“On The Horizon” is a new quarterly feature from Public Books that looks forward to the coming season’s notable events—literary and artistic, intellectual and pop-cultural—in and around New York City.
Film
About Elly at Film Forum, April 8–21
From director Asghar Farhadi comes this mystery-thriller, set among a group of Iranian college friends visiting the Caspian Sea for a holiday weekend. Produced just prior to A Separation (Oscar, Best Foreign Language Film), due to rights issues it has remained unreleased in the US until now.
New York Turkish Film Festival, March 27–April 1
Now in its 14th year, The New York Turkish Film Festival is one of the longest-running, premier Turkish film programs in the United States, welcoming an audience of nearly 2,000 each year.
Television
Wolf Hall on PBS, April 5
The six-part BBC series based on Hilary Mantel’s prize-winning novels, with the incomparable Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell, will make its American debut on PBS’s “Masterpiece.”
New episodes of High Maintenance are here.
The finale season of Community will air on Tuesdays on Yahoo Screen.
House of Cards, full season available on Netflix
The third season of House of Cards sees Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) in the Oval Office and struggling to maintain control. Especially compelling are performances by Robin Wright as Claire Underwood, and Lars Mikkelson as President Viktor Petrov of Russia, a thinly veiled reference to Vladimir Putin.
The Mountain Goats, Beat the Champ. Cover art by Leela Corman
Fat White Family at Mercury Lounge, April 2
A skronky young 6-piece UK punk rock band already famous for their wildly memorable live performances. Also playing at Music Hall of Williamsburg, April 30.
Beat the Champ, by The Mountain Goats, will be released April 7
The newest from John Darnielle is a concept album about professional wrestling (check out this track). Beat the Champ is fresh off the heels of Darnielle’s National Book Award shortlisted novel Wolf in White Van (read Ivan Kreilkamp’s review on Public Books).
Hauschka at Le Poisson Rouge, April 15
The German composer and experimental musician tours in support of his latest album, Abandoned City, which, after a number of thrilling collaborations, finds him returning to the solo prepared piano with which he first became known.
Ex Hex at Le Poisson Rouge, April 23, and Music Hall of Williamsburg, June 12th
One of the best shows I’ve been to recently was Ex Hex in a sweaty little venue in a strip mall in Tennessee. Tight, energetic garage rock with one foot in the ‘70s.
Julie Hanse at Pete’s Candy Shop, April 30 — 11:00 p.m.
Pretty prototypical singer-songwriter stuff, but with a Francophone twist. Hanse grew up outside of Paris, which bleeds into her Greenwich Village folk both musically and linguistically.
Water Liars at Mercury Lounge, May 1 — 10:30 p.m.
Named for a Barry Hannah story, they’ve got all the raw charisma of their source material.
Queen Latifah 1990. Photograph by Janette Beckman / Museum of the City of New York
Museums: on view
Multi-media exhibition entitled Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men is on view at the Museum of the Moving Image until April 17.
2015 Triennial: Surround Audience at the New Museum is on view until April 24.
Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum is on view until May 24.
Bjork Retrospective at the MOMA is on view until June 7
Though critics have not been kind to Bjork’s mid-career retrospective, the music videos that are included in the exhibit are undeniably spectacular.
Hip-Hop Revolution at the Museum of the City of New York is on view April 1–September 13.
The exhibit “presents more than 80 photographs taken between 1977 and 1990 by three preeminent New York-based photographers—Janette Beckman, Joe Conzo, and Martha Cooper—who documented hip hop from its pioneering days through its emergence into mainstream popular culture.”
Museums: opening soon
Salon Style exhibition opens at the Studio Museum in Harlem on March 26.
Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks opens at the Brooklyn Museum on April 3.
The new Whitney building is opening on May 1.
Galleries: on view
No Such Place at Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art is on view until April 3.
An exhibit of emerging contemporary African artists in America.
Exhibition of solo projects by Mateo Lopez, Harold Ancart, and Kevin Beasley is on view until April 26 at Casey Kaplan Gallery in Chelsea.
Galleries: opening soon
Hank Willis Thomas’s exhibition entitled Unbranded: A Century of White Women, 1915–2015 opens at Jack Shainman Gallery on April 10.
Mark Doty. Photograph by Star Black
The NYU Creative Writing Program’s Reading Series at the Lillian Vernon Writer’s House
The second half of this semester’s stellar line-up of readers include Mark Doty, Richard Siken, Michael Cunningham, Matthew Rohrer, Dorothea Laskey, Cathy Park Hong, Marie Howe, Afaa Weaver, and many others.
Renata Adler at McNally Jackson, April 7
Speedboat and Pitch Dark wowed a new generation of readers (and writers) when NYRB Classics reissued the genre-defying novels two years ago. Now a substantial collection of her nonfiction is getting its own hardcover release, as After the Tall Timber.
Muldoon’s Picnic, April 13 — 7:30 p.m.
Hosted by Paul Muldoon and the Wayside Shrines with special guests Mary Karr and Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill at the Irish Arts Center.
Maxine Hong Kingston
Colm Tóibín and Roy Foster in Conversation, April 9 — 6:15 p.m.
Barnard Hall, Barnard College
On Elizabeth Bishop with Colm Tóibín, April 19 — 11:00 a.m.
Part of a series of evenings with contemporary authors at 9Y2, Weill Art Gallery (Lexington and 92nd).
Artist at the Center: Maxine Hong Kingston, April 20 — 6:15 p.m.
With Dorothy Ko, Professor of History, Barnard College
Pulitzer Hall (formerly Journalism Hall), Room 301
An Evening with Author Kate Southwood, April 22 — 6:15 p.m.
The Heyman Center, Second Floor Common Room
Description Across the Disciplines, April 23–24
With Alison Bechdel, Author and Cartoonist; Lorraine Daston, Executive Director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science; Michael Fried, J.R. Herbert Boone Professor of Humanities and Art History at Johns Hopkins University; and others.
Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall (April 23) and Davis Auditorium, Schapiro Center (April 24)
Helen Vendler on Seamus Heaney, May 16 — 6:00 p.m.
9Y2, Classroom (Lexington and 92nd) 
