Agnès Varda in China

Agnès Varda is displaying her works at the Hubei Museum of Fine Arts  and the Museum of Fine Arts of Wuhan until May 6 2012. She is displaying several installations, including a portico in bright red in which she has installed her photographs. Agnès Varda is a visual artist and film-maker famous for films such as Cléo from 5 to 7 which made her a burgeoning member of the Nouvelle Vague film movement. However, in the eyes of the Chinese, where she is above all else is a photographer, the same photographer who travelled through the country under Mao, in 1957. The result of this trip is a collection of photographs which have never before been displayed: smiling families wearing Mao suits, female dockers bent under their burdens. The snapshots depict China before the repression.

Helen Shumaker @ The DeYoung

The tremendously talented actress and performance artist Helen Shumaker performing at the DeYoung Museum as part of a series of events called Our People curated by Monique Jenkinson (aka Fauxnique) with a group of performers, most of whom she knows through the queer club scene, to create a dance/installation inspired by the work of Jean Paul Gaultier—"his icons, his fetishes, and a light-hearted, humanistic irreverence." Photograph by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre. 

Takashi Murakami Opens Berlin Gallery

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Takashi Murakami opens a gallery in Berlin. The Japanese artist and his company Kaikai Kiki are calling the gallery Hidari Zingaro (named after the Edo period sculptor). The gallery opens in June, but is previewing the space tomorrow to coincide with Berlin's Gallery Weekend and will be marked by an all-day live Manga painting event by Mahomi Kunikata (picture above), known for her explorations of "the otaku culture of sexually explicit manga." Dieffenbachstraße 15, 10967 Kreuzberg, Germany

Liberatum Hong Kong

Liberatum Hong Kong International Festival of Culture opens today and runs through the weekedend. Participants include Khalil Fong, Daniel Wu, Rossy de Palma, Wing Shya, Nobel Laureate Sir VS Naipaul, Paul Schrader, Rosey Chan, Terence Koh, Pharrell Williams, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, Mike Figgis, OMA Partner – Architect, David Gianotten and many others.

Warhol in Flowers

American photographer William John Kennedy’s exhibition of newly published prints of Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana is believed to be the only such images in existence capturing the artists with their works, among them Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe and Indiana’s LOVE. After almost half a century in storage, a select number of the nearly forgotten images were carefully chosen, and are now being published for the first time as a collection. On view now until May 29 at Site 109 Gallery in NYC.

Santigold Kicks Off Transmission LA

Transmission LA, curated by Mike D of the Beastie Boys, is a multi-disciplinary festival that will be the meeting point for the Los Angeles art and music community. The sequel to the series of festivals that premiered in Berlin last year with curator and fashion designer Raf Simons, the 17-day collaborative festival includes work by Roy Choi, Benjamin Jones, Mike Mills,Tom Sachs, Public Fiction, and additional artists and musicians. Tomorrow night Santigold opens the festival tonight at The Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Transmission LA will be on view until May 6.

The Illustrations of Shia LaBeouf

"Shia [LaBeouf] is in some ways an art rapist," says Marilyn Manson.  Who knew the actor was such the consummate artist and publisher. LaBeouf says he "is obsessed with the history of visual culture" and puts out around 10 books a year with his publishing imprint The Campaign Book.  Right now the modest, but impressive catalogue includes graphic novels by himself like Let's Fucking Party and Cyclical, as well as books by Marilyn Manson and Kid Kudi. Above is an illustration by LeBeouf himself from Cyclical.

Fire Walk with Me Group Exhibition

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An exhibition honoring the 20th anniversary of David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me at the Copro Gallery at Bergamont Station in Los Angeles will be on view April 21 at the  featuring rare, unreleased music from "Twin Peaks" and a special DJ set by Dean Hurley, David Lynch's engineer and musical collaborator on his album "Crazy Clown Time." On view April 21 until May 12 at Copro Gallery, Bergamont Station, 2525 Michigan Ave , Unit T5, Santa Monica , CA.

Dark Sky

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On 6 June 2012 the second and the last transit of Venus of the century will occur. Departing from this extraordinary phenomenon, the Adam Art Gallery, in New Zealand, presents the exhibition Dark Sky which delves into the relationship between photography and astronomy to examine the intriguing photographic consequences and new territories discovered from capturing the skies. The exhibition has been timed to coincide with the 2012 Transit of Venus, a rare astronomical event when Venus passes between the Earth and the sun. The exhibition will be complemented by a public programme, including talks by scientists, artists and writers, including the German and New Zealand poets who have been commissioned by the International Institute of Modern Letters and the New Zealand Goethe-Institut to write about the Transit of Venus. Dark Sky will be on view from May 1 to June 8, at the Adam Art Gallery Victoria University, Gate 3, Kelburn Parade.

Doug Aitken's Song 1

One of the most important artist's working today is without a doubt Doug Aitken. From photography, sculpture, and architectural interventions, to films, sound, single and multi-channel video works, and installations Aitken's work is a truly unique and distinctive voice of this century. On view now at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., Aitken's multimedia exhibition, entitled Song 1, is a 360 degree projection of films onto the exterior museum set to the soundtrack of the 193os jazz standard reinterpreted by the likes of LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, Beck, Devendra Banhart, No Age and more. Song 1 "will illuminate the entire facade of the Hirshhorn’s iconic building, transforming it into 'liquid architecture' and an urban soundscape. Using eleven high-definition video projectors, Aitken will seamlessly blend imagery to envelop the Museum's exterior, creating a work that redefines cinematic space." Doug Aitken: SONG 1 will be on view until May 13, 2012.

Keith Haring's Notebooks

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The Keith Haring Foundation has been scanning Keith Haring's journals dating from middle school to 1989 – some of which are featured in the show of works at the Brooklyn Museum and a page will be post each day for the duration of the show through July 8, 2012. The show is the first large scale survey of the artist's early works.

Crumb Retrospective in Paris

His LSD-inspired heroes, rampant sex and frontal assaults on political correctness made comic artist Robert Crumb an icon of US counter-culture, but why on earth, he wonders, put his work on show in a museum? Crumb's cult universe, from hippy-era characters like "Fritz the Cat" to his cartoon take on the Bible, is on show -- uncensored -- until August at Paris' Museum of Modern Art, hosting the largest-ever retrospective of his work. Many of the 600 works on display are original drawings shown for the first time, loaned by a handful of private collectors in Europe and the United States. Crumb: De l’Underground à la Genèse will be on view at the Paris Museum of Modern Art until August 19, 2012.

Made in America

This Friday at the Roll Up Gallery in San Francisco will present Matthew Henri's solo exhibition of new works entitled Made in America.  Using his unique silkscreen method "Henri will present portraits of bank robbers and wanted posters, prostitutes of the Barbary Coast in San Francisco’s now defunct red light district, old whiskey bottles, railroad ties, public hangings, along with other haunting ephemeral nostalgia. By digging further than most, culling and obtaining imagery from obscure books and libraries, with exhaustive research, and artifacts such as nudie playing cards found at seedy liquor stores on the outskirts of the Las Vegas desert, Henri has created an extremely visceral and heartbreaking portrait of an American landscape...." Made in America will be on view from April 13 to April 29 at Roll Up Gallery, 161 Erie Street, San Francisco. 

The Shaping of New Visions

Valie Export, Einkreisung (Encirclement) from the series Körperkonfigurationen (Body Configurations). 1976.

The Shaping of New Visions: Photography, Film, Photobook, on view this month at the MOMA in New York, covers the period from 1910 to today, offers a critical reassessment of photography's role in the avant-garde and neo-avant-garde movements—with a special emphasis on the medium's relation to Dada, Bauhaus, Surrealism, Constructivism, New Objectivity, Conceptual, and Post-Conceptual art—and in the development of contemporary artistic practices. The shaping of what came to be known as "New Vision" photography bore the obvious influence of "lens-based" and "time-based" works. El Lissitzky best summarized its ethos: "The new world will not need little pictures," he wrote in The Conquest of Art (1922). "If it needs a mirror, it has the photograph and the cinema." The Shaping of New Visions: Photography, Film, Photobook will be on view at the Museum of Contemporary art from April 18 to April 29, 2013.