Sunday, September 11
Ten Years Hence
The National September 11 Memorial will be dedicated today. In a ceremony featuring Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Governor Andrew Cuomo and President Barack Obama, the name-inscribed reflecting pools officially become a part of our city. The memorial, part of a site that has, in many of its particulars, been an object of contention and debate over the past decade, is to open tomorrow, putting to rest a small part of the history of local politics. Another history—that of our processing a now-10-year-old catastrophe—remains, of course, ongoing.
The National September 11 Memorial is to be dedicated today and will be open tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; access is available from the northeast corner of Albany Street and Greenwich Street with a pass, available at 911memorial.org.
Monday, September 12
Gaga-a-gogo
We’ve had enough Gaga-on-TV for a while after her simply exhausting appearance on MTV’s Video Music Awards. (Hey, we had plenty of emergency liquor left after Irene and needed to commemorate not losing cable somehow.) The lady vamped as an unstyled New Jersey dude, Joe Pesci minus the rudimentary acting ability, for the benefit of the gossip blogs that can’t stop covering the pop star! Nevertheless, we’ll drag ourselves to the television for the special Gaga by Gaultier, not for Ms. Gaga, but rather for the chance to see the iconic designer Jean Paul Gaultier (who designed Madonna’s cone bra, back when she was the pop star testing boundaries of taste and patience) in a 75-minute special. Not to mention the fact that it’s airing on teenybopper mini-network the CW, which gives rise to more cognitive dissonance than any couture-donning chanteuse could ever hope to evoke by dressing in drag. The promotions would seem to indicate that Mr. Gaultier is interviewing Ms. Gaga, and we imagine his questions for her would be rather more perceptive than hers of him. But heaven help him if he tries to put the new, butch, dressed-down Ms. Gaga into a cone bra.
Gaga by Gaultier airs from 8 p.m. to 9:15 p.m. on the CW.
Tuesday, September 13
3D Movies With 2D Critic
Two events tonight indicate the values of storytelling in very different fashions. David Denby, the contemplative, chelonian New Yorker film critic addresses the future of movies in an address titled “Do Movies Have a Future?” (We vote yes! But then, we just loved the new Planet of the Apes.) It’s going down at the New York Psychoanalytic Society—the perfect spot for Mr. Denby to plop down on a couch after the speech and talk about all the issues he plumbed in his porn-and-bad-stocks memoir American Sucker … Meanwhile, Mr. Denby’s magazine colleague Adam Gopnik joins the heterogeneous crew of Bravo hostesses Padma Lakshmi and Gail Simmons, beloved-beyond-belief chef David Chang, and predictable insult-jock Lisa Lampanelli at an evening of storytelling about food. Each storyteller is to speak on the subject for 10 minutes, without notes—just broadly, anything that comes to mind! (Anyone seeking insight into what it’s like to force oneself to gorge on reality show contestants’ half-baked soufflés will enjoy the Lakshmi-Simmons double dose, we’d imagine.)
“Do Movies Have a Future?” The New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, 247 East 82nd Street, 8:15 p.m., R.S.V.P. recommended for limited space; email admdir@nypsi.org for RSVP or information; The Moth, Great Hall at Cooper Union, 7 East 7th Street, 6:30 p.m. doors open, 7:30 p.m. stories begin; visit themoth.org for tickets and information.
Wednesday, September 14
Museum of Modern Rock
We know we said we’d had enough of Lady Gaga, but we meant only that we couldn’t bear to listen to her speak about her theories of art and gender anymore. However, her conscription into a gallery show of pop-music-themed art—as the subject of a portrait by Bonnie Engelbardt Lautenberg, wife of New Jersey’s Senator Frank Lautenberg—allows her to do what pop stars do best: act as a muse. Tonight’s opening of RH Gallery’s “Melodymania” exhibit showcases artwork about pop music—including a new portrait of Nirvana rocker Kurt Cobain by Mark Seliger, a cleverly titled print called Violins/Violence by Bruce Nauman and a photograph by Matthew Barney inspired by Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song. (O.K., in that last one the tie to popular music may be a bit conceptual.) Other musical muses channeled by the visual artists on display at RH Gallery include Ennio Morricone and Joy Division—the first time those two have been landed in the same place since our iPod! The concept of pop-inspired art may seem a bit gimmicky to non-radio-listeners—but it’s at least in tune (get it?) with musicians’ tendencies to view themselves as artists and artists’ tendencies to tap into the more venal aspects of our cultural mosaic for inspiration.
Opens today (reception Sept. 13 at 7 p.m.), RH Gallery, 137 Duane Street; visit rhgallery.com for information.
ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_
