Please Don’t Sit on the Flowers

Sitting at September Cafe, I watch the autumn leaves separate from the trees and get carried away gently by the wind. They swirl and twirl, performing a merry little dance in the air before falling to their final resting place.

News has just come in about a sweeping Democratic victory in the midterm elections, as fierce and awesome as a Gustave Courbet wave. But I see nobody popping champagne bottles in the streets. A pregnant black cat with a hanging belly saunters by.

Lying back in the dentist’s chair, a TV screen in front of me shuffles picturesque views from exotic places. They’re idyllic to the point of not looking real. My doctor, a Lebanese, shows me an X-ray of my mouth, which looks like Beirut at the height of the Civil War.

The sky over the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge is gray, and the Harlem River is brooding as I make my way to Taryn Simon’s exhibition Father Country I Do Love You at the Guggenheim Museum. The show tells the heroic tales of an FBI agent whose alleged career intersects with major events in American history. Cold, antiseptic photographs encased neatly in plexiglass make up a detective story linking the protagonist to the explosion of TWA Flight 800, the 9/11 attacks, the bombing of the United States embassy in Nairobi, Bill Clinton’s impeachment, and more. Trudging up the Guggenheim’s spiraling galleries, I wonder whether this patriotic show is organized and sponsored by the US State Department. Simon makes you read a lot, but all that reading is just meant to distract you from thinking.

Jodie Foster narrates the audio guide for those who don’t have the patience to read long-winded wall texts. At the cafeteria, while eating a bikini sandwich, I see a woman who looks exactly like Judi Dench, another actress. “I love storytelling,” she tells a friend before plunging her teeth into a chocolate croissant.

On my way out, I once again resent how this museum forces everyone to exit through the gift shop to encourage commerce, but I buy myself a $5 Guggenheim bag anyway. Outside, in one of the manicured gardens of the Upper East Side, a small sign pleads, “Please don’t sit on the flowers.”

I cross the street into Central Park through Engineers’ Gate, climb the steps past a gilded bust of John Purroy Mitchel, NYC mayor between 1914-1918, and look out over the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. I think of the Kennedys, of Trump, and of Simon. A worker collects brown leaves in plastic bags and tosses them into a truck wrapped in a photo of green leaves. A mother tries to snap a photo of her child, but the unruly kid refuses to pose for the camera. He throws a fit, falls, and, to her shock, ends up sitting on the flowers.

—Hakim Bishara, editor-in-chief

So You’ve Been Invited to Documenta 16. Here’s Our Advice.

Over the past few months, several artist friends who have been invited to participate in the upcoming documenta 16 have contacted us for advice, asking whether they should accept, refuse early on, or accept for now and withdraw at a later stage. As two artists who participated in documenta 15, we understand the dilemma. An invitation to documenta is not something one receives thoughtlessly. It is hard to turn down, and these days, it is also becoming hard to accept. | Anonymous Documenta 15 Artists

Sarah Sze: Images in Translation at the Yale University Art Gallery

Step into Sarah Sze’s world, where painting and sculpture collide with photography, printmaking, video, and installation. This immersive exhibition pulls viewers into the mind’s eye of the artist and her processes of image making, inviting you to consider the fleeting nature of imagery and art making in our media-saturated society.

Learn more

News

Georgia O’Keeffe’s long-lost painting “Near Abiquiu, New Mexico I” was stashed in an East Village closet for decades. Now it might sell for up to $3 million.
Daniel Sikkema is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the murder-for-hire of his estranged husband, New York art dealer Brent Sikkema.
The Met Gala’s new theme has been announced. Brace yourself for A-listers strutting down the red carpet in everyday garb like jeans, T-shirts, and “humble, even ‘disposable’ materials.”
With less than a month left until the 61st Venice Biennale closes, the United States pavilion commissioner Jenni Parido pleads for additional donations to ship Alma Allen’s sculptures out of Italy.
Leaders at Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art, Paris’s Centre Pompidou, and M+ in Hong Kong sign an agreement granting unprecedented access to each museum’s holdings.
A group representing over a quarter of Art Basel Paris’s exhibitors release a letter demanding compensation following the fair’s abrupt closure.
The Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities appoints established curator, arts writer, and Hyperallergic contributor Elliot Josephine Leila Reichert as its new senior curator.
Visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston can soon watch the year-long restoration process of Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy’s “The Founders of the Amsterdam Wine Merchants Guild” (1625).
Pace Gallery is struggling, Ebony L. Haynes joins Marian Goodman Gallery, longtime Manifesta director steps down, and more in Art Movements.