ICONS OF THE DESERT:
EARLY ABORIGINAL PAINTINGS
FROM PAPUNYA
SEPT. 1 - DECEMBER 5, 2009

In 1971, at Papunya, a government-established Aboriginal community in Central Australia, a Sydney- based schoolteacher provided a group of men with the tools and the encouragement to paint. Known as “Papunya boards,” these works constituted the beginning of the Western Desert art movement where indigenous Australian artists explore images and experiences in a new medium and on permanent surfaces. Drawn from the John and Barbara Wilkerson Collection, the exhibition includes masters of the Papunya School such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi, Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, and Mick NamararriTjapaltjarri.

DOWNTOWN PIX:
MINING THE FALES ARCHIVES,
1961 - 1991
JANUARY 12 - APRIL 3, 2010

Downtown Pix features approximately 170 photographs from the acclaimed collections
of Fales Library at New York University. Organized jointly by
the Grey Art Gallery, NYU’s fine arts museum, and Fales Library, NYU’s rare book and manuscript collection, the show zooms in on New York’s Downtown scene from the 1960s to the early ‘90s. The exhibition focuses on one of the period’s dominant art forms—photography. These immensely creative decades witnessed the emergence and flourishing of a distinctly “Downtown attitude” toward art and life. Featuring works by Nan Goldin, Robert Alexander, Jimmy DeSana, Fred McDarrah, and David Wojnarowicz.

LIL PICARD
AND COUNTER-CULTURE
NEW YORK
APRIL 27 - JULY 10, 2010

Born in Landau, Germany in 1899, Lil Picard worked as an actress, accessories designer, and journalist in the heady, avant-garde art scene of 1930s Berlin. In 1937 she and her husband emigrated to New York City, where Picard continued to work as a journalist—writing for Arts Magazine, East Village Other,
and Interview, among others—and began making painting, making collages, and assemblages. An early practitioner of socio-political performance and installation, Picard was a generation older than groundbreaking female performance artists such as Carolee Schneeman and Hannah Wilke.