The Monday Muse: Last Call for these NYC Exhibits

By Kimberly Baldwin

Considering our proximity to the art capital of the world (ahem, that would be New York City), I thought it would be fitting to share the details of some important current exhibitions that will soon be coming to a close.

Kinz, Tillou & Feigen, 529 W. 20th St., 212.929.0500
Jeremy Blake: A Memorial Exhibition, through Jan. 5
Jeremy Blake was an artist of recognizable accomplishment and promise. He was considered influential and iconoclastic. Sadly, Blake committed suicide one week after his beloved companion of 12 years, Theresa Duncan, committed suicide--the reasons for which remain open only to conjecture. His sixth solo show at Kinz, Tillou & Feigen is a memorial show and features a selection of wall works, a retrospective of daily screenings of his 21 short animated films, and documentation from his unfinished last film.

Metropolitan Museum, 5th Ave. at 82nd St., 212.535.7710
The Age of Rembrandt, through Jan. 6
The Met is home to the finest collection of Dutch art outside of Europe, and all 288 of these masterpieces are displayed together for the first time in this exhibition. On view is an array of circa-seventeenth century works--landscapes, genre pictures, still lifes, marine views, portraiture, and historical and biblical paintings--by celebrated Dutch masters such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Hals. The works are arranged by their acquisition date and reflect the taste for Dutch art in America.

Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd St., 212.708.9400
Georges Seurat: The Drawings, through Jan. 7
Once described as "the most beautiful painter's drawings in existence," Georges Seurat's mysterious and luminous works on paper played a crucial role in his short, vibrant career. This comprehensive exhibition, the first in almost twenty-five years to focus exclusively on his drawings, presents over 135 works, primarily conte drawings, oil sketches, and paintings. While Seurat is best known as the inventor of pointillism, this exhibition clearly demonstrates his achievement as a draftsman and the significance of his working methods and themes for twentieth-century art.

PaceWildenstein, 545 W. 22nd St., 212.989.4258
Joel Shapiro: New Sculpture, through Jan. 19
Since his first one-person exhibition in 1970, Joel Shapiro's work has been the subject of over 100 solo exhibitions and retrospectives. Here, he's displaying nine new works: four painted wood sculptures and five bronzes. Shapiro's assemblages are beautiful and always alter the viewers perceptions of volume, space, and movement.