Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

Disorder

Documentary, Foreign language

• $

Weikai's doc was compiled from 1,000 hours of amateur footage; it's an often hectic portrait of the Chinese city of Guangzhou. It screens with Ou Ning and Cao Fei's "San Yuan Li" (2003).

24 City

Docudrama, Documentary, Foreign language

• $
• Critics' pick

Jia interviews nine people who have worked or lived around a state-owned factory, which is being demolished to make way for a luxury apartment complex.

"Wait, Later This Will Be Nothing: Editions by Dieter Roth"

Prints & editions

• $$
• Critics' pick

As with the rest of his art, Roth pushed the envelope hard when it came to publishing editioned multiples, using everything from chocolate and rabbit turds to sausages and stale croissants as materials. In fact, some of the most radical artworks of his...

"Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light"

Photography

• Rating: 5/5
• $$
• Critics' pick

One of the giants of 20th-century photography, Bill Brandt (1904–1983) is not as well-known as his close contemporaries Henri Cartier-Bresson and Walker Evans. This exemplary exhibition of his work, curated by MoMA’s Sarah Hermanson Meister, reappraises...

"Claes Oldenburg: The Street and the Store"

Museums & Attractions, Sculpture

The Pop sculptor's early career is the focus of this exhibit, which looks at two of Oldenburg's installations from the 1960s: The Store, a series of storefronts where he sold his artwork from 1961 to 1964, and The Street, which was first presented at...

"Abstract Generation: Now in Print"

Prints & editions

• $$
• Critics' pick

Contemporary takes on abstraction in print provide the focus for this exhibition, featuring contributions by Cory Arcangel, Tauba Auerbach, Philippe Decrauzat, Liam Gillick, Wade Guyton, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, R. H. Quaytman and Haegue Yang.

"Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light"

Design

• $$

Labrouste (1801–75) pioneered the use of glass and iron to create soaring, light-filled, cathedral-like interiors, like the ones found in his two great libraries, the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève and the Bibliothèque Nationale, both in Paris. This show,...

Claes Oldenburg, The Street and The Store + Mouse Museum/Ray Gun Wing

Installation, Mixed media, Sculpture

• Rating: 5/5
• Critics' pick

Now 84, Pop artist Claes Oldenburg is best known for his drooping, soft sculptures of telephones, toilets and other household fixtures, and for the cheerfully absurdist, gargantuan versions of small objects—lipsticks, clothespins and the like—made in...

"Hand Signals: Digits, Fists, and Talons"

Prints & editions

• $$

The hand becomes a feast for the eye in this collection of 20th-century posters and ephemera featuring the appendage as focal point.

Random International, Rain Room

Installation

• $$
• Critics' pick

As part of "EXPO 1: New York" at MoMA PS1, the museum offers what is essentially an indoor rain shower by archi-visionaries Random International. The piece turns on and off depending on the presence of viewers, and is sure to be the feel-good museum hit...

"XL: 19 New Acquisitions in Photography"

Photography

• $$

MoMA trots out its latest photographic holdings, which include photos by Robert Frank, Lynn Hershman Leeson and Stephen Shore, among many others.

Projects 100: Akram Zaatari

Film & video

• $$

The Beirut artist presents recent videos, including a YouTube clip compilation that's meant as an exegesis of social media in the Arab world.

Railroad of Hope

Documentary, Foreign language

• $

Thousands of peasants travel across China each year to earn money picking cotton; this documentary captures their arduous journey. Also on the bill is Ju Anqi's There's a Strong Wind in Beijing (1999).

Oxhide II

Docudrama, Drama, Foreign language

• $

Nine 45-degree shots—just nine, mind you—that travel around the apartment of the filmmaker's parents make up this formalistic sequel to Liu Jiayin's 2005 underground Chinese movie. Your move, Michael Snow.

Tape

Documentary, Foreign language

• $
• Critics' pick

Li's unique, often profound video diary was compiled from five years of footage chronicling his life as an avant-garde dancer and new father.

When Night Falls

Documentary, Foreign language

• $

A man murders six cops in Shanghai; this doc focuses on the criminal's mother, who finds herself caught between the judicial system and several pro-justice, antiauthority groups.

"Ellsworth Kelly: Chatham Series"

Painting

• $$
• Critics' pick

With the artist turning 90, there's been a lot of Kelly love evident in several gallery shows devoted to his work. MoMA joins the celebration with this presentation of paintings (each in the shape of an upside-down L) created as a color-study series in...

Petition

Documentary, Foreign language

• $
• Critics' pick

Filmed over ten years, Zhao's doc is a piercing—and clocking in at five hours, very lengthy—look at the people who come from all over China to visit Beijing's complaints offices. Kafka would surely have related to their woes.

Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers

Documentary, Foreign language

• $
• Critics' pick

This portrait of five artists living in China's capital before and after the Tiananmen Square incident is widely considered the work that launched the country's independent documentary movement.

Disturbing the Peace

Documentary, Foreign language

• $

You've seen that documentary on Ai Weiwei; now see one by the famous Chinese artist/dissident, as he takes on the cops who beat him up in 2008 and the courts who tried to let them get off scot-free.