, Manhattan, June 4
15. Doug Beube, FF Alumn, now online at HelenHiebertStudio.com and more
16. Ariane Lopez-Huici, FF Alumn, at Hal Bromm Gallery, Manhattan, opening June 12
17. Maja Petric, FF Alumn, at SXSW London 2026, UK, and more
18. Barbara Rosenthal, FF Alumn, at White Box Portable, Manhattan, thru June 13
19. Barbara Hoffman, FF Alumn, now online at oneartnation.com
20. Silvia Ziranek, FF Alumn, at MOCA, London, UK, thru July 5
21. EIDIA HOUSE, FF Alumns, at Plato’s Cave, Brooklyn, thru June 26
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Weekly Spotlight: **VOICES from the FIRST FIFTY**
In 1981, Ann Rosenthal was a graduate student in art history, headed for a career in museums. Then she had to choose between two internships — the New Museum or Franklin Furnace. What tipped the decision was a single image on the FF brochure. Here’s where that choice took her:
“Franklin Furnace changed my life. I was in grad school in art history, headed for museum work, when I had the chance to intern at either the New Museum or Franklin Furnace. The Furnace brochure had an image of Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Chocolate Grinder’ — and I love Duchamp, so I chose the Furnace. Being around the books and especially the performance art, I changed my whole focus. I never pursued museum work again. I spent the rest of my career promoting performance artists, and the political work Martha stood for shaped how I worked with artists ever since.”
That’s the quiet power of Franklin Furnace — we don’t just present art, we change the people who walk through our doors.
Help us be that turning point for the next fifty years’ worth of arts careers! https://secure.givelively.org/donate/franklin-furnace-archive-inc/first-fifty-campaign
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1. Jacki Apple, Carolee Schneemann, Martha Wilson, FF Alumns, at P·P·O·W Gallery, Manhattan, opening June 12
Strip
opening June 12, 6-8 pm and continuing through July 31, 2026
Jimmy DeSana Carolee Schneemann Martha Wilson Jacki Apple
P P O W 390 Broadway, 2nd Floor, NYC 0013 212-647-1044 ppowgallery.com
P·P·O·W is pleased to present Strip, a group exhibition bringing together three major works by the groundbreaking artists Jimmy DeSana, Carolee Schneemann, and Martha Wilson. In 101 Nudes, 1972, ICES STRIP / ISIS TRIP, 1972, and Transformance: Claudia, 1973, DeSana, Schneemann, and Wilson combine performance with seriality, text, and photo to establish the body as medium within conceptual art. Created between 1972-1973 in the context of a male dominated conceptual art movement and a cultural backdrop of conservative backlash against the recent civil rights, feminist, and gay liberation movements, these performance driven works undermined societal taboos and restrictions surrounding sexuality and gender within the art world and beyond. DeSana, Schneemann, and Wilson’s campy, provocative, and collaborative works claimed their autonomous subjectivity within spaces that were not accustomed to such commanding presence. By dressing up and dressing down, the artists in Strip simultaneously undressed assumed systems of authority, transforming them into sites of radical liberation.
Originally self-published as a portfolio for his undergraduate thesis at Georgia State University, Jimmy DeSana’s 101 Nudes, 1972, combines the artist’s early exploration of post war suburban culture and nude figuration to subvert the image of the ideal American family and reframe the domestic setting as a site of freedom and expression for both DeSana and his community. Facing censorship and regulation from both school officials and the city (in the state of Georgia, homosexual sex was still illegal and classified as a felony carrying a prison sentence of up to 20 years) DeSana’s grainy, flash-lit images depicted his queer and female friends erotically posing in various domestic and suburban settings. Humorously inverting conventions of 1950s mass market softcore pornography, DeSana’s playfully staged snapshots articulated a far more informal and participatory set of aesthetic and social relationships. Bringing a conceptual and performative approach to the medium of photography, 101 Nudes’ startling immediacy is as apparent today as when originally created forty years ago.
Carolee Schneemann’s ICES STRIP / ISIS TRIP took place on a commuter train from London to Edinburgh as part of the International Carnival of Experimental South (ICES) during the summer of 1972. Bringing performance art into alternative public spaces, ICES transformed a six-hour train journey into an immersive multisensory experience that was open to the public. In the dining car, Schneemann performed a comic striptease atop a table, then donned roller skates and glided along the length of the ICES Festival Train as it hurtled at 133 kph. All the while Schneemann recited phrases from Austro-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s notoriously didactic Logical-Philosophical Treatise, 1922, on the nature of language and reality. Schneemann scrambles Wittgenstein’s statements, which posit the world as a numbered system of absolute truths, replacing his hierarchical ordering with the train’s rail times. The resulting artwork pairs this text with twenty images taken of the performance by her then partner, artist Anthony McCall. The wordplay of the performance’s title invokes the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis, worshipped as the “mother” of all deities. Juxtaposing this imposing matriarchal figure with playful modes of undress and reframed recitations of text by a revered male philosopher, Schneemann jubilantly dismantles the ideas of “male authored” logic taught as universal and asserts the creative power of female eroticism.
In 1973 Wilson was 26 years old and just beginning to understand herself as an artist while teaching English at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, then a hotbed of conceptual art. Without any female faculty members at the art school or visiting artist program, it was not until Wilson met Lucy Lippard that she became aware of the word “feminism,” found encouragement as an artist, and learned about other women that were making performance-based work. Lippard would introduce Wilson to Jacki Apple and soon after the two began planning Transformance: Claudia. “Claudia” is a composite character based on Apple and Wilson’s idealized feminine selves as dictated by the standards of 1970s America. Claudia is powerful, gorgeous, sensual, self-assured, rich, and mobile. On December 15, 1973, Wilson and Apple invited four other women, and one man, to join them in performing their fantasy selves throughout a selection of New York City locales: lunch at the Palm Court in the Plaza Hotel, a limousine ride down Fifth Avenue, and art galleries in Soho. The group also included two men and a woman who documented the day while posturing as journalists and paparazzi. In the resulting 36 photos and 33 related texts, Wilson reveals that by mimicking ingrained neoliberal American female stereotypes, she and Apple transformed oppressive gender and class ideals into devices for genuine self-awakening.
Jimmy DeSana (1949-1990) grew up in Atlanta, GA, and received his bachelor’s degree from Georgia State University in 1972 before relocating to New York’s East Village in the early 1970s. Recent solo exhibitions include Jimmy DeSana: Submission at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, 2023, accompanied by a catalogue co-published by the Brooklyn Museum and DelMonico Books; The Sodomite Invasion: Experimentation, Politics and Sexuality in the work of Jimmy DeSana and Marlon T. Riggs, Griffin Art Projects, Vancouver, Canada, 2020; and Remainders, Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY, 2016. DeSana’s work can be found in numerous public collections including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Ruin of Rooms, a major two-person exhibition of the work of Jimmy DeSana and Paul P., at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, was on view in 2024.
Carolee Schneemann (1939- 2019) received a B.A. in poetry and philosophy from Bard College and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois. Her work has been exhibited worldwide, and is in the permanent collection of major public institutions including Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA; Tate Museum, London, UK; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; among many others. The comprehensive retrospective Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting traveled from Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, Austria (2015), to the Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (2017) and MoMA PS1, New York (2018). And in 2022, the major survey Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics was on view at the Barbican Art Centre, London, UK. In 2017, Schneemann was awarded Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion, honoring lifetime achievement. Of Course You Can / Don’t You Dare, an exhibition highlighting Schneemann’s early painting constructions, drawings, and works surrounding gesture, movement, and materiality, building up to the making of the artist’s iconic film Fuses in 1964, was on view at P·P·O·W in early 2024. Her work was recently on view in her first solo exhibition with Lisson Gallery, Los Angeles, CA.
Martha Wilson (b. 1947) began making videos and photo-text works in the early 1970s while in Halifax in Nova Scotia, and further developed her performative and video-based practice after moving in 1974 to New York City, embarking on a long career that would see her gain attention across the U.S. for her provocative appearances as political personae. In 1976 she founded, and as Founding Director Emerita, continues to help guide Franklin Furnace, an artist-run space that champions the exploration, promotion and preservation of artists’ books, installation art, video, online and performance art, further challenging institutional norms, the roles artists play within society, and expectations about what constitutes acceptable art mediums. For four decades, Wilson has performed nationally and internationally in the guises of Alexander Haig, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, and Tipper Gore, among others. In the Fall of 2021, the Centre Pompidou in Paris presented Martha Wilson in Halifax, 1972-1974, the first institutional presentation of Wilson’s groundbreaking early photo-text works. In 2023, Wilson’s work was the subject of Invisible—Works on Aging 1972–2022 at Frac Sud in Marseille, France.
Jacki Apple was an artist, an educator, a critic, an expert on performance art, and a beloved art world figure. Her collection of essays, Performance/Media/Art/Culture: Selected Essays 1983-2018 edited by Marina LaPalma was published by Intellect in 2019. Jacki was Franklin Furnace’s first curator and programs manager from 1976–1980, and one of the earliest staff members. As a feminist performance artist herself, Jacki’s curatorial practice expanded into the spectrum of interdisciplinary and multi-media visual, audio, and written expression.
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2. Shaun Leonardo, FF Alumn, at Christine Tierney Gallery, opening July 9
Shaun Leonardo
The Invisible Man
June 26 – August 7, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 9, 6:00 to 8:00 pm
49 Walker Street
New York, NY 10013
Cristin Tierney Gallery is pleased to present The Invisible Man, a survey exhibition of works by Shaun Leonardo. This marks the artist’s first solo show with the gallery, and will be on view from Friday, June 26th, through Saturday, August 7th. An opening reception will take place on Thursday, July 9th, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. The artist will be present.
Spanning drawing, painting, video, sculpture, and performance, The Invisible Man traces Leonardo’s longstanding investigations of masculinity, race, memory, and what the body can endure under pressure. The exhibition’s title draws on Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man (1952), referencing the experience of being viewed through the lens of racial stereotypes and projection, and therefore being unseen. For Leonardo, this invisibility is both an internalized condition and a social position—one tied to the repeated failures produced by systems of oppression, constructs of masculinity, racial stereotypes, and of institutions that promise belonging while ultimately withholding it.
These subsumed failures surface early in Leonardo’s self-imaging. Works such as Self-Portrait Azua (The Fall 2) (2010) re-imagines the artist as a defeated warrior, drawing on superhero imagery, religious iconography, and the Dominican landscape of Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The figure appears powerful but fallen, monumental yet vulnerable, asking what remains of the hero when there is no one to save.
Leonardo’s exploration of collective masculinity informs The Messengers, a body of work focused on hands. Earlier paintings from this series depict the hands of figures he identifies as spiritual teachers and sources of wisdom, including Tupac Shakur, Bruce Lee, Héctor Roca, and Brian Tripp. Rendered in sign enamel and pearlescent pigment, these hands suggest work, care, creation, communication, and transmission. Within the framework of The Invisible Man, the focus on hands also speaks to partial and selective perception—how Black and brown figures are often seen in fragments rather than as fully visible or accountable selves.
The artist extends this idea in his expansion of the series through pencil drawings of the hands of disgraced figures charged with sexual abuse, including Bill Cosby, P. Diddy, R. Kelly, Woody Allen, and Dominique Pelicot. Attentive to the forensic reading of gesture, these works examine how power, control, innocence, and self-justification are performed through the body. The series forms an important counterpoint to the earlier works, asking how influence can become corrupted, and how the public participates in sustaining or excusing it.
Leonardo continues to build on earlier works through his expansion of We Went Undefeated (2024), a video installation exploring masculinity, memory, and gendered responsibility. The piece reflects on his experience as captain of the Queens Falcons, a multiracial football team from Queens that won a 1995 championship during a period of heightened racial tension in the United States. In We Went Undefeated 2 (2026), Leonardo shifts away from the themes of belonging and joy that defined that reigning season, turning instead toward memories of failure. Through slowed and incremental movement, four men—including Leonardo—reflect on their evolving understandings of defeat, from adolescence on the field to their current lives as fathers. Through an Ellisonian lens of invisibility, these identities—athlete, victor, and father—are never fully seen on their own terms, but filtered through limited public narratives of success and failure. In this way, football becomes both memory and metaphor, a site where manhood is learned, performed, and later re-examined.
The Return of El Conquistador (2026), a three-channel video and sound installation, revisits Leonardo’s long-running lucha libre persona. First developed through performances in which El Conquistador battled El Hombre Invisible, the work frames invisibility as both a literal opponent and a psychic condition. Revisiting the alter ego more than two decades later, the artist reflects on what it means to inhabit the very figure he once critiqued. The performance confronts obscurity, transformation, and the fine line between role and self.
Failure does not sit at the margins of The Invisible Man; it is the core of the exhibition. The fallen hero, the athlete, the fighter, the mentor, and the disgraced icon each reveal a different fracture in the hypermasculine myths and socially imposed standards Leonardo has spent years examining. As identity is constructed through repeated acts of performance, it is also constructed through the moments when those performances falter. Leonardo proposes failure not as an endpoint but as a condition through which visibility, vulnerability, and self-knowledge become possible.
Shaun Leonardo (b. 1979, Queens, NY) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work negotiates societal expectations of manhood, namely definitions surrounding Black and Brown masculinities, along with their notions of achievement, collective identity, and experience of failure. Leonardo received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and has received support from Creative Capital, Guggenheim Social Practice, Art for Justice, and A Blade of Grass. His work is currently included in the traveling group exhibition Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture, open now at the Perez Art Museum Miami.
Leonardo’s work has also been featured at the Guggenheim Museum, the Norton Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Queens Museum, the High Line, and the New Museum, and profiled in The New York Times, Artnet News, and CNN. His solo exhibition, The Breath of Empty Space, was presented at MICA, MASS MoCA, and The Bronx Museum, and his first major public art commission, Between Four Freedoms, premiered at Four Freedoms Park Conservancy in 2021. Numerous institutions hold Leonardo’s work in their collections, including the Bowdoin Museum of Art, the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Art Collection, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, the Portland Museum of Art, the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
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3. Ed Woodham, FF Alumn, at Houghton Hall Arts Community, Manhattan, July 11
This is not just the story of one wedding. It is a reminder that love is still here, still necessary, still saving the day.
Catch the exclusive first look at LOVE SAVES THE DAY in a private screening you won’t want to miss.
Limited seating. Reserve your seat today, here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/love-saves-the-day-world-premiere-private-screening-tickets-1989632669875
Please join me for the private world premiere screening of Love Saves the Day, marking the first anniversary of my wedding to myself on June 15, 2025, at KoKo Lot in Brooklyn.
One year later, we gather to revisit that rainy Brooklyn afternoon when a sologamy ceremony became something larger: a public act of joy, remembrance, resistance, and renewal. With friends, music, laughter, a brass band, a giant puppet, and a parade around Greenwood Cemetery, we made space to honor survival and insist on love as a radical practice. This film captures that day and the many lives, memories, and communities that made it possible. It is a love letter to queer endurance, to chosen family, to the dead who still dance with us, and to the possibility of making joy in fragile times.
Come celebrate this anniversary. Come witness. Come dance.
“Love is the message and the message is love.” – MFSB
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4. Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel Atrib, FF Alumn, at The White Cliffs of Dover, UK, June 20-21
SOLSTICE FESTIVAL, POLLINATOR PILGRIMAGE
THE BEE FRIENDLY TRUST
Curated by Dr. Luke Dixon
Join us at Samphire Hoe for a SOLSTICE FESTIVAL
20 and 21 June, Saturday 10 am to 5 pm
There will be performances to be discovered, artworks to find, stories to be told, music to be heard, artists to encounter and workshops to participate in.
Artists include:
Bláth Ní Mhurchú & Mark Carberry aka Cave Poems * jdwoof Steve Xoh * Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel * haru apa nyx * Justine Rogers* Niamh Jones * Lesley Hipple Steve Walker * Nikki Turner * Ryan Simpson * Ben Carroll * Kyri Martin* Isadora Mazon * Sarah Ainslie
Sunday 11 am
Join all the artists in a POLLINATION PILGRIMAGE around The Hoe honouring the creatures that live in, on, under, above and below it.
Samphire Hoe Country Club, White Cliffs Countryside Partnership, and The Bee Friendly Trust
The Bee Friendly Trust
saving the world one bee at a time
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5. GOODW.Y.N., FF Alumn, at La MaMa Theater, Manhattan, June 13
GOODW.Y.N.
“Desert Flowers”
Downtown Urban Arts Festival
La MaMa Theater
June 13, 7:30 pm
$25.00
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6. Cheri Gaulke, FF Alumn, at Bentonville Film Festival, AR, June 17, and more
World Premiere at Bentonville and Frameline Festivals
ACTING LIKE WOMEN
Director Cheri Gaulke
WHO: Available for Quotes / Interview:
Writer/Director, Producer Cheri Gaulke
WHAT: The Feature Documentary Debut of Artist/Filmmaker Cheri Gaulke
A production of IAMBE FILMS in association with Metabolic Studio
Executive Produced by Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner, ACTING LIKE WOMEN is an official selection of the Bentonville and Frameline Film Festivals
WHERE: Bentonville: Date; Time: Wednesday, June 17, at 7:00 p.m. Skylight 4
Frameline: Date/Time: Sunday, June 21, 3:30pm p.m. BAMPFA
https://www.frameline.org/festival
WHEN: Please contact See-Through Films if you would like to schedule a Zoom or in-person
interview with Filmmaker Cheri Gaulke
WHY: The highly personal, first-person filmmaking of ACTING LIKE WOMEN addresses themes of feminist, activism, performance art, LGBTQ+, herstory, and art. A rebellious art form, exploding onto the scene in the late 1970s and 1980s gave birth to the “performance art as protest” movement seen around the world today. Led by female, feminist, artists determined to bring women’s bodies and voices into the art world, from a foundational feminist art space called The Woman’s Building in Los Angeles, the radical rebellion gave rise to powerful activism at the apex of the Women’s Movement.
TEASER: https://vimeo.com/892732842
LOGLINE: Revisiting the groundbreaking feminist performance art movement in 1970s Los Angeles, one artist spotlights the inspirational, transformational, radical community exploding the narrative and status quo.
SYNOPSIS: Through interviews, archival footage, and personal reflections, feminist artist Cheri Gaulke revisits the 1970s Los Angeles foundational art space, The Woman’s Building, laying bare how a collective of artists transformed their bodies and voices through performance art into
a powerful tool for activism, reshaping the cultural landscape for generations of women. The film includes the voices of over 50 artists including Suzanne Lacy, Judy Chicago, and Senga Nengudi; the works of The Waitresses, Sisters Of Survival, and Feminist Art Workers among others, as well as the music of artists such as Billie Eillish, The Linda Lindas, and Phranc. Original Score is composed by Miriam Cutler.
Julieta Esteban, See Through Films – julietaesteban@gmail.com
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7. Saya Woolfalk, FF Alumn, at Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN, thru Sept. 7
SAYA WOOLFALK
Empathic Universe
Hunter Museum of American Art
May 22 – September 7, 2026
We are extremely pleased to announce that the critically acclaimed mid-career survey of paintings, sculpture, video, works on paper, and immersive installations by Saya Woolfalk has opened at the Hunter Museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The exhibition originated last year at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York (MAD) and will travel early next year to the Smithsonian American Art Museum Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C.
In the fully illustrated, 143-page catalogue that accompanies the exhibition, Alexandra Schwartz, MAD’s Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Craft, and Design writes:
“Over the course of her two-decade career, she has built an all-encompassing, science-fiction storyworld called the Empathic Universe, the narrative of which runs throughout her entire oeuvre. Complete with its own rituals and culture, the Empathic Universe is populated by a fictional race of women who choose to undergo a transformation allowing them to empathize with any other living being. Theirs is a dream-world not simply because it is fantastical, but because it is utopian.”
Saya Woolfalk has participated in exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia including solo shows at the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire; the Newark Museum of Art, New Jersey: the Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri; the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Mead Art Museum, Amherst, Massachusetts; The SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah; the Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, Nebraska; the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia; the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York; the Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey, among others, and group shows at the AKG Buffalo Art Museum; ArtScience Museum, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Brooklyn Museum; the Seattle Art Museum; the Studio Museum in Harlem; MoMA PS1; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; and many other institutions worldwide.
She is currently at work on major commissions for the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Austin, Texas; the New Children’s Museum, San Diego, California; and the Bronx Museum, New York. Other recent public commissions include The Coretta Scott King Peace and Meditation Garden, at the King Center in Atlanta and monuments to Ruth Bader Ginsberg in Los Angeles, and Marjorie Stoneman Douglas in Miami.
Works by Saya Woolfalk are in the collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art Museum; the Hunter Museum of American Art; AKG Buffalo Art Museum; the Baltimore Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Chrysler Museum of Art; the Mead Museum of Art; the Everson Museum of Art; the Newark Museum of Art; the Weatherspoon Art Museum; the Montclair Art Museum; and many other institutions
The artist is also currently participating in Ascendancy: The Self in Contemporary Art, Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, Connecticut (through June 21, 2026); The Future is Female, 21C Museum Hotel, Saint Louis, Missouri (through June 2026); and See It Now: Contemporary Art from the Ann and Mel Schaffer Collection, Montclair Art Museum (through June 28, 2026).
Saya Woolfalk is represented by Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects.
Leslie Tonkonow Art Works + Projects
401 Broadway, Suite 411
New York, NY 10013
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8. Su Friedrich, Mona Hatoum, Betsy Hess, Joyce Kozloff, Martha Rosler, FF Alumns, at SVA Theatre, Manhattan, June 25
It is an honor to invite you to ICI’s next public program, Make Art, Make Trouble: Feminist Art, Film, and Collective Action.
On June 25, we will hold an all day screening event at the SVA Theatre on 23rd Street in honor of the artist Joan Braderman, a pioneer in feminist film and video, and co-founder of the Heresies collective. During the event, we will screen Joan’s feature length documentary THE HERETICS alongside films and videos by her contemporaries including Su Friedrich, Martha Rosler, Mona Hatoum, Meena Nanji, Julie Dash, among others.
more info and rsvp here:
https://curatorsintl.org/events/26427-heresies-make-art-make-trouble
Hope to see you there!
Becky
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9. Jane Goldberg, FF Alumn, at Older Adults Center, Manhattan, June 5
Friday, June 5th at 1:30PM
Older Adults Center
310 Greenwich St, 2nd Floor
New York, NY
NEXT FRIDAY! Jane will be joined by dancers Karen Calloway Williams, Conner Kelly and making a rare trip from Guyana, Herbin van Cayseele aka Tamangoh. Don’t miss it!
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10. Richard H. Alpert, FF Alumn, now online at https://richalp4gov.com/
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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11. Tehching Hsieh, Linda Montano, Vernita Nemec, FF Alumns, in Lisa Hsiao Chen novel
I am mentioned in Lisa Hsiao Chen’s “Activities of Daily Living” along with Tehching Hsieh and Linda Montano & so are you maybe! It is a wonderful book about life & art which I recommend highly! Check it out!
“The novel explores themes of time, art, care, and memory, weaving in references to performance artist Tehching Hsieh’s radical time-based works.”
Thanks,
Vernita
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12. Đoan Hoàng, FF Alumn, receives Emmy Award 2026
Congratulations Đoan Hoàng on receiving an Emmy for Outstanding Research: Documentary for Turning Point: The Vietnam War
Please visit this link:
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://theemmys.tv/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/2026-Doc-Emmys-Winners-with-names-v-1.1.pdf
Thank you.
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13. Nina Sobell, FF Alumn, at Various // Artists Gallery, Manhattan, opening June 4
Hoping all’s well with you!
As summer approaches, and hot times are heating up, I am happy to say one of them is my solo show opening at Various// Artists Gallery.
Hoping you can come!
Hugs,
Nina
Nina Sobell | Proximity Effects
June 4 – July 26, 2026
VARIOUS // ARTISTS GALLERY
19 ESSEX ST. NYC
Opening Reception: June 4, 7-9pm
GammaTime Live Performances
June 4th, 8pm | June 27th, 5pm | July 26th, 5pm
Various/Artists presents interactive performance, video, and prints by the artist Nina Sobell chronicling her pioneering exploration of technology and human connection across six decades. Proximity Effects surveys Sobell’s innovative use of brainwaves as an interactive artistic medium in participatory performances and installations beginning with BrainWave Drawings in 1974 and culminating in the newest version of GammaTime in 2026.
Sobell and collaborators Ed Bear and Lucinda Jacobson will perform GammaTime at the opening on June 4, 2026 and twice more throughout the exhibition. GammaTime is Sobell’s latest social neurofeedback performance in which four participants wear electroencephalograph (EEG) headsets and headphones while viewing a projected audio-visualization representing their collective brain activity. The image shifts between discrete shapes into a unified whole as participants achieve inter-brain synchrony by watching, listening, and being together in this inherently generative work.
A multichannel video installation presents selected excerpts from Sobell’s socially engaged neurofeedback works from 1974 to 1998, showing how she adapts her approach and collaborations in a way that anticipates the broader adoption of technology in society. These range from closed-circuit video and laboratory computers with Mike Trivich, personal computers and interactive computer graphics with Chris Matthews, and multimedia and social internet connectivity with Emily Hartzell and others.
In each brainwave performance, Sobell devises innovative configurations of neurotechnology and media tools to enable groups of participants to observe their intermingled brain activity. Sobell stresses the artistic importance of teaching participants to connect through her work, including the physical touch involved in helping participants wear hand-stitched and hand-wired EEG headsets, and emphasizes how this moment of interpersonal connection, and the subsequent physical proximity of the participants seated together is essential for achieving inter-brain synchrony. The audiovisual imagery created throughout is not the final product of the work, but a means of constructing social sculpture through the physical involvement of the participants with the artist and each other.
Sobell’s brainwave works are presented alongside related work in video and print that similarly examine the convergence of technology with intertwined consciousness. A series of photographs of conté and ink drawings of video static convey Sobell’s commitment to the material continuities across media and the people who sense and perceive through them. A pair of video performance works show how Sobell uses video to sculpt intimate social interactions. In the Portapak work Hair Comb (1974), Sobell and performer Susan Krentzman engage in a ritualistic process of mimicry and transformation, while 25lbs of clay / Right Brain Left Brain Investigation of a Creative Process (1990) depicts Sobell engaging in a haptic perceptual challenge of sculpting both a clay figure and a mediated video image of performer Rebecca Yeldham without looking at her workpiece.
Other works, including excerpts from the sprawling Park Bench project begun with Emily Hartzell in 1993, seek connectivity through the development of a public kiosk for early internet access and local community building. Park Bench soon developed into a “NetWork” of over 84 inter-connected online media performances. A selection of these are on display within a new kiosk including a series, Web Seance: Brainwave Drawing from 1999, which addresses the physical disconnectedness of the “information age”.
Sobell’s work resonates with recent developments in social neuroscience that shows that the human brain is inherently social and always physically entangled with other minds, materials, and forces. Nina Sobell invites you to continue exploring how media technology transforms interpersonal connection and social space with her from June 4 to July 26, 2026.
– Allen Riley
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14. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Holman, FF Alumns, at Howl! Arts, Manhattan, June 4
ALLEN GINSBERG AT 100: A Brief Walk Through Ginsberg’s Life
THURSDAY JUNE 4, DOORS 5PM to 8:30PM
We begin at 5:55PM with BOB HOLMAN & DEBORAH BAKER-GHOSH,
followed by GORDON BALL, BILL MORGAN, and BOB ROSENTHAL.
FREE
HOWL! ARTS | HOWL! ARCHIVE, 250 BOWERY 2nd Floor, NYC 10012
ON DISPLAY FOR THIS EVENT ONLY: Photographs by Gordon Ball and others, early editions of Allen’s poetry books from Howl!s archival library, and selected flyers and ephemera from The Allen Ginsberg Trust!
Gordon Ball’s new book will be available to purchase.
top photo: Cadets reading Howl by Gordon Ball.
Thursday June 4th ~ Allen Ginsberg at 100
Deborah Baker & Bob Holman: “Ginsberg in India”
Baker, author of A Blue Hand: The Beats in India, & Poet Holman, co-director of “Ginsberg’s Karma” & “Bob Holman’s India Journals,” discuss Allen’s near mythical 18 months in India.
Gordon Ball: “Allen As I Knew Him”
Allen’s friend and early Journals editor will share a slideshow of his own photos of Allen.
Bill Morgan: Allen Ginsberg: “The Unknown Photos”
Allen’s Biographer and Bibliographer takes us through a slideshow of unseen photography.
Bob Rosenthal: “Allen Ginsberg’s Theory of Idiots”
Allen’s long time personal Secretary, reads his new work, which breaks down Allen’s humorous ‘Theory of Idiots’.
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15. Doug Beube, FF Alumn, now online at HelenHiebertStudio.com and more
Helen Hiebert Studio recently featured an in-depth conversation with me on her podcast about artists working with paper. She interviewed me on April 7—please click here to listen: https://helenhiebertstudio.com/podcast/doug-beube/
The ongoing group exhibition Context at Columbia University, curated by Meg Hitchcock, has been extended through June 23, 2026. Please note that Columbia University maintains a strict visitor policy. To attend, click here https://events.columbia.edu/cal/event/eventView.do?b=de&calPath=/public/cals/MainCal&guid=CAL-00bbdb70-987e68e8-0198-8157aaa2-000038d3events@columbia.edu&recurrenceId= and follow the instructions carefully. Visitors must contact Courtney Chartier in advance to arrange a visit, obtain a QR code, and present valid ID upon arrival. Please register at least one day before your visit, as unregistered guests will not be admitted by campus security.
I’m also continuing preparations for my solo exhibition at Koffler Arts in Toronto, ON. Scheduled for spring 2027 and curated by Buzz Spector, the exhibition will survey my early photography, bookworks, collage, sculpture, and installations. I’ll share further updates as the exhibition develops over the coming year.
All the best,
Doug
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16. Ariane Lopez-Huici, FF Alumn, at Hal Bromm Gallery, Manhattan, opening June 12
Opening June 12
Hal Bromm is pleased to present Photo·graph, an exhibition surveying the diverse nature of photographic practices today. Featuring works by Renate Aller, Francisco Alvarado-Juárez, Berndt and Hilla Becher, Roger Cutforth, Mark Golderman, Grace Graupe-Pillard, Ariene Lopez-Huici, Slava Mogutin, and Dirk Rowntree.
The exhibition explores photography’s unique capacity to reveal not the truth of its subject, but the truth of the photographer’s perspective. Despite the diversity of their output, each artist uses photography as a vehicle to reveal aspects of the self through the way they see the world around them — whether it is an affirmation of one’s identity through carving out space in a visual culture which has sought to exclude them, or preserving one’s memory and presence within past events.
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17. Maja Petric, FF Alumn, at SXSW London 2026, UK, and more
This June at SXSW London 2026, I’ll be presenting The Glitched Sublime and opening a new solo exhibition at HOFA Gallery in Mayfair exploring robotics, AI, climate instability, and the paradoxical relationship between technology and ecological collapse.
Inspired by Arctic poppies, among the northernmost flowering plants on Earth, the new works transform real-time Arctic climate anomalies into evolving sculptural environments shaped by robotics, light, optics, and responsive systems. Each time Arctic temperatures exceed historical norms, autonomous systems physically intervene in the works, causing them to evolve continuously.
Alongside the exhibition, I’ll also be speaking at SXSW London in:
Art, Tech & Nature: The Glitched Sublime
3 June 2026
11:40–12:10
Protein Studios, London
and joining a panel:
Worldbuilding for the Senses: When Art Meets Experience Meets Brand
4 June 2026
16:10–16:50
Truman Brewery, London
Exhibition Dates
HOFA Gallery, Mayfair, London
3–11 June 2026
More information:chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://static1.squarespace.com/static/588d9dd3440243895c46b28f/t/6a15f88dd504b350c0e46e0d/1779824781892/Arctic+Poppies+%26+Climate+Fragility+Inspire+Immersive+Art+During+SXSW+London+%2826+May+2026%29.pdf
Hope to see some of you in London.
Maja
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18. Barbara Rosenthal, FF Alumn, at White Box Portable, Manhattan, thru June 13
Barbara Rosenthal’s text-art piece, Provocation Cards Folio” will remain on view during the extension of the White Box Portable exhibition “Re-Union” through Saturday, June 13.
The White Box exhibiton is in the Chashama Space along the transverse above the downtown A, C and E lines inside the 42nd Street Subway Station at 8th Ave. The “Re-Union” show is curated by Juan Puntes and Yohanna Roa, and also features Daniel Rothbart, Marie-Christine Katz and Roberta Allen.
Rosenthal’s piece comprises 25 cards bearing original aphorisms of philosophical discernments. MoMA, The Whitney and Tate all own two editions of PROVOCATION CARDS FOLIO, and Padua, Italy fabricated billboards from them. Earlier in this White Box show, Rosenthal performed an interaction with the cards, which reprises many in other countries over the years, the languages of which have every aphorism translated in various symbolic fonts on the versos, and is updated every time she performs it in a “foreign” country. The current version is available at Printed Matter:https://www.printedmatter.org/catalog/artist/641
(NOTE: Rosenthal will be performing this interaction on Saturdays from June 13 through the end of July along the Bowery, too.)
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19. Barbara Hoffman, FF Alumn, now online at oneartnation.com
Please visit this link:
Thank you.
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20. Silvia Ziranek, FF Alumn, at MOCA, London, UK, thru July 5
SILVIA ZIRANEK
BY A THREAD
31/5/2026 – 5/7/2026
Private view 2-4pm, 31/5/2026
Readings 2.30pm and 3.40pm at launch
TRIGGER WARNING: contains allusions to physical and emotional abuse.
Domestic. Universal. Poetic. Provocative. Unifying. Ingenious. Explosive. Subtle. Text in Textiles. True. Sculpture.
Sound installation.
Through sculpture and sound installation Silvia Ziranek’s
BY A THREAD, incorporating UNSUNG SONGS, offers insight into a personal yet universally recognised outrage. Ingenious use of everyday materials combines in beautifully created text framed in textiles in the form of a monumental mobile to create a provocative arena for contemplation.
The text-in-textiles are taken from UNSUNG SONGS, the artist’s book of poems / texts designed by Herman Lelie and published to coincide with the exhibition. An audio version of the poems forms an intrinsic part of the installation, and the recording will also be available for sale.
This project is for all regardless of age, gender, race, class, orientation. Please help in promoting BY A THREAD to all groups in the community. No one is beyond harming or being harmed.
Nota bene: SZ is an artist, a mother, a female, not a social worker.
113 Bellenden Road, London SE15 4QY
The Gallery has wheelchair access.
Copyright (C) 2026 Silvia Ziranek. All rights reserved.
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21. EIDIA HOUSE, FF Alumns, at Plato’s Cave, Brooklyn, thru June 26
“Box in a Valise in a Vault” Marcel Duchamp The Plato’s Cave exhibition series continues Saturday, May 30 through June 26, 2026 Open Wednesday – Friday 1-6pm or by Appointment contact Paul @ eidiahouse@earthlink.net / 646 226 6478 Plato’s Cave at EIDIA House, 14 Dunham Place, Williamsburg Brooklyn, NY 11249 USA “50 cc of Paris Air” by Marcel Duchamp 1919 The EIDIA House Plato’s Cave 37th exhibition, “Box in a Valise in a Vault” (de ou par Marcel Duchamp ou Rrose Sélavy Boîte-en-valise). There is so much chatter about the gargantuan show at MoMA, and with Duchamp being a considerable influence on the EIDIA House practice, we have chosen to exhibit: a “Box in a Valise”; an EIDIA versions of “Bicycle Wheel” and “Fresh Widow” 2026 (with special ‘peephole’ to an ‘Étant donnés’) and “EIDIA Magnetized Air” 2023. Marcel Duchamp is indeed the air, Manhattan air certainly. “I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.” Marcel DuchampÉtant donnés (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas Étant donnés: 1° la chute d’eau / 2° le gaz d’éclairage) Duchamp 1966 Interesting timing for the MoMA show now as they have been working on it for ten years―who do you turn to when currently paintings exhaust themselves by their mere nature and shear numbers. When you visit Plato’s Cave, you are welcome to give the ‘Bicycle Wheel’ a spin, as Duchamp said that he often did in his studio. A story goes that once the piece was acquired by MoMA and on display Duchamp came to the piece and spun the wheel. A guard stopped him and MD said, “I am the artist.” The guard replied; But it is now the property of the museum. EIDIA House always strived to put complicated ideas into a simpler form. Aside from being well ahead of its time, Duchamp’’s oeuvre endues forward future still. Looking at the repeating examples of his work at MoMA, on one hand they appear complicated, ‘mind boggling’ but when you listen to Duchamp speak, ideas are made clear in simple language. He had an uncanny ability to make convoluted ideas simple. In the newly published “Duchamp on Tape: The Janis Family Interviews” edited by Ann Temkin (MoMA Curator) with an introduction by Carroll Janis, MD is interviewed on tape by Carroll, Harriet, and Sidney Janice. As taken from the book, Harriet asks Duchamp: “Let’s start with the coffee grinder.” MD replies: “The story was that my brother (Jacques Villon) had a kitchen like everybody has and in this kitchen he wanted to put some paintings. So he asked de La Fresnaye, Gleizes, Metzinger, myself, Léger also I think, to make a little painting for the kitchen. He had just a sort of cupboard above the sink―not a cupboard but just some kind of frieze, and he divided it into five to six compartments, and each of us should paint a painting that special size, the size of this exactly… And I did this one (Coffee Mill, 1911)…It was really the first painting for which mechanistic ideas came to me as a possibility…And it was done before ‘Nude Descending the Stair.’” Other News AIR @ EIDIA House, is now offering Artist In Residence at the inspired EIDIA House Studio―one week to one month from June to December 2026. If you happen to have an artist fellowship, grant, or stipend enabling your visit to New York City and Brooklyn please consider the residency. During or at the end of your stay, you could have the opportunity for a solo exhibit featuring your current work in Plato’s Cave. Contact us with your plans and samples of your current “works-in-progress.” Fractured Atlas is the EIDIA House Inc. 501c3 sponsor pass-through. Your support helps to keep Plato’s Cave Exhibition Series going. Please consider making a contribution. Your check is written to Fractured Atlas, with EIDIA House written on the memo line and mailed to: Melissa Wolf EIDIA House Inc. 426 East 9th St, Apt 1C New York, NY 10009 USA You can also visit: eidia.com and click the DONATE button for your personal support. For PLATO’S CAVE, EIDIA House founders Paul Lamarre and Melissa P. Wolf curate invited fellow artists who create installations (and often accompanying limited edition) for the subterranean space PLATO’S CAVE. EIDIA House boldly states that it does not function as an art gallery, but collaborates with the artist to create provocation in art forms, keeping within an ongoing discipline of aesthetic research. Contact Paul Lamarre 646 226 6478 eidiahouse@earthlink.net eidia.com @eidiahouse @bobs_world_the_film # # #
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Goings On is compiled weekly by Rohan Subramaniam, Archive Intern
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