For almost forty years, Martha Rosler has been hosting garage sales of the standard American variety wherein visitors may browse through random assortments of used goods, from books and dishes to lingerie and porn, in the hopes of scoring something on the cheap. Unsuspecting shoppers are likely to have a purely commercial experience, haggling with Rosler and prowling for the finery hidden among the tchotchkes, while participants familiar with her work as an artist may notice that there’s more going on than just an exchange of goods for money — the questions of desire and consumption, reflections on sentimentality and personal attachment to material objects — that Rosler is hoping people will consider.

Rosler’s most recent iteration of the piece, the “Meta-Monumental Garage Sale” is currently underway (until November 30) in the MoMA Marron Atrium, turning the space into a retail zone, where visitors have the rare opportunity to take home a piece of the art. ARTINFO visited the sale and spoke with Rosler, the show’s chief curator Sabine Breitwieser, and some of the sale’s happy customers. 

Watch our video of Martha Rosler's MoMA garage sale below:

Depending on whom you ask, Jerusalem has been conquered between 20 to 40 times, and in each case, a new homesteader has managed to bury whatever the last group left behind. In a particularly old homestead like Silwan, a district in East Jerusalem that has been occupied in various forms since the 4th millenium BCE, the resulting strata can be divided into at least this many layers of artifacts and debris, each left by a different human conqueror over the range of 50 to 500 years.

Since it was first excavated in the mid-19th century, Silwan has become an ideal place to observe the extent to which archaeology and conflict are connected. Whereas biblical sources would describe Silwan as the place David first conquered when he established his capital, in the present day, the neighborhood is populated predominantly by Palestinians. It has, at the same time, been a perennial target of settler groups looking to “Judaise” parts of East Jerusalem that were placed under Israeli control following the Six Day War in 1967. Critics believe that since the mid-1990s, the Ir David Foundation (also known by the Hebrew acronym “Elad”) has been underwriting excavations in the area with the intent of developing the archaeological record of one group — the Hebrew one — at the exclusion of all others. After the announcement last month that Tel Aviv University (TAU) would take part in an excavation in Silwan, funded indirectly by Elad, many left-leaning archaeologists and skeptical observers have stepped forward in protest.

Off and on since 1997, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority has tasked Elad with the “guardianship and maintenance” of Silwan’s archaeologically rich City of David National Park. For a private organization, it wields an unusual amount of authority over a public entity, directing tours and charging admission, inviting soldiers on religiously minded “heritage tours,” and compelling guides to interpret ambiguous artifacts along biblical lines.

A 2006 report by Ir Amim, a left-wing advocacy group focussed on Jerusalem, described one instance in which Dr. Eilat Mazar, an archaeologist working at a dig funded by Elad, claimed to have found the pipe that David’s warriors traveled through when they conquered the city. This was despite the fact that many scholars — including Ronny Reich, an archaeologist at Haifa University who worked at the same site — were skeptical that David or Solomon had ever been there. On another occasion,Reich uncovered a Byzantine water pit and was instructed by Elad to present it as the cistern of Malkijah, the pit Jeremiah was thrown into by the son of Zedekiah, the king of Judah, according to the Old Testament. For weeks, the attribution was listed on the website and echoed by tour guides, even though Reich himself said that it was “nonsense.”

Excavators who work in Silwan largely describe themselves as beyond the reach of partisan politics, but given Elad’s extensive involvement in archaeological activity there, this can be hard to prove. Founded in 1986, the group’s stated goal has been to “strengthen the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and renew Jewish settlement in the City of David.” Ir Amim has linked the group to an array of coercive methods settler groups have employed to move space in Silwan from Palestinian to Israeli hands, including forced evictions, forged deeds, and the now-null Absentees Property Law, which allowed Israeli settlers to occupy land and buildings that had been depopulated in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

A Google search of the group’s founder, David Be’eri, leads to multiple stories about the day he passed through Silwan in a silver four-door sedan and was confronted by Palestinian youths throwing stones. He struck two of them with his car and drove off, later claiming he had felt he was in danger and was trying to flee. Though both boys avoided serious injury, the incident was broadcast on Al Jazeera as well as Israeli television, and in numerous clips on YouTube.

It's hard to imagine how an organization whose leader is best known for running over Palestinian children with his car could invite itself into archaeology, a field in which professionals pride themselve in being almost tediously objective. In recent years, however, Elad has managed to do just that, funding public education projects in Silwan that would make viewers believe that politics was not Elad’s concern.

“I think Baeri’s great achievement is to de-politicize,” Meron Rapoport, a journalist who authored the Ir Amim report, told ARTINFO. “When Elad started its activities in 1990, some years ago, they had this image of being extremist settlers who wanted to disturb life in East Jerusalem. What I think David Be’eri did in the late 1990s and from there on is to make Elad not political, to continue what they do in Silwan, but at the same time not to appear political, as if this is a scientific, touristic project, and not a political project.”

Because of the drama of archaeology in Jerusalem, in addition to the sizable funds it provides for research areas like Silwan, researchers like Reich have frequently found themselves forced to answer difficult questions about cooperating with Elad. Israel Finkelstein, a professor of archaeology at TAU who is involved in the work at Silwan and is described among colleagues as “center-left,” gave a notably guarded answer when I asked him if he had qualms about doing archaeological work in which Elad was involved. “I have always kept distance from politics, so I am not going to answer this question,” he wrote in an email. “My only interest is to better understand archaeology and history. In order to make things clear, let me add that: 1) the Tel Aviv University dig will be carried out as a joint venture with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA); no other body will be involved in the dig; 2) Tel Aviv University and its Institute of Archaeology work according to law.” 

That TAU would be working in coordination with the Israel Antiquities Authority, which will transfer funds from Elad to the university, is hardly disputed (and in fact has already been widely covered). Eliding this, Finkelstein was less than eager to comment on whether Elad might be harnessing the presence of archaeologists in Silwan to evict Palestinian residents and allow Jewish settlers to move in. Rafael Greenberg, another professor of archaeology at TAU who has stood out for his opposition to the university’s involvement in Silwan, regularly expressed concerns about Elad’s involvement to his colleague Ronny Reich, who, recently, has become the head of the IAA’s archaeological council. “Whenever I told them he was being used by the settlers,” he told ARTINFO, “He’d say, ‘No, I’m using them.’” 

Speaking over the phone last week, Greenberg repeated his feelings about Elad’s presence in the area, as well as the public relations concerns of TAU’s involvement. Part of what made him want to speak reporters, as it turned out, was how unconvincing he thought TAU’s message will be to Palestinian Silwanis, whose anxieties about losing their home might overlap with anxieties about being evicted from history. “No amount of spin or declarative sentences saying ‘we’re not being part of it,’ is going to change that, unless they actively dissociate themselves from that project,” he said. “It has to be a completely new concept, in order to carry out an excavation that is not associated with the settlers, with the Israeli view of history.”

Whereas the university might profess to doing unglamorous and uncontroversial work to better understand the exceedingly complicated history of Jerusalem, Greenberg said that for Elad, TAU’s involvement will be a “huge feather in their cap” that will further distance their brand from the stigma of settler politics. In reality, Greenberg said, “everything is happening in a political context.”

“I’ve come to the realization that archaeology is not about the past but how the past has formed the present, and what parts of the past we’re taking to the future,” he told ARTINFO. “Archaeologists are in the business of creating collective memories.”

One of the greatest pleasures of Tumblr — now officially one of America’s top ten most-trafficked websites — is the surprisingly frequent opportunity it offers to stumble upon a blog that seems to have been made just for you. Our latest such discovery, o

Ben: I've hit the low point of this little experiment. After having a few too many cocktails, there is nothing worse than a multistep skin-care regimen. I wish there were an exfoliating pillow that I could have just face-planted into. For some women, a n

EMERGING is a regular column where ARTINFO spotlights an up-and-coming artist.

“I am really drawn to images that are both beautiful and unsettling, and unravel slowly with you long after you’ve seen them,” explained Firelei Báez in a recent conversation with ARTINFO. Born in 1980 in Santiago De Los Treinta Cabelleros in the Dominican Republic to Dominican and Haitian parents, and now based in Brooklyn, the idea of self in the Caribbean diasporic communities provides a fertile theme for her mixed-media portraits and paintings.

Her “Geographic Delay” series includes powerful, large-scale gouache and ink portraits of participants in Brooklyn’s massive annual West Indian Day Parade that bring out “the unmentioned histories present in these performers’ bodies.” Her work “Not Even Unalterable Limitations” references the knotted headdress known as a tignon that all women of black ancestry, whether free or slave, had to wear in Spanish colonial Louisiana as a class distinction. The women had such strong and elaborate interpretations of this headdress that they ended up influencing Paris fashion, before ultimately overturning the law. In Báez’s piece, the headdress has transformed and bloomed into a dense garden drawn in graphite.

She approaches her work as a way of connecting the past and present, as well as the real to the fictional, examining existing power structures of race, gender, and society. For example, her “Carib’s Jhator” and “Ciguapa” series of disjointed figures confront the passive role of women in language, “subverting expectations of beauty and normalcy with seductively frightening specters.” But amid the artistic tumult built from cultural ambiguities is a consistently playful perspective. “I’ve discovered that although drawing from these spaces and experiences can often be turbulent and uncomfortable, there is also an incredible amount of humor and fantasy involved in self-making within them as well,” she stated.

Báez graduated with a BFA from the Cooper Union in 2004 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2008, later earning an MFA from Hunter College in 2010. Her studies come out in her detailed work with a variety of media, including painting, watercolor, drawing, and collage, all laced into forms on paper. “I am usually drawn to surfaces that act as surrogates for the bodies being depicted or evoked,” she said. “I am drawn to the fragility and flexibility of paper, how it has a memory from which it expands and shrinks back to, it scars, colors, and ages in ways really similar to our physical selves.”

Currently, she is part of “Fore” at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and earlier this year she had her first West Coast solo show at Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles. In 2013 her work will be featured in the second edition of the Phaidon drawing anthology “Vitamin D2,” and she will participate in Wave Hill’s “Workspace” and their show “Drawn to Nature.” She also has upcoming residences at Dieu Donné Papermill in New York and at Headlands Center for the Arts in California, where she will continue to explore interactions between people and history in her pursuit to capture the lushness of life and culture.

Click here to view a slideshow of Firelei Báez's work.

Like the younger clientele it courts, Versus is going through a lot of changes. Last week it was announced that Christopher Kane was departing his design post at Versace’s second line, launching a flurry of speculation that he was replacing Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga, in the highest-profile fashion-world shakeup since John Galliano’s unceremonious exit from Dior early last year. So far, however, that has not happened; in fact Kane’s camp has denied it.

At the same time, Versace announced a “strategic repositioning” of Versus, amounting to an increased digital presence, season-less collections, and a rotating roster of collaborators. Today it was learned that the first of the rotating designers will be Jonathan William Anderson, among London’s new crop of young eccentrics whose punk-inspired designs regularly appear in alterna-titles such as i-D, Ten, and Hero.

“I keep a close eye on young talent,” said Donatella Versace, “and have been impressed by Jonathan’s work over the last couple of years. Versus is all about fun, change, and digital. I can’t wait to present this collaboration.”

The Irish-born designer currently shows both a men’s and a women’s collection at London Fashion Week, under the name JW Anderson, which presumably he’ll continue. Earlier this week he won the Emerging Talent Award for Ready-to-Wear at the British Fashion Awards.

Anderson’s capsule collection for Versus — women’s, men’s, accessories — will launch in New York with an event planned for spring. In a glimpse of what to expect, he said he was inspired by an androgynous image from a 1996 campaign shot by Bruce Weber, a lighter moment between models Stella Tennant and Iván de Pineda. “For me, this iconic image says it all. That’s how I see Versus. It’s all about the relationship between a boy and a girl, a girl and a girl, a boy and a boy. Purity.”

Lee Carter is editor-in-chief of Hint Fashion Magazine.

Visit Artinfo.com/fashion for more fashion and style news. 

BLOUIN Fashion is now on Twitter. Follow us @BLOUINFashion

To help spread that holiday cheer, we compiled a Wine and Spirits Gift Guide for the season's upcoming festivities.

Click on the slideshow to see ARTINFO's wine and spirits picks. 

– LACMA's Council Leaders Resign Over Fee Hike: The 40-member board of the Art Museum Council at LACMA has voted unanimously to stop volunteering at the museum next year because of its plans to triple council members' fees. (Starting next June, members who once paid a minimum of $400 will be required to pay $1,000 plus a $250-level membership.) "Our AMC Board of Directors voted to withdraw from LACMA rather than discriminate against any of our members who would be unable to pay the exorbitant increase to stay in our council," said chairwoman Diana Gutman. [LAT]

– Futurist French Christmas Tree Ruffles Feathers in Brussels: A blocky, 80-foot-tall Christmas tree sculpture created by French collective 1024 Architecture in Brussels's main public square has been receiving symbolic lumps of coal from Catholic Belgians who see the luminous monument as an overly PC attempt to make Christmas secular. "What's next," asked Belgian Christian-democratic party leader Bianca Debaets, "will they ban Easter eggs because they make us think of Easter?" [Libération]

– French Prez to Launch Louvre's Lens Outpost: The site of the first-ever franchise of Paris's Louvre, the Louvre-Lens in the northern city, was selected when Jacques Chirac was president in 2000. On Tuesday, France's recently elected leader François Hollande will inaugurate the new institution. Lens, a depressed mining town that hopes the Louvre will generate its own version of the "Bilbao effect" engendered by Frank Gehry's Guggenheim outpost, emerged as the preferred site from a field of seven finalist cities. [Le Figaro]

– Showtime for Sandy-Damaged Art: Groups across New York are planning exhibitions for artwork damaged by Hurricane Sandy. In Red Hook, artist Z Behl, 27, is throwing a Flooded Art Party on Saturday that will raise money for neighborhood recovery and offer artists an opportunity to exhibit waterlogged work. The New York Foundation for the Arts is planning a similar exhibition in February that will also feature new pieces inspired by the storm. "It really feels like the flood had an artistic hand," said Behl. [WSJ]

– Is "Revenge of the Sith" The Greatest Artwork of Our Time?: Rabble-rousing art historian Camille Paglia is making headlines in the entertainment press for her pronouncement that 2005's "Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith" is the greatest work of art of the past 30 years. The claim comes from her book, "Glittering Images," which traces key moments in Western art from the Egyptians to the modern era. "The long finale of Revenge of the Sith has more inherent artistic value, emotional power and global impact than anything by the artists you name," she said. [Hollywood Reporter] 

– Munch, Kirchner Works Returned to Jewish Collector's Heirs: A Berlin museum will return three graphics by Edvard Munch and one by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner to the heirs of collector Curt Glaser, who escaped Nazi persecution by fleeing to the United States. Berlin’s Kupferstichkabinett acquired the works back in 1933, when Glaser auctioned his collection before fleeing Germany. Five works from that auction will remain at the Berlin museum with the heirs' approval. Other works from the Glaser holdings remain in the collections throughout Europe. [Bloomberg]

– Zebras on the High Line: On Monday, Paola Pivi will become the next artist to transform the High Line billboard on West 18th Street and 10th Avenue. The Italian multimedia mastermind will install a photograph of two zebras posted on a snowy mountaintop set against a brilliant blue sky. Though it appears to be a digital manipulation, the image was in fact staged (live zebras and all) at San Grasso, a national park in central Italy. High Line Art curator Cecilia Alemani likened the surreal image to "a postcard from the future." [NYT]

– Possible Banksy Mural Targets BBC: A new street art piece in the style of Banksy that appeared near the BBC's offices on Wood Lane in London references the ongoing scandal involving the organization's late radio host Jimmy Savile, who since his death has been accused by more than 400 people of abusing them as children. The artwork shows a boy about to lower a medal reading "Jim Fixed It For Me" down a drain, though a spokesperson for the elusive street artist says the work — which was removed about an hour after it was spotted — was not by Banksy. [Telegraph]

– Teresa Margolles Takes Artes Mundi Prize: The Mexican conceptual artist whose work often addresses her country's brutal drug wars has won the fifth edition of the biannual Artes Mundi prize, which comes with a £40,000 ($64,000) purse and recognizes international artists whose work engages with social issues. An exhibition showcasing her work — which the chair of judges Tim Marlow described as having "visceral power and energy" — alongside that of the six other shortlisted artists continues at the National Museum of Wales until January 13. [Guardian, AI UK]

– Last Ditch Effort to Halt Moore Statue Sale: Though a plea by the councilors of Tower Hamlet to its mayor to stop the sale of Henry Moore's beloved public artwork "Draped Seated Woman" was rejected, solicitors from the Art Fund have filed a legal challenge regarding ownership of the sculpture, which Moore sold to the Greater London Council, an entity that was abolished in 1986. "Our research suggests that works of public art were handled separately from land and buildings when both the London County Council and the Greater London Council were dissolved," a statement from the Art Fund explained. "For this reason our lawyers have been in touch with the Council to ask for more information, which they have so far failed to provide." [BBC]

ALSO ON ARTINFO:

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Archaeologists Fear Their Work in Jerusalem May Be Tainted by Settler Politics

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check ARTINFO's In the Air blog.

The studio is very small. There’s a shelf with Styrofoam models of works in progress, a large plywood sculpture, and a big desk by the door. Add two chairs and that’s it — you’ve used up all the square footage of this tiny room in Brooklyn. “I like it because I want to reach a level of density in this space. I think that’s what I am going for in the show,” says Ohad Meromi, referring to his solo exhibition at Miami’s Gallery Diet, which opens November 30. Meromi, an Israeli-born, New York–based artist who thinks extensively about architecture and whose installations often fill and take over entire exhibition spaces, does not think in terms of a simple presentation of sculptures. “An exhibition is where people are going to see the work and engage with it, and I’m interested in this engagement and how far it can go, how effective it can be, and what could happen there,” he explains. So his large anthropomorphic figures made of cheap materials like plywood and Styrofoam will be arranged to create a busy feeling in the gallery. The moment when Meromi brings the works into the space — he keeps them unfinished until that point — is important to him. “This may sound a little like a decorator,” he says, “but you come to a party with a box full of stuff you’ve made, and then you want to use the stuff and really transform the space, open it up to possibilities.”

Stepping into one of Meromi’s exhibitions can be overwhelming. The sculptures are large — he explains that his range of scale starts with his own body and grows from there (he is over six feet tall) — and his exhibitions usually include an overarching architectural structure that makes viewing them a distinctly physical experience.

Meromi thinks about his audience very seriously. It may often be said that meaning is created in the gallery space, but for Meromi this is not without responsibility. “I have to be there, be the host,” he says. When Meromi was invited to do a project at Art in General, in New York, he took advantage of the fact that he would be in the city for the duration of the exhibition. The result was Rehearsal Sculpture, 2010, which could be viewed in two ways: You could come during the gallery’s opening hours and see the environment the artist created, or you could participate in a rehearsal. Once a week, Meromi or one of his collaborators led a workshop, composed of interactive exercises drawn from theater and dance. Those events did not produce any objects per se, but they did transform the space and become part of the sculpture. As the visitors danced, improvised theatrical scenes, or went through the motions of, say, a factory assembly line, they left remnants behind, giving the installation a feeling of un-bound spontaneity: It became a place where things could happen.

“I tried to create a model to experiment with the diffusion between my studio and the gallery,” the artist explains. “I wanted to think about what happens if we make an extension of the studio and actually produce work in the gallery, which is not such a radical position, but for me was a little tricky.” Meromi’s invitation to the audience was specific: They had to participate. “I was trying to invoke the potentiality of the stage without ever having this relationship of ‘I’m on the stage and then people are on the bleachers.’ ” The outcome, he hopes, was an experience of the stage and the agency that comes with it, without the self-conscious, spectacular aspect of having an audience.

Last year, Meromi debuted his first outdoor work, Stepanova, 2011, as part of the Public Art Fund’s exhibition “A Promise Is a Cloud,” which was on view at MetroTech Center in Brooklyn until last month. This piece is another experiment in participation, a modular sculpture made of blue-painted aluminum that viewers can move and rearrange like a set of children’s blocks. “I’ve been very cautious about working outdoors,” says Meromi. “I’m obviously interested in public space but also scared of what usually happens to sculpture in public and what type of sculpture it becomes.” The exhibition was a good opportunity to make a monumental piece that was open-ended: “It was an invitation for a set of events that included the public, which was possible because of the particular nature of this show. It was a public piece, but it existed there only for a year, which made it an event,” he says. Unlike public works that become part of the scenery—always there, and thus forgotten — Stepanova existed in a relatively transient moment. When the exhibition closed, Meromi says the sculpture would “fold back into itself and wait for another opportunity to play somewhere else.”

Play is a very fashionable term, Meromi admits. “I am a little bit guilty of talking about this and not giving clear guidelines about the kind of play I’m proposing,” he says. “I see play as sitting in a similar category or maybe interchangeable with the idea of work — I don’t want to work, I want to play. In a utopian ideal of it, work becomes play and play becomes work and the distinction starts to disappear. Craft could maybe be a place where the two overlap.” Meromi is an idealist. He speaks frankly about utopia, engagement, modernist dreams, and politics. The references and ideas he brings into his work range from the failure of Zionism and the kibbutz movement to labor relations and the image of the worker. But the interchangeability of work and play he ties to this notion of craft is crucial. Meromi works with his hands and defines his work as “crafty.” And for him, that becomes politics as well. “Craft, or making as a place to introduce the idea of working together, is my version of utopia,” says the artist, who, in the course of our conversation, manages to compare his process to a party, a theater set, and a game—all sociable situations where people come together. “I like seeing the social space of the gallery through the utopian hopes I have, even though they are so ridiculous in so many ways that my presence as a host is really important,” Meromi says. “I have to humor people into understanding.”

To see images of Ohad Meromi’s work, click through the slideshow. 

This article was published in the November 2012 issue of Modern Painters. 

Once again, ARTINFO has sent its intrepid staff into the streets of New York, charged with reviewing the art they saw in a single (sometimes run-on) sentence. (To see our One-Line Reviews as an illustrated slideshow, click here.)

* Peter Campus, “now and then,” Bryce Wolkowitz, 505 West 24th Street, through December 22

With recent time-altered videos of the Long Island shore welcoming visitors to the gallery and leading to a back room of historic works in which visitors become the videos' subjects, “now and then” presents the bookends of Campus's ceaselessly exploratory career, from inward-looking young artist to a reflective observer slowing down time in order to capture it and present it to his audience. —Sara Roffino

* Agnes Denes, “Sculptures of the Mind: 1968 to Now,” 535 West 22nd Street, through January 19

Alongside documents pertaining to her pioneering Land art practice, this mini-survey finds similar environmentalist concerns at work in Denes's sculptures — like her oh-so-1960s mirrored boxes in hot pink-tinted Plexiglass — though the darkly comic, solemn, and haunting disk of cremated remains "Human Dust" (1969) steals the show. —Benjamin Sutton

* Serban Ionescu, “Demeter,” Bridge Gallery, 98 Orchard Street, through December 15

Taking its title from the boat that brought Dracula from Transylvania, Romanian-born, New York-based Serban Ionescu's “Demeter” references both the fictional monster and the actually monstrous Vlad Tepes in black and white paintings scrawled as if by Bram Stoker's mad Renfield, with impaled sculptural heads and an eerie film rounding out the vampiric nightmare. —Allison Meier

* Ricardo Mazal, “Kailash,” Sundaram Tagore, 547 West 27th Street, through December 15

With his liberal use of photography and the squeegeed swaths of paint that are hard to shake from the Richter brand, Mazal, whose latest series is inspired by the views of the holy mountain of Kailash in Tibet, has evidently joined the ranks of latter-day abstract expressionists eager to infuse the influence of music and religion into their work.—Reid Singer

* Seth Price, “Folklore U.S.,” Petzel Gallery, 456 W 18th Street, through December 22

The white garments and large, soft, white envelopes that hang on Petzel Gallery's walls seem recognizable enough, save for the bank logos that have been sewn into the linings of all of the garments and that could be mistaken, at first glance, for popular repetitive logo designs like Louis Vuitton — except where we expect to see the familiar LVs and the status they represent, we find FDIC and UBS.—Terri Ciccone

* Ricardo Rendon, “Open Works,” Vicky David Gallery, 522 W 23rd Street, through January 12

For his debut New York exhibition, Mexican artist Ricardo Rendon channels early Richard Serra and mature Joseph Beuys simultaneously by tacking large, perforated pieces of felt to the wall and letting the cutouts fall into piles on the ground, offering the viewer a window into his process. —Julia Halperin

* Ryan Turley, “High/Low,” ArtBridge Drawing Room, 526 W 26th Street, through December 6

A low-fi answer to the current trend toward grandiose room-filling art installations, Turley’s oddball architecture of dirt flooring, prismatic diffraction, grating film strips, extension cords, handicap grab bars, and other miscellania invites you to walk barefoot (or, rather, in a pair of complementary socks) in this topsy turvy — yet strangely tranquil — immersive environment. —Chloe Wyma

* Günther Uecker, Haunch of Venison, 550 West 21st Street, through December 21

In his first NYC show since 1966, the ZERO Group founder explores political and religious tensions through his iconic canvases of twisted nails, hammered over religious text and deconstructed shapes such as the Star of David, while more recent works like floor-to-ceiling canvases peppered with black paint resemble shooting-range targets, and add a haunting new dimension of violence. —Lori Fredrickson

Our most-talked-about stories in Visual Art, Design & Architecture, Fashion & Style, and Performing Arts, November 26 - 30, 2012:

Is it already that time of year? Just about everybody who is anybody in the art-world stratosphere will descend on Miami this week for the 11th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, and aside from perusing the various art fairs, people look forward to — what else? — the parties. We’ve compiled a list of some of the hottest celebrations taking place so you can have an idea of what’s going on.

Where Is Le Baron?

Art Basel Miami Beach’s most infamous after-hours spot — Le Baron’s pop-up club — is leaving its usual home, the Delano Hotel, to play a game of “guess where” with you. Each day the location will be kept secret until 6 p.m., when details will be released via the “Where Is Le Baron?” iPhone app, the Le Baron website, Twitter, and Facebook.

Locations to be disclosed, December 4-9, visit whereislebaron.com for details.

A-List at the Beach

There’s no doubt that the Chanel’s Beachside Barbecue for Art.sy will attract a top-notch crowd, especially when it’s hosted by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Wendi Murdoch, Dasha Zhukova, Larry Gagosian, and Carter Cleveland.

Soho Beach House, 4385 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, December 5, 10:30 p.m. Invitation only.

Swedish Invasion

Jeffrey Deitch’s Art Basel Miami Beach parties are always among the best, and with Swedes Lykke Li; Andrew and Pontus of Miike Snow; and Björn of Peter, Björn, and John slated to perform at this year’s MOCA Beach Party, it’s sure to have one raging dance floor.

The Raleigh, 1775 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, December 5, 10 p.m.-midnight. Invitation only.

Swap Meet in Style

Visionaire, Net-a-Porter.com, and Mr Porter.com present Free Store, artist Jonathan Horowitz’s interactive installation that invites guests to “bring stuff in you can’t use, take stuff away that you can.” With personal objects from Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci and artists Rob Pruitt, Maurizio Cattelan, and Marilyn Minter already in the mix, we promise you won’t be leaving this party empty handed — or disappointed, for that matter.

SLS Hotel, 1701 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, December 6, 9 p.m.-11 p.m. Invitation only.

Get Inspired for amfAR

Beyoncé’s little sister, Solange Knowles, will be DJing the Inspiration Miami Beach Party, a benefit and silent auction for amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. Bid on works by Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman, and Ryan McGinley and you just might see one of the event’s honorary chairs – including Hans Ulrich Obrist, gallerist Marianne Boesky, and Chloë Sevigny – boogying down.

Soho Beach House, 4385 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, December 6, 9 p.m.-1 a.m. Invitation only.

Rock Out on the Roof

Nightlife impresario Nur Khan throws some of the best parties in New York, and the Miami Beach rooftop edition of the Electric Room promises the same. Khan is partnering up with Julian Lennon for an exhibition of music photography courtesy of the Morrison Hotel Gallery, along with a DJ set by Alison Mosshart of The Kills. 

Dream Southbeach, 1111 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, December 6, 9 p.m.-late. Invitation only.  

Bubbly Bonanza

Dom Pérignon will keep the champagne flowing as Alex Dellal, Stavros Niarchos, and Vito Schnabel help Dom Perignon fete its Luminous Rosé vintage. We’re wondering if we’ll get a glimpse of Schnabel’s new paramour, Demi Moore.

Wall at W South Beach, 2201 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, December 6, 10:30 p.m. Invitation only.

California Dreaming With Terry Richardson

Be prepared to pose with your thumbs up as Terry Richardson and friends gather at the Standard Spa to fete his ode to Hollywood, the monograph “Terrywood.”

The Standard Spa, 40 Island Avenue, Miami Beach, December 7, book signing from 7 p.m.-9 p.m., launch party 9 p.m.-midnight. Invitation only.

Puffer Party

Moncler, the purveyor of luxury puffer coats, is celebrating 60 years and Uma Thurman, Owen Wilson, and Pharrell Williams are joining in the festivities, which will be held at a mystery location.

Undisclosed Location, December 7, 10:30 p.m. Invitation only.

NADA Gets Funky
Your energy level may be waning by this time, but bring your bathing suits for NADA’s poolside bash, which will feature installations by Korakrit Arunanondchai and Molly Lowe, nail art by Vanity Projects, and a group painting by group beach painting by Tyson Reeder and Scott Reeder.

The Deauville, 6701 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, December 8, noon-7 p.m., RSVP@michellefinocchi.com.