© Mary Heilmann; Private Collection, London. Foto Alex Delfanne.

In this week’s roundup An-My Lê and Jeff Koons are honored, Kiki Smith and other artists’ work in Italy, several artist retrospectives and more.

• An-My Lê is being honored among 23 MacArthur Fellows for 2012. The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. The fellowships come with a no-strings-attached $100,000 a year for five years.

• Jeff Koons will be honored at the Hermitage Museum Foundation’s (HMF) 3rd Annual Gala co-hosted withPhillips de Pury & Company on November 10, in New York. Hermitage Museum Director Dr. Mikhail B. Piotrovsky will present Foundation Awards to Koons and Erik Bulatov for their lifelong artistic achievements and contributions to contemporary art.

• Kara Walker has a solo show at the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery (Portland, OR). More & Less includes Walker’s most recent film—Fall Frum Grace, Miss Pipi’s Blue Tale (2011)—and a body of prints and works that explore the symbolism and theatricality of imagined historical space and the visual and pictorial history of the Civil War through appropriated images from the popular periodicals of the time, namely Harper’s Weekly. The show closes November 18. You can listen to Walker’s talk on October 2 here.

• Mary Heilmann‘s first European retrospective is on view at BACA Projects, the Bonnefantenmuseum (Maastricht, NL). The exhibition Good Vibrations is devoted to the 2012 BACA Laureate and it is the only major award for international visual art in the Netherlands. The exhibition gives insight into the varied work she has created over fifty active years, which comprises gouaches, graphic work, sculpture, furniture and ceramics, along with paintings. This exhibition runs through January 27, 2013.

• Kiki Smith‘s photographs are being exhibited at Galleria Raffaella Cortese (Milan, Italy). By the Stream is Smith’s third solo exhibition at the gallery and features photographs that evoke a fairytale tradition and build an iconographic narrative laden with femininity. Using the camera, Smith draws a conceptual dimension of space and body set in a world of childlike dreams. The show closes November 15.

• Rashid Johnson presents his first London exhibition at the South London Gallery (London, England). Rashid Johnson: Shelter is inspired by the idea of an imagined society in which psychotherapy is a freely available drop-in service. Johnson’s installation questions established definitions of the art object and its limitations, as well as the relationship between individual and shared cultural experience. This work is on view through November 25.

• Raymond Pettibon: The Punk Years, 1978-86 is on view at the McIntosh Gallery (London, Canada). The show includes over 150 examples of Raymond Pettibon‘s zines, fliers, posters and album covers made for punk bands such as Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, Go-Go’s, Meat Puppets and the Ramones. The exhibition runs through November 3.

• Mike Kelley: Themes and Variations from 35 Years is scheduled to debut at Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) in December. The exhibition will include work from the 1970s right up until Mike Kelly‘s death, including 250 paintings, sculptures, objects, works on paper and videos. The show is expected to travel to MoMA PS1 in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A., according to the site GalleristNY, but dates haven’t been announced.

• Marina Abramović, El Anatsui and Tabaimo were featured via Art21 for Festival Artecinema (Rome, Italy) that ran October 4–7.

• Mark Bradford waxes poetic on MOCAtv, an extension of the legendary Los Angeles art museum into the digital realm with the first-ever original YouTube channel devoted to contemporary art. The YouTube page features five-minute videos with artists.

• Barry McGee completed a mural called Untitled 2012 on the east wall of the Mark Morris Dance Center in Fort Greene, Brooklyn (NY). Vanity Fair commissioned McGee as part of their Art in the Streets program. The mural will be photographed by Jason Schmidt and showcased in the December issue of Vanity Fair magazine.

Ai Weiwei. “Cube Light," 2008. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne.

In this week’s roundup Cindy Sherman arrives in Paris, Hiroshi Sugimoto tilts photos 90 degrees, Shahzia Sikander explores Islamic and East Indian art, Richard Tuttle mixes poetry and sculpture, Ai Weiwei presents his retrospective, and more.

• Cindy Sherman features a series of recent photographs on view at the Gagosian Gallery (Paris). This is Cindy Sherman‘s first exhibition in Paris following shows in Los Angeles and Rome. This series displays snapshots taken on the Capri and Stromboli islands, in Iceland during the volcanic eruption of 2010, and on Shelter Island, in New York. Afterwards, she digitally retouched them to create luxuriant pictorial effects. The exhibition closes October 10.

• Paul McCarthy‘s chess set made from kitchen items is on view in The Art of Chess at the Saatchi Gallery (London). This exhibition demonstrates the inspirational power of chess in the 21st century and how the game continues to provide an intriguing starting point for artistic expression. This show runs through October 3.

• Hiroshi Sugimoto‘s Lightning Fields and Photogenic Drawings is on view at Lille Metropole in Villeneuve-d’Ascq, France. The exhibitions present 30 large prints that are the direct result of his study of the invention and history of photography. This exhibition closes October 7.

• Hiroshi Sugimoto‘s Revolution will be on view at Museum Brandhorst, Munich, Germany. This show will feature large-format photographs of the sea at night that trace the movement of the moon over a long period. Their special presentation – the pictures being tilted 90° – creates a puzzling effect that varies considerably depending on the region in the world or the latitude. This group of works will be presented to the public for the first time in Munich. The exhibition will run October 24 – February 10, 2013.

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Barry McGee. "Roseville Trainyards," 1995. Photo by Craig Costello. Courtesy of the artist.

In this week’s roundup Barry McGee’s mid-career show, Cai Guo-Qiang in Copenhagen, Ida Applebroog and Krzysztof Wodiczko explore free speech, Cindy Sherman is celebrated by drag artists and more.

• Barry McGee is at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California (BAM/PFA). This exhibition is the first mid-career survey of Barry McGee and provides a much-anticipated opportunity to experience his work from the late 1980s to the present. It includes rarely-seen early work, vibrant op-art painted panels, animatronic taggers, and a re-creation of a cacophonous street-corner bodega, along with many new projects. The show runs through December 9.

• Cai Guo-Qiang: A Clan of Boats opens next week at the Faurschou Foundation (Copenhagen). The exhibition will mark Cai Guo-Qiang‘s first one-man show in Scandinavia since 1997 and will include a series of newly-commissioned gunpowder drawings inspired by Denmark’s nature, culture, and history. On the opening day, the artist will realize an outdoor explosion event. The show will run September 7 – December 7.

• Paul Pfeiffer‘s Playroom opens next week at the Paula Cooper Gallery (NYC). The exhibitions features a sculpture based on the “playroom” from legendary basketball player Wilt Chamberlain’s Los Angeles mansion. It also includes video work that has been digitally altered, contains fragments of a storyline and invites the viewer to piece together the nature of the characters’ relationship and the narrative they are performing. The exhibition is on view September 8 – October 13.

• Ida Applebroog and Krzysztof Wodiczko have work featured in Ruptures: Form of Public Address, a group exhibition at the 41 Cooper Gallery (NYC). Situated within the context of the upcoming U.S. elections and the one-year anniversary of the Occupy movement, the exhibition explores the promise and fragility of fearless speech in the aftermath of the 2011 demonstrations, which have erupted across the world in city streets, university campuses, and urban centers. The show will run September 4 – October 13.

• Mike Kelley: 1954 – 2012 is a tribute exhibition to Mike Kelley in collaboration with LUMA Foundation at The Watermill Center (New York). The show includes works from the Kandor Project and opened at The Big Bang: The 19th Annual Watermill Center Summer Benefit. The “Kandors” series, which Kelley initiated in 1999, are sculptural depictions of Superman’s birthplace Kandor. The exhibition closes September 16.

• Barbara Kruger talked about her new installation, Belief+Doubt at the Hirshhorn Museum (Washington DC), and art in the Digital Age with Complex magazine. Kruger’s installation reminds us to question assumed authority and pay attention to how we treat one another. Kruger’s installation is currently on view in the Hirshhorn’s Lower Level Lobby.

• Cindy Sherman‘s work is currently on view at SFMOMA, and to celebrate this retrospective four of San Francisco’s premier drag performance artists have re-enacted four of Sherman’s iconic portraits. Featured in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the performances are “all about looking twice — or in Sherman’s case, four or five times — and we wanted to see how many layers of gaze her work could hold.” The SFMOMA exhibition is on view through October 8.

• Next year James Turrell: A Retrospective will explore nearly fifty years in the career of James Turrell. The exhibition includes early geometric light projections, prints and drawings, installations exploring sensory deprivation and seemingly unmodulated fields of colored light, and recent two-dimensional experiments with holograms. The exhibition will run May 26, 2013 – April 6, 2014.

Robert Adams. "Pikes Peak, Colorado Springs, Colorado," 1969. Photo courtesy the artist.

In this week’s roundup a Robert Adams retrospective, a Mike Kelley tribute, an honor for Ursula von Rydingsvard, a first for Laylah Ali’s Greenheads series, and more.

• Robert Adams: The Place We Live, A Retrospective Selection of Photographs is on view at the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT).  Featuring over 200 photographs, this retrospective traces more than 45 years of work by Robert Adams, including his work on the suburbs of Colorado, his portrayal of southern California, and his recent meditations on the endangered landscape of the Pacific Northwest. The show runs through October 28.

• Mike Kelley 1954 – 2012, a tribute exhibition at The Watermill Center in New York, includes selected soundtracks from The Poetics, Mike Kelley’s art punk band, and videos by Kelley dating from 1978–1986. The various pieces in different media include models and banners from an initial Kandor-Con 2000 installation, seven large-scale projections (2007), one of the sculptures with video projection of Kandors (2007) and Kelley’s last performance video, Vice Anglais (2011). This work is on view through September 16 and can be seen by appointment only.

• Robert Ryman: A Painting in Four Parts, 1963–1964 is now on view at the Gagosian Gallery (NYC). The show features four untitled paintings from 1963–1964, on which Robert Ryman explores the nuanced effects of acrylic paint on aluminum. The exhibition ends August 24.

• Laylah Ali: The Greenheads Series will be presented at the Williams College Museum of Art (Williamstown, MA). The show includes over forty of Laylah Ali‘s gouache paintings—created between 1996 and 2005—that will be shown for the first time as a comprehensive body of work. The WCMA exhibition runs from August 18–November 25.

• Hiroshi Sugimoto will present a collection of his portraits of Henry VIII and his six wives at Sudeley Castle (Winchcombe, Gloucestershire). The show is in honor of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Queen Catherine Parr. The seven photographs feature wax figures staged and lit like Renaissance portraits and are drawn from Sugimoto’s Portraits series, which was commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim Museum in 1999.

• Ursula von Rydingsvard will be honored by the Storm King Art Center (Mountainville, NY) for an annual gala dinner and live auction that will take place October 17.

• Hans Ulrich Obrist interviewed John Baldessari for the Institute of the 21st Century (I21c), a non-profit initiative to consolidate and digitally archive the entirety of Obrist’s Interview Project. This event took place on July 29 at LACMA.

• Do-Ho Suh‘s Bridging Home, an outdoor installation originally commissioned for the Liverpool Biennial in 2010, will be part of Roundtable: 9th Gwangui Biennale at the Tate Modern. Made of a steel structural frame and finished with marine plywood, this structure was installed at an angle to highlight the sense of tension between the traditional Korean architecture of the miniature house and the more British architecture of its neighbors. This work will be on view September 7 – November 11.

• Sally Mann: Upon Reflection will be at the Edwynn Houk Gallery (NYC) and features an exhibition of new photographic self-portraits by Sally Mann. The artist will showcase a new technique based on 19th century processes but that incorporates a modern sensibility. The show runs September 13–November 3.

• Behind the Scenes Barry McGee at BAM/PFA covers Barry McGee‘s new installation in progress at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (San Francisco). This mid-career survey will span over three decades of work, from spray painted objects to a myriad of rainbow geometric patterns. McGee is currently artist-in-residence as he prepares for this exhibition, which will tour to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston next spring. This exhibition will run August 24–December 9.

• Krzysztof Wodiczko: Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection will be presented by Galerie Lelong and More Art later this year. This marks a return of sorts to Union Square for Krzysztof Wodiczko, who in 1986 developed Homeless Projection: A Proposal for Union Square. For his new project, slated to begin on November 9, approximately 30 veterans will animate the statue of Abraham Lincoln with their stories in the now commercially-thriving and historically civic center of Union Square.

Sanford Biggers. “The Cartographer’s Conundrum,” 2012. Courtesy the artist and Mass MoCA.

In The Cartographer’s Conundrum, a large installation currently on view at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA), artist Sanford Biggers maps artistic, cultural and spiritual practices, other disciplines and fields such as Afrofuturism, music, and sacred geometry. The average visitor probably knows very little about these concepts, their diversity and the relationships that exist between them. However, Sanford’s presentation draws you in and provokes an unrestricted sort of curiosity that might lead to a more global understanding of the various issues involved. The Afrofuturist perspective was influenced by pioneers Sun Ra, George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, Afrika Bambaataa, and others who produced works that resonate with contemporary artists and performers like Cauleen Smith, Rashid Johnson, even singers Erykah Badu and Janelle Monae –these examples are good starting points for exploring the themes in Sanford’s show.

“I figured another place you wouldn’t think black people would be was in outer space. I was a big fan of Star Trek, so we did a thing with a pimp sitting in a spaceship shaped like a Cadillac, and we did all these James Brown-type grooves, but with street talk and ghetto slang.” (George Clinton)

George Clinton and Parliament. Mothership Connection poster circa 1975. Courtesy Casablanca Records.

Curator Denise Markonish describes Sanford Biggers as a “child of hip-hop, breakdancing and graffiti culture.” As Sanford and I were born in the same year (1970) certain aspects of this work resonate on a personal level and others emerge as part of the “spirit of the times,” in which artists, scholars, and mathematicians, for example, intermingle different perspectives and creative ideas to produce new spaces for production and discourse – see Cai Guo-Qiang‘s and Hiroshi Sugimoto‘s contributions in Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere. Here, Sanford’s work is part of what he refers to as the “hip-hop ethos,” as well as Afrofuturism as (in this case) a platform for contemporary artistic production and discourse.

“Afrofuturism plays tricks with history, wrapping street culture with science fiction to advance new and alternative views of the world.” (Denise Markonish)

Creative syncretism, or as Sanford describes, the ”study of ethnological objects, popular icons, and the Dadaist tradition,” intersects with Afrofuturism, a parallel cultural practice that brings together disparate technologies, new rituals of communication, and communities that remain open to the incorporation of older knowledge contexts. Scholar Roy Ascott argues that syncretism – the attempt to reconcile disparate practices – contributes to “our understanding of multi-layered worldviews” that are emerging with our social-cultural and spiritual engagements. These engagements reach across divides. Ethnomathematics is the study of the use of culture with the presentation of math. Ethnomathematician Ron Eglash wrote A Geometrical Bridge Across the Middle Passage: Mathematics in the Art of John Biggers (2004) to create awareness of the process through which this knowledge progresses and is exchanged. After Sanford talked about his contemporary mandala at Emory University I introduced him to Ron (my dissertation advisor) via email. Inspired by the response, I made the trek to Mass MoCA from Georgia Tech.

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Marina Abramović. The Artist Is Present (2012). Courtesy Show of Force LLC and Mudpuppy Flims Inc. Photo by Marco Anelli © 2010.

In this week’s roundup a Marina Abramović documentary national roll-out, Barry McGee in Fast Company, Fred Wilson and Kiki Smith explore color and glass, and more.

• Marina Abramović is the subject of a new film, The Artist Is Present, that opened last week at the the Film Forum in NYC and Nuart Theater in West Los Angeles. The feature-length documentary follows the artist as she prepares for the retrospective of her work at MoMA in NYC. The national roll-out of the film is soon to come.

• Barry McGee is featured in Fast Company’s Co-Create column. The article notes McGee’s current show at the Prism Gallery in West Hollywood, CA and an upcoming retrospective at the Berkeley Museum of Art August 23 – December 9. The centerpiece of the Prism exhibition is a patchwork of framed paintings, drawings, and photographs that bulge out from the gallery wall like a slow wave. This exhibition is on view through June 30.

• Alfredo Jaar is in a new exhibition at Haus Der Kunst (Munich). Image Counter Image presents artistic positions that focus on the critical analysis of violent conflicts in the media, beginning with the First Gulf War of 1990-1991 to September 11, 2001, and ending with the events of the Arab Spring of 2011. Jaar compiled a collection of Newsweek covers to demonstrate the hierarchy of news and indirectly questions the agendas and responsibilities of journalists. The exhibition closes September 16.

• Fred Wilson and Kiki Smith have pieces on view at the Toledo Museum of Art. Color Ignited: Glass 1962-2012 showcases studio glass created during the past half-century, spotlighting pivotal work by artists working in the medium. The exhibition focuses on the “role of color—from the conceptual to the political to the metaphoric—in artistic expression.” Fred Wilson designed an 8½-foot black Iago’s Mirror with intricate detail. Kiki Smith designed Frogs which was cast from a single mold. This show runs through September 9.

• In the Studio with Hiroshi Sugimoto is featured by the New York Times Style Magazine as part of its coverage of the artist’s collaboration with Hermès. Twenty of Hiroshi Sugimoto‘s abstract color studies have been translated into silk scarves in signed, limited editions of seven each: “Couleurs de L’Ombre is a moving tribute to the lowly Polaroid, which faces imminent extinction.”

• Carrie Mae Weems‘s recent collaboration with jazz pianist Geri Allen was featured in the New York Times. Slow Fade to Black is a multimedia show that premiered last Friday at Celebrate Brooklyn!, the Prospect Park summer festival of performing arts and film. Weems’s images (on three giant screens) were put together to original music by Allen. The show was among the festival’s 32 mostly free events.

Doris Salcedo. "A Flor de Piel," 2011 - 2012. Image courtesy the artist and White Cube.

In this week’s roundup, Doris Salcedo’s rose shroud, several Art21 artists in documenta 13, Do Ho Suh’s Fallen Star, Paul McCarthy’s 30-foot ketchup bottle, and much more.

• Doris Salcedo’s first London show since 2007 is now on view at White Cube. Doris Salcedo: Mason’s Yard includes A Flor de Piel, an enormous shroud made up of thousands of rose petals connected to each other in a suspended state and which may transform during the course of the exhibition. This work was developed as a sculpture that was about the simple but impossible task of making a flower offering to a victim of torture. The exhibition closes June 30.

• Allora & Calzadilla, Ida Applebroog, Mark Dion, William Kentridge and Julie Mehretu are in documenta 13. This exhibition series located in Kassel is dedicated to artistic research and forms of imagination that explore commitment, matter, things, embodiment, and active living in connection with, yet not subordinated to, theory. The exhibition runs June 6 – September 16.

• Rashid Johnson‘s work is in An Architect’s Dream, a group exhibition in Washington, DC that focuses on the concept of arrangement and presentation as a unifying formal device. Johnson explores the nuanced transformations of black history and culture between his own family’s generations. This work continues his interest in the intellectuals and creative provocateurs of African American history.

• Jeff Koons kicked off Studio in a School’s Visual Arts Appreciation Week. He visited a second-grade class at PS 112 in NYC. Fred Wilson and Ursula von Rydingsvard also visited classes as part of this program.

 

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Ai Weiwei on Skype for the Richard. J. Massey Award for Arts and Humanity, at the White Box Spring Benefit 2012. Photo by Chris Reed.

In this week’s roundup Ai Weiwei is honored, Barry McGee highlights the Mission School, Mike Kelley’s homestead is screened and more.

• Ai Weiwei was honored with the first Richard J. Massey Foundation White Box and Humanity Award, at the White Box gallery in New York City. Ai accepted the award from Beijing via a Skype call. He could not receive the award in person because authorities in Beijing are constantly monitoring him. The award included an art piece created in his honor by Chilean artist Ivan Navarro.

• Hiroshi Sugimoto: From Naked to Clothed is at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Japan. According to the exhibition notes, in creating and/or assembling the thirty-odd works on show, Hiroshi Sugimoto “sought to uncover the essence of what it is to be human.” At the center of this exhibition is the photographic series Stylized Sculpture, which showcases the fashion of such seminal 20th century designers as Gabrielle Chanel, Yves Saint-Laurent and Rei Kawakubo. The exhibition is on view until July 1.

• Catherine Sullivan contributed to Model United Nations at the University of Chicago (MUNUC), an annual four-day conference at the historic Palmer House hotel providing thousands of high school students the opportunity to participate in educational simulations of the United Nations and other international affairs-themed bodies.

• Barry McGee organized a special exhibition at the Paule Anglim Contemporary Arts Centre (San Francisco). This show displays work from 1990s artists who were part of the now coined “Mission School” movement.  Over 40 artists were invited to participate in this event, which closes May 19.

• Mark Bradford‘s retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts features  more than 50 works from 2000 through 2010, including Detail, an ark-like sculpture and the Rat Catcher of Hamelin, a large-scale four–panel mixed media collage created for the Istanbul biennial. 50 billboards collected from all around South-Central Los Angeles form the basis of this socially charged abstract art. This work is on view through May 27 at YBCA and June 17 at SFMoMA.

• Mike Kelley‘s feature-length video installation Mobile Homestead will be screened  as part of the Whitney Biennial. Kelley built a life-size sculptural replica of the small ranch house where he grew up in a blue-collar Detroit suburb, attached it to a tractor-trailer and had it driven through the streets of Detroit as a symbolic reversal of the “white flight” that helped depopulate the city. This anchors more than three hours of documentaries about the stretch of Michigan Avenue that cuts through the West Side of Detroit and its working-class suburbs. This work will be on view May 16 – 20.

• Maya Lin will be featured as this year’s speaker for the Visionaries Series at the New Museum (NYC), supported by the Stuart Regen Visionaries Fund. The series honors leading international thinkers in the fields of art, architecture, design, and related disciplines of contemporary culture. The event will take place on May 30, at 7pm.

Maya Lin. "Dew Point 18 (detail)," 2007. Blown glass. © Maya Lin Studio, Inc., courtesy The Pace Gallery. Photo courtesy The Pace Gallery.

In this week’s roundup Maya Lin invites and challenges viewers, Alfredo Jaar makes history, Mike Kelley, Pepón Osorio, Carrie Mae Weems, and Jessica Stockholder explore everyday things, and more.

• Maya Lin recently launched What Is Missing?, as part of the fifth, and last, of her memorial projects, which began with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial built on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 1982. The web-based, multimedia memorial coincides with her exhibition in the Heinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art. The show closes May 13.

• Mike Kelley, Pepón Osorio, Carrie Mae Weems, and Jessica Stockholder have work in Everyday Things: Contemporary Works from the Collection at the Rhode Island School of Design. This show features artworks that depict commonplace objects and imagery, utilize everyday elements in their construction, or serve as functional artist-made objects, including benches, chairs, and light fixtures. This work is on view through  February 24, 2013.

• Richard Serra‘s, Kiki Smith‘s and Martin Puryear‘s works are currently on view in Inside|Out at the Speed Art Museum (Louisville, KY). The exhibition illustrates how art and nature connect at the “New” Speed when the Museum reopened after its renovation and expansion project. Inside|Out looks at sculptures and prints made by these artists, among others. The exhibition closes September 23.

• Jeff Koons lent his entire body of work to designer Lisa Perry’s latest collection of apparel and accessories. Perry’s art-inspired collection featuring Koons’s work is available at her boutique and on her website. Some of the proceeds will go to the Koons Family Institute, an initiative of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

• Alfredo Jaar is featured in Making History at Frankfurter Kunstverein (Frankfurt, Germany). The exhibition addresses how photographs shape our view of history as well as the images that are withheld from us. Jaar’s photographs investigate the potential effect and ideological power of published photographic icons in his work, as well as in a large-scale installation. This show runs through July 8.

• Barry McGee‘s stickers are featured in Stuck Up: A Selected History of Alternative and Popular Culture told through Stickers at the UGLYgallery and New Bedford Art Museum (Massachusetts). Contemporary artists not necessarily known for stickers, such as Jenny Holzer, are shown side by side with anonymous stickers peeled from the streets of New York City. This exhibition will run concurrently at the New Bedford Art Museum and UGLYgallery through May 4.

Rashid Johnson. "Triple Consciousness," 2009. Courtesy MCA Chicago. Collection of Dr. Daniel S. Berger, Chicago.

In this week’s roundup, Rashid Johnson was on the diamond, Lynda Benglis to be featured at Boston RAW, Kalup Linzy pays tribute to Cindy Sherman, and more.

• Rashid Johnson threw out the first pitch at Wrigley Field before the Cubs-Brewers game last Thursday. This was tied to the opening of his new exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago. Rashid Johnson: Message to Our Folks explores the complexities and contradictions of black identity, rooted in his individual experience, through photographs, sculptures, videos, installations, and paintings. This work is on view through August 5.

• A film clip from a still-in-progress documentary on Lynda Benglis will be previewed at Boston RAW Menagerie a day before Benglis’s segment from Season 6 of Art in the Twenty-First Century broadcasts on PBS. RAW directors select and spotlight local artistic talent in film, fashion, music, visual art, hair and makeup artistry, and performance art. Including artists from all genres in each showcase, RAW events come together to form an amazing one-night circus of creativity. This week’s showcase takes place on April 19; Benglis’s Art in the Twenty-First Century episode airs Friday April 20.

• Lynda Benglis and Kara Walker were newly elected by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The annual induction and award ceremony will take place in mid-May. An exhibition of art, architecture, books, and manuscripts by new members will be on view in the Academy’s galleries from May 17 to June 10.

• Ursula von Rydingsvard will be lecturing on April 21 at Florida International University. The Green Critics’ Lecture Series with Ursula von Rydingsvard will introduce Rydingsvard to the South Florida community. Her traveling exhibition Ursula von Rydingsvard: Sculpture will be open to the public at the Frost Art Museum from April 21 – August 5.

• Kalup Linzy performed a tribute to Cindy Sherman to the tune of Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Linzy recounts his earliest encounters with Sherman’s work as an undergraduate student, and her role in getting him a grant. The exhibition Cindy Sherman is now on view at MoMA (NYC) in conjunction with the film exhibition Carte Blanche: Cindy Sherman, through June 11.

• Barry McGee is one of twenty-six artists featured by SFMOMA (San Francisco) for the Google Art Project that provides Internet access to high-resolution images of selected paintings, sculptures and photographs from museum and gallery collections around the world. Twenty-nine of the partners, in sixteen cities, are in the United States, with four of those just added in California.