Happy New Year - Mona's Eyes - Substack - Last Call for January and February 2026

Dearest Friends of New York Arts Exchange,

New Year's Greetings - I hope the beginning of 2026 has been kind to you and your loved ones.  We are already "rockin' and rolling" on the World Stage. And it's soooo cold in New York. Perhaps it's the right time to curl up with a good book and join a book club to share your thoughts about the experience.

If you are able, please join me in person at Ardsley Public Library on Tuesdays, January 13, 20, 27, and February 3, at 11 am to talk about Thomas Schlesser's brilliant novel Mona's Eyes. Here is the blurb on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It was selected as the BN Book of the Year 2025. 

Here is my review for Bonjour Paris, only available to subscribers.

If you cannot join us in person, please let me know if you would like to join a Zoom book club to discuss Mona's Eyes beginning in February.  I look forward to hearing from you about this future program sponsored directly through the New York Arts Exchange.

And, on that note . . .please join me for arts content on my new Substack website. Here is my first post. Subscribing is free to everyone. Look for the information on my Substack website:  https://bethnewyork.substack.com/

And finally - Last Call for January and February 2026.

Closing Sunday, January 11: 

Chiharu Shioto: Two Home Cities, Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, NYC.

Closing Saturday, January 17:

New Photography, Museum of Modern Art

Closing Monday, January 19:

Sixities Surreal, Whitney Museum of American Art

Divine Egypt, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gingerbread NYC, Museum of the City of New York

Closing Sunday, February 1:

Monet in Venice, Brooklyn Museum

Man Ray, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Closing Saturday, February 7:

Ruth Asawa, Museum of Modern Art

Closing Sunday, February 8:

Renoir Drawings, The Morgan Library and Museum

Best wishes to you and all your loved ones for 2026 and beyond!

With love and hugs,

Beth

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, PhD

Director/Owner

New York Arts Exchange, LLC

Happy Thanksgiving 2025!

 Dear Friends, 

Wishing you and your families a joyous Thanksgiving! 

With love,

Beth and the New York Arts Exchange

Paul Cézanne, Still Life with Apples and Oranges, 1895-1900, Musée d'Orsay, Isaac de Camondo Bequest, Paris

"Zing!" Loft Artists Association Spring Exhibition Opens on Saturday, April 26, at 4-6 pm; Artists Talk on May 2nd at 2 pm

 Dear Friends,

It's been a pleasure and an honor to serve as the juror for "Zing! Expressing Joy and Positivity Through Art."  

Thank you so much, Emi Subotovsky, a New York Arts Exchange member, and Soledad Bence, both Loft Artists Association members and co-chairs for this year's Spring Juried Exhibition, for inviting me to jury this show. It's been fabulous to work with you!

Please join me today, Saturday, April 26, from 4 - 6 pm at Loft Artists Association's opening for "Zing!"   

And/or on Saturday, May 10th, for the Artists Walk and Talk at 2 pm.

Gallery Hours: Saturday and Sunday, 1 - 4 pm, through June 8th.

Loft Artists Association, 575 Pacific Street, Stamford, CT

I look forward to seeing you there!

Warm wishes,

Beth

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, PhD

Director/Owner, New York Arts Exchange, LLC

 

Berthe Weill Exhibition at Grey Art Museum - a conversation with co-curator Lynn Gumpert on Thursday, Feb. 13 at 4 pm ET

 

A conversation with Lynn Gumpert, Director of the Grey Art Gallery and Co-Curator of Make Way for Berthe Weill, and Beth Gersh-Nesic, on Thursday, February 13, 2025 at 4 pm ET, 1 pm PT, 2pm MT, 3 pm CT, 9 pm UK time, 10 pm France

Hosted by the AFUSA on Zoom. Registration here

Make Way for Berthe Weill: Art Dealer of the Parisian Avant-Garde, currently at the Grey Art Museum, New York University (through March 1st), shines a bright spotlight on an unsung hero who believed in the emerging artists of the early 20th century, even when she earned very little for her efforts. Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Fernand Léger, Diego Rivera, and Raul Dufy are among the best-known artists in this exhibition. However, there are many lesser-known artists among the 110 paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures, as well as photographs, catalogs, and other archival material illustrating her life and gallery.  This homage to Berthe Weill (1865-1951) also reintroduces numerous gifted women artists: Suzanne Valadon, Emilie Charmy, Jacqueline Marval, and Hermione David, among many others. 

A conversation with co-curator Lynn Gumpert, Director of the Grey Art Museum, and art historian Beth Gersh-Nesic, will shed light on Berthe Weill's biography, the artists included in the exhibition, and the fascinating backstory for this show, which took over a decade of dedication from a brilliant team of women arts professionals. The exhibition will be on view at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art from May through September 2025, and then in Paris at the Musée de l'Orangerie, from October 2025 through January 2026. 

Lynn Gumpert

Museum director, curator, administrator, and art historian, Lynn Gumpert has overseen and organized exhibitions on four continents. For more than 25 years, she has served as Director of New York University’s Grey Art Museum, formerly known as the Grey Art Gallery. During her tenure, the Grey has presented over 75 exhibitions. Among them are: Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Post-War France, 1946-1962 (March-July 2024); Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s 1980s (2020); The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal (2018); and The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984 (2006). Gumpert received a BA from the University of California at Berkeley and an MA in art history from the University of Michigan. The French government honored Gumpert with the distinction of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1999.

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic

Art historian, Beth Gersh-Nesic is the Director of the New York Arts Exchange, an arts education service, and she is a staff writer with Bonjour Paris, an online arts and culture magazine.  Her books and articles focus on Picasso, the School of Paris, women artists, and the poet/art critic André Salmon, who wrote about several artists on view in the Berthe Weill exhibition at the Grey.  Her translations of Salmon's books include André Salmon on French Modern Art (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and Pablo Picasso, André Salmon and “Young French Painting” (Za Mir Press, 2022). She recently retired from teaching undergraduate and graduate art history courses.

To register for this Zoom event click here , as a friend of the speaker.

Berthe Weill image credits: * Émilie Charmy, Portrait of Berthe Weill, 1910-1914, in the exhibition “Make Way for Berthe Weill: Art Dealer of the Parisian Avant-Garde.”Credit: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Alberto Ricci; Photo by MMFA, Julie Ciot

Happy Lunar New Year - Year of the Wooden Snake!

 Dear Friends of the New York Arts Exchange,

Via 

Best wishes for the Year of the Wood Snake!

Love, 

Beth and the New York Arts Exchange

Happy New Year! Last Call for January-early February 2025

 

Wishing you peace and joy in 2025!

Happy New Year to you and your loved ones 

Beth 

and the New York Arts Exchange

But, wait!   Before we bid farewell to 2024 . . . here is a list of the 2024 Fall-Winter Season exhibitions closing in January and the first week of February:

Metropolitan Museum

Mexican Prints, through January 5.

Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Creche, through January 6

Mary Sully, through January 12

Siena: The Rise of Painting through January 26.

Museum of Modern Art

Robert Frank in Dialogue, through January 11 (members January 12)

Nour Miobara, through January 12

Thomas Shutte, through January 18 (members January 19 and 20)

Matisse Cut-Outs, through January 20 (The Swimming Pool)

Whitney Museum

Mark Armija McKnight, through January 12

Alvin Ailey, through February 9

Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, 100 11th Ave, and 19th Street

18 Women, 50 Years, through January 26

Brooklyn Museum

Elizabeth Catlett, through January 19

Brooklyn Artists, through January 26

Museum of the City of New York

Byzantine Bembé: NY by Manny Vega, through January 6

Gingerbread NYC, through January 12

El Museo del Barrio

La Trienal 2024, through February 9

Hudson River Museum

No Bodies: Clothing as Disruptor, through January 26

Katonah Museum of Art

Jonathan Becker, through January 26

Andy Warhol's Last Supper, through January 26

Happy Holidays!

 

Rosso Fiorentino, Cherub Playing a Lute, 1521

Oil on Panel, Uffizi, Florence

click to hear music

Happy Holidays!

Wishing you and your loved ones - 

Good Health

Happiness 

and Peace - 

With love and hugs,

Beth

and the New York Arts Exchange

Happy Thanksgiving 2024

 

Dear Friends,

To you and your loved ones, we wish you a very 

Happy and Peaceful 

With love and hugs,

Beth and family - 

and

The New York Arts Exchange

Fall into the Fall Art Season 2024 - Highlights and Last Call for Isaac Julien, MoMA; Jenny Holzer, Guggenheim

 

Sonia Delaunay, Electric Prisms, 1914 (Orphism)

Musée Moderne de la Ville de Paris

Dear Friends,

Three cheers for Fall - the most glorious time of the year!  Rich red, orange and golden leaves shelter us and then fall as our most cherished festive gathering Thanksgiving draws near. Plump pumpkins proudly sit on our porches and in our shop windows almost everywhere to welcome Halloween activities throughout October.  Classes to nourish our minds and spiritual growth begin.  And best of all, the Fall Art Season gets into full swing.

However, before we welcome in this bountiful Fall harvest, let's bid farewell to two great summer exhibitions:

Isaac Julien, Lessons of the Hours (on Frederick Douglass), Museum of Modern Art, through September 28 for the public; September 29 for members only.  Another stellar video installation by Sir Isaac that is a powerful indictment of America's idealization of itself and its dehumanizing reality.

Jenny Holzer: High Line at the Guggenheim Museum through September 29, 2024. A "reimagining" of her 1989 exhibition - which was AMAZING!  Don't miss out on this opportunity to consider the past and present relevance of this hard-hitting installation artwork.

Elizabeth Catlett, Mother and Child, 1939

New Orleans Museum of Art

Hyperallergic Art Magazine offers one of the best guides to a jam-packed autumn in New York City (all five boroughs).  Here is the link to use as a reference to mark your calendars: Fall Art Season.

I am especially excited about three Modernist shows in New York: 

Elizabeth Catlett at the Brooklyn Museum, September 13, 2024 - January 19, 2025.

Berthe Weill at the Grey Art Gallery, NYU, October 1, 2024 - March 1, 2025.

Orphism at the Guggenheim, November 8, 2024 -  March 9, 2025.

And I recommend these extremely important exhibitions outside of New York:

Impressionism at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, September 8, 2024-January 19, 2025.

Surrealism at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, November 3, 2024 - March 2, 2025.

Wishing you a healthy and happy Fall 2024!

Beth

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, PhD

Director/Owner

New York Arts Exchange, LLC

Tonight: A Conversation with Steven Lane at Zarolot Gallery, DUMBO, at 6 pm

 

Re-making the Existing 

a exhibition of recent works by Steven Lane

July 12 - August 4, 2024

at Zarolat in DUMBO

Dear friends,

I hope you will join us for this rare opportunity to sit down with the wonderfully talented artist Steven Lane to ask him questions about his work.  I will moderate - and ask questions too :)

What is Zarolat? (click on the link)

"ZAROLAT is an architecture studio and a design collective representing a community of artists and makers. 

It is a creative initiative that celebrates skillful design and artisanship. 

Zarolat Studio has been working as an independent architecture studio creating buildings, interiors and furniture since 2018."

I hope to see you later today - and I believe this conversation will be recorded 🤞

Beth - 

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, PhD

Director/Owner

New York Arts Exchange, LLC

What is Zarolat?

ZAROLAT is an architecture studio and a design collective representing a community of artists and makers. 

It is a creative initiative that celebrates skillful design and artisanship. 

Zarolat Studio has been working as an independent architecture studio creating buildings, interiors and furniture since 2018.

Happy Spring Holidays!

 

Charles Ethan Porter, Mountain Laurel, 1888

Wishing you and your family peace and joy this holiday season:

Happy Easter!

Blessings for Ramadan!

A Zissen Pesach!

With love,

Beth and the New York Arts Exchange

Happy Holidays 2023 - Wishing You Comfort and Joy!

 

Central Park in the Snow

Happy Holidays!

      Peace be with you now and through 2024 

Love and hugs,

Beth 

and the New York Arts Exchange 

Thanksgiving Greetings 2023

Charles Ethan Porter, Apples on the Ground, 1878

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

Wishing you and your loved ones

a joyous Thanksgiving celebration - 

And all the blessings of the Holiday Season!

With love and tremendous gratitude 

for 20 years of sharing art with you - 

 Beth

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, PhD

Director/owner

New York Arts Exchange, LLC

 

Fall Greetings and a letter from the heart

  

Mark Podwal, Jerusalem in My Heart, 2001

Etching

Dear friends,

I live with this image of Jerusalem etched by Mark Podwal. It's a rose cradling three religions, growing and thriving from its stem of thorns. It is a metaphor for the region that cradles Israel and Palestine today. What can we say?  There are no words. We feel these thorns. We pray for the survival of the rose. When will the conflict in the Middle East end? This image seems to say that the only way to see this region survive, having experienced its thorny history, is to rise above it, protecting this vision of peaceful coexistence among the main religions, if not all humankind.

I am praying everyday that all sides of the conflict will reach a peaceful agreement and work toward the survival of all who have been dragged into this horror. Their pain and suffering belongs to us all, there and here - as we worry daily for the hostages and the possibility of an all out war among Israel and its neighbors. We pray for peace as soon as possible.

My heart goes out to the mourners, whose lives have been damaged forever because of their losses. My heart goes out to the family members who wait for word from their loved ones in captivity. My heart goes out to the families who are enduring bombs on both sides, the destruction on both sides, the loss of their homes and personal security on both sides. And my heart goes out to those who tried to broker peace in the region, failed, and lived to see this horror. I remember those who died because they tried to make it happen: Anwar Sadat, Yitzak Rabin, and countless others.  

Our population on earth is enduring war, terrorism, gang violence, and personal assaults/assassinations all the time, all over the place. What can we do? 

I have no idea. . . .

Mark Podwal, Jerusalem in My Heart, 2001

original ink drawing; image courtesy of the artist

I often think about what to write for this blog and then it feels trite and inconsequential in the face of the pain of so many others. So, I don't write anything at all.  Art is all I can offer.  Is this enough for you? Does art lift you up out of your sorrow and bring relief, if only for a little while?

After the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the Purchase College class I had begun the week before, Thursday, September 6, 2001, corresponded through email to affirm our mutual decision to carry on. We must continue the class, which met weekly at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  We had to be together, resist fear of public spaces, support art, and support each other as we faced the unknown.  That week, we couldn't even imagine being alive today. We only worried about getting through each day and tomorrow.  

At that time, art helped us persevere because we decided to remain together and enjoy our Thursdays at the Met together. We had each other and we had the treasures in this extraordinary cultural institution guiding us out of the darkness and into the light of historical proof that humankind carries on, producing beauty despite all the setbacks imposed by our fellow humans or Mother Nature herself.

Take care, my dear friends - use art to escape from your sorrows, use art to heal. Take a moment to forget the painful truth of our present world crises as you stand in front of wondrous creativity.  

Later this week, I will post on this blog a calendar of exhibitions that I hope bring you comfort and joy.

With love and hugs,

Beth

Director/owner

New York Arts Exchange, LLC

Best Wishes for Labor Day 2023

Jean-François Millet, Noonday Rest, 1866

Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Vincent van Gogh, Noon, Rest After Work (After Millet), St. Rémy, 1890-91

Best wishes for Labor Day 2023

to you and your family.

With hugs and love,

Beth  and the New York Arts Exchange

 

Summer Pleasures - Museum Mile on Tuesday, June 13, 6 - pm

It's that time of year - 

Museum Mile, Tuesday, June 13, 6 - 9 pm

Free admission to:

Metropolitan Museum of Art: Juan de Paraja, Lagerfeld, Van Gogh's Cypresses, and more . . . 

Guggenheim Museum: Gego, Sarah Sze, and "Young Picasso in Paris"

Jewish Museum: The Sassoons and After "the Wild": Contemporary Art from the Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Collection

Museum of the City of New York: Centennial Celebration!

Neue Galerie; "Woman in Gold" (The Portrait of Adele Boch-Bauer in context)

Cooper Hewitt: "Give Me A Sign" and "Designing Peace"

El Museo del Barrio: "Something Beautiful: Reframing La Colección"

Africa Center: A musical performance by West African Band Kakande, art-making workshops with iLLUSTRA8 and a first look at the Black Future Newsstand, an interactive installation created by The Black Thought Project and Media 2070. 

Happy New Year! Best wishes for 2023

 

Ancient Greek, Girl with Dove, Marble Stele, c. 450-50 BC

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Wishing you peace and joy in 2023!

With love,

Beth and the New York Arts Exchange

Merry Christmas 2022!

 

Geergen tot Sint Jans, The Nativity at Night, x. 1490

National Gallery, London

Sandro Botticelli, The Nativity of Jesus, c. 1473-75

Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC

Georges de la Tour, Nativity, c. 1645

Musée du Louvre, Paris

Merry Christmas -

Wishing you comfort and joy at Christmas and always -

And may peace prevail among us

With love,

Beth and the New York Arts Exchange