If you think paying a visit to your local museum exhibit is a relatively safe endeavor, then beware.  It’s likely you have not visited the The Studio Museum of Harlem’s current exhibit,  Trenton Doyle Hancock: Skin and Bones, 20 Years of Drawing.  Chronicling the evolution of his comical, often nightmarish universe, it’s a show that may alternately delight and repel but guaranteed, one you will not soon forget.   

Fair founder Leanne Stella sees the Fair’s mission as “a way to showcase artists that underscore the cultural zeitgeist that is Harlem.”  Launched in May to coincide with the internationally recognized Frieze art fair, it embraces a unique criteria—the 21^st century artist as a nomad, a creator whose nationality, ethnicity, gender or religion is combined with a global consciousness.

Simmons made a name for herself in the ‘70s and ‘80s by constructing dollhouse rooms and photographing them. They were a subversive reflection on the Marxist notion of the fetishizing commodity and were done through a feminist lens. She was not interested so much with creating a narrative in her photographs, though her subject matter may have reflected otherwise. Rather, she refers to the early works as “doll still life work” and they became as such after she stared at the created spaces until they became void of meaning and abstract to her. 

Philadelphia-based painter Richard Gabriele has emerged in the New York City art scene as a symbolic figurehead, reminding us that Romance does exist, even in our generation. Art has always been a part of Gabriele's life. He began drawing at an early age and kept sketchbooks throughout childhood and high school, traveling extensively to gain the experiences and stylistic influences depicted later in his paintings. By the time Gabriele realized his dream of becoming an artist in college, his techniques were nearly perfected.

Through her lyrical videos Behbahani stages a contemporary cultural critique by layering and juxtaposing allusions to past and present sociopolitical circumstances with a language that she draws from her experience as a painter. Her work has been featured in the 18th Biennale of Sydney, Australia; Sharjah Biennial 10, UAE; Queens Museum, New York; The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan; MACRO, Museum of Contemporary Art, Italy; Mimara Museum, Croatia; The Tribeca Film Festival, New York; as well as the Asia Art Biennial, Bangladesh, among others.

Though the country remained under a one-party rule, Vietnam has since the late 1980s eased its once-iron grip on the economy and cultural life, moving from a socialist to a free market economy. Gone are the days when citizens were required to discuss Marxist-Leninist doctrines at weekly neighborhood sessions. Gone too are the permits needed to buy rice from state-run stores, or to move from one city to another. The drab, impoverished and immobile nation that Catherine saw when she first visited in 1990 quickly shifted under her lens. And fascinated, she kept coming back. 

But the primary focus of the show is a far-reaching exploration of how such personal portraiture has been transformed over the decades.  It comprises not only choice works from Academy members, but entries from places as far-flung as Palestine, Lebanon, Iran and China.  Perhaps the biggest and most welcome surprise is the extent of entries from women—62 such artists represented from 30 different countries in all.  

While it sounds typical – Western male artist enters “exotic” land to bring stories back home – one must remember that at the time of Riboud’s creations, the metropolitan West, in the fallout of the World Wars, was just starting to gain a real appreciation for what Asia had to offer. Yet Riboud deters from juxtaposing the differences in cultures as a way to highlight both sides’ strengths. 

From her small town beginnings in the Jewish Poland of 1872, Helena Rubinstein grew a cosmetics empire that spanned four continents.  By her death in 1965 at 92, this self-made magnate of beauty had not only amassed a world-class collection of Western, African and Oceanic art, but transformed how millions of women thought about themselves.  The Jewish Museum’s gorgeously-mounted exhibit, Helena Rubinstein: Beauty is Power, is aptly titled.  

These are all characters embedded in American childhood and how we remember them is due to the careful process Jones employed as an animator for WB Inc. He saw his characters as actors themselves, taking anthropomorphism to a new level in the cartoon sphere. The exhibit begins with layout drawings and detailed notes Jones wrote next to the sketchy preliminary drawings of Bugs. Next to the figure he would write how to form the movement: “In a walk: humans, rabbits, or ducks, the shoulders are always an opposite angle to the hips,” and when Bugs is tired “think of a dollar sign” for his shape.