Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: US REPUBLICAN PARTY (90%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (90%); POLITICAL PARTIES (90%); ELECTIONS (89%); US FEDERAL ELECTIONS (78%); US DEMOCRATIC PARTY (78%); POLITICAL CANDIDATES (77%); APPRENTICESHIPS & INTERNSHIPS (77%); FUNDRAISING (72%); JUSTICE DEPARTMENTS (71%); NATIVE AMERICANS (69%); AFRICAN AMERICANS (64%); ETHNICITY (63%)
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE (55%); REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE (55%)
PERSON: TOM COLE (96%)
GEOGRAPHIC: OKLAHOMA, USA (92%) UNITED STATES (92%)
LOAD-DATE: November 18, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
CORRECTION-DATE: March 30, 2008

CORRECTION: The cover article in The Times Magazine this weekend, about the recent struggles of the Republican Party, misspells the surname of the Democratic congressman who helped devise the strategy for the Democratic gains in the 2006 Congressional elections. He is Rahm Emanuel, not Emmanuel.
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Tom Cole, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY AMY ARBUS

ELEPHANT PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW BETTLES)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

929 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 29, 2008 Saturday

Late Edition - Final

Japanese Author Guides Women to 'Dignity,' but Others See Dullness
BYLINE: By NORIMITSU ONISHI
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; THE SATURDAY PROFILE; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 1219 words
DATELINE: TOKYO
YOUNG Japanese women searching for a wider role in society have no role model today. The ideal of a self-sacrificing ''good wife, wise mother,'' according to a Japanese saying, belongs to the past. And fighting alongside the country's overworked and overstressed salarymen holds little appeal.

At least that was the view of Mariko Bando, 61, the author of a book that professes to be a guide for young women. With sales of more than three million copies, the book, ''The Dignity of a Woman,'' has become one of Japan's biggest sellers in decades and has presented Ms. Bando as just such a role model.

Ms. Bando has, to be sure, led a career considered ground-breaking for a Japanese woman of her generation. After graduating from the University of Tokyo, she became an elite bureaucrat, choosing to keep working even after marriage and children. She later became the deputy governor of a prefecture and then the first woman to serve as a consul general. She is now president of Showa Women's University here in Tokyo.

And yet, in her book, Ms. Bando focuses not on policy or diplomacy but on everyday issues. She gives tips on maintaining dignified manners, using dignified speech and wearing dignified clothes. Other chapters revolve around living and interacting with, of course, dignity.

A ''sophisticated'' strategy is necessary for women to get ahead in Japanese society, Ms. Bando said in an interview, making a snaking motion with her hands. Simply being aggressive, a quality she ascribed to American women, would not work.

''Japanese society hasn't matured enough yet to accept independent and aggressive women,'' she said during the interview, in her university office. ''That's the reality. So we have to think about how to become independent here. However, I did not write that we should be meek like women in the old days.''

Though fans have praised the book for its useful information, critics have complained that, in the guise of upholding dignity, it reinforces a traditional view of women. Why should women be required to know the names of flowers or be good cooks to be considered dignified, as Ms. Bando writes?

In the age of ''Hillary, Rice and Merkel,'' this book seeks to shape young women into traditional, subservient women of the distant past, Nanami Shiono, an author of history books, wrote in the monthly magazine Bungeishunju. ''I think this book is perfect for the mass production of dull women suitable for dull men,'' Ms. Shiono wrote. ''But why is it that, in Japan, a person who could not have become an elite bureaucrat by being dull is so keen on mass-cultivating dull women?''

Ms. Bando answers the critics by pointing to the popularity of her book, saying it resonates among young women searching ''for a way to live with dignity.''

THE success of Ms. Bando's book -- as well as of others with the word ''dignity'' in their titles in the last couple of years -- can be viewed as a backlash against the half decade of economic and political reforms under former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. With Mr. Koizumi's emphasis on free markets, deregulation and competition, brash American-style entrepreneurs were briefly heralded as role models for a new Japan. But now calls for a return to so-called traditional, more dignified Japanese values are multiplying.

Anyone writing such a book exposes herself to scrutiny, and Ms. Bando recently took some gentle ribbing from a reporter from a youth-oriented television program who visited her home. In Ms. Bando's study, the television reporter noticed the drawers of a dresser, opened and bulging with clothes.

''I was cleaning up but wasn't able to finish before they arrived,'' Ms. Bando recalled.

Born in 1946, in the rural prefecture of Toyama, Ms. Bando grew up in a family that took to heart the American-inspired, postwar emphasis on the equality of the sexes, she wrote in an autobiographical essay in Bungeishunju. After college, she became the first woman to enter the Prime Minister's Office as a career bureaucrat.

Even as her female college classmates gave up working after marryin , she did not. Her husband, a salaryman, did not object, but told her flatly that he ''wouldn't help at all'' at home, she wrote. Her mother and father often came to Tokyo to help out with her two daughters.

After she landed at Showa Women's University, a publishing friend suggested that she write a book on Japanese women. Ms. Bando had an academic book in mind, but the publisher wanted a how-to volume geared to readers like her own students.

''Women are looking for a new way to live, not the way men do, but with dignity as human beings,'' Ms. Bando said. ''And I wanted to advise them.''

In her book, Ms. Bando starts with a brush-up on manners, emphasizing the importance of writing thank-you notes and keeping time. She advises against talking too fast or wearing designer clothes. She condemns the indignity of accepting free tissue paper handed out on Japanese streets and of hunting for bargain items in sales.

She counsels against trying to deliver too good a speech. ''First of all, being able to deliver a conventional speech is the requirement of a woman with dignity,'' she writes. ''Once that requirement is fulfilled, let's add a tad of personality.''

With friends, she recommends against sharing problems, saying it is best ''not to reveal one's weak and unattractive sides.'' Consultation by phone, anonymously of course, is preferable. Asking personal questions, like the occupation of a friend's husband or the children's school, is a no-no.

Male managers often address younger workers by adding the diminutive ''chan'' or ''kun'' to their names instead of ''san.'' But female managers should refrain from following that practice, she said, because Japanese men are very sensitive about their positions.

If the book reflects the survival strategies of a woman of Ms. Bando's generation, however, it also betrays its prudence -- little in the book would make conservative men uncomfortable.

BY almost every economic and social indicator, Japanese women trail their counterparts in other advanced nations. The system here, the laws, the workplace, are stacked against women, as Ms. Bando herself acknowledges.

Still, Ms. Bando is ambivalent about American society, what she perceives as its fierce materialism and individualism. She pointed to the futility of pursuing personal desires.

''For example, someone said that all romantic love turns into friendship within four years,'' she said. ''It's not certain that you'll feel psychologically satisfied by fulfilling personal desires like acquiring power or wealth, or marrying the person you love. Instead, many people fail and get hurt. The degree of satisfaction of the society, in total, may not increase.''

Nowadays, Ms. Bando believes that a ''society in which everyone can lead modest little lives isn't bad, though it's not an attractive way of thinking.''

''Things change,'' she said. ''There's a time when you're young, healthy and ambitious. Then when you're mature, you value a well-balanced life. Things change, in individuals and in societies.''

Japan, in the past, was more open to challenges, she said. ''But,'' she added, ''once you reach a certain level, challenges and competition aren't necessarily a plus anymore.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: WOMEN (90%); INTERVIEWS (89%); MARRIAGE (78%); EMBASSIES & CONSULATES (67%)
GEOGRAPHIC: TOKYO, JAPAN (88%) JAPAN (92%)
LOAD-DATE: March 29, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO (PHOTOGRAPH BY KO SASAKI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Biography
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

930 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 29, 2008 Saturday

Late Edition - Final

Diller Wins as Court Allows His 5-Way Division of IAC
BYLINE: By TIM ARANGO
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 800 words
In the battle of the billionaire media moguls, the protege won.

A Delaware Chancery Court judge ruled Friday that Barry Diller could go forward with a plan to split his e-commerce conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp into five companies, thwarting an attempt by John C. Malone to block the deal and oust Mr. Diller.

The decision came two weeks after a five-day trial in which Mr. Malone, the billionaire chairman of Liberty Media, which is the majority voting stockholder in IAC, had sought to gain control of IAC. With the court decision, Mr. Diller can now go ahead with his plan to break IAC into five companies: the HSN home shopping network; Ticketmaster; Interval, a vacation time-share company; and LendingTree, a mortgage broker, as well as IAC, which would include Match.com and Ask.com.

The ruling, however, left the door open for Mr. Malone to challenge the breakup plan after it is approved by IAC's board.

''To fully grasp the unusual character of this dispute requires an understanding of two basic facts that rule the governance of IAC,'' wrote the judge, Vice Chancellor Stephen P. Lamb, in his opinion, which was released Friday after the close of stock market trading.

Those two facts are the dual voting structure of IAC, in which Liberty owns a 61.7 percent supervoting stake, and Mr. Malone's lack of control over those votes. In the early 1990s, Mr. Malone granted an irrevocable proxy giving Mr. Diller control over Liberty's votes -- essentially conferring on him the power of attorney over Liberty's voting stake.

''I wish this hadn't happened, but it did,'' Mr. Diller said in an e-mail statement. ''Now it's over and we can all get on with our work and lives.''

Representatives of Liberty did not return phone calls requesting comment.

Shares of IAC closed Friday at $20.49, down 27 cents, but were up nearly 7 percent in after-hours trading. The company's share price has floundered -- based on Friday's close, the stock is down close to 48 percent from its 52-week high.

In one respect, the case was about corporate finance and the interpretation of a complicated proxy agreement. But it took on an air of drama when the two moguls took the stand, and the case was closely watched in the media industry because of the personalities involved.

Mr. Malone, a cable television pioneer, rarely talks to the press; the brash Mr. Diller is a yacht-owning former movie studio executive who is married to a well-known fashion designer.

The complex partnership between the men began in 1992 when Mr. Malone sought to take control of Silver King Communications, which owned television broadcast stations. But Liberty -- then an affiliate of Tele-Communications Inc., the nation's largest cable company -- was barred from owning Silver King by Federal Communications Commission rules that prohibited companies from owning broadcast stations in the same markets in which they owned cable systems.

Three years later, in 1995, Mr. Malone struck a deal in which Mr. Diller would run Silver King and vote Liberty's shares -- essentially a way to maneuver around the F.C.C. regulations. Before operating Silver King, Mr. Diller had been chairman of Paramount Pictures and the Fox Broadcasting Company.

It was this transaction that ultimately led to Mr. Diller's perch at the top of IAC. Mr. Diller eventually became a billionaire, unusual in the media world for someone who began as a hired employee rather than an entrepreneur.

Mr. Malone had long been disenchanted with the performance of IAC stock, and the two companies began talking last year about ways to unwind the partnership between Liberty and IAC.

On the last day of the trial, Mr. Diller testified for five hours and got into a barbed exchange with Mr. Malone's lawyer, Kevin G. Abrams, over the degree of independence of IAC's board.

Mr. Diller's breakup plan called for a single voting structure at each of the individual companies, a move Mr. Malone had challenged in court. The split was proposed at an IAC board meeting on Jan. 16 -- which turned contentious when Mr. Malone objected and left. Lawsuits were filed the following week.

Under the deal between Liberty and IAC, Mr. Diller gets the right to vote Liberty's shares, but requires that IAC seek Mr. Malone's approval to take actions that are ''outside the ordinary course of business.''

But Judge Lamb ruled that the split-up plan did not require Mr. Malone's consent. He wrote that ''the court concludes that Liberty has failed to demonstrate that Diller has breached or threatened to breach any contractual duty he owes to Liberty.''

Mr. Malone had also sought to remove several IAC directors, including Mr. Diller; his wife, the fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg; and Edgar Bronfman Jr., the chief executive of Warner Music Group.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: WEALTHY PEOPLE (90%); JUDGES (90%); DECISIONS & RULINGS (90%); LITIGATION (90%); SETTLEMENTS & DECISIONS (90%); TELEVISION INDUSTRY (88%); DIRECT RESPONSE TELEVISION (78%); APPROVALS (78%); SHAREHOLDERS (77%); CABLE TELEVISION (74%); LAW COURTS & TRIBUNALS (73%); ELECTRONIC COMMERCE (72%); SECURITIES TRADING (71%); POWER OF ATTORNEY (71%); BROADCASTING INDUSTRY (69%); MORTGAGE BANKING & FINANCE (69%); MORTGAGE BROKERS (54%); FASHION DESIGNERS (50%); STOCK EXCHANGES (74%)
COMPANY: IAC/INTERACTIVECORP (93%); TELE-COMMUNICATIONS INC (60%); TICKETMASTER (56%); TICKETMASTER ENTERTAINMENT INC (90%)
TICKER: IACI (NASDAQ) (93%); TCOM (NASDAQ) (60%); IACID (NASDAQ) (93%); TKTM (NASDAQ) (90%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS454113 MAIL-ORDER HOUSES (93%); NAICS454111 ELECTRONIC SHOPPING (93%); SIC5961 CATALOG & MAIL-ORDER HOUSES (93%)
PERSON: BARRY DILLER (94%); JOHN MALONE (93%)
GEOGRAPHIC: DELAWARE, USA (90%) UNITED STATES (90%)
LOAD-DATE: March 29, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Barry Diller is chief executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp. (PHOTOGRAPH BY TIM SHAFFER/REUTERS) (pg. C2)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

931 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 28, 2008 Friday

Late Edition - Final

Art
SECTION: Section E; Column 0; Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk; Pg. 26
LENGTH: 2155 words
ART

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

Museums

ASIA SOCIETY AND MUSEUM: 'DESIGNED FOR PLEASURE: THE WORLD OF EDO JAPAN IN PRINTS AND PAINTINGS, 1680-1860,' through May 4. Organized by the Japanese Art Society, this show anchors the ''floating world'' of ukiyo-e prints firmly in economic and social reality. It includes works by well-known artists, including Hokusai and Hiroshige, and emphasizes the entrepreneurial role of print publishers and the relationship between printmaking, painting and literature in the Edo period. Because the prints are sensitive to light, ''Designed for Pleasure'' will be shown in two installments. Of the 148 works in the exhibition, 95 are currently on view; about two-thirds of those will be rotated out on April 4. 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street, [phone], asiasociety.org.

(Karen Rosenberg)

BROOKLYN MUSEUM : 'UTAGAWA: MASTERS OF THE JAPANESE PRINT, 1770-1900,' through June 15. This fascinating show tells the story of a group of artists that dominated the woodblock print business in Japan for much of the 19th century. Not everything in it is a masterpiece, but among its 95 prints are stunning portraits of actors, geishas and warriors; colorful retellings of old myths; views of contemporary urban life; and gorgeous, poetically captivating landscapes. 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, [phone], brooklynmuseum.org.

(Ken Johnson)

THE FRICK COLLECTION: 'PARMIGIANINO'S ''ANTEA'': A BEAUTIFUL ARTIFICE,' through April 27. Exhibitions don't come any smaller than ''Parmigianino's 'Antea': A Beautiful Artifice.'' A painting, a wall text, a nugget of a scholarly catalog, and that's it. It's enough. 1 East 70th Street, [phone], frick.org.

(Holland Cotter)

INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY: 'ARCHIVE FEVER: USES OF THE DOCUMENT IN CONTEMPORARY ART,' through May 4. You need no grounding in art theory to understand the messages generated by this powerful theme show. The archive of the title is less a thing or a place than a concept, an immersive environment: the sum total of documentary images, mostly photographic, circulating in the culture, on the street, in the media and finally in what is called the collective memory. From an Andy Warhol silk-screen of a black civil rights demonstrator attacked by police dogs, to a gallery wallpapered with the front pages of international newspapers reporting on the destruction of the twin towers, truth, untruth and their consequences make up the riveting story here. 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at 43rd Street, [phone], icp.org.

(Cotter)

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: 'POUSSIN AND NATURE: ARCADIAN VISIONS,' through May 11. If a painter can be judged by the love he inspires, Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665) was one of art history's great valentines. Corot, Delacroix, Constable and Cezanne all adored him. So did Picasso and Matisse. You can see why in this show of his post-Classical, pre-Romantic landscapes and drawings. Every age has a different style for ''serious'' in art; Poussin's was different from our own, but enthralling and moving in its moral gravity and poise. [phone], metmuseum.org. (See above.)

(Cotter)

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART : 'COLOR CHART: REINVENTING COLOR, 1950 TO TODAY,' through May 12. Organized by Ann Temkin, a curator in the museum's department of painting and sculpture, color functions as a ready-made in ''Color Chart'' -- something to be bought or appropriated, rather than mixed on a palette. The show is a rejoinder to the notion of color as the province of formalists, and to the idea that Minimal and Conceptual art comes only in shades of black, white and gray. In the upper section of the lobby a floor created by the artist Jim Lambie surrounds concentric strips of brightly hued tape. In the galleries there are postwar classics by Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg and Sherrie Levine. [phone], moma.org.

(Rosenberg)

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES LIBRARY: 'MONUMENTAL FRANCE: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF EDOUARD BALDUS' AND SKETCHES ON GLASS: CLICHES-VERRE FROM THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY,' through June 28. This pair of exhibitions focuses on the experimental period after the birth of photography (the 1850s through the 1870s). Film had not yet been invented, but glass-plate and paper negatives allowed artists to micromanage the camera's performance or to bypass it entirely. ''Monumental France'' gathers 38 artisanal prints of French architectural landmarks. ''Sketches on Glass'' presents prints made with hand-drawn glass plates on light-sensitive paper (no camera required). Together these shows reveal that artists in mid-19th-century France blurred the distinction between the photograph and the unique object. Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, [phone], nypl.org. (Rosenberg)

P.S. 1 CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER: 'WACK! ART AND THE FEMINIST REVOLUTION,' through May 12. This big, messy, fascinating scrapbook of a show focuses on the years between the mid-1960s and the early '80s, when feminism had its most intense impact on contemporary art. Presenting works by 120 women, it is uneven in quality, but the overall effect is exciting. It takes you back to a heady time when women were throwing out old, patriarchal laws and reinventing art in all kinds of idiosyncratic and sometimes dangerously extreme terms. 22-25 Jackson Avenue, at 46th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, [phone], ps1.org. (Johnson)

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART : 'WHITNEY BIENNIAL 2008,' through June 1. This year's show takes lowered expectations -- lessness, ephemerality and failure, to use the words of its young curators, Henriette Huldisch and Shamim M. Momin -- as its theme, and makes at least an appearance of trying to circumvent an object-obsessed market. With 81 artists, this is the smallest Biennial in a while, and feels that way, even as it fills three floors and more of the museum, and continues at the Park Avenue Armory (at 67th Street), with a program of installation and performance art. [phone], whitney.org. (Cotter)

Galleries: Uptown

'WINE, WORSHIP AND SACRIFICE: THE GOLDEN GRAVES OF ANCIENT VANI' In small but elegant new galleries, a study center founded in 2006 under the auspices of New York University presents its inaugural exhibition. This show offers more than 100 objects unearthed from ancient graves in Vani, a cosmopolitan city established in Colchis -- modern-day Georgia -- in the eighth century B.C. It includes beautiful, intricate gold jewelry discovered in grave sites of the rich and powerful; the life-size bronze torso of a youth made in classic Hellenistic style; and two strikingly exotic bronze lamps with functional parts in the form of elephant heads. Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, 15 East 84th Street, [phone], nyu.edu/isaw, through June 1. (Johnson)

Galleries: Chelsea

JEAN ROYeRE Organized by two Parisian galleries, Patrick Seguin and Jacques Lacoste, this exhibition provides New Yorkers with a rare in-depth look at the work of Jean Royere (1902-1981). It includes 100 objects presented in plausible if free-flowing domestic arrangements designed by India Mahdavi and demonstrates the timeless appeal of this French master's fusion of Art Deco streamlining with the organic forms of the 1950s. Sonnabend Gallery, 536 West 22nd Street, [phone], through April 12. (Roberta Smith)

Galleries: Other

'DIEBENKORN IN NEW MEXICO' In graduate school in Albuquerque at the beginning of the 1950s, Richard Diebenkorn put his own spin on the drawing-painting fusion of Willem de Kooning's black-and-white paintings, interjecting an elegant, waggish sense of line borrowed from George Herriman's Krazy Kat cartoons, along with brushy, glowing layers of color. He would later go on to make grander, more complex works, but in many ways his painting was never freer, less predictable or more full of the future than in New Mexico. Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 100 Washington Square East, at Waverly Place, Greenwich Village, [phone], nyu.edu/greyart, through April 5. (Smith)

Last Chance

DIANA COOPER: 'OVERDRIVE' Over the years this artist's obsessive doodling has reached three-dimensions by various routes. Here, all red, it covers the stepped interior of an imposing sculpture resembling a ziggurat turned on its side. The doodling generates relief-like drawings in paper, vinyl and pins. But it also goes beyond that in ''Orange Alert UK,'' a room-size installation where regimented stripes suggest exploded walls. This apocalyptic romper room achieves a better balance between making and thinking, and process and meaning. Postmasters, 459 West 19th Street, [phone], postmastersart.com; closes on Saturday. (Smith)

MALE: WORK FROM THE COLLECTION OF VINCE ALETTI A discerning collector with an impressive resume (critic, curator, editor) and no budget to speak of tellingly installs a sampling of his holdings, mostly photographs. His single focus -- the male face and body -- is elaborated in photographs and a few watercolors that range through portraiture, erotic and pornographic images and high points of photojournalism. It is a splendid mediation on integrity of personal taste and the variety of beauty, love and sexual attraction. White Columns, 320 West 13th Street, West Village, [phone]; closes on Sunday. (Smith)

BRUCE NAUMAN: 'DRAWINGS FOR INSTALLATIONS' Ask almost anyone for a short list of the most influential contemporary artists, and Bruce Nauman's name will be there. This survey of drawings related to his architecturally scaled installations ranging from 1968 to the present suggests why. Some of the drawings are preliminary sketches for later completed projects. Others are second-thought variations made after a piece was done. Still others -- a series of studies for underground installations -- are hard-core conceptual projects realized only on paper. Sperone Westwater, 415 West 13th Street, West Village, [phone], speronewestwater.com; closes on Saturday. (Cotter)NEW MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART: 'UNMONUMENTAL: THE OBJECT IN THE 21ST CENTURY,' through March 30. The New Museum has eked as much exhibition space as possible out of its new building and is devoting almost all of it to a raucous, polemical first show. The premise, as reflected in the work of 30 artists (among them, Rachel Harrison, Isa Genzken, Eliot Hundley, Carol Bove, Jock Bock and Sarah Lucas), is that assemblage sculpture is the most viable art form of the moment. Lo-tech, cheap, portable and rough around the edges if not actually falling apart, it reflects our fractured times and also resists easy absorption by the art market. At 235 Bowery, at Prince Street, Lower East Side, [phone], newmuseum.org; closes on Sunday. (Smith)

MANFRED PERNICE: 'DIARY' The abject formalism that is rife in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and unanimous in the multilayered ''Unmonumental'' at the New Museum of Contemporary Art owes much to this German artist. His fourth gallery solo in New York continues his elevation of the nondescript and his sly deprecation of the conventions of display. The pedestal-like pieces, made mostly from chipboard and mounted on fit-together platforms, suggest a low-tech model for a city.. Anton Kern Gallery, 532 West 20th Street, Chelsea, [phone], antonkerngallery.com; closes on Saturday. (Smith)

STERLING RUBY: 'KILN WORKS' This Los Angeles artist usually spreads his talents among multiple mediums, making this the first show devoted exclusively to his obstreperous, richly glazed ceramic vessels. Walking the fine line between decoration and tragedy, they suggest charred remains; small, rather grotesque votive objects; or Neolithic precursors to everyday objects like a child's car seat or a football helmet. Metro Pictures, 519 West 24th Street, Chelsea, [phone]; closes on Saturday. (Smith)

ANDY WARHOL: 'DRAWINGS'These drawings from the 1950s are only tangentially related to his thriving commercial-art career. They show him experimenting with handmade repetition (achieved through blotting) and marbleized backgrounds; exploring uses for his growing photography archive (with Darger-like results); and veering between romantic and erotic love. Paul Kasmin Gallery, 293 10th Avenue, at 27th Street, Chelsea, [phone], paulkasmingallery.com; closes on Saturday. (Smith)

ANDRO WEKUA: 'BLUE MIRROR' The beautiful if overlong video at the center of this exhibition builds on the set-up photography of early 1980s appropriation art, juxtaposing modernist calm with life's turbulence in a promising way. But it fails to pull together the assortment of complacent sculptures, collages and paintings that make this show seem so adolescent and unanchored. Gladstone Gallery, 515 West 24th Street, Chelsea, [phone]; closes on Saturday. (Smith)