Beyond the Armory Booths

NEW YORK—Hundreds if not thousands of art enthusiasts will be hitting New York this week for the Armory Show and all the other fairs that orbit it. In the spirit of squeezing every last drop of stimulation out of the city during Armory week, we offer a quick Top 5 of recommendations that are ostensibly unrelated to any of the fairs (as though any arts event can pretend this isn’t something of a special week in New York).

Rather than list them by preference, we’ve listed them in order of how far they’ll take you away from the fair ethos. Expect to see lots of fairgoers at number 1, but possibly none at all by the time you get to the final event listed under number 5.

1. Get some art for free.
If you find your acquisitive appetite running up against the sorts of prices you’ll find at even the humblest of the week’s fairs, this might be the answer. At the Whitney at 7:00 on Friday evening (when admission is free), L.A.’s Ry Rocklen, one of the most interesting young artists from the current Biennial, will be conducting one of the museum’s “Multiple Edition” artist seminars. Rocklen will not only be talking about his work — which revives and complicates the spirit of Duchamp for the 21st century — and inviting audience discussion, he will also be giving away the 200 multiples he has been commissioned to make for the event. You should book a ticket for this one.

2. Do the Chelsea shuffle.
Thursday evening west of Tenth Avenue might be less frenetic than usual this week, but if looking at art over other people’s shoulders while drinking vinegary wine from a plastic cup is your thing, then there’s plenty to keep you happy from 6:00 p.m. on: stop in on David Claerbout at Yvon Lambert on 21st Street; James Siena at PaceWildenstein on 22nd; André Butzer at Metro Pictures on 24th; Eve Ingalls at SOHO20 and a group show at Agora, both on 25th; Joseph La Piana at Robert Miller and Felipe Barbosa at Sara Meltzer, both on 26th; and Jaeran Won at SHAG on 27th. And of course you’ll find plenty of others on the way.

3. Rock the foundations, if just a little.
In the somewhat incongruous-seeming setting of the Metropolitan Museum’s Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, hear Rob Storr, dean of Yale’s School of Art and director of last summer’s Venice Biennale, consider “What is too taboo in contemporary art?” — a subject that might seem entirely appropriate by the end of this week. He’s promising the likes of Kara Walker, Kiki Smith, Chris Ofili, John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage, Mike Kelley, and Paul McCarthy on his roster of taboo-seekers, but as he’ll be taking in the fairs like the rest of us, he’ll no doubt feature one or two of this week’s enfants terribles as well (Saturday, 6:00 p.m., $23). To set the mood, and if you haven’t seen it yet, you might want to visit the museum’s galleries first and have a look at Damien Hirst’s shark, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, on loan from Steve Cohen for three years. The Met’s outgoing director Phillippe de Montebello suggests that it is “especially revealing and stimulating to confront this work in the context of the entire history of art.” Quite.

4. See a bit of performance art.
With timing that can best be described as “curious,” the Whitney Biennial’s program of performances and installations at the Park Avenue Armory wound up this Sunday. Still, fast-ascending performance artist Tamy Ben-Tor, whose videos go on show at Zach Feuer this week, will be appearing live at The Kitchen at 8:00 on Friday and Saturday nights for just $8. Ben-Tor’s specialty is exaggerated impersonation, and she conjures up a vast range of interconnected characters for audience entertainment and occasional unease. Just two years out of the Columbia MFA program, she starred in both the ’05 and ’07 editions of Performa and recently had a solo show at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet. See her while you still can.

5. Take a stroll.
Not just any stroll, of course, but one of those walking tours that, though locals tend to be rather snooty about them, often turn out to be remarkably entertaining. Depending on how sick of the art world you are by the end of the week, you can choose from Big Onion’s “The Bowery” tour, which starts at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday and costs $15 (art-world crossover: moderate, thanks to the new outcropping of galleries here); the Bakerloo Theater Project’s “Greenwich Village Literary Pub Crawl,” which heads off at 2:00 on Saturday afternoon and will also cost you $15 (art-world crossover: low); and the Big Onion “Multi Ethnic Eating Tour” of the Lower East Side, which starts at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday and costs $20 (art-world crossover: near nonexistent).