Explore Our Exhibitions: What's Going On This Fall in Hunter's Gallery Spaces

It’s autumn in New York, but the deepening foliage colors aren’t the only art that comes with the season. Hunter’s three gallery spaces are all presenting vivid, compelling exhibits that give you a reason to feel good about the chilly weather – there’s a lot to see indoors.

The 205 Hudson Gallery’s new exhibit takes visitors’ imaginations a few blocks uptown -- and a few years back in time – to Pier 34 NYC, 1983-84. This exhibit documents the remarkable events two decades ago when a group of artists bucked the traditional system to create their own gallery space, effectively seizing a city pier and filling it with art. Contributing artists responded to a mandate of permission: they could explore any image in any material on any surface they chose, a freedom that would never have been granted by the usual gatekeepers. The guerilla gallery that resulted – a series of makeshift studios and display sites on the pier -- brought together a cross-generational group of disparate artists of all mediums, and created a vibrant, eclectic community by the water. Though the building was demolished, and almost none of the work that was shown still exists, the 205 Hudson Gallery displays a series of photographs by Andreas Sterzing that document how these artists transformed a waterfront shopping terminal into their gallery. Curated by Jonathan Weinberg, the exhibit also showcases more than 75 paintings, drawings, and sculptures by artists who were part of the Pier 34 movement – though not the pieces shown on the pier, they represent a contemporaneous portrait of the movement and moment.

Something Possible Everywhere: Pier 34 NYC, 1983-84
205 Hudson Street, on the corner of Hudson & Canal
Wednesday-Sunday, 1-6pm, through November 20
 
Further uptown at Hunter’s main campus, The Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery is showing the work of Nahum Tevet, an Israeli sculptor known for his unconventionally minimalist approach to ordinary objects and his exploration of scale. In this collection, Nahum Tevet: Works on Glass, 1972-1975, Hunter’s Evelyn Kranes Kossak Professor of Art History, Thierry de Duve, has curated a first-time showcase of all Tevet’s known extant glass pieces. These unframed panes of glass, combined with other materials, are suspended by wire or twine, creating a stark visual permutation of sketches he had made of other objects – the sketches and their potential frames becoming objects and works of art in their own right.  

Nahum Tevet: Works on Glass, 1972-1975
132 East 68th Street, SW corner of Lexington & 68th Street
Wednesday-Sunday, 1-6pm, through November 20

Then head even further uptown to the Hunter East Harlem Gallery, where a favorite pastime is getting the full artistic treatment with Spots, Dots, Pips, Tiles: An exhibition about dominoes. With ancient roots in China and a currently vibrant presence in the East Harlem community, dominoes gets a deep dive in this exhibition, which draws on both the aesthetics of the gameplay – a study of the board, the players, the game’s context – and on the aesthetic aspect of the tiles themselves: those arresting black rectangles, and their evocative dot arrangements. Also explored are the social aspects of dominoes, its larger historical and geographical context, and the way it can be used as a metaphor for community and even international relations. Curated by Director Arden Sherman and Maria Elena Ortiz, the exhibit will also have complementary public programming, with domino games and events and artist talks. Come play!
 
Spots, Dots, Pips, Tiles
2180 3rd Avenue, corner of East 119th Street between Lexington & 3rd Avenue
Tuesday-Saturday, 12-5pm, through February 11