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URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: CELEBRITIES (90%); BOOK REVIEWS (90%); PUBLISHING (75%); NOVELS & SHORT STORIES (75%); NON FICTION LITERATURE (75%); FAMILY (74%); HISTORY (72%); TELEVISION PROGRAMMING (72%); TRADE SHOWS (71%); CUSTOMER SERVICE (70%); WRITERS & WRITING (68%); BOOKSTORES (55%)
COMPANY: SIMON & SCHUSTER INC (51%)
GEOGRAPHIC: BOSTON, MA, USA (79%) MASSACHUSETTS, USA (79%); NORTH CAROLINA, USA (78%) UNITED STATES (79%)
LOAD-DATE: July 27, 2008
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The New York Times
July 27, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Agents Replaying A Hollywood Drama
BYLINE: By MICHAEL CIEPLY
SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 2087 words
DATELINE: BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.
ONCE upon a time in Hollywood, a band of rebels left a lumbering old talent agency to start a hot little company of their own -- and in a dozen years or so managed to reach the top of the heap.

Twice upon a time, actually.

Just as Michael S. Ovitz and his peers walked away from the William Morris Agency to found Creative Artists Agency more than 30 years ago, Ariel Z. Emanuel and three associates left International Creative Management in 1995 to found Endeavor.

Creative Artists, under Mr. Ovitz and the people who succeeded him after he left in the mid-'90s, has long been the talent industry's leader, staking its claim as a voracious (and, some detractors said during the Ovitz years, sometimes thuggish) conglomerate that changed the way talent is bought and sold here.

Along the way, Endeavor became Creative Artists' doppelganger. With only a third as many agents and a much smaller client list, the junior agency is known for the sort of quick thinking, ferocity and barely bridled ambition that carried Creative Artists to the top.

But Endeavor now has to show that it has staying power, and how it accomplishes that task offers a window onto the shifting landscape of talent brokering in Hollywood.

While Creative Artists is aggressively expanding into areas like sports and corporate consulting, Endeavor says it has smoothed its rougher, frat house edges and is trying to take advantage of ownership deals, in which Endeavor clients take a stake in their work rather than just being paid a handsome fee.

Mr. Ovitz says that Mr. Emanuel ''and his crew have done the same thing we did, and people don't really give that enough weight. In some strange, blase way, it's taken for granted.''

For his part, Mr. Emanuel says he takes nothing for granted. ''I feel like we're just getting started,'' he says in an interview in the hilltop home of one of his partners, Patrick Whitesell.

Acknowledging speculation that Endeavor is being groomed for a sale or merger, the partners said they had routinely discussed that possibility in the past without finding a combination that overcame the ego and turf issues endemic to the talent trade. They assert that no sale or merger is in the works.

Meanwhile, however, the entertainment business itself is transforming, as digital media supplant conventional television networks and movie theaters. Mr. Emanuel insists that Hollywood's future looks robust, despite a pullback among outside film investors and the determination of television executives to trim budgets.

MR. Emanuel, a close-cropped, sharp-tongued model for the fictional Ari Gold of the HBO series ''Entourage,'' says it's all simply a matter of supply and demand.

''You have the same number of content creators,'' he says. ''But distribution has grown.''

Mr. Emanuel thinks rising opportunity has surpassed the supply of talent, putting clients and their agents (at least those he deems desirable) on the verge of new prosperity, because they can more readily sell their wares to a broader universe of cable television, Internet and independent film buyers. ''The lines have crossed,'' he says.

Even so, on the conventional film front this year, Endeavor ranks behind Creative Artists, which had about 10 directors and 13 stars in movies like ''Iron Man'' and ''What Happens in Vegas.'' Endeavor landed six directors and nine stars in projects like ''The Incredible Hulk'' and the comedy ''Tropic Thunder.''

A closely watched ranking of television client deals compiled annually by TVtracker.com put Endeavor in the top slot for last year, with a slight edge over Creative Artists in overall network and cable deals -- 376 to 359 -- and a clear edge in the representation of ''showrunners,'' the writer-producers who supervise television series.

Endeavor is paid packaging fees on ''Boston Legal,'' ''Gossip Girl'' and others, while Creative Artists reaps the fees from shows like ''E.R.'' and ''Cold Case.''

All of this amounts to real money, by the way.

Endeavor's revenue is estimated to be a bit more than $100 million a year, well under half that of Creative Artists, according to people at both agencies who spoke anonymously to avoid conflict within either company. (Endeavor partners declined to give a figure, and Michael Mand, a spokesman for Creative Artists, declined to comment.)

Both William Morris and International Creative Management, two agencies that rank behind Creative Artists and Endeavor in the Hollywood pecking order by some measures, appear to have more revenue than Endeavor, thanks in part to what agents like to call ''legacy'' -- steady cash flow from movie and television work booked over long decades of representation. (The ticklish game of ranking agencies is something of an apples-and-oranges exercise, as each firm has pursued different strategies.)

Virtually all of Endeavor's profit after salaries and bonuses is distributed to partners annually. Without much in the way of physical assets or retained earnings, Endeavor, like many agencies, is an ephemeral business.

It has tried to leverage its smaller size by building an esprit de corps reminiscent of Creative Artists' early days. Its offices, designed by the architect Neil Denari, feature sculpted spaces and white halls. Departments are deliberately mixed: television packaging agents work side-by-side with those representing movie writers or major stars.

Promotion from within is the rule -- about 35 of the 80 or so agents started in the mailroom or as assistants -- and the agency attempts to govern itself democratically (Hollywood egos notwithstanding).

Mr. Emanuel and Mr. Whitesell, without corporate titles, join Rick Rosen of the television department and Adam Venit, a motion picture talent agent, as fixed members of a seven-member executive committee. The remaining slots are filled for two-year terms according to a vote by the agency's 26 partners.

Several former clients privately maintain that Endeavor's internal coordination lags. They note that Creative Artists is quicker to match its clients with each other, for instance, by pairing an available script with an agency-represented director. Endeavor leans more toward individual representation, with agents inclined to advance and protect their own clients.

Yet Endeavor continues to hold its own with clients. In the last few rounds of client swapping, Endeavor lost Ashton Kutcher to Creative Artists, which lost Robert De Niro to Endeavor. Two longtime agents joined William Morris from Endeavor, which signed three others from International Creative Management.

In the last three months, Endeavor also picked up a string of high-profile comedians that includes three A-listers: Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Amy Poehler.

As it mixes it up with other agencies, Endeavor is also maturing into something more than an upstart. ''The firm grew up,'' said Thomas Strickler, a movie agent who joined Mr. Emanuel, Mr. Rosen and David Greenblatt (who has since left Endeavor) as a co-founder of Endeavor. That has meant trying to abandon rougher elements of a corporate culture that landed the agency in serious trouble about seven years after its birth.

IN April 2002, an agent named Sandra Epstein sued Endeavor, alleging, among other things, sexual harassment and pointing out that at one point she had been the lone woman among a dozen male agents.

According to court papers, Ms. Epstein ultimately settled her claims for $2.25 million. But not before underwriters at Lloyd's of London, Endeavor's insurer, canceled the agency's employment practices policy, provoking a second suit by Endeavor against Lloyd's and a law firm the insurers had been paying to represent the agency.

In depositions and court filings in the second suit -- ultimately settled under undisclosed terms -- Ms. Epstein and other Endeavor employees described office escapades that included rampant pot-smoking, obscene hazing at corporate retreats, sexual frolics on desks, and one agent demanding that his assistants book prostitutes for him.

Mr. Emanuel, the filings said, allowed a friend to operate a pornographic Web site out of the agency's quarters. Also, according to Ms. Epstein's filings, Mr. Emanuel made antigay and racist remarks -- accusations he disputed at the time.

Ms. Epstein said Mr. Emanuel blocked her from sending a script about the Navy Seals to the actor Wesley Snipes. ''That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard,'' the agent was reported in the papers to have said. ''Everyone knows that blacks don't swim.''

Endeavor's partners said they were blocked by legal agreements from discussing the case.

The case came at a time of upheaval at Endeavor, but it weathered its problems. Today, about half of Endeavor's agents and a quarter of its partners are women. Managers at the company say that it has no African-American agents but that it has had some in the past. Women who work at the firm say things have changed.

''Man or woman, it doesn't matter,'' said Nancy Josephson, a partner who joined the company in 2006. ''I can't tell you the number of times Ari Emanuel has said to me, 'I've got your back.' ''

Today, Endeavor -- like some of its competitors -- has focused on what it calls ''the entrepreneurial client.'' That list includes stars and other creative clients who have a stake in the enterprises most closely associated with them, like the writer-producer-performer Ricky Gervais (''The Office'') and the former supermodel Tyra Banks (''America's Next Top Model'').

Ideally, such clients create and often retain ownership in projects that can bounce through iterations on movie screens, the stage, cable television or the Internet -- generating revenue for the agency and its allies at each turn.

The British comic Mr. Gervais, for instance, was a writer, director and star of ''This Side of the Truth,'' a movie set for next year about a man who invents lying in a world where it didn't exist. Earlier this month, he brought his live stage show to Hollywood and used the visit to grab media attention for another of his films, ''Ghost Town.''

Endeavor also has to retain a foothold in the television industry as it is reinvented, with more reality programming and a shift away from the big networks. When Endeavor was founded, Mr. Rosen notes, it focused on representing television writer-producers, had few filmmakers and had virtually no movie stars in its stable. ''We're now close to 50-50,'' Mr. Rosen said of its film and television businesses.

In today's cable-driven world, television agents are pursuing more buyers who generally pay less than the conventional broadcast networks, while also navigating the business of making television pilots -- a craft that was heavily damaged by the recent writers' strike.

While television has become challenging, Endeavor has had an easier time expanding its film business by raiding agents from other firms -- an expensive proposition, though Mr. Emanuel insists that his agency has never ''paid retail'' for new agents.

A tipping point came when Mr. Whitesell arrived from Creative Artists in 2001, bringing with him much-needed stars like Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Christian Bale, star of the new Batman movie, ''The Dark Knight.'' John Lesher (now a top executive at Paramount) joined the next year, bringing sophisticated filmmakers like David O. Russell. (Mr. Venit had arrived several years earlier, bringing Adam Sandler to the agency.)

The accretion led, finally, to this year's strong showing in the high-stakes summer season, following a spectacular performance at the Oscars in 2007, when clients took a raft of awards for films like ''The Departed'' and ''Little Miss Sunshine.''

But some key Endeavor partners are in their 40s, approaching the age at which Mr. Ovitz and his acolytes at Creative Artists began to itch for new pursuits.

For example, Mr. Emanuel -- whose brothers are Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois and the bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel -- hasn't been without distractions. He has been at the front of Senator Barack Obama's Hollywood campaign but says he doesn't intend to make politics a full-time occupation or to put aside a personal client list that includes Larry David, Mark Wahlberg and Martin Scorsese.

Mr. Venit and Mr. Rosen both say they intend to stay put. And Mr. Whitesell, a gravelly voiced 43-year-old, concurs, saying that Endeavor has become too interesting of late for him to even think about leaving.

''People want to be a part of it,'' he says.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ARTISTS & PERFORMERS (90%); MERGERS (86%); FILM (78%); ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS (78%); INTERVIEWS (74%); TELEVISION INDUSTRY (63%); TELEVISION PROGRAMMING (60%)
COMPANY: CREATIVE ARTISTS AGENCY INC (57%); INTERNATIONAL CREATIVE MANAGEMENT LTD (57%); INTERNATIONAL CREATIVE MANAGEMENT INC (57%); WILLIAM MORRIS AGENCY INC (57%)
PERSON: MICHAEL MCMAHON (53%)
GEOGRAPHIC: CALIFORNIA, USA (73%) UNITED STATES (73%)
LOAD-DATE: July 27, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Creative Artists, once a rebel itself, is facing Ari Emanuel's talent agency. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMIE RECTOR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES0(BU1)

The remarkably democratic Endeavor has 26 partners, including Adam Venit, front, and, from left, Patrick Whitesell, Rick Rosen, Tom Strickler and Ari Emanuel. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMIE RECTOR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(BU6)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

551 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
July 27, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

BYLINE: By PHYLLIS KORKKI
SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; THE COUNT; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 161 words
Losing one's job can be humbling and unsettling. But it can also be an opportunity to pursue a dream long deferred, like starting a business.

At least that is the hopeful theory. Unfortunately, in 2008, the conditions that have led to a surge in layoffs have also caused a severe tightening of credit, causing some entrepreneurial dreams to die on the vine.

According to the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, only 4.3 percent of the unemployed managers and executives who sought help from the firm started businesses in the second quarter. That compared with 7.2 percent in the first quarter, and an average of 8.3 percent since the beginning of 2001.

The glory years for entrepreneurial types were from 1988 to 1991: that's when an average of 18 percent of the people surveyed by Challenger were able to start businesses. Back then, unlike now, economic conditions converged to help a greater share of start-up dreams become reality.

PHYLLIS KORKKI
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ENTREPRENEURSHIP (91%); LAYOFFS (88%); EMPLOYMENT SERVICES (73%); ECONOMIC NEWS (50%)
LOAD-DATE: July 27, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: CHART: Fewer Start-Ups: The percent of unemployed executives starting their own businesses has fallen since the early '90s.
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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The New York Times
July 25, 2008 Friday

The New York Times on the Web

Museum and Gallery Listings
BYLINE: By THE NEW YORK TIMES
SECTION: Section E; Column 0; Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 6101 words
ART

Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art.

Museums

AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM: 'ASA AMES: OCCUPATION SCULPTURING,' through Sept. 14. This first show devoted to the American sculptor Asa Ames (1823-51) is a gem. Its eight carved and painted wood portraits -- roughly two-thirds of the work of Ames's brief maturity -- introduce an artist who translated the style of self-taught American portrait painters into three dimensions, imbuing their artificiality with the sense of suspended life found in 19th-century photography. A crowded, wonderfully bizarre photograph that Ames orchestrated of himself, his work and a friend is a poignant tribute to his ambition. 45 West 53rd Street, [phone], folkartmuseum.org.

(Roberta Smith)

5AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM: 'DARGERISM: CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS AND HENRY DARGER,' through Sept. 21. The great Outsider Henry Darger (1892-1973) was completely unknown as an artist during his own lifetime. Now his epic adventure, ''The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion'' is famous and a big influence on mainstream artists. This intriguing exhibition presents 12 of Darger's gorgeous, bizarre watercolors and works by 11 contemporary artists who have been inspired by him, including Justine Kurland, Trenton Doyle Hancock and, most surprisingly, Paula Rego. (See above.) (Ken Johnson)

OK 5/2,9,16,23,30:6/6,13,20,27:7/4,11,18,25AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM: 'EARL CUNNINGHAM'S AMERICA,' through Sept. 7. The folk artist Earl Cunningham (1893-1977) romanticized the American landscape without hyperbole. Cunningham didn't suffuse his paintings with divine light or invoke manifest destiny, like the Hudson River School artists; he simply showed the many small interactions of the Atlantic coastal ecosystem -- a delicate balance of dock workers, harbor pilots, fishermen, farmers, waterfowl and American Indian tribes. Some 50 of his cheerful, intensely colored paintings are on view at the Lincoln Square branch of the American Folk Art Museum. Whether you think of Cunningham as a folk artist or a Modernist, his paintings display an intuitive grace. 2 Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets. [phone], folkartmuseum.org. (Karen Rosenberg)

OK6/6,13,20,27:7/4,11,18,25ASIA SOCIETY AND MUSEUM: 'ARDESHIR MOHASSESS: ART AND SATIRE IN IRAN,' through Aug. 3. Given that his work is found in newspapers and magazines as well as on gallery walls, Westerners might tend to think of Ardeshir Mohassess, in the simplest terms, as Iran's answer to Saul Steinberg. His drawings have been published in The New York Times, as well as in The Nation and Playboy. Yet they are more ambiguous than typical op-ed illustrations and more subtle than most political cartoons. Some 70 of his works are on view in a show assembled by the Iranian-born artists Shirin Neshat and Nicky Nodjoumi. In Mr. Mohassess's drawings the coded beauty of traditional Persian art comes face to face with the ugliness of successive autocratic regimes. 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street, [phone], asiasociety.org. (Rosenberg)

ASIA SOCIETY AND MUSEUM: 'VIETNAM: A MEMORIAL WORK BY JUN NGUYEN-HATSUSHIBA,' through Aug. 3. In a dreamily allegorical video by this Vietnamese artist, six young men struggle to pedal and drag three pedicabs across the sandy and rocky bottom of a shallow sea. Unequipped with breathing apparatus, they periodically swim to the surface for air before resuming their Sisyphean task. Near the end they abandon their burdens and swim away, in a lovely image of submarine flight. (See above.) (Johnson)

BROOKLYN MUSEUM: 'CLICK! A CROWD-CURATED EXHIBITION,' through Aug. 10. Inspired by ''The Wisdom of Crowds'' by the business writer James Surowiecki, ''Click!'' is more of a sociological experiment than a conventional photography show. Photographers submitted their pictures to the museum's Web site for online appraisal by any and all comers. The 78 top-ranked pictures are now on display in a small gallery at the museum. Is the crowd a better judge of artistic merit than an individual expert? You be the judge. 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, [phone], brooklynmuseum.org. (Ken Johnson)

GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM: 'LOUISE BOURGEOIS,' through Sept. 28. This retrospective of the French-born New York artist, now 96, has been seen in Paris and London and looks great in the Guggenheim's big spiral, clean but organic -- fecund, tumid, hands-on -- and unclassically classical. The installation is chronological, from early found-wood abstract pieces to recent soft sculptures in fabric, but there is nothing linear about Ms. Bourgeois's thinking: images come and go and reappear, like motives in a dream, and they're intense like a dream. After her long career, the art world tends to take Ms. Bourgeois for granted. That's a mistake. 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, [phone], guggenheim.org. (Holland Cotter)

INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY: 'BILL WOOD'S BUSINESS,' through Sept. 7. Bill Wood Jr. was a commercial photographer who operated in Fort Worth from 1937 to 1970. Twenty years ago Diane Keaton, the film actress, photographer and photography collector, purchased 20,000 negatives left over from his business, and now 210 of those images are on display in this fascinating, compact exhibition. Mr. Wood photographed babies, pets, weddings, dead people in their coffins, retirement parties and recitals. For local businesses he shot grocery displays, new cars, new houses, oven knobs and prayer books. All his images are lucid and banal yet curiously affecting -- often inadvertently funny, sad or strange. 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at 43rd Street, [phone], www.icp.org. (Johnson)

INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY: 'HEAVY LIGHT: RECENT PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO FROM JAPAN,' through Sept. 7. The first large museum survey of Japanese photography in this country in decades feels a bit phoned in. About half of its 13 artists are ready for international exposure, adeptly covering the bases of landscape, portraiture and still life in different ways. But all provide useful glimpses of Japanese life and culture today, including a tendency to prolong adolescence and a nearly inescapable penchant for artifice or its more exalted manifestation, style. (See above.) (Smith)

JEWISH MUSEUM: 'ACTION/ABSTRACTION: POLLOCK, DE KOONING AND AMERICAN ART, 1940-1976,' through Sept. 21. With the help of some stupendous paintings and a beautiful installation, the same old story of postwar American painting's glory is told a new way: through the rivalry between its most prominent advocates, the art critics Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, and through their intellectual milieu. 1109 Fifth Avenue, at 92nd Street, [phone], thejewishmuseum.org. (Smith)

THE JEWISH MUSEUM: 'WARHOL'S JEWS: TEN PORTRAITS RECONSIDERED,' through Aug. 3. In 1980 Andy Warhol produced a series of portraits of famous Jews, including Sigmund Freud, Gertrude Stein and the Marx Brothers. When they appeared at the Jewish Museum that year, the critics hated them. But they were warmly received by Jewish audiences when they were exhibited in museums and Jewish institutions around the country. Viewing them in this return engagement, it is hard to imagine anyone growing very excited for or against such bland, posterlike images. (See above.) (Johnson)

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: 'ART OF THE ROYAL COURT: TREASURES IN PIETRE DURE FROM THE PALACES OF EUROPE,' through Sept. 21. Pietre dure -- one of the most eye-boggling collaborations of man and nature -- is the superfine inlay (mostly on furniture) or small sculpture made from semiprecious stones. Its first extensive survey should appeal to rock hounds and the art-fixated alike. It is a sumptuous sprawl of 170 objects from around the late-16th century to the early-19th century. Most reflect the styles, tastes and princely whims of their times and are, to say the least, nexuses of extraordinary allure, prestige and let-them-eat-cake presumption. This show is a stealth blockbuster. [phone], metmuseum.org. (Smith)

5THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: 'FRAMING A CENTURY: MASTER PHOTOGRAPHERS, 1840-1940,' through Sept. 1. Organized by Malcolm Daniel, curator of the Met's photography department, this show examines the medium's first great century through extensive looks at 13 innovators. It proceeds majestically from stillness to motion, from landscape and ruin to city, from people frozen in studio poses to people on the move. William Henry Fox Talbot is at one end, Brassai is at the other. All used the camera to find bigness in themselves, in the new medium and, above all, in the world. . (See above.) (Smith)

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: 'JEFF KOONS ON THE ROOF,' through Oct. 26. Panoramic views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline from the Cantor Roof Garden are distracting, but the three sculptures now on display there are well worth visiting. Each is a greatly enlarged, glossily lacquered, stainless-steel representation of something small: a toy dog made of twisted-together balloons; a Valentine heart wrapped in red foil; and the silhouette of Piglet from a Winnie the Pooh coloring book randomly colored, as if by a young child.(See above.) (Johnson)

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: 'J. M. W. TURNER,' through Sept. 21. Unbelievably, this gathering of nearly 150 paintings and watercolors is the first major American retrospective of this great British landscape painter. It provides a sweeping account of Turner's work; his debt to Poussin and Claude Lorrain; his reinvention of history painting; his DeMillean views of Venice; his determined proto-abstract depiction of heavy weather of all kinds, all the while swinging back and forth between overblown and moving, inspired and mechanical. Turner's ambition seems to exclude all else, including the viewer, which gives the work an oddly imperious, impersonal tone. It may explain why you can emerge from the show impressed by the majesty of his vision and yet oddly untouched, even chilled. (See above.) (Smith)

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: 'MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE TREASURES FROM THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM,' through Aug. 17. This beautiful exhibition presents a diverse assortment of 34 small, choice objects from one of the world's great repositories of European decorative arts. The showstopper is an eight-inch-tall Virgin and Child made of boxwood by the German sculptor Veit Stoss around 1500-05. The carving is done with such tenderness and delicacy that it seems as if the wood had been animated by some magical spirit. (See above.) metmuseum.org. (Johnson)

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: 'TIBETAN ARMS AND ARMOR FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION,' through fall 2009. The paradox of militant Buddhism inspired the Metropolitan's fascinating 2006 exhibition ''Warriors of the Himalayas: Rediscovering the Arms and Armor of Tibet.'' Now Donald LaRocca, the museum's arms and armor curator, has created a follow-up installation of 35 objects from the Met's collection (including 5 acquired in 2007). This time the focus is on defense rather than offense: examples of horse and body armor, dating from the 15th through the 20th centuries, outnumber swords, guns and spears. Most of these objects have seen more ceremonial than military action. All of them equate supreme craftsmanship with defense of the body and Buddhist principles. (See above.) (Rosenberg)

MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM: 'ILLUMINATING THE MEDIEVAL HUNT,' through Aug. 10. As part of a conservation effort, the Morgan Library's 14th-century hunting manuscript ''Le Livre de la Chasse'' has been temporarily unbound, affording viewers a rare opportunity to study the individual pages. Fifty illustrated leaves are on view in this show, along with other manuscripts and printed books from the 11th to the 16th century. Gaston Phoebus's authoritative text examines the characteristics of various wild animals, explores different methods of hunting and provides instruction on caring for hounds. ''Le Livre de la Chasse'' was written for medieval aristocrats, but it will appeal to contemporary athletes, nature lovers and dog owners. 225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, [phone], themorgan.org. (Rosenberg)

MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM: 'PHILIP GUSTON: WORKS ON PAPER,' through Aug. 31. This enthralling exhibition of 100 works, mostly drawings, tracks Guston's evolution from his Abstract Expressionist efforts of the 1950s to his darkly comic and hugely influential representational pictures of the 1970s. While he went through several radical stylistic changes over those three decades, a determination to work from basic instincts and primal feelings runs throughout, giving the show a powerful autobiographical momentum. (See above.) (Johnson)

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: 'DALI: PAINTING AND FILM,' through Sept. 15. Salvador Dali's lifelong preoccupation with film -- so perfectly suited to his hyper-real Surrealist painting -- spanned nearly his entire career, from the groundbreaking ''Chien Andalou'' to little-known works from the 1960s and '70s that capture an early Happening by Dali or presage appropriation art of the 1980s. This exhibition skillfully mixes a sizable number of paintings and drawings with continuous screenings of several films, including the dream sequence from Alfred Hitchcock's ''Spellbound.'' Because many of Dali's film projects did not come to fruition, the show gives you an unusually intimate sense of his artistic process and his artistic imagination, which was always on fast-forward. [phone], moma.org. (Smith)NATIONAL ACADEMY MUSEUM: 'THE 183RD ANNUAL: AN INVITATIONAL EXHIBITION OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN ART,' through Sept. 7. If you emerged from the Whitney Biennial wondering where all the painting went, don't despair. At this exhibition abstract painting reigns, sculpture is small and nonthreatening, and photography is practically nonexistent. It's not quite the art world memorialized in the current show ''Action/Abstraction'' at the Jewish Museum, but the critics Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg would find plenty to argue about. This year's show is a nonmember affair. (Alternate years are members only.) 1083 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, [phone], nationalacademy.org. (Rosenberg)

NEUE GALERIE: 'WIENER WERKSTaTTE JEWELRY,' through Sept. 1. Founded in 1903, the Wiener Werkstatte, or Vienna Workshops, set out to prove that the modern world still needed fine craftsmanship and good design. Its first product was jewelry, of which this stunning exhibition presents 40 gorgeous examples. Works in gold, silver and semiprecious stones by the workshop's founders, Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser, and others -- including, most notably, Dagobert Peche -- magically blur the line between personal ornament and miniature sculpture. 1048 Fifth Avenue, at 86th Street, [phone], neuegalerie.org. (Johnson)

NEW MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART: 'AFTER NATURE,' through Sept. 21. This strange, lugubrious, wildly uneven dream of an exhibition exudes a distinctly European mood of ruminative pessimism, relieved intermittently by moments of black humor and otherworldly fantasy. Meditating on a spiritual landscape of death and destruction, it lurches from transcendentally thrilling to portentous to kitschy. The best moment is on the fourth floor, where the elevator doors open on the stunning, tragicomic spectacle of Zoe Leonard's dead tree held up by cables and stanchions and Maurizio Cattelan's full-size horse hanging high in the air, with its head seemingly buried in the wall. 235 Bowery, at Prince Street, Lower East Side, [phone], newmuseum.org. (Johnson)

5NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES LIBRARY: 'EMINENT DOMAIN: CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE CITY,' through Aug. 29. This show highlights recent work by five New York artists: Thomas Holton, Bettina Johae, Reiner Leist, Zoe Leonard and Ethan Levitas. None are street photographers in the conventional sense. Broadly speaking, the exhibition is a series of responses to change in the city (the source of which might be anything from gentrification to globalization). Weaving the five projects together is an autobiographical text by the artist Glenn Ligon, ''Housing in New York: A Brief History'' (2007), in which he reminisces about the various New York City apartments he has occupied over the course of his life. Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, [phone], nypl.org. (Rosenberg)

* P.S. 1 CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER: 'ARCTIC HYSTERIA: NEW ART FROM FINLAND,' through Sept. 15. Urgent emotions and mystical fantasies animate otherwise coolly controlled works in this terrific 16-artist show. See especially Veli Grano's heartbreaking documentary portrait of a Finnish couple who believe that their unborn child was taken by aliens to live on a planet in the Sirius star system, and Salla Tykka's dreamy short film in which a young female voyeur is overwhelmed by the sight of an athletic, bare-chested young man spinning a lasso in a suburban house. 22-25 Jackson Avenue, at 46th Street, Long Island City, Queens, [phone], ps1.org. (Johnson)

SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN: 'REMIX: NEW MODERNITIES IN A POST-INDIAN WORLD,' through Sept. 21. This exhibition argues that for many young American Indian artists, being Indian does not necessarily determine who or what they are and does not oblige them to produce a certifiably Indian style. Presenting works by 15 artists of at least partly Indian descent, the show includes videos, abstract and representational paintings, imitation folk art sculptures and photographs. Some works obviously are about Indian identity; others are not. The most conspicuous overall influence is what you might call art school postmodernism. National Museum of the American Indian, George Gustav Heye Center, One Bowling Green, Lower Manhattan, [phone], americanindian.si.edu.

(Johnson)

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART: 'PAUL MCCARTHY: CENTRAL SYMMETRICAL ROTATION MOVEMENT: THREE INSTALLATIONS, TWO FILMS,' through Oct. 12. Mr. McCarthy's fans are in for a shock. They will find almost nothing of what this Los Angeles master of transgressive provocation is famous for in this smart, tightly focused exhibition of works dating from 1966 to the present. No psychotic clowning, no pornographic vaudeville. Instead they will discover Mr. McCarthy's art stripped to its bare, abstract yet still metaphorically resonant essentials. The main attractions are two scarily mechanized rooms and a walk-in enclosure dizzyingly animated by feedback loops from four rotating video cameras. [phone], whitney.org. (Johnson)

Whitney Museum of American Art: 'Polaroids: Mapplethorpe,' through Sept. 7. During his 20s, between 1970 and 1975, Robert Mapplethorpe made more than 1,500 photographs with Polaroid cameras. This may surprise viewers who are more familiar with his posed and polished studio photography of the '80s. ''Polaroids: Mapplethorpe'' offers about 100 examples drawn largely from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, including portraits, still lifes, erotica and works that fall into more than one of these categories. All the themes of Mapplethorpe's mature work -- the body as a site of pain and pleasure, the ideals of classical beauty, the celebration of alternative lifestyles -- are here, but rendered in a more spontaneous medium. (See above.)

(Rosenberg)

Galleries: Uptown

EDWARD HOPPER: 'ETCHINGS' Early in his career, when the demands of commercial illustration left him little time to paint, Edward Hopper turned to printmaking and produced some of the most moving and memorable graphic images in 20th-century American art. This small gem of a show presents 13 of those works, dating from 1915 to 1923. Craig F. Starr Gallery, 5 East 73rd Street, [phone], starr-art.com, through Aug. 15. (Johnson)

'QUIET POLITICS' Works in this elegant group show express political impulses through understated means. '' 'Untitled' Fear'' by Felix Gonzalez-Torres is a Minimalist box made of blue-tinted mirrors. David Hammons's African-American flag -- the Stars and Stripes in black, red and green -- is a sly rejoinder to Jasper Johns's flag paintings. Michael Brown's stainless-steel simulation of a cracked mirror freezes an act of anarchy into a lovely, lacey web. Zwirner & Wirth, 32 East 69th Street, [phone], zwirnerandwirth.com, through Aug. 29. (Johnson)

'ROAD WORKS' This rich selection of comic drawings, paintings and sculptures about life on the road features work by more than two dozen artists, including H. C. Westermann, Saul Steinberg and the great outsider Joseph Yoakum. Adam Baumgold Gallery, 74 East 79th Street, [phone], adambaumgoldgallery.com, through Aug. 15. (Johnson)

Galleries: SoHo

'CONSTRACTION' The title of this visually fizzy group show conjoins the terms conceptual and abstraction. Tauba Auerbach's black-and-white tiled floor and Peter Coffin's rotating party disc on the ceiling make the gallery seem like a hip boutique. On the walls are eye-buzzing neo-Op canvases by Ms. Auerbach, rainbow-hued dot paintings by Xylor Jane and psychedelic murals made of colored wooden slats by Ara Peterson. Mitzi Pederson puts a feminine twist on macho Minimalist sculpture, and Joe Bradley humorously anthropomorphizes Minimalist painting. Deitch Projects, 76 Grand Street, [phone], deitch.com, through Aug. 9. (Johnson)

DAWN MELLOR: 'A CURSE ON YOUR WALLS' Large canvases illustrating scenes from a punk, post-apocalyptic version of ''The Wizard of Oz'' by this English painter are darkly comical and rousingly ambitious. In the rear gallery hang 71 portraits of famous people and celebrities who, with painterly panache, Ms. Mellor has subjected to all kinds of comic, bizarre and horrific transformations. Team, 83 Grand Street, between Wooster and Greene Streets, [phone], teamgallery.com, through Aug. 8. (Johnson)

FRANCISCO DE GOYA: 'LOS DESASTRES DE LA GUERRA (THE DISASTERS OF WAR)' No artist before or since Goya has depicted the domino-effect devastation that warfare visits upon a land, its people and their moral fiber with such precision, formal invention and pathos. His 80 etchings, made between 1810 and 1820 in response to the French invasion of Spain and the subsequent Spanish War of Independence, are more unblinking and pertinent than ever. It is amazing to see them lining the walls of this simple space, especially given its location in a neighborhood that is now synonymous with shopaholic oblivion. Peter Blum Gallery, 99 Wooster Street, near Spring Street, SoHo, [phone], peterblumgallery.com, through Aug. 1. (Smith)

Galleries: Chelsea

CROP ROTATION' The most impressive piece in this perplexing group show, organized by the independent curator Clarissa Dalrymple, is a pair of enormous black circles painted by Neil Campbell in a corner of the main gallery. Giving the illusion of openings into infinite space, they suggest Anish Kapoor on a low budget. Don't miss Jeffrey Wells's video projection of an almost invisible line wavering in another corner of the gallery. Marianne Boesky Gallery, 509 West 24th Street, [phone], marianneboeskygallery.com, through Aug. 15. (Johnson)

PHILIP PEARLSTEIN: 'THEN AND NOW' Those who think the figurative painter Philip Pearlstein's art has changed little (or not at all) over the last four decades may be surprised by this pairing of his early and recent works. His nudes are as smooth-skinned and glassy-eyed as ever, but in the newer paintings they are surrounded by a garage sale's worth of toys and lawn ornaments. Curiously, all this clutter only emphasizes Mr. Pearlstein's clinical treatment of the body. Betty Cuningham, 541 West 25th Street, [phone], bettycuninghamgallery.com, through Aug. 8. (Karen Rosenberg)

'I WONT GROW UP' Artworks that appear to be made for or by children make up this entertaining 30-artist show. Mark Fox's video ''Nutzilla,'' in which a giant Mr. Peanut violently attacks the Cincinnati Art Museum, is hilarious. George Stoll's hand-made, child-size costumes, one a skeleton and the other a clown, are delicately evocative. Tim Liddy's painted simulation of an old Twister game box is an extraordinary feat of trompe l'oeil realism. Cheim & Read, 547 West 25th Street, [phone], cheimread.com, through Aug. 29. (Johnson)

ANISH KAPOOR This Indian-born sculptor, based in London, inaugurates the Gladstone Gallery's handsome new exhibition space with a dazzling if trick-prone exhibition of three polished-steel geometric volumes and one curved wall made of highly reflective polished steel. They look a bit like immobilized mercury, but their surfaces are anything but. As you move around them, they move too. You investigate the nature of their always curved surfaces by watching the reflections ooze and mutate. Space, architecture, light, the other works and whoever else is present are all implicated. Gladstone Gallery, 530 West 21st Street, [phone], gladstonegallery.com, through Aug. 15. (Smith)

TETSUMI KUDO This show introduces the Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo (1935-1990) with 26 derisively beautiful, macabre sculptures that examine the human condition and find it wanting. Fluorescent colors and mutant forms (plants sprouting phalluses) convey a post-apocalyptic tone not surprising for an artist in postwar Japan. ''Survival of the Avant-Garde'' (1985) is a plastic skull whose body has melted into a swirl of brightly colored thread, possibly because of an atom bomb. Several works in birdcages involve distorted faces and spidery hands, which evoke the eccentrics and grotesques of Japanese folklore, but Mr. Kudo also fits in all over the map of Neo-Dada and its discontents. Andrea Rosen Gallery, 525 West 24th Street, [phone], andrearosengallery.com, through Aug. 15. (Smith)

'NOT SO SUBTLE SUBTITLE' Selected by the artist Matthew Bannon, this intermittently absorbing, often puzzling show of mostly small works on paper by 24 artists has an insiderish feel. It includes Christopher Williams's photograph of the blank white back cover of an exhibition catalog; John Stezaker's collages in which postcards depicting rocks are pasted over film stills of lovers; and Nick Mauss's small abstractions made by scratching through aluminum leaf into black gesso grounds. Casey Kaplan, 525 West 21st Street, [phone], caseykaplangallery.com, through Aug. 1. (Johnson)

'RETROSPECTIVE' With Marcel Duchamp's miniature career survey in a briefcase as its centerpiece, this sprawling group show presents works by various artists that function as compendiums of their earlier efforts. One fascinating room presents written and photographic documentation of all the performances that Chris Burden did from 1971 to '73. Another has all the films and videos that Douglas Gordon has produced since 1992, running on 50 monitors. Gagosian Gallery, 522 West 21st Street, [phone], gagosian.com, through Aug. 22. (Johnson)

THE WORLD'S SMALLEST ART FAIR Probably bound for the record books, this enterprising variant on the standard summer group show includes 28 galleries from the United States and Europe. It is taking place in a large front window, where each participating gallery is represented by a single small work of art; all are installed in neat rows, as if along aisles, and a floor plan is available. As with any art fair, there are unknown artists and galleries to learn about, and a modest media program selected by the artist Alix Pearlstein can be viewed inside the gallery, which is outfitted like a normal-size V.I.P. lounge. Anna Kustera Gallery, 520 West 21st Street, Chelsea [phone], annakustera.com; through Aug. 1. (Smith)

Galleries: Other

FIA BACKSTROM: 'THAT SOCIAL SPACE BETWEEN SPEAKING AND MEANING' Several deft ways with words create a transparent environmental collage of colliding voices and situations. Art reviews, gallery news releases, statements by Ralph Nader and more are deployed in wallpaper designs or extrapolated into brand-expanding tablecloths. Language-related works by other artists are incorporated, and conversations with invited guests are regularly added. The prison house of language is shown to be a soft, inescapable web, ever available for repurposing and revelation. White Columns, 320 West 13th Street, at Horatio Street, West Village, [phone], whitecolumns.org; closes on Saturday.(Smith)

'PERSONAL PROTOCOLS AND OTHER PREFERENCES: AN EXHIBITION WITH WORKS BY MICHAEL BEUTLER, ESRA ERSEN AND KIRSTINE ROEPSTORFF/I'VE GOT SOMETHING IN MY EYE' Fun happens in these two exhibitions, one featuring three young artists, based in Berlin; the other selected from the Hessel Collection (with additions) by Bik Van der Pol, a pair of humorously inclined Dutch artists who have worked together since 1995. Combined, they provide monumental walls made of bright paper blocks to get past, newly built stairs to climb, unusual seating to try and art jokes to get. Luckily there is just enough seriousness to go around, with the videos in both exhibitions supplying some of the best moments. Center for Curatorial Studies/Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, [phone], www.bard.edu/ccs, through Sept. 7. (Smith)

5TOM SACHS: 'BRONZE COLLECTION' Public sculptures, spaces and monuments, as well as form and function, are commented on and lampooned in bronze sculptures of everything from a greatly enlarged Hello Kitty, cast from the artist's characteristic patchwork foam core and painted white, to lighter-looking versions of Le Corbusier's classic thigh-high cast-concrete street lamps from the 1950s. The routine realism of other bronze pieces involving car batteries, skateboarders' quarterpipes and a Dumpster seem out of step with Mr. Sachs's usual artisanal quirkiness. He's nothing if he's not cute. Lever House, 390 Park Avenue, at 53rd Street, 3/5cq 4/5(212) 228-5555, through Sept. 6. 3/5cq 4/5 (Smith)

Public Art

'THE NEW YORK CITY WATERFALLS'Walt Whitman would be pleased. The four waterfalls that the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has temporarily insinuated along Whitman's beloved East River (one on Manhattan, two in Brooklyn, a fourth on Governors Island) tweak the ecstatic experience of city life that is especially palpable at water's edge. Forming a mammoth yet oddly discreet work of shoreline land art, they are spectacular only in the cumulative sense, although the top level of Pier 17 at the South Street Seaport is a great place from which to pick out all four. Their scaffoldings and standard New York apartment riser pipes make them, strictly speaking, fountains. But they are also mirages that add uncanny signs of a primordial Eden that never was. Pier 35 in Lower Manhattan, the eastern foot of the Brooklyn Bridge; between Piers 4 and 5 near the Brooklyn Heights Promenade; north shore of Governors Island; nycwaterfalls.org, through Oct. 13. (Smith)

Last Chance

MAT COLLISHAW: 'DELIVERANCE' In the darkness of Mr. Collishaw's technically tricky but stirring installation, photographic images continually and unpredictably flash and fade away here and there on all four walls. The black-and-white, near life-size images show men and women carrying half-naked children out of nocturnal backgrounds. It's as if you were in the midst of some great human calamity -- or dreaming of one. Tanya Bonakdar, 521 West 21st Street, Chelsea, [phone], tanyabonakdargallery.com; closes on Thursday. (Johnson)

'DEEP COMEDY' Mysteriously humorous highlights of this group show include John Wesley's painting of Donald Duck giving birth and Vija Celmins's painting of a steaming electric frying pan. A video by Michael Smith and Joshua White about a fictitious wellness center spoofs New Age entrepreneurship. Christian Jankowski's mock-documentary film in which nonprofessional child actors play famous artists discussing their works satirizes art-world language and customs to surprisingly touching effect. Marian Goodman, 24 West 57th Street, [phone], mariangoodman.com; closes on Wednesday. (Johnson)

DAVID ELLIS: 'DOZENS' Mr. Ellis's penchants for percussion, performance, graffiti and stop-motion animation come together with exhilarating kinetic results. The tour-de-force ''FAMS 1 (Fine Art Moving and Storage'' marshals paint cans, wine bottles, spackle buckets and other tools and detritus of the studio into a drum kit that accompanies a painting marathon recorded from above. Almost as ingenious and entertaining is ''Heap,'' a very large pile of trash that regularly bursts into miked, gadget-driven drumming. Both of these labor-intensive works must be seen to be believed. Roebling Hall, 606 West 26th Street, Chelsea, [phone], roeblinghall.com; closes today. (Smith)

CLIFF EVANS: 'EMPYREAN' Short and mesmerizing, Mr. Evans's digitally animated video ''Empyrean'' presents surrealistic scenes of war, tourism and industrial development, populated by soldiers, movie stars, porn models, construction workers, terrorists, politicians and other figures lifted from mass-media sources. As the view moves slowly through panoramic desert and mountain landscapes, it is as if God were surveying the mess humankind has made of the world. Luxe Gallery, 53 Stanton Street, at Eldridge Street, Lower East Side, [phone], luxegallery.net; closes on Saturday. (Johnson)

'GEOMETRY AS IMAGE' In this show geometry encompasses, by turns, organic eccentricity (John Duff, Julie Mehretu), chaos (Joel Schapiro), serene chaos (Al Held), measurement (Mel Bochner and Andy Spence), rhythm (Keith Sonnier), electrical towers (Walter Niedermayr), barcode stripes (Paul Miller), big polystyrene squares (Nils Folke Anderson) and amazing optical patterns in three dimensions that might have been made 40 years ago but are still fun to look at (John Pai). Robert Miller Gallery, 524 West 26th Street, Chelsea, [phone], robertmillergallery.com; closes on Wednesday. (Smith)

ZHANG HUAN: 'BLESSINGS' An erstwhile Chinese performance artist, now working with the help of well-trained assistants in his Shanghai studio, shows two gigantic works. An enormous rag doll covered with whole cowhides conforms to the main festivalist-art formula: take a familiar form, make it really big, use unexpected material already charged with meaning. A Communist-era photograph is rendered enormous in incense ash on tall blocks of ash. Pace Wildenstein, 534 West 25th Street,[phone], and 545 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, [phone], pacewildenstein.com; closes on Saturday. (Smith)

JESS: 'PAINTINGS AND PASTE-UPS' For anyone unfamiliar with Jess (1923-2004), the visionary artist who emerged from the San Francisco Beat scene in the 1950s, this compact, 40-year survey will be a good introduction. It includes big, cosmic collages made under the influence of Max Ernst and mysterious, extraordinarily thickly painted pictures of scientific instruments that are among the oddest and most original artworks of the post-World War II era. Tibor de Nagy, 3/5cq 4/5 724 Fifth Avenue, 3/5cq 4/5 [phone], 3/5cq 4/5 www.tibordenagy.com; closes on Thursday. 3/5cq 4/5 (Johnson)

'THE STRANGER' Seven sculptures by as many artists cast an existentialist spell. Richard Jackson's ''Big Baby,'' a large, yellow smiley face made of shiny plastic, has pudgy, humanoid limbs. Berlinde de Bruyckere's wax torso in an old vitrine looks like a remnant of a medieval sculpture crossed with a slab of meat. George Segal's blue woman at a cafe table reads from the novel by Albert Camus that gives the show its title. Yvon Lambert, 550 West 21st Street, [phone], yvon-lambert.com; closes on Thursday. 3/5cq 4/5 (Johnson)

'STRENGTH IN NUMBERS: ARTISTS RESPOND TO CONFLICT' With prints and drawings ranging through several decades, this thought-provoking group show examines the way artists use repeating forms -- abstract and not -- in works of a political nature. The repetition might be the figures on a chain gang or rivers of eyes intended to represent the bodies of massacred Rwandans. The best efforts grapple head-on with glaring social problems, from marauding Klansmen to the gentrification of Manhattan, sending a clear message with the focused and efficient exploitation of a given medium. Ellen Sragow Gallery, 153 West 27th Street, Chelsea, [phone], sragowgallery.com; closes on Thursday. (Smith)