This week on State of the Arts NYC our theme is about taking a stand with I AM HERE. January 20th is Inauguration Day. As we turn the page on a new chapter in our country's history, State of the Arts NYC will continue to look at the layers that make us Americans, examining various folk, indigenious and sub-cultures. Joining our show is Cristina Canale who will talk about her exhibition at the Nara Roesler Gallery in Manhattan's Flower District. Cristina Canale (b. 1961, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) lives and works in Berlin. Canale’s paintings are on the cusp of impending dissolution into abstraction. Her landscape seem to portray, as has been noted previously, a liquid world, in which a few recognizable elements emerge between fields of color that are juxtaposed in harmonic fashion, despite the wide variety of colors in each painting.

Then we will talk with Katy Pyle and Sergei Tcherepnin. Together they collaborated with Paulina Olowska for her multi-media installation A Wreath of Ceremonies. Paulina Olowska revisits the work of Zofia Stryjeńska—exploring the visionary Polish artist’s notion of ballet as a “wreath of ceremonies,” and designing costumes after her 1918 painting series Bożki słowiańskie (Slavic Deities) that was based on Slavic folklore and mythology. Katy Pyle, Artistic Director of the Ballez, will be working with Jules Skloot, Lindsay Reuter, Mei Yamanaka, Deborah Lohse, Madison Krekel, and Charles Gowin to personify Stryjeńska’s goddesses in solos that reactivate classic folk steps. An original score by Sergei Tcherepnin will mix cosmic sounds together with traditional Mazurkas, Polkas, and Oberkas, as well as spiritual disco. Lighting design by Madeline Best with inspirational quotes of Zofia Stryjeńska and Paulina Olowska.

“State of the Arts NYC will feature a conversation with John Biewen, host and producer of the Scene on Radio podcast from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. We’ll discuss and hear excerpts from Scene on Radio’s documentary, El Nuevo South. The documentary takes us to Siler City, North Carolina, and explores this small town’s response, over two decades, to the cultural change brought on my large-scale Latino immigration — leading ultimately to a degree of acceptance and embrace.

And the show closes with the Winter Antique Show. State of the Arts NYC will have the Executive Director Catherine Sweeney Singer and Ronald Hurst, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s vice president for collections, conservation, and museums and its second Carlisle H. Humelsine Chief Curator in 1998

Singer is celebrating her 20th year with the Winter Antiques Show and the Show’s 60th year Diamond Jubilee in January 2014 and continues as Executive Director of the Show, which is owned by its beneficiary, East Side House Settlement. With over two decades’ experience in art and antiques show management, marketing, and exhibition development, she oversees the Show’s dealer selection, vetting process, marketing, programming, loan exhibitions, and overall operations. 

Ronald Hurst holds degrees in history and American studies from George Mason University and the College of William and Mary. Previous museum experiences include Gunston Hall Plantation, an exchange post at England’s Lady Lever Art Gallery, and the curatorship of Preservation Virginia’s 13 historic sites.

Hurst served as curator of furniture at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation 1983-1998, overseeing 3,000 pieces of British and American furniture exhibited in the Foundation’s historic buildings and art museums. His duties included acquisition, research, exhibition, and publication of the collection.

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