Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection @ The Whitney Museum of American Art In New York

Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection offers new perspectives on one of art’s oldest genres. Drawn entirely from the Museum’s holdings, the more than two hundred works in the exhibition show changing approaches to portraiture from the early 1900s until today. Bringing iconic works together with lesser-known examples and recent acquisitions in a range of mediums, the exhibition unfolds in eleven thematic sections on the sixth and seventh floors. Some of these groupings concentrate on focused periods of time, while others span the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to forge links between the past and the present. This sense of connection is one of portraiture’s most important aims, whether memorializing famous individuals long gone or calling to mind loved ones near at hand. Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection will be on view until February 12, 2017 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York

Elmgreen and Dragset "Van Gogh's Ear" @ Rockafeller Center in New York

This spring, artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset will transform the Fifth Avenue entrance to the Channel Gardens at Rockefeller Center with a large-scale new work. Van Gogh’s Ear is a sculpture, which takes the form of a swimming pool sitting upright. On view until June 3, 2016 at 5th Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets. photograph by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

On the Hunt for Conservation: Read Our Interview With Dylan Johnston On The Great Python Challenge →

Dylan Johnston has documented the Florida Python Challenge, one of the Florida Wildlife Commission’s more successful attempts to eradicate the invasive and evasive snake, for the past three years. In 2013, he began the project after mention from a friend in Sarasota, only a few hours from the river of grass, and has worked on the project since, immersing himself in the unforgiving environment that is the Everglades. Johnston, from Ft. Pierce, has worked on plenty of projects and assignments in his home-state, detailing the life of working in junkyards to rigging ballyhoos while trolling for pelagic species in the Gulf-stream just off Southern Florida’s east coast. Click here to read more. 

Dodging a Bullet: Read Jeffrey Deitch's Words On Artist Tom Sachs On The Occasion of His Solo Exhibition →

“How did these get here!?” I was shocked to see a pile of stickers on my gallery reception desk in the Spring of 1996 with the outrageously provocative phrase “Nuke the Swiss” printed above a red cross. “They were left there by that funny guy who comes in here all the time,” my staff explained. A few weeks later, I was there when the culprit walked in, smirking as he handed me a fresh stack of Nuke the Swiss stickers. His engaging manner somehow neutralized the egregious content of his free art. This was my first introduction to Tom Sachs, who twenty years later, still visits during his walks around the neighborhood, and who continues to perfect his fusion of radical conceptual performance, Modernist idealism, bricolage and provocation. Click here to read more. 

Nataal Presents "New African Photography" Group Show At Red Hook Labs in Brooklyn

Nataal presents the group show New African Photography in association with Red Hook Labs. The exhibition features six artists - Atong Atem (Sudan/Australia), Delphine Diaw Diallo (Senegal/France/US), Kristin-Lee Moolman (South Africa), Lakin Ogunbanwo (Nigeria), Namsa Leuba (Guinea/Switzerland) and Owise Abuzaid (Egypt). The work of these selected photographers, both emerging and internationally recognized, express the diversity of narratives informing Africa’s rich visual language today. Encompassing documentary, fashion and portrait photography, the exhibition will explore multiple themes that challenge accepted notions of belonging and identity, the everyday and the fantastical; the past and the future; the public and the private. New African Photography will be on view until May 15, 2016 at Red Hook Labs, 133-135 Imlay St, Brooklyn, New York. photographs by Scout Maceachron. 

Last Chance To Sign Up To Have Your London Airbnb Transformed by Yayoi Kusama

Tate Modern and Airbnb are partnering with world-renowned artist Yayoi Kusama, to transform an Airbnb listing into a living piece of art…and you could be part of it. Airbnb hosts with a private room or entire home located in the Greater London area will have a chance to invite the work of Yayoi Kusama herself into their home, and see their spare bedroom transform into an art installation that will surprise, delight and inspire their guests. This once-in-a-lifetime prize also includes tickets for the winner and a friend to the Tate Modern extension opening party on 16 June 2016. Click here to enter. 

The War Back Home: Read Our Interview With Writer of James Franco's Memoria and Creative Polymath Nina Ljeti On Memory, Filmmaking and Ghosts →

Nina Ljeti is prolific. She is a writer, filmmaker, actress, and musician. Just a few of her many projects include: starring in films directed by and alongside James Franco; co-writing and co-directing the feature length film Memoria with Vladmir de Fontenay (which is out in theaters now); performing in her band, Nani; and shooting a biopic about Jerry Garcia. She has the creative output young artists have wet dreams about. But Nina Ljeti is prolific in another sense of the word. She is the daughter of Bosnian immigrants (who came to Canada at the start of the Bosnian Revolution) and a high school punk stoner; a film buff who loves Titanic and Coppola alike. Her richness isn't just in practice; it's in spirit and history as well. We got to ask Ljeti about memory, filmmaking, ghosts, and getting to play Patti Smith. Read it here.

Allen Jones "A Retrospective" @ Michael Werner Gallery in New York

Michael Werner Gallery in New York presents an historical survey exhibition of works by Allen Jones. Organized by Sir Norman Rosenthal, the exhibition includes paintings and sculptures from the 1960s to the present day and is the first comprehensive showing in New York of this celebrated and controversial British artist. Allen Jones "A Retrospective" will be on view until June 4, 2016 at Michael Werner Gallery, 4 East 77th St, New York. 

Jean-Michel Basquiat "Words Are All We Have" @ Nahmad Contemporary In New York

Nahmad Contemporary presents its first exhibition dedicated solely to Jean-Michel Basquiat, organized by guest curator and preeminent Basquiat scholar Dr. Dieter Buchhart. Centering on the critical function of language in the work of Basquiat, this comprehensive exhibition will illuminate the artist’s pioneering incorporation of literary and musical elements into his work. Most often identified with both the formal and stylistic aspects of Neo-Expressionism, Basquiat’s linguistically complex paintings place him within the trajectory of the Beat Generation writers and the evolution of jazz and hip-hop. Jean-Michel Basquiat "Words Are All We Have" will be on view until June 11, 2016 at Nahmad Contemporary, 980 Madison Avenue