The B List
WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, Madison Ave. at 75th St. (212-570-3676)
Tim Hawkinson, a mid-career retrospective of the California artist’s diverse inventions, including the football-field-size “Überorgan,” an automated bagpipe housed in the sculpture garden at 590 Madison Avenue, at Fifty-seventh Street. Through May 29.
BROOKLYN MUSEUM OF ART, 200 Eastern Parkway (718-638-5000)
Basquiat is an important, intensely enjoyable retrospective of the neo-expressionist, who died in 1988, at the age of twenty-seven. Through June 5. (Open Wednesdays through Fridays, 10 to 5, and Saturdays and Sundays, 11 to 6.)
NEW MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, Temporarily located in the Chelsea Art Museum, 556 W. 22nd St. (212-219-1222)
Correction, Fiona Tan’s video portraits of inmates and guards were taped in four prisons in Illinois and California.. Through June 4.
Jonah Peretti, leader of the Contagious Media Group at Eyebeam, provides the works-slash-stunts that serve as the core of “Contagious Media,” many of which may have touched down in your in-box in the last few years. “Nike Sweatshop Emails” (2001) details a correspondence with Nike after Peretti attempted (and failed) to order sneakers with the word “sweatshop” emblazoned on them. Other projects include Jim Young and James Hong’s gauge of attractiveness, “Hot or Not” (2000), and the hypnotic, slightly grotesque “Dancing Baby” (1996), by Michael Girard, Robert Lurye, and Ron Lussier. Through June 4. (Open Tuesdays through Saturdays, noon to 6, and Thursday evenings until 8.)
SWISS INSTITUTE, 495 Broadway. 212-925-2035; and GREY ART GALLERY, 100 Washington Sq. E. 212-998-6780.)
OK/OKAY, Conflicting etymologies of the word “O.K.” are printed on the wall of this dual-venue show, with sources ranging from Choctaw to Finnish, ancient Greek to eighteen-thirties slang. The fourteen European artists inside present similarly intriguing takes on history and idiom. Outstanding is Gabriele Di Matteo’s “History Stripped Bare,” a grid of tiny, hilarious canvases that re-create scenes like the murder of Julius Caesar and the funeral of Pope John Paul II, but with all the figures nude. The rest of the work is as winsome and obliging as the show’s title suggests. Through July 16.
COOPER, 534 W. 21st St. 212-255-1105
SOPHIE CALLE, In 1985, Calle’s boyfriend broke her heart with a three-minute 2 A.M. phone call from Paris to her room in a New Delhi hotel. The details of the breakup are furnished through a series of color photographs and black text panels, each paired with another story of suffering solicited by Calle from her friends. Sudden, terrible deaths are the most common tales; the solipsistic repetition of Calle’s disappointment juxtaposed with this shifting, anonymous grief is surprisingly provocative. Through June 30.