Kate Clairmont

Alexander Calder’s Saurien

Sprawling its neon-orange legs across the street in midtown Manhattan, Alexander Calder’s outdoor sculpture Saurien marks the entrance to the IBM building and provides an eye-catching contrast to the glassy gray skyscraper.

Many Columbia student groups utilize the ploy of free food to entice students to attend their events. But Saturday night, at the art event entitled “Potluck III,” free food was not a ploy but a message, and the message was this: art and food do essentially the same thing.

The beauty of living in New York is that you can walk into a museum and suddenly be in the presence of a painting worth $135 million. In this case, that painting is the Portrait of Adele Block Bauer by Gustav Klimt, and is on display at the Neue Galerie.

The Lehmann Maupin gallery knows that sex sells. Among the plethora of chic, modern galleries in Chelsea, Ashley Bickerton’s exhibit on 26th Street is hard to miss: voluptuous, perfectly shaped nude models painted with vivid primary colors surrounded by island scenery stare at passersby with purple and orange eyes.