The largest of several new museums devoted to African American history and the Civil Rights movement, the $500 million National Museum of African American History and Culture (or NMAAHC for short, kind of), broke ground on the National Mall this week. It joins two other in-progress institutions, the sprawling National Center for Civil and Human Rights slated for Atlanta, to the upcoming International African American Museum in Charleston, each of them larger in both size and scope than their predecessors.

For the NMAAHC project, the Tanzanian-born, London-based Ghanian architect and Design Miami designer of the year David Adjaye beat out a formidable roster of opponents in 2009 — Foster + Partners, Moshe Safdie, DS+R — to create the new 350,000 square-foot Smithsonian museum. His design, a collaboration with the Freelon Group, Davis Brody Bond, and SmithGroup, foregrounds his characteristic attention to texture and natural light: copper plates perforated with designs evoking traditional African crafts cover the exterior, changing color according to the position of the sun and moderating the natural light that penetrates the building; inside, wooden embellishments hang from the ceiling, with skylights throughout; and a spacious porch extends from the south entrance into the landscape. Its most distinct feature is its “corona” shape — an inverted, stacked pyramid.

The seven-story museum will be Adjaye's largest project to date, while past accomplishments include the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver and the wildly colorful interiors of the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo. NMAAHC's focus will be on artifacts that symbolize African American life from slavery through the Civil Rights movement, including the reconstruction and the Harlem Renaissance. The collection boasts landmark objects in black history, including Emmett Till’s coffin, the dress Rosa Parks wore during her storied bus ride, and the original “Soul Train” sign that hung over the "hippest trip in America."

Elsewhere in the capital, Adjaye has been tapped to create new buildings for the the Francis A. Gregory and Washington Highlands libaries, the preliminary designs of which look like they're going to be very colorful playhouses. Completion of the NMAAHC is scheduled for 2015.

To see more images of David Adjaye's National Museum of African American History and Culture click View Slideshow.

WHAT: "John Chamberlain: Choices"

WHEN: February 24 through May 14

WHERE: Guggenheim Museum, New York City 

WHY THIS SHOW MATTERS: The late sculptor John Chamberlain’s soon-to-open retrospective at the Guggenheim is explosive, it’s a collision of brute mechanical force with visual finesse in an array of work that is impressive for its focus if not for its diversity. Car-wreck comparisons are inevitable, so let’s just get that out of the way at the start: Chamberlain’s twisted aggregations of metal, ranging from toy-sized to 22 feet tall, are scattered along the museum’s ramps like remnants of a demolition derby, laying in wait for the unwitting visitor, ready to surprise with their sensual surfaces and jagged-yet-graceful compositions.

Organized by Guggenheim senior curator Susan Davidson along with Helen Hsu and the artist himself before his death last December, the exhibition proceeds chronologically through Chamberlain’s career. At the bottom of the ramp, early works hint at the artist’s formative influences. “Calliope” (1954) and “Cord” (1957) bring to mind David Smith sculptures and Surrealism. Farther along, the artist settles easily into the groove that dominated the remainder of his long career, the masses of discarded metal and car parts that took Abstract Expressionism’s concern for the gesture into three-dimensional space.

Posing floridly on the floor or mounted onto the Guggenheim’s walls, the sculptures present themselves like frozen dancers. “Hillbilly Galoot” (1960) displays crinkled red plumage from one side and polished plain steel on the other; the pleasure is in the surfaces and in the process of moving around the piece, discovering new angles. “Velvet White,” 1962, is a symphony in the titular color while “Ultima Thule” of 1967 wrings more supple movement out of matte steel than anyone would have thought possible. Chamberlain, the curatorial text hilariously reads, likened his sculptures to “twisted bed sheets after a night of raucous sex,” and it shows.

The exhibition takes care not to pigeonhole Chamberlain as merely a fellow traveler of Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, or Minimalism. Instead he is, as Davidson described at the press conference, “in the middle of everything and in the center of nothing.” Chamberlain’s aesthetics had more to do with his idea of "fit," an intuitive sense of what went well together, than with any particular ideology. But the artist fit himself too closely into a single groove: There’s almost no change in his work from 1965 to 1995 other than its scale, which grows as visitors progress up the ramp. As art critic Jen Graves wrote, Chamberlain is “one of those artists who gets locked into the one idea he happened upon early in his career.” That doesn’t mean it’s not a thrilling ride, though.

Click on the slide show for a photo tour of John Chamberlain’s Guggenheim retrospective

Soon you’ll be able to read J. Hoberman’s thoughts on “4:44 The Last Day on Earth,” Abel Ferrara’s latest film, but in the meantime, check out the trailer. It promises a more modest turbulence than one expects from mega-budget end-of-days flicks, but we still see an attempted suicide, worshippers massed at the Vatican, and — beloved NY1 anchor Pat Kiernan? This movie clearly has everything.

The Bronx Museum of the Arts has just announced that New York-based sculptor and installation artist Sarah Sze will represent the United States at the 2013 Venice Biennale. She was selected for the coveted commission by Bronx Museum executive director Holly Block and independent curator Carey Lovelace. 

Titled "Triple Point," Sze's installation will engage the architecture of William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich's 1930s pavilion in the Giardini, modifying and distorting it without actually changing it in any way, in the museum's description. Sze will craft complex and delicate installations from her trademark accumulations of everyday materials, discarded objects and kinetic devices like electrical fans. In an Web-savvy twist appropriate for this most global of shows, an online component will allow users to live-stream video of the commission's fabrication and installation.

Sze's art-world cred is iron clad. The Boston-born, Chinese-American artist graduated summa cum laude from Yale in 1991, and then went on to get her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Only two years after graduating from art school in 1997, she won a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and then received a MacArthur Foundation "genuis" grant in 2003. For much of her career Sze has been enthusiastically embraced by museums. Among other projects, she created an on-site sculpture with found materials over the course of 10 days at the MCA Chicago, built a labyrinth of plastic tubes for the Whitney Museum, and, most recently, showcased her drawings at the Asia Society in New York. (That show, "Infinite Line," remains on view through March 25).

Nor is this the first biennial for Sze, who is represented by Tanya Bondakar in New York and Victoria Milo Gallery in London — though it is certainly her most high profile. She has shown previously at the Berlin Biennial, the Sao Paolo Biennale, the Liverpool Biennial, and the Lyon Biennale. The artist, who lives and works in Brooklyn, has also produced a number of public artworks in her own backyard. She contributed a much-loved sculpture — a kind of futuristic bird feeder — to New York's High Line Park, and will create the public art for the forthcoming 96th Street 2nd Avenue Subway station in New York.

"Sze’s project for the U.S. Pavilion will create opportunities for public engagement and exchange both at a local level in Venice and at home in the United States," writes Block, "connecting directly to the community- oriented mission of the Bronx Museum."

"Sze’s boundary-defying work engages architecture and space," Lovelace adds in the press release, "challenging the viewer by reorganizing reference points, disorienting and reorienting at every turn... Her ephemeral installations strike a balance between spectacle and poetry."

Sze's delicate and seemingly weightless sculptural installations of found objects mark a sharp contrast to the brash exhibition by artist duo Allora & Calzadilla, who represented the U.S. in 2011 and stationed an upside down tank outside the U.S. Pavilion. The Allora & Calzadilla pavilion was widely criticized as bombastic, and the selection of the more classically minded Sze seems to mark a turn in a safer direction.

To get a taste of the works in Sarah Sze's current Asia Society show, "Infinite Line," click here.

To see video of Sze talking about her work, click here.

Ken Price, the influential Los Angeles ceramic artist, died this morning at his home in Taos, New Mexico, the Los Angeles Times reports. He was 77, and struggled with tongue and throat cancer during the final years of his life. The news comes just as he was preparing a major, five-decade retrospective of his work, which will open at LACMA in the fall before traveling to Dallas's Nasher Sculpture Center and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2013.

Despite his illness, Price had continued to produce sculptures in his characteristically organic ceramic forms, their otherworldly colors achieved by applying upwards of fifty coats of acrylic paint and glazing them to a shining finish. His most recent solo exhibition was a show of those trademark works in 2010 at New York's Matthew Marks Gallery. Profiling the artist at the time of that exhibition, the New York Times' Nick Stillman wrote that though Price had never had his moment, "Judging from the ubiquity of his work in New York this season, that might be changing."

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Price earned his BFA from the University of Southern California and his MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics in 1959. In addition to his work in ceramics — which helped boost the standing of a material long considered the province of folk artists to a viable sculptural medium — the artist produced many prints and watercolors.

On top of his many gallery exhibitions with Matthew Marks, which represent him, Price had major solo shows at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). His work was also included in the Whitney Biennial in both 1979 and 1981.

To see images from Ken Price's career, click on the slide show.

Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor, ruled over a vast terrain that stretched along the Pacific Ocean from Ecuador to Chile. After winning the crown in 1532 through a bitter civil war with his brother after their father's death, he was ambushed and executed by the Spanish explorer Francisco Pizarro. Although puppet Inca rulers were subsequently established, the independent Inca empire was extinguished, and Atahualpa's burial place was never discovered.

One of the most striking things about last month’s India Art Fair was that passion rather than politeness ruled, even in the unlikeliest of places. Unforgettably, at a panel forum on the snooze-worthy subject of "The Post Colonial and the Curatorial,” leading Indian curator and panellist Gayatri Sinha shook things up by confessing she was bored with the whole concept of post-colonialism, asking whether it was time for the curatorial community to move on — a feisty call in a country born out of one of the greatest anti-colonial struggles in history.

Sinha is one of India’s most influential curators, and she is certainly not uninterested in history. In fact, with the 2010 exhibition and book "Voices of Change" she did her bit to define India's first generation of contemporary art stars, those like Jitish Kallat, Subodh Gupta, and Bharti Kher, whose works have revolutionized the way we see India. But she believes that we now need to look elsewhere. "Once I had done [the "Voices of Change" show] it was if the page had turned. Those artists had been historicized, even as they continue to do brilliant work, and I wanted to move into investigating newer and more ironic voices who are more representative of the way India is at the moment.”

Some of these voices can now be heard in Sinha’s latest exhibition "Cynical Love — Life in the Everyday," which runs through August at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi. The show is an extension of an ill-fated exhibition Sinha co-curated at Shanghai’s Pearl Lam Fine Art last year, which aimed to introduce these new voices to the art scene of India’s neighbor and great rival, China. When these two powers interact things often end badly, and so it turned out in that particular instance: A number of the Indian works were held up in Chinese customs and the show ended with many of the exhibits still in their packing cases.

ARTINFO recently talked to Sinha about the new voices she had discovered for her show, looking beneath the national fabric, and Indian arts attempt to come to grips with China.

Tell me more about the "newer and more ironic voices" of Indian art that you want to introduce to a wider audience now.

I want to show voices which are not so much part of the grand national narrative, but rather the minor narratives. There is a national fabric that is being maintained, but there are also these unexpected forces of energy, these kinds of bursts of energy under the bedspread, as it were, which are not being factored into the national mainstream or the national narrative. I’m deeply interested in these, in the smaller narratives and works. Given India’s current economic condition and its very engaged political scene, I think the time for minor narratives has come. The artists’ works I am interested in now are intense, edgy, ironic, witty, and sensuous. I want these kinds of voices to travel outside India.

What kind of artists are we talking about?

I am talking about, for example, an artist like Mithu Sen. She was educated at Visva-Bharati University in West Bengal. This university was founded by Rabindranath Tagore, India’s first Nobel laureate and a believer in Pan Asianism.  Tagore founded this visual arts school to promote the idea of Indian-ness. The idea was to nurture a very different methodology to the British imperial style and in art it saw a return to works on paper, Indian-style painting, the exclusion of oil on canvas, and a respect for the national art tradition. In that sense it leads to a kind of epiphany for the national movement in India. Anyway, Mithu comes along much later but she has still imbibed that kind of training.

You have to remember that nationalism is not a dirty word in India. It is associated with the freedom struggle and from the 1910s up until at the least 1960s or 1970s the idea of Indian-ness went through many periods of revision and investigation, and represented a deliberate breach from the colonial period. In that pan-Asian moment a celebration of China and Japan was very strong as well.

So you see in Mithu’s work many of the tropes of Persian and Chinese painting — the mountains in the distance, the scroll form — and tied to these she concerns herself with specific, historical, but also rather ironic details. Tea comes from China to India and opium of course travels from India to China. And so she illustrates some other Chinese imports too — the Chinese bicycle, the Mongol horse. Like all of her generation (she is around 40), she is quite ironic in her approach.

Her work to me seems quite joyous.

It is joyous. But that again is very Indian — the mood of celebration even in the face of huge adversity, and simultaneous with the adversity. It’s very Indian.

I’m interested in what you say about Indian artists’ use of Chinese iconography, but it seems to me the engagement between the two countries culturally today is actually very small.

China is a striking absence in the Indian cultural mindset. It’s as if the Himalayas really are some huge road-bump preventing cultural interface. And I’ve been very struck by this, very struck by the lack of any cultural and intellectual interlocutors between China and India. It’s only now that people are almost simultaneously starting to think about it — the time has come.

There is also a rapid growth in outward-lookingness in India. Both China and India were closed societies until very recently. China until the late 1970s, India until about 1989, and now there is this great outward flow, not just in terms of diaspora and money and investment abroad but also in terms of confidence. There is more Indian confidence and inquiry. And art is really at the end part of this outward cultural flow. Look at what cinema did in the '50s and '60s and literature did in the '80s and '90s for the world’s understanding of India. Art has done that in the 2000s.

But in terms of China, we are just starting — previously almost all cultural interaction with China has been mediated through the West. Even now I would read about China through a Western interlocutor, through a Western critic. And yet at one time, at the turn of the last century, there was this Pan Asianism between intellectuals in China and India and Japan that was anti-colonial. But of course the two great wars and the revolution in China put a stop to that.

So in India there are flashes of interests in China in the culture — Chinese gymnasts, or Chinese toys — but then a thousand years ago there was an intimate relationship between the countries along the Silk Road. Chinese contemporary art is of great interest in the Indian art scene though.

Is that a genuine interest do you think or a fascination with its commercial success?

I guess there is a global pattern developing — basically wherever China goes India follows five years later! (laughs) Whether it’s museum shows or curated exhibitions, China has "been there, done that" and then five years later India comes along. And nobody really minds in India about that because India really globalised about 15 years later than China.

It’s interesting when you think about the Western reception of Indian art: It in some ways is more accessible to Westerners, because of the use of English and the familiar iconography.

Indian art, more than Chinese, is also intense, edgy, ironic, witty, and sensuous, and these all seem to me to be very English attitudes too.

What about some other artists you would like to introduce?

Another interesting artist (also a woman) is Lavanya Mani. She is young, in her 20s, and she has developed this method of painting where she grinds her own colours and she washes the cloth she paints on in the local river. In that sense her painting has a totally pre-colonial feel, but then as a post-colonial artist her work is very much about globalisation and trade and economic movements.

So in a work like "Paisley" it is all painted with these handmade dyes as if she were working in the pre-1850 period. It's very beautiful. And it shows a Knave of Hearts sailing what could be a Chinese junk with a paisley sail. But then you see the sail is all decorated with war planes, and there's an opium poppy growing out of the boat like a chimney propelling the boat. And of course the symbolism is that the Knave is the Brit who engineered the whole thing, and drugs of course lead to war, not just in the 19th century but today. It's funny, in a work like this you see how much India and China are embedded in each other's histories in a way that isn't often acknowledged.

This kind of embedding and also blurring of the lines between high art and craft, studio practise and craft practise, is a very notable thing in contemporary Indian art practise.

What about the work of Ranbir Kaleka, who is an older artist but one whom you have been quite associated?

Kaleka has been creating a kind of work that blends painting and video since the early 2000s. In the past he has been a very successful painter but to make this kind of bridge between painting and video, this kind of medium, I don't think I've seen anything else quite like it. You get this kind of quality, which is maybe an Indian quality, in his work that there is no closure, it is kind of a looped imagination that Indian creative artists (writers as well) have. And the nature of this looped imagination is really what his work is about, the idea that beneath the mundane, the engagements of the mind continue to flow all the time, it's like a river of thought. So you see this painting of a man sitting quietly in a domestic setting, but then suddenly you see this moving video that animates his thoughts. Kaleka's work is really rich. It is multi-layered. An aesthetic layer, which is immediate, and then there are other layers if you want to stay and look, and they will unfold for you.

Speaking of multiple layers, there are also in Indian contemporary art these rich photocollages like the ones by B.M. Kamath.

Yes, in digital collages like "Familiar Music from the Old Theatre" you see this cacophony of imagery. The main theme is the burning of books, but among this theme you have this ironic referencing of all these international styles that are invading our landscape now, like the French style that is now mass produced in our markets, side by side with an Indian temple setting, and then the whole work seems to be sited in a building that is not quite finished, which is very much what the Indian landscape is like now. There are buildings upon buildings upon buildings and none is quite complete. It's a stunning work, with a use of color that is very assured.

But in all these different works you can see how far we are moving away from [Subodh] Gupta. It’s already another generation. And as a curator I think it's important to move beyond.

To see work by some of the artists Sinha discusses here, click on the slide show.

With a vital concentration of artists, galleries, museums, and collectors, New York remains America’s art capital. Each year as spring comes to the Big Apple, so too do Gotham’s important contemporary art fairs, the Armory Show and the ADAA Art Show.  

GO
THE ARMORY SHOW
WHEN: March 8−11
WHERE: Piers 92 and 94
HIGHLIGHTS: Galleries from around the globe, including Lisson Gallery of London, Berlin’s Eigen + Art, and Massimo de Carlo from Milan, will be at the 14th edition of the Armory Show. The Focus section, now in its third year, features Nordic countries and showcases some 20 dealers from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland, curated by Jacob Fabricius. “I think the critically engaged work coming out of Scandinavia is a nice antidote to some of the more flat commercial work being produced these days,” says one of the fair’s managing directors, Noah Horowitz.
thearmoryshow.com

ADAA: THE ART SHOW
WHEN: March 7−11 
WHERE: Park Avenue Armory
HIGHLIGHTS: Returning for its 24th edition, this fair features 72 members of the Art Dealers Association of America, including names like Crown Point Press of San Francisco; Blum & Poe of Los Angeles; and locals P.P.O.W. and Marian Goodman Gallery. Fairgoers can peruse such curated installations as “Gaston Lachaise/Louise Bourgeois: An Affinity” from Cheim & Read, a Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art show titled “Surrealism in Latin America,” and “Optic/Kinetic” from Maxwell Davidson Gallery.
artdealers.org/artshow.html

STAY
HOTEL AMERICANO
Situated next to the High Line park, in Chelsea, Hôtel Americano is only steps away from a plethora of galleries. Because so much art fills the neighborhood, the guest room walls remain bare, but design and fashion elements — from Alessi Optic alarm clocks to Loden Dager denim bathrobes — are plentiful throughout the hotel. After a long day of fair- and gallery-going, guests can lounge by the rooftop pool, sip cocktails at Bar Americano, or simply order in bento boxes from room service.
518 WEST 27TH ST.
212-216-0000
RATES: From $325
hotel-americano.com 

MONDRIAN SOHO
Custom rose-vine carpets, crystal sconces, and large antique mirrors decorate the halls of this hotel; the “sleeping chambers” have floor-to-ceiling windows and vanities that double as wet bars. Don’t forget to check out the Sol LeWitt photo installation.
9 CROSBY ST.
212-389-1000
RATES: From $369
mondriansoho.com

ST. REGIS
Stay at this iconic New York landmark and live like Salvador Dalí, who spent his winters in suite 1610 during the 1950s and ’60s. Opt for the Tiffany Suite, which features 1,700 square feet of classic elegance, or the Dior Suite, which was designed almost entirely in the brand’s signature color, “whispering gray.”
2 EAST 55TH ST.
212-753-4500
RATES: From $895
stregisnewyork.com

EAT
AI FIORI
Critics have been praising chef Michael White’s latest venture, an Italian fine dining establishment located on the second floor of the Setai Fifth Avenue hotel. Try the agnolotti, stuffed with braised veal and butternut squash, covered in a black truffle sugo; or the maiale, Red Wattle pork loin accompanied by boudin noir, gnocchi, apple, and mustard.
400 FIFTH AVE.
212-613-8660
aifiorinyc.com

ABC KITCHEN
Jean-Georges Vongerichten opened this eatery, which the James Beard Foundation named the Best New Restaurant of 2011, with a commitment to using the freshest organic and local ingredients available (it’s located a few blocks from the Union Square Greenmarket). Start with the raw diver scallops, market grapes, and lemon verbena before savoring the roast suckling pig.
35 EAST 18TH ST.
212-475-5829
abckitchennyc.com

MA PECHE
The East Village chef-restaurateur David Chang went north to open this Midtown spot, which serves French-Vietnamese cuisine. Diners go for its famous set menu, Beef 7 Ways, which includes courses such as Wagyu beef with ginger, scallion, and radish and oxtail soup prepared with tamarind, mint, and cilantro. But don’t miss the lamb corn dog and trout on the à la carte menu.
15 WEST 56TH ST.
212-757-5878
momofuku.com

MISS LILY'S
Meant to evoke the feel of humble patty bakeries and take-out restaurants of New York's West Indian diaspora in Crown Heights and the Bronx, this stylish Serge Becker eatery serves up a tasty selection of classic Caribbean dishes like cod fish fritters, jerk chicken, and curry goat.
132 WEST HOUSTON ST.
NEW YORK
646-588-5375
misslilysnyc.com

SEE
THE FRICK COLLECTION
“Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting,” on view through May 13, offers new insight into the revered French Impressionist. Inspired by the Frick Collection’s “La Promenade” of 1875−76, the exhibition brings together nine of the artist’s pieces highlighting Belle Époque beauty.
1 EAST 70TH ST.
212-288-0700
frick.org

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART 
From March 1 through May 27, the venerable New York institution showcases the works of 51 artists in its multi-disciplinary art bonanza known as the Biennial. This year’s edition features the filmmakers Werner Herzog and Vincent Gallo, the experimental theater director and playwright Richard Maxwell, and the artists Kate Levant and Oscar Tuazon.
945 MADISON AVE.
212-570-3600
whitney.org

PACE
“Happenings, New York: 1958−1963” is the first exhibition dedicated to the “Happenings” movement from its birth in the late 1950s until its founders abandoned it in the early ’60s. The exhibition will showcase more than 30 Happenings, through photographs, film footage, and artworks by key figures like Simone Forti and Claes Oldenburg.
534 WEST 25TH ST.
212-929-7000
thepacegallery.com

GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
Less than two weeks before John Chamberlain’s death last December, the Guggenheim announced the first comprehensive retrospective of the sculptor’s 60-year career. The 95-piece exhibition, “Choices,” runs through May 13.
1071 FIFTH AVE.
212-423-3500
guggenheim.org

SHOP
OHWOW BOOK CLUB
Obscure art books fill this shop, which features titles by Terence Koh, Rosson Crow, Aurel Schmidt, and José Parlá.
227 WAVERLY PL.
646-370-5847
oh-wow.com/book-club

CREATURES OF COMFORT
Along with its own line of women’s clothing, this Nolita store carries the up-and-coming label Suno, pieces by Nordic designer Henrik Vibskov, and Rick Owens apparel.
205 MULBERRY ST.
212-925-1005
creaturesofcomfort.us

TREASURE & BOND
This charity concept store hawks clothing, jewelry, housewares, and designer items from labels like Malin+Goetz, Bijules, and Vince.
350 WEST BROADWAY
646-669-9049
treasureandbond.com

Click on the photo gallery to see highlights from When in New York City... for the Armory Show and the ADAA Art Show.

Cadbury's chocolate eggs are, indisputably, the U.K.’s greatest contribution to the Easter holiday. But London’s got a different set of eggs to offer this year. The city’s given itself over to Fabergé, the Easter egg of choice for tzarinas, celebutantes, (allegedly) strung-out supermodels, and other modern-day princesses, which has commissioned customized eggs by more than 200 artists and hidden them all about town. It’s all part of the Fabergé Big Egg Hunt initiative to raise £1,000,000 for two charities, The Elephant Family and Action for Children, by capitalizing on the Queen’s 60th anniversary celebrations (what the Brits call her "Diamond Jubilee"), our addiction to text messages, and irrepressible attraction to anything sparkly.

A wide array of talents were tapped to craft the 2-foot-6-inch-tall fiberglass eggs, including artists Marc Quinn, Mr. Brainwash and the Chapman Brothers; Wallpaper* magazine; and starchitect Zaha Hadid. Like all ensemble casts, each artist brought his or her own unique contribution: Dame Maggie Smith, a cherished staple in period pieces and the Harry Potter franchise, played to her strengths and got all Downtown Abbey with her dapper “Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham,” a portrait of proper Victorian restraint. Oliver Clegg’s clever “On/Oeuf” took a transparent egg shell and transformed it into a clever light bulb; and the East India Company turned its egg on its axis to create a vintage, sepia-toned globe titled "Remarkable Connections," a nod to its heritage as globe-trotting imperialist spice hunters. Among our favorites is food art masters Bompas & Parr's gumball machine, titled "No. 2062" and presumably crafted to resemble their medium of choice, Jell-O (or as the Brits would say, “jelly”).

The rules are simple: the eggs, dispersed throughout the city, each carry a code. When texted to the contest hotline, each number provides an entry to win the crowning jewel of the competition: a Diamond Jubilee Egg of rose gold, set with 60 diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires (one for each year of Her Majesty's reign), valued at £100,000. The charges that apply to each text go straight to saving Asian elephants and at-risk youth. 

The hunt is already on — although, if you're lazy, you can just bid for them online. Meanwhile the adventurous have just 37 more days until the contest ends on April 7 (to the pious, Easter Sunday).

To see the high-art Fabergé Big Egg Hunt, click the slide show.

Our most-talked-about stories in Art, Design & Style, and Performing Arts, February 20 - 24, 2012:

ART

— Chloe Wyma offered five lessons from a behind-the-scenes exposé by Alice Gregory of her experiences as an accidental "Sotheby's girl."

— Cindy Sherman's retrospective opened this week at MoMA. Kyle Chayka wrote that the exhibition offers a new angle on an artist who's long been a household name.

— We gave a peek at the trippy environments Yayoi Kusama unveiled at her dot-filled solo show at Tate Modern.

— New York-based sculptor and installation artist Sarah Sze was selected to represent the United States at the 2013 Venice Biennale.

— Julia Halperin rounded up some of the stranger details from the recent scandal around the Knoedler Gallery's sale of allegedly forged masterpieces by the likes of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. (Frank Stella has a sideline as an art authenticator?)
 

DESIGN & FASHION

— Shohei Shigematsu, of Rem Koolhaas's Office of Metropolitan Architecture, spoke with Janelle Zara about the firm's plans for Marina Abramovic's amazing performance art center in Hudson, New York.

— Just as the late singer Whitney Houston was being laid to rest, celebrity auctioneer Darren Julien announced plans for a sale of the tragic actress and singer's memorabilia.

— Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson's latest work is a solar-powered lamp, to be mass produced for the people of Africa, South America, and Asia.

— Designers at London Fashion Week took inspiration from almost every period in art history, from Gustav Klimt to Ryan McGinley.

— The Smithsonian's $500-million National Museum of African American History and Culture broke ground in Washington, D.C. this week, and we took a close look at David Adjaye's glittery designs.

PERFORMING ART

— Nick Catucci explains why, against all logic, you should care about Kenny Powers's caricature of a character on mancentric HBO sitcom "Eastbown & Down."

— Less than a week before the ceremony, artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen complains that Michael Fassbender, the star of his new film "Shame," was snubbed at the Oscars because Americans are prudes.

— New songs and music videos by the hip-hop veteran formerly known as Mos Def and rising horrorcore rappers Odd Future try to out-shock you.

— Following controversy over an offensive joke tweeted by "The Office" star Rainn Wilson, Nick Catucci had some thoughts about the comedy mine field surrounding the "Rape Joke."

— Filmmaker Abel Ferrara unleashed the gloomy trailer for his Willem Dafoe-starring apocalypse drama "4:44 The Last Day on Earth."

The LISTE art fair is Art Basel’s kid brother, the fair that welcomes the “young” galleries of the world. In order to qualify your gallery needs to be less than 5 years old and be planning to show artists who are younger than 40. You also have to beat off some pretty stiff opposition. Running parallel to Art Basel from 12-17 June, Liste will this year welcome 63 participants, of whom just two hail from China. One — Beijing’s Platform China —  is a veteran of the fair with 2012 being their third outing, the other is Hong Kong’s 2P Contemporary Art Gallery, the first ever gallery from the Harbor City to participate.

ARTINFO HK checked in with Pui Pui To, the founder and director of 2P Contemporary Art Gallery, just after she heard the news.

What does it mean for you gallery to be accepted into LISTE?

It is an opportunity to get great exposure. Of course we have ART HK here in Hong Kong which is a great platform for artists in the region but LISTE has been established since 1996 and also it has an audience and people attending that would be impossible to reach from Hong Kong. It is not only about the exposure though it is an honor to get in. Often the galleries that are featured in LISTE graduate into Art Basel.

Is that something you see for 2P in the future?

I have no idea. To get into Art Basel is very, very difficult but it would be a dream. But definitely being in LISTE has opened the first door to something like that.

Who are the artists that you plan to bring with you to LISTE?

We are bringing three artists Wun Ting Tai, Magdalen Wong and Will Kwan. Wun Ting Tai and Magdalen Wong are Hong Kong-based artists and then Will Kwan was born in Hong Kong but lives in Canada. They are all still quite young but they all have a strong conceptual grounding in their creative processes. They all have their own individual concepts that make them stand out.

How did you go about choosing who to show?

Right now we represent 6 artists and the decision of who to show was made with availability in terms of work in mind and what would work in terms of the curatorial approach we wanted to make. The decision was very much based in terms of the curatorial content that would work that was my main priority.

You are the first Hong Kong Gallery to be accepted into LISTE. Do you feel a burden of responsibility?

In a way I still cannot believe it. On the other hand I was emailed by one of my mentors and he was saying, now you have to perform. In a way I am so excited to bring Hong Kong artists to an international market and audience. Of course it is a lot of pressure but this is what I have chosen to do as my profession and I am ready to take this on. 

As widely predicted, “The Artist” was crowned Best Picture at the 84^th Oscars yesterday evening, completing its domination of the 2011-12 awards season. Its director Michel Hazanavicius, who singled out the influence of Billy Wilder, and lead actor Jean Dujardin, who obliquely acknowledged his debt to Douglas Fairbanks, were also winners. So was Mark Bridges, the film’s costume designer, and Ludovic Bource, its composer.

Dujardin adds the Oscar to his Golden Globe, Spirit Award, BAFTA Award, and SAG Award, among others. Yet he was denied a César in Paris on Saturday. (“The Artist” ended up with six Césars and four Spirits, the latter presented in Santa Monica, also on Saturday.)

Meryl Streep won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in “The Iron Lady”; the record holder for acting nominations with 17, she had previously won Best Actress for “Sophie’s Choice” and Best Supporting Actress for “Kramer vs. Kramer.” Streep chose not to talk about her "Iron Lady" character, Margaret Thatcher, but gave one of those mercurial acceptance speeches with which she grapples with the humility issues that come with being repeatedly nominated for awards. “When they called my name I had this feeling I could hear half of America going, 'Oh no, oh come on, why her again?' You know? But, whatever.”

“The Help”’s Octavia Spencer, genuinely overcome, tearfully accepted the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. “Beginners”’ Christopher Plummer, voted Best Supporting Actor, became, at 82, the oldest man to win in either of the male acting categories.

Angelina Jolie jutted a long bare leg out of the split in her dress to present the writing words, though it wasn’t clear whether she was striking a glamour pose or spoofing herself, presumably the latter. The Best Adaptation Oscar went to the director Alexander Payne and his co-writers on “The Descendants.” Woody Allen won his third Best Original Screenplay Oscar for “Midnight in Paris.” Had Allen been present, Jolie would have probably terrified him.

Iran’s “A Separation” won the Best Foreign Language Oscar. Its writer-director, Asghar Farhadi, giving the most eloquent and pointed speech of the evening, said he imagined "the Iranian people would be happy not just because of an important award or a film or filmmaker, but because at the time when talk of war, intimidation and aggression is exchanged between politicians, the name of their country Iran is spoken here through her glorious culture, a rich and ancient culture that has been hidden under the heavy dust of politics. I proudly offer this award to the people of my country, a people who respect all cultures and civilizations and despise hostility and resentment."

Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo” matched “The Artist”’s haul of five, its wins all coming in technical categories: cinematography, art direction, sound editing, sound mixing, and visual effects. Valentines to silent cinema that in different ways address the passion for making and watching movies, the two films set the tone for the show’s calculated indulging of nostalgia.

The elements of this included the host Billy Crystal’s good-natured Borscht Belt shtick (rarely did he unleash a dart and then nothing as piercing as a Ricky Gervais-ism), the art deco movie theater set in which he first appeared, and a mock MGM focus group response to “The Wizard of Oz” in 1939 featuring the Christopher Guest stock company. The celebration-of-movies idea was hammered home by clips of actors extolling what makes certain films special; the best contributions were made by Edward Norton (who commented on how the odds are stacked against such movies being made) and Sasha Baron Cohen (“I just want to watch really sick stuff”).

Low on schmaltz and bombast compared with previous years and seemingly brisker than usual, the ceremony got off to a hectic start with Tom Hanks breathlessly announcing the first two wins for “Hugo.” This followed Crystal’s filmed montage spoofing the nine Best Picture nominees and his song-and-dance number saluting them. The routines seemed fresher for their seven-year absence. 

The montage contained a faux “Mission Impossible” scene with Tom Cruise that culminated with Crystal leaping from the floor of a skyscraper as he chased an escaping film reel. The scene was bizarrely reminiscent of a World Trade Center death plunge -- not  least because the 9/11 movie “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” was one of the nominees. The similarity, which was self-evidently unintended, was marked enough to make anyone who noticed it flinch.

The only live incident of note occurred on the red carpet prior to the ceremony at the Hollywood and Highland Center (formerly the Kodak Theater). Cohen, who was in the end permitted to attend the Oscars in the beard and uniform of the Middle Eastern tyrant he plays in his upcoming satire “The Dictator,” showed up attended by two Amazons as guards and brandishing an urn supposedly containing the ashes of Kim Jong Il. These Cohen spilled over E! Live’s Ryan Seacrest who, visibly shaken, had to be consoled by Jennifer Lopez in a subsequent interview. Cohen, who was jostled by a bouncer, tipped the rest of the "ashes" onto the carpet. (See the video below.)

Lopez did her best to create a low-level tabloid scandal by showing a hint of left-side areola when she presented the costume and makeup Oscars with Cameron Diaz.

If there was a bona fide scandal it was that the In Memoriam segment neglected to include two masters of modern cinema who began directing in the sixties: the Chilean Raúl Ruiz (1941-2011)  and the Greek Theo Angelopoulos (1935-2012). Otherwise, the segment, which concluded with a shot of Elizabeth Taylor in her "Cleopatra" costume winking at a camera, was as moving as always. Crystal paid special homage to Gil Cates, the 14-time producer of the Oscar telecast who originally recruited Crystal to host it in 1990. In an earlier aside, following the clip of Meg Ryan noisily orgasming in Katz’s Delicatessen in his film “When Harry Met Sally,” Crystal acknowledged Estelle Reiner, Rob Reiner’s mother, the woman who says, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

The presenters were hit and miss with their bits of business. Robert Downey Jr. archly pretended to make a documentary of himself presenting the Best Documentary award with Gwyneth Paltrow. Introducing Best Visual Effects, Emma Stone was delightful as a giddy Oscar-show newbie telling a jaded Ben Stiller that they ought to put on a performance. “Perky gets old fast,” Stiller kvetched. Tina Fey, partnering Bradley Cooper for the Editing Award, played it straight. Of “The Bridesmaids” women, split into three pairs for the live-action short, documentary short, and best animated short presentations, Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph deadpanned on the merits of “short” and “long.”

Michael Douglas, presenting Best Director and starting with an anecdote about the director Leo McCarey, looked fit and well, the silveriest fox in the room.

The night though belonged to “The Artist" gang, which crowded around the producer Thomas Langmann after he accepted the Best Picture Oscar from Tom Cruise; Uggie was inevitably led out from backstage for the climax. Not for the first time this awards season, Langmann mentioned his late father, Claud Berri, an Oscar-winner himself for his first short film in 1962 and a prolific producer who was best known outside France for directing “Jean de Florette” and “Manon des Sources.” Therefore, like Fairbanks and Wilder, Berri was there in spirit as les artistes cleaned up.

Related: Hoberman: The Wrong  “Margaret” Won

WINNERS
Best Picture The Artist — Thomas Langmann

Best Directing  Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

Best Actor  Jean Dujardin, The Artist

Best Actress  Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

Best Supporting Actor  Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Best Supporting Actress   Octavia Spencer, The Help

Best Adapted Screenplay The Descendants — Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash

Best Original Screenplay Midnight in Paris — Woody Allen

Best Animated Feature Rango — Gore Verbinski

Best Documentary Feature Undefeated — Daniel Lindsay, T.J. Martin, and Rich Middlemas

Best Foreign Language Film A Separation (Iran) — Asghar Farhadi

Best Cinematography Hugo — Robert Richardson

Best Film Editing The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo — Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter

Best Art Direction Hugo — Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo

Best Costume Design The Artist — Mark Bridges

Best Makeup The Iron Lady — Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland

Best Original Score The Artist — Ludovic Bource

Best Original Song  “Man or Muppet,” The Muppets — Bret McKenzie

Best Sound Mixing Hugo — Tom Fleischman and John Midgley

Best Sound Editing Hugo — Philip Stockton and Eugene Gearty

Best Visual Effects Hugo — Robert Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossmann, Alex Henning

Best Animated Short Film The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore — William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg

Best Documentary Short Subject  Saving Face — Daniel Junge and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

Best Live-Action Short Film The Shore — Terry George and Oorlagh George

What then to say in the sober aftermath of an Oscar night that was not only set up to be the most retro in recently memory but the most consecrated to conventional wisdom — with “The Artist” more or less sweeping the table as it had throughout this protracted awards season, emerging as the first “silent” (or faux silent) movie to win an Oscar since the Murnau-Flaherty oddity “Tabu” got Best Cinematography (for David Crosby’s father Floyd) in 1931.

That was just about the only broken taboo last night. I cherished a foredoomed hope that “Hugo” (or at least Scorsese) might upset the applecart and, to the amusement of an affably cynical neighborhood crowd whose good cheer helped keep me awake through this painfully predictable ceremony (even as an Italian colleague and I wondered what the fuck we were going to find to write about), would have bet Mitt Romney’s chump change $10,000 that Viola Davis was going to once more deny Meryl Streep, nominated for her impersonation of Maggie Thatcher and wittily wrapped in Oscar gold.

The end of Streep’s Susan Lucci-like streak of 15 or whatever unanswered nominations was the big surprise — others being the appearance of underground moviemaker George Kuchar in the annual necrology, the reappearance of Angelina Jolie’s shapely gam after an obstreperous award-winner mocked the mock pin-up pose the goddess struck in presenting the award for Best Adapted Screenplay to “The Descendants,”and the abject failure of the drinking game I had proposed. Anyone who took my free advice and waited to hear the word “magic” before taking a shot was destined for a relatively quick two drinks followed by a painfully dry slog and is entitled to my apologies and their money back.

That the Oscar’s not-so-deep structure is making the industry feel good about itself was reaffirmed by the ultimate winner’s heartfelt “I love your country!” Still, the least surprising part of the affair was the total absence of a movie that might have reasonably been nominated for six Oscars (Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Actress, Supporting Actress, and Editing) and might legitimately have won three — had anyone actually seen it. I refer to Kenneth Lonergan’s “Margaret,”critical cause célèbre, which began shooting in 2005 and only released in last November, and I had only seen the night before at an oversold, personal-appearance enriched love-in as part of “Film Comment Selects” through the kindness of a total stranger who, overhearing my jawing a harried house manager, gifted me with a ticket and then anonymously melted back into the stand-by line. (To you sir, I dedicate this, my first ARTINFO post!)

So is “Margaret” the Best (American) Picture of 2011? Let’s say that the coming of age story of a 17-year-old (Anna Paquin), the self-dramatizing daughter of an off-Broadway actress (J. Smith-Cameron), living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side with a half-scholarship to some progressive private school, traumatized by a dreadful accident she helped precipitate was, despite at least one wholly unnecessary subplot, the shortest 2½ hours of my recent viewing experience (a blink of an eye compared to the Oscars). Endlessly generous to his actors, notably the great Jeannie Berlin who has the movie’s single best line, informing Paquin’s latter-day Holden Caulfield that, “this isn’t an opera and we are not supporting characters in the fascinating story of your life!”, Lonergan mined territory mapped out by Woody Allen, and recently explored by Nicole Hofcener and Noah Baumbach, albeit with a paucity of smugness and abundance of heart.

“Margaret” is dense with literary allusion, and the illusion of novelistic density, balances  astute pedagogy and on-with-the-show schmaltz, and combines adolescent verisimilitude with operatic pathos for a stunningly cathartic stunning conclusion at a performance of Offenbach’s posthumous “Tales of Hoffman” with Renee Fleming singing the lilting and sensuous Barcarolle. It’s a piece in which, as Siegfried Kracauer wrote, Offenbach “once more, though more profoundly and cunningly than ever, conjured up the joy of the fleeting moment and the beauty of the passing day,” a state to which this wonderful movie-movie similarly aspires.

Related:  “The Artist” Triumphs at the Oscars, But Was the Show Any Good?

Though Frieze New York may be invading its territory by taking over Randall’s Island May 4 through 7, Armory Week remains New York’s foremost occasion for art collecting. Opening on March 8, the Armory Show is the largest among a plethora of fairs, exhibitions, and events that will keep the city’s art-world class busy until everyone is nursing their hangovers on March 12. Though last year's Verge Art NYC, the inaugural NADA NYC art fair, and Pulse have all chosen to move to May to cluster around Frieze’s pre-summer warmth, there are still a dozen distinct fairs to choose from, sprawling across Manhattan and Brooklyn, and featuring everything from blue-chip dealers to the most emerging outfits and anarchic artists and galleries. 

Already feeling overwhelmed? Here is ARTINFO’s guide to what’s happening where during Armory Week.

***The Armory Show, Modern and Contemporary, at Piers 92 and 94, 12th Avenue and 54th Street, March 8 through 11 

In order to compete with the rash of art fairs that have popped up around New York City, the Armory Show has opted to fight quantity with quality, paring down their gallery list by 25 percent, allowing bigger booths, and adding a new solo projects section for young dealers. New York galleries Greene Naftali and David Zwirner are back in the Armory fold after prolonged absences, though international spaces including White Cube and Yvon Lambert have defected to May's Frieze New York. The Armory Focus section will shine a spotlight on Nordic art in a selection curated by Malmö Konsthall director Jacob Fabricius while a newly created media lounge will showcase a series of performances and films. And, to further tempt you, the refreshed fair will also host a farm-to-table restaurant and cafe courtesy of Great Performances catering.

***ADAA’s The Art Show, at Park Avenue Armory, Park Avenue and 67th Street, March 7 through 11

The Art Dealers Association of America is also focusing on the artists, emphasizing solo and two-person exhibitions in its booths. The list of participants is diverse and exciting and includes a number of prominent female figures — one hopes that this year’s fair will surpass the musty atmosphere of its last outing. Metro Pictures will present Cindy Sherman’s 1976 “Murder Mystery” collage series, a fitting choice considering her present MoMA survey, while Marian Goodman will bring a booth of work by Francesca Woodman, whose posthumous retrospective soon opens at the Guggenheim. Galerie Lelong has an all-women booth featuring Louise Bourgeois, Ana Mendieta, and Yoko Ono, while Pace plans to show works on paper by their freshly-poached catch Yoshitomo Nara (not a woman, but popular with a huge female fanbase). A two-part Collectors’ Forum on March 9 and 10 will explore the sticky issue of catalogues raisonnés and authentication, with such speakers as dealer David Nash and MoMA chief curator emeritus John Elderfield.

***Independent, at 548 West 22nd Street, Between 10th and 11th Avenues, March 8 through 11 

Will the 2012 Independent match the hip, internationalist glamor of last year’s outing? If the list of featured artists and galleries is any indication, then it’s a given. A pop-up structure will once again roost on the roof of the fair's Chelsea warehouse space, this time populated by publications Bidoun, 02, Mousse, and star-of-the-moment TripleCanopy. Both Bartolami and Murray Guy galleries have defected from the Armory to show at this dealer-driven alternative, which boasts a list of featured spaces including Gavin Brown’s enterprise, Elizabeth Dee, and Andrew Kreps gallery. Taking a historical bent, gb agency will be presenting a 1976 installation by sculptor and photographer Mac Adams, while McCaffrey will show late Japanese interdisciplinary artist Jiro Takamatsu. On March 9, the fair will host a screening of works by Luke Fowler at the SVA Theatre.

***Volta NY, at 7 West 34th Street, Between 5th and 6th Avenues, March 8 through 11 

Volta NY puts the emphasis on individual artists with a fair composed solely of invitational solo projects. Volta highlights an under-the-radar side of contemporary art, showing up-and-coming names that might not be familiar to collectors. Geometric street and installation artist Aakash Nihalani is bringing his neon polygons to Carmichael Gallery while Jeff Perrott will show loopy abstractions at LaMontagne. Spain’s Visor Gallery is presenting a timely show of work by feminist performance artist Sanja Ivekovic, coinciding with her Museum of Modern Art retrospective. Integrating video screens into faux-antique sculpltures, Japanese video artist Ken Matsubara will be featured at Tokyo’s MA2GALLERY. Volta’s extracurricular activities include “BOOM!,” a showing of technology-enabled artwork by media consultancy Culture Shock and a presentation of work by photographer David Schoerner from Brooklyn art nonprofit NURTUREart as well as a filming of the award ceremony of art reality TV show Art/Trek NYC.

***SCOPE New York, 57th Street and 12th Avenue, March 7 through 11

SCOPE is raising the stakes this year by boldly positioning itself across the street from The Armory Show in a brand new 30,000-square-foot pavilion. This year, the fair adds the SCOPE Foundation Series, with multi-disciplinary projects, performances, and events. “Focus: Puerto Rico” brings a selection of five artists (Juan A. Negroni, Martin Albarran, Omar Velazquez, Rogelio Baez Vega, and Samuel Toro Rosa) to represent the socio-political climate of the island’s art community within the fair. Artist David Rosenbloom will light up the scene with a six-screen LCD installation titled “Tokyo Bay,” showing the eponymous city at night as seen from the top of Mt. Fuji. Keep your eyes peeled while perusing the booths for work by Richard Hambleton from Dorian Gray Gallery, John Kessler from Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, Norman Mooney with Waterhouse & Dodd, and Ron English with Corey Helford Gallery, amongst a sea of other work for sale.

***Moving Image, at the Waterfront New York Tunnel, 11th Avenue Between 27th and 28th Streets, March 8 through 11

The Moving Image fair, focusing solely on video art, made a huge splash last year with its inaugural New York outing and even added a London event in October. Settling back in to its Chelsea tunnel space, the fair boasts a number of galleries showing two artists, as well as single-artist video installations and projections. The technology-obsessed bitforms gallery will show work by Marina Zurkow and Yael Kanarek while PPOW will highlight Martha Wilson’s video work. Winkleman gallery, whose owner Ed Winkleman founded the fair, will feature Christopher K. Ho and Janet Biggs. The fair has also organized an impressive series of panels dealing with the issues and conflicts surrounding video art. On Friday, March 9, Electronic Arts Intermix will address video preservation, while two panels on March 10 discuss the future of the moving image and the eternal collecting question — what do you get when you buy video art? — respectively.

***New City Art Fair, hpgrp gallery, 529 West 20^th Street #2W, March 7 through 11

In a slew of fairs that pride themselves on internationalism, the New City Art Fair is unique by virtue of its focus. Bringing together 11 participating galleries from Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, New City is devoted to showing work by Japanese artists. Don’t expect to find any Murakami or Araki pieces here, though. Most of the artists are virtually unknown in the U.S.; and many have created works that respond to the recent natural disasters in Japan. Hpgrp gallery’s Tokyo outpost is bringing Kanako Ohya’s disquieting paintings of leaking trash bags, evoking Japan’s traumatic past with nuclear contamination. Courtesy of Osaka’s Tezukayama Gallery Western audiences will become acquainted with Hiroyuki Ooe’s surreal group of headless flower children, a sculpture both funereal and absurdly funny.  

***PooL Art Fair New York, at the Gershwin Hotel, 7 East 27th Street, March 9 through 11 

PooL is a three-day event that features artists who aren’t represented by galleries. In an established guerrilla-art-fair tactic, exhibiting artists will use guest rooms at the hotel to display their work. Run by the nonprofit Frere Independent, the fair includes artists Justin Wood, Francis Eck, Yoshiya Homma, and Anne-Marie Cosgrove. Manuela Viera-Gallo will contribute twisted fabric scupltures while Erol Gundez will show his geometric creations adorned with metallic action figures.

***Fountain, at the 69th Street Regiment Armory, 68 Lexington Avenue, Between 25th and 26th Streets, March 9 through 11

Fountain embraces the indie side of the New York art scene, highlighting a bevy of Brooklyn galleries and artists. At an Artlog-hosted opening reception on March 9, NYC DJ legend Fab 5 Freddy will spin tunes (and show his artwork) and psych-rockers Spirit Animal will play a concert alongside an intervention by the art-improv collective Art Liars. A series of performances will feature Marni Kotak, who recently hit viral fame with her work “The Birth of Baby X,” during which she gave birth in Bushwick’s Microscope Gallery. Art consultancy Big Deal Arts, directed by Ginger Shulick, will create a facade projection inspired by the historic 69th Regiment Armory’s architecture. Among the participating galleries is Bushwick Gallery, an emerging space that will be highlighting Ken Kocses’s imaginary video game landscapes.

***SPRING/BREAK Art Show, at The Old School, 233 Mott Street, March 8 through 11

In its debut outing, SPRING/BREAK Art Show will assert itself as the sole "curator-focused" fair of Armory week. Stationed at the Old School, a multi-functional arts and cultur space in Nolita, Ambre Kelly and Andrew Gori will assemble projects and a wide array of events from 23 curators. Maureen Sullivan will curate a site-specific piece by Eve Sussman as well as an installation by duo Algis Antanas Kizys & Simon Lee while Jamie Sterns will assemble installations by Atelier Van Lieshout. Ambre and Andrew have also lined up events including Artlog’s “Show & Tell” lecture and presentation series, a special performance by Miky Fabrega, and Segway-guided tours of the fair and installations on the Lower East Side by Dora + Maja Cule. Before you head back uptown be sure to stop by “The End” sign workshop by Bigert & Bergström.

***Art’s Not Fair, at Like the Spice Gallery, 224 Roebling Street, Brooklyn, March 9 through 11 

Looking for Brooklyn’s answer to all of the Manhattan fair insanity? This is it. Like the Spice gallery’s Marisa Sage is spearheading a free-for-all decentralized fair that encompasses 17 art spaces in and around Williamsburg. On March 9, check out the opening of “The Buzz” at Like the Spice, featuring Jenny Morgan, Chino Amobi, and Brian LaRossa, and then on March 10 explore Brooklyn Armory Night, with a plethora of local gallery openings at spaces including Pierogi and Parker’s Box. Capping it off is an afterparty at Indiescreen Cinema and, of course, all the bars of Williamsburg. A Pernod Absinthe app lets you know where it all goes down.

***Salon Zurcher, at Zurcher Studio, 33 Bleecker Street, March 5 through 12

The third edition of this “mini fair” will showcase the work of seven women artists from seven international galleries, circumventing the usual circuit of Armory fair week. New York City’s D’Amelio gallery will show work by fabric installation artist Polly Apfelbaum while Paris’s Galerie Anne Barrault will show sculptor Sarah Tritz. 

— Kyle Chayka, Alanna Martinez, and Chloe Wyma