Peanut-butter cheesecake at a Cheesecake Factory restaurant in Chicago. (Getty Images)

It's a time of transition at the Whitney! Today the museum announced the three curators who will organize its 2014 biennial, and tomorrow evening, Jay Sanders, who co-curated the 2012 show and was named a full-time curator of performance this summer, will present his first event in that role. (He's also responsible, along with curator Chrissie Iles, for the just-opened exhibition "Dark and Deadpan: Pop in TV and the Movies.")

The event he's organized for Friday, tantalizingly titled Emergency Cheesecake, is presented in collaboration with Wade Guyton, whose really handsome show, "Wade Guyton OS," is on view on the museum's third floor through Jan. 13. The two go way back, and Mr. Guyton's partnership with Kelley Walker, Guyton\Walker, was represented by Greene Naftali, where Mr. Sanders used to work as director.

"We had this idea that we could co-curate a group of younger artists that he and I know," Mr. Sanders said earlier this week. "You see a kind of emerging generation of people who work across mediums, and it's a chance for them to do something new and different. It's a party event—music, action, film and video." (It's also pay-what-you-wish night!)

Among those on tap for Emergency Cheesecake are Amy Yao and Lisa Jo, who will present a new trailer for their forthcoming film "Sorry, can't talk, I'm at work" CISF, I.U.D. (a band formed by Lizzi Bougatsos and Sadie Laska) and the combined forces of Sam Pulitzer and Mathieu Malouf.

Virginia Overton, who's better known as a sculptor, also has a piece in the works. "It's going to involve a pickle, and something special is going to happen," Mr. Sanders said. "She's kind of keeping me in the dark a bit."

Mr. Sanders is planning more one-off performances in the future, and is also planning programming for "Blues for Smoke," a MOCA Los Angeles show centered on the blues that arrives at the Whitney in February.

As for the title of Friday's program, Mr. Sanders was tight-lipped about its exact source, but a Google search brings up a fine-looking array of recipes and images.

Sanders and Haq. (Courtesy ICI).

Jay Sanders and Nav Haq have been selected as the 2012 winners of the Independent Vision Curatorial Award by Independent Curators International (ICI). Mr. Sanders, curator of performance at the Whitney Museum in New York, and Mr. Haq, a curator at MuHKA in Antwerp, Belgium, were selected by Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of exhibitions and programs and director of international projects at the Serpentine Gallery in London. The award goes to emerging curators from around the world who have demonstrated “exceptional creativity and prescience” in organizing exhibitions, conducting research and for related writing. The biennial award comes with a $4,000 stipend to support the curators' independent practice.

The two were chosen from a shortlist of curators who were nominated by 15 internationally established curators, including RoseLee Goldberg, founding director of Performa, Sofia Hernández Chong Cuy, curator of contemporary art for Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros,
 Jens Hoffmann, director of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, and Matthew Higgs, the director and chief curator of White Columns.

Mr. Haq has previously been a curator at Arnolfini in Bristol, England, and Gasworks in London, and has curated many solo projects with artists, including Hassan Khan, Cosima von Bonin and Kerry Tribe. Mr. Sanders has been a gallery director at both Greene Naftali and Marianne Boesky in New York. Most recently, he co-curated the 2012 Whitney Biennial with Elisabeth Sussman.

"Each curator is establishing a unique voice, developing their practice by initiating projects independently, as well as having worked in a diverse range of institutions," said Mr. Obrist in a statement. "Nav Haq frequently takes us into the polyphony of art centers, creating shows and projects that broaden the scope of our thinking. Jay Sanders stays close to artists, gaining a strong understanding of an artist’s body of work—both emerging and overlooked—so that ultimately audiences can know an artist deeper.”

Vincent Gallo (Courtesy PatrickMcMullan.com)

Director Vincent Gallo's contribution to the Whitney Biennial had been anticipated ever since the list of participating artists, which included his name, was first leaked in December 2011. But as the Biennial, which opened on March 1, came to a close officially on May 27—with a few galleries remaining open until last Sunday, Mr. Gallo has remained elusive, even to the curators.

The New York Times reports on the mysterious no-show, noting that Mr. Gallo was in talks with the curators, Jay Sanders and Elisabeth Sussman, to present his third and latest feature film, Promises Written in Water, which hasn't been screened publicly since it was first shown at the Toronto and Venice film festivals in 2010.

From the article:

Is the Whitney no-show a ploy or a tantrum? An act of self-sabotage or a principled stand against establishment culture?

[Jay] Sanders said that when he and his co-curator, Elisabeth Sussman, began discussions with Mr. Gallo more than a year ago, Mr. Gallo had already decided not to have the film distributed. “There’s a way in which suppressing it from the public is fundamentally part of the point,” Mr. Sanders said. There was talk of showing it only once or off site, he added, perhaps by invitation. Mr. Gallo declined to be pinned down, the curator said, and his wait-and-see approach seemed to fit the exploratory spirit of this Biennial.

Discussion: Whitney Biennial Curators in Conversation with Michelle Kuo at Artists Space Books & Talks
The Whitney Biennial is just about over—the final festivities occur on Sunday, June 10, the same day that the last of its galleries close for de-installation. The biennial's co-curators, Jay Sanders and Elisabeth Sussman, and its film program co-curators, Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, will join Artforum's editor in chief, Michelle Kuo, to discuss the exhibition and the critical response it received. This is first come, first served, so it may be wise to arrive a bit early.
Artists Space Books & Talks, 55 Walker Street, New York, 7 p.m., $5 donation

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 6

Party: The Whitney Art Party
The Whitney's annual Art Party is set to pop this year, with a swanky venue in Soho, music by Japanster and a collaboration between Kreemart and Kalup Linzy that is sure to be bonkers. —Dan Duray
Skylight Soho, 275 Hudson Street at Spring Street, New York, 9 p.m.–1 a.m., $350

THURSDAY

Opening: “Andrepolis,” at The Hole
This week, the Hole presents “Andrepolis,” an “all encompassing representation of the art culture” at the center of which is Andre Saraiva, street artist and nightclub impresario and owner of the global nightclub Le Baron. If it’s anything like his exhibition earlier this year, at Half Gallery, you can expect a scene as packed and attitudy as you’d see at any of his clubs. —Rozalia Jovanovic
The Hole, 312 Bowery, New York, 6-9 p.m.

Opening: “Young Curators, New Ideas IV,” at Meulensteen
For the fourth, and most ambitious, installment of “Young Curators, New Ideas,” 12 curators present work from 29 artists across 7,000 square feet of space on two floors. This group exhibition, organized by Mr. and Mrs. Amani Olu—Mr. Olu, you’ll recall recently departed from Nadine Johnson to start a gallery—will kick off with music by Derrick Adams and DJ Impostor. The “Young Curators, New Ideas” is an annual show that aims to re-imagine established mediums, materials and concepts, and investigate how contemporary issues are resolved (or not) in an art context. —R.J.
511 West 22nd Street, New York, 6–9 p.m.

FRIDAY, JUNE 8

Extended Hours: "Summer Night" at the Frick
This sounds pretty much like heaven on Earth: free admission to the Frick on a Friday night for a full three hours after it typically closes. Stroll through the museum's shows devoted to Renaissance sculptor Antico and Saxon jeweler Johann Christian Neuber, and see how the museum's new portico gallery fares as the sun sets on the Upper East Side. Alex Katz once quipped, "If we only wanted to look at masterpieces, we'd spend all our time at the Frick." This can be your masterpiece night.
The Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, New York, 6–9 p.m.

Book Launch: Joy Drury Cox, The Old Man and Sea, at Dashwood Books
The artist Joy Drury Cox holds a book signing and release party for her new project The Old Man and the Sea at Dashwood Books. The book creates original drawings from the periods in an old copy of the book and was printed by the very hip Conveyor magazine. —D.D.
Dashwood Books, 33 Bond street, 6-8 p.m.

Opening: Megan Whitmarsh "Revolution is a Circle" at Jack Hanley
Jack Hanley Gallery presents a solo show of work by Los Angeles-based artist Megan Whitmarsh, who uses hand-stitching and embroidery to create large fabric collages. The "revolution" of the title refers as much to the idea of rotation as it does to the other kind of revolution (i.e. the one that won't be televised...). —Michael H. Miller
Jack Hanley Gallery, 136 Watts Street, New York, 6-8 p.m.

SATURDAY, JUNE 9

Talk: Fionn Meade on Joseph Beuys at the Dia Art Foundation
Fionn Meade, a writer and former curator at SculptureCenter (among other places), will discuss the work of Joseph Beuys. But really: what better way to spend a Saturday afternoon then upstate at Dia's Beacon location? --M.H.M
Dia: Beacon, 3 Beekman Street, Beacon, 2 p.m., free with museum admission, RSVP here