August 2026 at The City Reliquary
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August 2026 Calendar
Opening Reception: Akiva Listman’s I Appreciate You and Patrick O’Hare’s Views from the Skeletal City
August 7th | 7-10pm | FREE ENTRY | RSVP here
In the front room, The City Reliquary is pleased to present Patrick O’Hare’s Views from the Skeletal City, a series of xeroxes of black and white photographs scanned and rescanned to varying degrees of abstraction and image degradation. The images comprise a dreamscape of various locations in New York City, many on the peripheries of its outer boroughs. An exploration of everyday borders, outposts and spaces, the works utilize weather, light and shadow to reveal an ethereal and fleeting infrastructure we inhabit and move through.
In the back gallery, we are thrilled to host Akiva Listman’s I Appreciate You. This exhibition honors the physical objects that witness New York City's daily rhythm and reflect it back to us through their wear and surface qualities. Small pieces of the city, which could otherwise go unrecognized, on display for our delight and understanding.
Screening, Book Launch, and Artist Talkback Featuring Patrick O’Hare’s Short Film “The Light at Dusk”
August 26th from 7-9pm | FREE ENTRY | RSVP here
Join us for a screening of Patrick O’Hare’s “The Light at Dusk,” a photo-montage film that interweaves still photographs of New York City and upstate New York with a spoken text dealing with themes of memory, time, and the uncanny.
Both the stills and the poems are at times fragmented, cryptic, and on the edge of a disembodied state of awareness. The exploration is of a city as a lonely void, and the country as a place of haunted shapes and forms, that eventually merge with each other and produce a state of mind that transcends the idea of regions and embraces a kind of perpetual transition, impermanence, uncertainty, and foreboding.
The forces and refractions of weather and visual phenomenon in both urban infrastructure and the rural and small-town landscapes provide gestures of a fragile beauty that hover on the edge of futility. A cinematic narrative that follows the contours, specters, illuminations, and visual portals of the everyday.
The short screening will be followed by a discussion with Brent Wahl, a multi-media artist whose photography stages questions about collective identity, our relationship to reality and perception, and the ways we frame our existence. Through ambiguity, contextual, and optical shifts, his work reveals unexpected connections and complicates meaning within the frame. Wahl is a Senior Lecturer at the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.
Following the conversation, O’Hare’s new book Memories of a Weather Exposed Skeleton will be available for purchase, alongside his 2020 release, Evanescent Cities. O’Hare’s exhibit in our front room, his short film, and his latest book share many of the same images, allowing audiences the opportunity to engage with his work in a range of formats.
July’s Featured Relics
As our volunteers work to digitally archive our entire permanent collection, we are putting the spotlight on individual artifacts each week on Instagram. Below are July’s featured objects!
As Always
The City Reliquary is open Thursday through Sunday, noon til 6pm.
Admission is $10, with discounts for NYC residents, educators, students, children 16 and under, and—of course—members and their households visit free, as often as they’d like. Members also get discounted event tickets. Membership costs $10/month. Sustained, predictable revenue helps the Reliquary plan, grow, and thrive.
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