New exhibits opening in New York

NEW YORK – If you’re planning on being in New York City anytime this summer, there are several art and photography exhibitions that you won’t want to miss.

Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Twentieth Century Mexican Art: The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, is on display through Sept. 8 at the El Museo del Barrio. The exhibition includes some 100 works by 20 artists, “all masterpieces,” according to the museum’s curator, Fatima Bercht.

There are seven Kahlo self-portraits, one of muralist Diego Rivera, Kahlo’s husband, and several other drawings by her. There are also some works by Rivera and his colleagues, Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siquerios.

Kahlo, born in 1907, and Rivera, born in 1886, were both Communists and part of the cultural renaissance after the Mexican Revolution. The arts in Mexico were able to flourish during this time because of government backing.

Although at that time Rivera was the artistic “superstar” of the two, today it is Kahlo who is perhaps more renowned – or at least more in vogue.

Just recently both Jennifer Lopez and Salma Hayek were vying to make a film about her life, with Hayek winning the coveted role in the upcoming Miramax film, Frida. This exhibition gives her one more chance to shine.

For photography buffs and People’s Weekly World readers in general, The New-York Historical Society is offering two photo exhibitions of interest.

The first, The Tumultuous Fifties, A View From The New York Times Photo Archives, runs through Aug. 14. It includes 195 black-and-white photographs depicting a decade of “significant transformations in the cultural landscape, from McCarthyism, Sputnik and Cold War politics to bebop, abstract expressionism and the Beats,” according to the Historical Society.

Co-curators Douglas Dreishpoon of the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo and Alan Trachtenberg, a professor of English and American Studies at Yale, developed categories for the thousands of prints they examined for this exhibition.

These included “Fame and Infamy” and “America in the World: War Hot and Cold,” among others. The category “American Ways of Life” had six subcategories of its own: “Politicking,” “Scapegoating,” “Demonstrating,” “Striking,” “Serving” and “Struggling.” Whether you spend a lot of time politicking and demonstrating or just struggling, there’s probably something in this exhibition for you.

Finally, on June 4 another exhibit, The Angry Dove, opens. This one looks back at the June 12, 1982, demonstration for nuclear disarmament that brought one million people to Central Park and the United Nations.

The exhibition uses puppets, sketches, photographs, videos and flyers to recall this truly historic demonstration. The exhibition ends Sept. 2.

El Museo del Barrio is located at 1230 Fifth Ave. (212-831-7272) and is open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday. Suggested contribution is $5 for adults, $3 for students and seniors.

The New-York Historical Society is at 2 W. 77 Street (212-873-3400) and is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Admission is $5 for adults, $3 for students and seniors.

The author can be reached at crummel@pww.org