SOFA NEW YORK 2011 Opening Night Preview
SOFA NEW YORK 2011
Park Avenue Armory

SOFA VIP cardholders enjoy first viewing and selection of top quality pieces offered at the fair. Join artists, collectors, curators, and cognoscenti at the festive Opening Night Preview – truly a party with a view. Savor an eclectic assortment of complimentary hors d’oeuvres and wine throughout the fair.

MAD Benefit Cocktail/Dinner Reception
SOFA NEW YORK 2011

Support New York’s Museum of Arts and Design by joining MAD’s SOFA Circle. Attend a private cocktail/dinner reception in the Park Avenue Armory's Tiffany Room and enjoy additional benefit programming that includes private collection tours, special luxury hotel rates, and more. To sign up for MAD’s SOFA Circle call 212.299.7712 or visit sofaexpo.com/preview.

Artist Discussion:
Christa Assad & Matt Nolen
VIP Lounge, SOFA NEW YORK

This event is full

AIDAshed

Matt Nolen, President of the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, and ceramic artist Christa Assad discuss Assad’s recent artist residency in Israel, and AIDAshed, a partnership between the Association of Israel’s Decorative Arts (AIDA) and Watershed to produce a two-week residency program in Israel based on the philosophy of the Watershed residency. The residency provides North American ceramic artists and their Israeli counterparts the opportunity to live and work together while sharing their ideas, thoughts and techniques. Refreshments provided. Christa Assad is represented at SOFA NEW YORK 2011 by Ferrin Gallery.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue (at 82nd Street)

Go behind the scenes at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Sherman Fairfield Center for Objects Conservation with conservators Lisa Pilosi, who specializes in the technical study and conservation of glass objects, and Drew Anderson, who specializes in stained and architectural glass. Observe their current projects and learn about approaches to technical examination and conservation of glass objects and stained glass.

Cooper-Hewitt,
National Design Museum
2 East 91st Street (at Fifth Avenue)

Join Cooper-Hewitt curator Matilda McQuaid for an in-depth tour of Color Moves: Art & Fashion by Sonia Delaunay, an exhibition focusing on Sonia Delaunay’s extraordinary fashion designs in Paris during the 1920’s, and vibrant textiles designs in 1930’s Amsterdam. On view are designs, textiles, garments and photographs from the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris, the Musée de l'Impression sur Etoffes in Mulhouse, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, and private collections in Europe and the United States.

Museum of Arts and Design
2 Columbus Circle
(near 58th Street & Eighth Avenue)

Explore a broad spectrum of contemporary African art, design, and craft worldwide with Museum of Arts and Design Curator Lowery Stokes Sims in MAD’s unprecedented special exhibition The Global Africa Project, a project Sims worked on for 30 years. Through ceramics, basketry, textiles, jewelry, furniture, and fashion, as well as selective examples of architecture, photography, painting, and sculpture, the exhibition actively challenges conventional notions of a singular African aesthetic or identity.

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
(between Fifth and Sixth Avenues)

This event is full

Cobbling together a guitar from cardboard, paper, string, and wire, materials he cut, folded, threaded, and glued, Pablo Picasso created an artwork that resembled no sculpture ever seen before. A more fixed and durable sheet metal form followed, and these two Guitars bracketed an incandescent period of material and structural experimentation in Picasso’s work. Explore seventy closely connected collages, constructions, drawings, mixed-media paintings, and photographs assembled from over thirty public and private collections worldwide.

NEW EVENT!
Asia Society
725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street)

Enjoy this presentation of one of the finest surviving Persian manuscripts—an exquisite and richly illuminated 15th-century volume commissioned by the Timurid prince Muhammad Juki (1402-1444) that features more than 30 miniatures that illustrate scenes from the Persian national epic, the Shahnamah (Book of Kings). Also view a selection of exemplary Chinese ceramics from the Asia Society’s world-renowned permanent collection, the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection of Asian art. A Longing for Luxury presents exquisite Song through Qing dynasty porcelains and stonewares of unparalleled aesthetic and technical sophistication.

Andrea & Charles Bronfman Philanthropies
110 East 59th Street

The collection housed at ACBP continues the tradition of collecting contemporary decorative arts which originated over 30 years ago in Canada with the Bronfman family’s creation of the Saidye Bronfman Award for Excellence in the Fine Crafts. Charles Bronfman and his late wife, Andy, filled both their Montreal and New York offices with works by major artists including SOFA NEW YORK artists Lino Tagliapietra, Bennett Bean and Dante Marioni. Andy and Charles Bronfman are co-founders of The Association of Israel’s Decorative Arts (AIDA).  Light refreshments will be served.

Estee Lauder Companies Art Collection
767 Fifth Avenue (between 58th and 59th Streets)

The Estee Lauder Companies Art Collection focuses on the work of emerging and young artists, including paintings, sculpture, photography, prints, and works on paper. Developed by the Lauder family when the company moved into the GM Building in the 1960s, the pieces on view span the last fifty years of contemporary art, from Robert Rauschenberg and Claes Oldenburg to Marilyn Minter and Mickalene Thomas. Led by curator Elizabeth Szancer Kujawski, the tour will cover the Companies’ executive area and the office of Mrs. Estee Lauder.

NEW EVENT!
Japan Society
333 East 47th Street

Moving far beyond the stereotypes of kawaii and otaku culture, Bye Bye Kitty!!! features sixteen emerging and mid-career artists whose paintings, objects, photographs, videos, and installations meld traditional styles with challenging visions of Japan’s cultural present. Joe Earle, Director, Japan Society Gallery, guides participants through this radical departure from recent Japanese exhibitions. Each of the three sections, “Critical Memory,” “Threatened Nature,” and “Unquiet Dream,” not only offers a feast for the senses but also demolishes our preconceptions about contemporary Japanese art.

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue (at 75th Street)

This event is full

A gift that goes beyond showcasing the best of American art to demonstrating a sense of adventure, Legacy: The Emily Fisher Landau Collection, is an exhibition of works from art pledged to the Whitney Museum of American Art by longtime trustee Emily Fisher Landau. Seminal works by Carl Andre and Agnes Martin focus on Minimalism, and those of John Baldessari, Willem de Kooning and Cy Twombly represent a return to representational painting. Robert Mapplethorpe, Keith Haring, and Lorna Simpson deal with AIDS, issues of politics, gender, and race. Also on view are career surveys of Richard Artschwager,Ed Ruscha, and Jasper Johns.  

American Folk Art Museum
43 West 53rd Street (between Fifth and Sixth Avenues)

View selections from two extraordinary exhibitions at the American Folk Art Museum. Eugene Von Bruenchenhein: ‘Freelance Artist—Poet and Sculptor—Innovator—Arrow maker and Plant man—Bone artifacts constructor—Photographer and Architect—Philosopher’ features Von Bruenchenhein’s (1930- 1983) extraordinary work in poetry, photography, ceramics, drawing, painting, and signature objects made from chicken and turkey bones. In Quilts, participants will see textile masterpieces in the Museum’s collection with an emphasis on contemporary fiber artists who use the historical concept of a quilt as a starting point for their artistic, and often social and political, statements.

NEW EVENT!
Artist Studio Tour: Lucy Feller

Lucy Feller’s latest work in digital collage imagery is inspired by The Pursuit of Porcelain installation at Ferrin Gallery presented at SOFA NEW YORK 2011. Her newest image "Porcelain Doll" references the word's multiple meanings - youth, beauty - perfection via "porcelain skin" - antique dolls that used porcelain for heads, hands and feet.  On view in her spacious Upper East Side home and studio are Feller's current works along with her extensive porcelain and ceramic sculpture collection and an eclectic selection of vintage dolls, photography, folk art and unusual objects assembled over the past forty years. Refreshments will be served. Lucy Feller is represented at SOFA NEW YORK 2011 by Ferrin Gallery.

Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue (at 89th Street)

This event is full

View more than 100 artworks that evidence the tremendous creativity and innovation that characterized the years leading up to World War I, especially 1910–14, with the rise of Cubism, Expressionism and Abstraction in Europe. The exhibition unites the Guggenheim Foundation’s remarkable collections in New York and Venice with paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by 48 artists including Umberto Boccioni, Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, Vasily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, Kazimir Malevich, and Pablo Picasso.

NEW EVENT!
Before-Hours VIP Tour of SOFA NEW YORK
Park Avenue Armory

This event is full

Join Art Jewelry Forum in a walk through of the jewelry galleries at SOFA NEW YORK 2011 as Damian Skinner and Toni Greenbaum highlight and discuss their favorite jewelry works.  Damian Skinner, Ph.D., is an art historian and curator from New Zealand and the editor of the AJF website and blog. He is currently working on a book about contemporary jewelry that will be published by Lark Books in 2013. Toni Greenbaum is an art historian, specializing in 20th- and 21st-century jewelry and metalwork. She is the author of Messengers of Modernism: America Studio Jewelry, 1940-1960 as well as numerous exhibition catalogues, book chapters, and journal essays.

Curator Discussion:
Ulysses Dietz with Bennett Bean
VIP Lounge, SOFA NEW YORK

How Artists and Museums Evolve

“Vesselist” Ulysses Dietz, Senior Curator & Curator of Decorative Arts, Newark Museum, and longtime ceramicist Bennett Bean talk about the Bean’s work and the way artist/potters evolve and museums evolve. In 1980, the first piece of contemporary work Dietz purchased for the Newark Museum collection was a work by Bean. An accomplished artist in many mediums, Bean has works in the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The White House, Washington, DC; The Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and many others. Bennett Bean represented at SOFA NEW YORK 2011 by William Zimmer Gallery.

VIP Tour of SOFA NEW YORK
Park Avenue Armory

This event is full

Independent curator Davira S. Taragin leads participants through the SOFA fair highlighting leading examples of contemporary decorative arts and design.  Prominent and emerging artists in furniture, jewelry, glass, fiber and wood are surveyed. Enjoy this opportunity to see highlights of the fair and talk with attending artists.

Taragrin is a former curator at Detroit Institute of Arts and Toledo Museum of Art, and former Director of Exhibitions at Racine Art Museum, WI.

Curator Discussion: Gerald W.R. Ward
VIP Lounge, SOFA NEW YORK

Highlights of Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass

Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture Gerry Ward, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, discusses the work of preeminent glass artist Dale Chihuly and the newly opened special exhibition Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In the course of his long career, Chihuly has revolutionized the art of blown glass, moving it into the realm of large-scale sculpture and establishing the use of glass as a vehicle for installation and environmental art. This exhibition of new and archival works, which opened April 10, represents the breadth and scope of the artist’s creative vision over the last four decades. Ward joined the Museum of Fine Arts in 1992 and was heavily involved in the planning of the Museum’s new American Wing, which opened in November 2010. Dale Chihuly works represented at SOFA NEW YORK 2011 by Donna Schneier Fine Arts.

Artist Discussion: Daniel Kruger 
VIP Lounge, SOFA NEW YORK  

Jewelry and the Influence of Landscape

Jewelry artist Daniel Kruger shares his experience growing up in Namibia and the influence of the landscape on his work in this illustrated discussion. Kruger, who now lives in Germany, discusses his first ventures into the world of jewelry in America and Europe, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and now teaches at the University for Art and Design in Germany. Kruger's work, exhibited widely by galleries and museums internationally, can be seen in the collections of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York; the RISD Museum in Providence; the Jewelry Museum in Pforzheim, Germany; The Hiko Mizuno College of Jewelry, Tokyo; and others. Daniel Kruger is represented at SOFA NEW YORK 2011 by Sienna Gallery.

VIP Tour of SOFA NEW YORK
Park Avenue Armory

Independent curator Susan Jefferies, former Curator of Modern and Contemporary Ceramics at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto, leads participants through the SOFA fair highlighting leading examples of contemporary decorative arts and design with an emphasis on works of ceramic art.  Prominent and emerging artists in furniture, jewelry, glass, fiber and wood are surveyed. Enjoy this opportunity to see highlights of the fair and talk with attending artists.

VIP Tour of SOFA NEW YORK
Park Avenue Armory

Independent curator Susan Jefferies, former Curator of Modern and Contemporary Ceramics at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto, leads participants through the SOFA fair highlighting leading examples of contemporary decorative arts and design with an emphasis on works of ceramic art.  Prominent and emerging artists in furniture, jewelry, glass, fiber and wood are surveyed. Enjoy this opportunity to see highlights of the fair and talk with attending artists.

Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) 
Spring Benefit at SOFA NEW YORK

Ticketed Event

 

Gerit Grimm: Lirum Larum Löffelstiel and Other Miraculous Tales
Opening Reception
Greenwich House Pottery
Jane Hartsook Gallery
16 Jones Street

 

Friends of Contemporary Ceramics Dinner
Harmonie Club
4 East 60th Street

Ticketed Event

Attend the Friends of Contemporary Ceramics dinner where there will be no long speeches…just good friends, good food and good fun. Tickets are $200 per person and must be purchased in advance by emailing Linda Schlenger at lindon114@aol.com.  The Friends of Contemporary Ceramics is a non-profit group consisting of collectors, curators, gallery professionals, writers, and others who wish to learn more about the contemporary ceramic arts movement.

UrbanGlass
Fête de Verre
Capitale, 130 Bowery Street
New York, NY 10013

Ticketed Event

UrbanGlass presents the 2011 Fête de Verre: FUTUR, a festive evening of fabulous glass, fine cuisine, futuristic fantasy and “fun”d raising. The event includes a major auction of 100 works of art selected by a jury that includes Jane Adlin, Metropolitan Museum of Art; David MacFadden, Museum of Arts and Design; and Katya Heller, Heller Gallery. The Urban Glass Awards, established in 1995, celebrate outstanding achievement in glass. This year’s awards will be presented to Matt Eskuche for New Talent and Tina Oldknow for Service to the Field. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit www.urbanglass.org/fete or contact Kristin Solomon at kristin@urbanglass.org, 718.625.3685 ext 211. Tickets start at $350 per person.