Fall Arts Preview

BY BEN SCHNEIER

Steal This ArtWhen visiting a museum, there is often a childlike urge to reach out and touch the items on display, but obviously this is suppressed to preserve the works and natural order of museums. However, in this new exhibition from the Jewish Museum, you can do more than touch the artwork — you can actually take it home.

Take Me (I’m Yours), opening on Sept. 16, will feature pieces from over 40 eclectic, global artists that encourage viewer participation. Many of the works presented will be new and site-specific, and will attempt to include the viewer in the ownership of the artwork through alternative modes of interaction, including allowing visitors to take some of the pieces. The experiential exhibit is meant to comment on the art world’s nuances of consumerism, value and hierarchy.

Initially presented in 1995 at the Serpentine Galleries in London, Take Me (I’m Yours) was created by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and artist Christian Boltanski. It featured the work of a dozen artists and maintained a similar intention to the upcoming New York exhibition, which will be the first to cross to this side of the pond. The current iteration is also the first in a collecting museum, challenging traditional notions of museums by distributing the artwork for free.

It will feature a number of prominent artists, ranging from the world-renowned multimedia artist Yoko Ono to the viral Instagram performance artist Amalia Ulman. The exhibition is curated by Jens Hoffmann and Kelly Taxter of the Jewish Museum in collaboration with Hans Ulrich Obrist, one of the original exhibition’s creators.

Take Me (I’m Yours)

Jewish Museum (1109 5th Avenue)

Sept. 16 through Feb. 5

GoldLink and Friends Take the SummerStageThroughout the summer, the City Parks Foundation has continued their long-running SummerStage series of mostly free concerts throughout New York City. SummerStage is notable for its immense range of artists, spanning all genres, ages, and corners of the globe. On Aug. 28, GoldLink, Brasstracks, and DJ Spicoli will take the Rumsey Playfield stage in Central Park, bringing a gumbo of hip-hop, jazz, electronic dance music, and rhythm and blues.

GoldLink is a Washington, DC rapper whose has dubbed his sound “future bounce,” a unique brand of smooth, up-tempo hip-hop strongly influenced by house music. His stock has steadily risen over the past few years as he has gained millions of listeners on Soundcloud, and he released his most recent album, And After That We Didn’t Talk, in late 2015. He also caught the attention of Def Jam founder Rick Rubin, who he went on to collaborate with.

Brasstracks is a Brooklyn duo featuring a drummer and trumpet player, who create genre-bending brass music that blends jazz, soul, funk and hip-hop. They worked on Chance The Rapper’s hit “No Problems” and have also collaborated with artists including Anderson.Paak and Gallant.

DJ Spicola is a Los Angelino by way of Washington, DC, DJ who similarly combines multiple genres. Known for an exhilarating live show, he has performed across the country, including a set at Trillectro Music Festival.

GoldLink / Brasstracks / DJ Spicoli

Central Park – SummerStage (E. 72nd & 5th Ave.)

Aug. 28, Free

renowned Poets and Authors Read their worksAs a part of the 92nd Street Y’s ongoing reading series at the historic Unterberg Poetry Center, a medley of poets and authors will read excerpts from their respective works. Running weekly beginning on Sept. 19, this series will allow audiences the opportunity to listen to illustrious writers live in person.

In the Center’s season opener on Sept. 19, Ian “Ian Macabre” McEwan will read from his new novel “Nutshell,” a story of death and deception. McEwan, who Claire Messud wrote “forces his readers to turn the pages with greater dread and anticipation than does perhaps any other ‘literary’ writer working in English today,” is known for books such as “Atonement,” which was later adapted into an Oscar-nominated film. Signed copies of his yet-to-be released book will also be available.

Another highlight is on Oct. 27, featuring Martha Collins and Tyehimba Jess, two idiosyncratic poets reflecting on issues of race. Martha Collins will be reading from her new anthology, “Admit One: An American Scrapbook.” The books traces the lineage of science-based racism in the United States over the last century, using documentary sources to reinforce her ideas. The Washington Post called it “a strikingly original collection that combines brilliant storytelling and compelling commentary.” Tyehimba Jess will read from “Olio,” his recent book that combines sonnet, song and narrative to explore the experiences of largely unrecorded black performers. Nikki Finney wrote that it is a “21st-century hymnal of black revolutionary poetry, a theatrical melange of miraculous meta-memory. Inventive, prophetic, wondrous, he writes unflinchingly into the historical clefs of blackface, black sound and human sensibility.”

Christopher Lightfoot Walker Reading Series

Unterberg Poetry Center – 92nd Street Y (1395 Lexington Ave.)

Weekly, beginning Sept. 19