No matter what else is going on in Jersey City, there’s one thing you can count on: first-rate visual art shows. There were so many good ones mounted in 2023 that I couldn’t stick to my customary Top Eleven. We’re going fifteen deep this year, and honestly, I could have gone further. When I look […]
Arts and Culture
Imaginative Young Artists Take the Reins at Two Jersey City Fridays Art Shows
There is something unbearably lonesome about an image of a cross on another planet. Its presence reflects the hope that God might chase us across the stars. But there’s no church in the alien wilderness, and no congregation on the interstellar plain. The tiny cross in Kaira Villanueva’s “On the Lookout” is tucked into a […]
Rogue Waves December: Live Music in Jersey City
So how’d we do? Pretty well, in a modest sort of way. In 2023, Bookers at Jersey City’s flagship venues demonstrated imagination and broadmindedness. White Eagle Hall, for instance, supplemented the usual parade of touring guitar-slingers with dates from K-pop acts, Latin stars, and a first-rate Indian progressive rock group. Fox & Crow felt like […]
Museum of Jersey City History Opens With “Frank Hague’s Jersey City: Yesterday and Today”
Over the years, this Jersey City property has supported Leni Lenape maze land, a private residence, a funeral parlor and municipal offices in the heart of Bergen Square where the Dutch established one of the first Colonial-era settlements in the New World. On Saturday, December 2, the 2-story structure at 298 Academy St. known as […]
Two Recommended Shows From MANA Curators Close This Week
Curating a group show is a little like deejaying a set, a little like stitching together a patchwork quilt, and a lot like assembling a choir. A curator must get many different voices to sing in harmony. Like a choir, a well curated group exhibition isn’t univocal. Instead, each participant is selected to augment and […]
2024 Arts Forecast: Cloudy, With a Chance of Storms
In 2023, our arts organizers went big. Jersey City Art Week was the most ambitious, most coordinated, and most ballyhooed event local organizers had ever attempted. The state’s largest art fair in the middle of Liberty State Park! Open studios at MANA Contemporary! An international sculpture conference! The 34th annual Jersey City Art and Studio […]
Keith Garcia’s Calm and Curious Trip Extended at Deep Space Through November
In Keith Garcia’s paintings, objects of desire are often very far away. Stages in the distance tantalize with floodlights and hot color. Lush hills are visible through the windows of sparsely decorated living rooms. A warming fire beckons the viewer’s eye across vast expanses of icy water. Perfectly round full moons hang, watchfully, in […]
Rogue Waves November: Live Music in Jersey City
October 2023 was for the classic rockers and the tribute acts, the legendary strummers with big names, and enthusiastic locals masquerading as internationally famous musicians. But Halloween is over, and the costumes are back in the closets. For November — the humble period nestled between the parades and the tinsel — we turn to artists […]
Novado Gallery Closes an Exemplary Season With an Accomplished Sculpture Show
On Morgan Street, the umbrellas are out. In defiance of a long-running superstition, they’re open indoors. Perhaps because nobody holds them, the pall of misfortune rests on no single set of shoulders. Instead, these umbrellas and parasols are mounted on the wall. The protection they bestow is general, and permanent. They couldn’t be closed even […]
At Art House Productions, ‘Tracy Jones’ Finds Laughs in Loneliness
In William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, closing this weekend at Nimbus Arts Center, the heroine declares that names don’t mean much. A block west at Art House Productions (354 Marin Blvd.), a somewhat less famous playwright comes to a different conclusion. In Stephen Kaplan’s Tracy Jones, directed by Alex Tobey, names carry weight. A name […]