Museum & Gallery Listings for Feb. 19-25

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Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art. A searchable guide to these and many other art shows is at nytimes.com/events.

Museums

★ Bronx Museum of the Arts: ‘Martin Wong: Human Instamatic’ (through March 13) Fervor, desire and coded insider-outsider knowledge crackle through this career retrospective of one of our great 20th-century American visionaries. Expanding on an earlier survey at the New Museum, the Bronx exhibition takes the artist from precocious juvenilia to unearthly little pictures done the year before his death from AIDS in 1999. Along with his art we have the traces of his countercultural life as mythologist, homoeroticist, existential tourist and urban resurrectionist. And all revolves around his mystical visions of ghetto New York. Neighborhood buildings are fortresslike, crushing, sinister. Yet miracles abound: Windows glow gold; night skies bloom with stars. 1040 Grand Concourse, at 165th Street, Morrisania, the Bronx, 718-681-6000, bronxmuseum.org. (Holland Cotter)

★ Brooklyn Historical Society: ‘Personal Correspondence: Photography and Letter Writing in Civil War Brooklyn’ (through June 19) Officially, the Civil War ended when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in the spring of 1865. For many people who lived through it, though, the war never ended at all, and it lives on in letters sent to and from the battlefield. Thousands of these ended up half-forgotten in attics and bureau drawers; a small stash comes to light in this exhibition, which consists of just one little room with a lot in it — including letters, Civil War souvenirs and explanatory texts — with everything as readily accessible as if in a well-packed suitcase. 128 Pierrepont Street, near Clinton Street, Brooklyn Heights, 718-222-4111, brooklynhistory.org. (Cotter)

Brooklyn Museum: ‘Agitprop!’ (through Aug. 7) Most art is political, whether it’s means to be or not, and politics is what this group exhibition is all about. Photography, prints and performance are favored media because they’re, in different ways, portable, readily legible, easily reproducible and disposable — ready to change as the news changes. The Brooklyn Museum show has change built in. It’s been conceived as an exhibition in progress, and at this point, early in its run, it looks like one, only half there and thin. But there’s more to come in cumulative stages, with artists chosen by artists already in the show joining on Feb. 17 and again on April 6. Among the later arrivals will be young activist collectives like Occupy Museums and Not an Alternative. 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, 718-638-5000, brooklynmuseum.org. (Cotter)

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum: ‘Beauty — Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial’ (through Aug. 21) This year’s version of the Cooper Hewitt’s always interesting Design Triennial boldly ventures to tackle one of the most controversial topics in today’s visual culture. With more than 250 works by 63 designers from around the world in a jam-packed, two-floor show, it’s a mixed bag in terms of quality. But whether or not everything in it qualifies as incontrovertibly beautiful, it offers an exciting opportunity to meditate on the perennially confounding questions, what is beauty and what is it good for? 2 East 91st Street, at Fifth Avenue, 212-849-8400, cooperhewitt.org. (Ken Johnson)

★ Guggenheim Museum: ‘Peter Fischli David Weiss: How to Work Better’ (through April 27) Presenting more than 300 sculptures, photographs and videos, this marvelously entertaining exhibition demonstrates the power of creative play to invigorate hearts and minds. It includes photographs of doll-scale tableaus made mainly of processed meats; films starring the artists as Rat and Bear in frowzy costumes; more than 160 small, comical clay sculptures representing a harebrained history of the world; and myriad trompe l’oeil sculptures of ordinary objects. Most importantly, there’s the team’s classic movie “The Way Things Go” (1987), the landmark film documenting an apparently continuous series of chain reactions of a Rube Goldberg-type construction. 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, 212-423-3500, guggenheim.org. (Johnson)

★ Guggenheim Museum: ‘Photo-Poetics: An Anthology’ (through March 27) Formally complex and expressively reserved, even hermetic, the work by 10 photographers in this stimulating show has roots in Conceptualism and takes language, history and speculative thinking as its raw materials. Photographs are structured with the equivalent of poetry’s metrical cadences and internal rhymes, and treated less as generators of translatable ideas than of suggestive metaphors. 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, 212-423-3500, guggenheim.org. (Cotter)

★ Jewish Museum: ‘Unorthodox’ (through March 27) With about 200 putatively unorthodox works crowded into tightly walled-in spaces, this lively show has the feel of an Outsider Art fair — in a good way. The paintings, drawings, collages, assemblages, ceramics, weavings and videos are variously funny, funky, quirky, eccentric, idiosyncratic and visionary. Are they truly unorthodox by the standards of a contemporary art world wherein no one wants to be thought orthodox? No, but that’s O.K. It’s an entertaining and intermittently exhilarating exhibition nonetheless. 1109 Fifth Avenue, at 92nd Street, 212-423-3200, thejewishmuseum.org. (Johnson)

Metropolitan Museum of Art: ‘Artistic Furniture of the Gilded Age’ (through May 1) In December, the Met unveiled a beautiful new period room in the American Wing: the Worsham-Rockefeller Dressing Room, which was created in the early 1880s by the heretofore little-known cabinetmaker and interior decorator George A. Schastey (1839–1894). A two-part exhibition in neighboring galleries focuses on individual work by Schastey, including an extravagantly ornamented Steinway grand piano. Also featured are sumptuous furnishings and decorative objects made for the palatial William H. Vanderbilt House by Herter Brothers, one of Schastey’s chief competitors. 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Johnson)

★ Metropolitan Museum of Art: ‘Celebrating the Arts of Japan: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection’ (continuing) This lavish roll out of 160 objects came to the Met from the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation last spring. The Burkes loved Japanese art — all of it — and the collection is close to compendious in terms of media, from wood-carved Buddhas to bamboo baskets, with a particular strength in painting, early and late. The quality of the work? Japan thinks highly enough of it to have made the Burke holdings the first Japanese collection from abroad ever to show at Tokyo National Museum. Some pieces on view now will be rotated out and replaced in February, making this an exhibition to visit at least twice. 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Cotter)

Metropolitan Museum of Art: ‘A New Look at a Van Eyck Masterpiece’ (through April 24) This small show of Flemish art, highly specialized yet not inaccessible, is the latest in an impressive sequence of laser-focused examinations of the Met’s holdings of late medieval and Renaissance painting. A crystalline Crucifixion attributed to van Eyck, and a jam-packed Last Judgment painted by him and his studio, now hang as a diptych — but technical analysis of the frames suggests they were probably side panels for a central painting now lost. Alongside the Met’s van Eycks is a recently resurfaced drawing of the Crucifixion, lent by Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, whose wizened Virgin and writhing thieves rhyme with the painted version. Did van Eyck draw it? Whether he did or not, the drawing grounds these divinely impeccable paintings in the real world of brushes and pencils. 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Jason Farago)

Metropolitan Museum of Art: ‘Reconstructions: Recent Photographs and Video from the Met Collection’ (through March 13) This show is not framed as a showcase of what’s new, hot or trending, but rather includes 18 works by 15 artists acquired during the past seven years — work that Met curators think will endure historically. Among those on view are Moyra Davey’s photographs of record store patrons and vinyl record bins, printed on fold-up mailers; Lucas Blalock’s example of photography in the post-Internet era, which contains perverse digitally tweaked passages; as well as a deceptively simple image by Sarah Charlesworth, a leading member of the Pictures Generation, who died in 2013 but remains influential. 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Martha Schwendener)

★ Metropolitan Museum of Art: ‘Vigée Le Brun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France’ (through May 15) The outstanding late-17th-century painter finally receives a ravishing survey. A prodigy and portraitist to Marie Antoinette and her court, Vigée Le Brun orchestrated an equally successful career among the royals of Italy, Prussia and especially Russia after the French Revolution. Her best efforts are distinguished by exquisite technique (ears sometimes excepted), inventive colors and immensely sympathetic portrayals of men and women alike. 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Roberta Smith)

★ Metropolitan Museum of Art: ‘Wordplay: Matthias Buchinger’s Drawings From the Collection of Ricky Jay’ (through April 11) A draftsman, calligrapher, magician and musician, Matthias Buchinger (1674–1739) traveled all over Northern Europe to entertain kings and aristocrats as well as hoi polloi with feats of physical dexterity. He was especially noted for elaborate drawings featuring biblical passages written in letters too small to be read by ordinary naked eyes. This he managed despite having been born without hands or legs: His arms ended at the elbows and his lower extremities were truncated at the upper thighs. Sixteen of his amazing works are featured in this exhibition. 212-535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Johnson)

★ MoMA PS1: ‘Greater New York’ (through March 7) With a multigenerational team of organizers, MoMA PS1’s every-five-years-roundup of New York art steps away from its founding premise of newness, the idea that it would be an update on the metropolitan market. The 158 artists on the roster range from 20-something to 80-something; a few are deceased. The notion that an “emerging” artist has to be young is discarded. Older artists newly in the spotlight, or back after a long delay, qualify. And history works in two directions. Art from the 1970s and ’80s is presented as prescient of what’s being made now, and new art is viewed as putting a trenchant spin on the past. 22-25 Jackson Avenue, at 46th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, 718-784-2084, ps1.org. (Cotter)

★ Museum of Arts and Design: Ebony G. Patterson: ‘Dead Treez’ (through April 3) Born in Kingston, Jamaica, this young artist focuses her attention on the island’s dancehall culture in a smashing solo show. The centerpiece is a set of monumental tapestries, laid flat on the floor like carpets, their embroidered surfaces sparkling with sequins and dense with sewn-on objects which partially obscure images of urban murder victims. The theme of beauty disguising danger extends to a smaller adjoining installation in which the artist has inserted jewelry from the museum’s permanent collection in vitrines filled with carnivorous-looking fake tropical flowers. 2 Columbus Circle, Manhattan, 212-299-7777, madmuseum.org. (Cotter)

Museum of Arts and Design: ‘Wendell Castle Remastered’ (through Feb. 28) This eminent woodworker became noted in the 1960s for carving chic, curvy furniture out of blocks of laminated wood. In the past four years he has revived that method with the assistance of digital and robotic technologies that enable him to make bigger and more adventurous works. This engaging show focuses on pieces from those two periods. “Suspended Disbelief,” made this year, has an irregularly oval, glossy black table top extending horizontally and without legs some 10 feet in the air from a trio of tall conical forms resembling the tips of monstrous tendrils. It’s spectacular. 2 Columbus Circle, Manhattan, 212-299-7777, madmuseum.org. (Johnson)

Museum of Modern Art: ‘Endless House: Intersections of Art and Architecture’ (through March 6) This scattered but enjoyable exhibition, drawn from the museum’s art collection as much as its design holdings, focuses on the single-family home as a place of experimentation and regeneration; of conflict as well as dreams. Its highlight is a series of drawings and photographs by Frederick Kiesler, the Austrian-American polymath whose Endless House — never completed — fused fine art, architecture, furniture and lighting design into a bulbous, unstable whole. Several artists here echo Kiesler’s theme of the house as a reflection of the psychology of its inhabitants. None is more powerful than Rachel Whiteread’s sober image, made with white correction fluid, of a dwelling in East London: a preparatory drawing for a now lost sculpture crafted by filling the house with liquid concrete. 212-708-9400, moma.org. (Jason Farago)

★ Museum of Modern Art: ‘Jackson Pollock: A Collection Survey, 1934-1954’ (through May 1) The first exhibition devoted to the Modern’s unsurpassed Pollock holding gives a dazzling account of the evolution of his signature poured paintings. Its 58 works on canvas and paper also attest to the Modern’s laserlike focus on accounting fully for the achievements of artists it deems great. 212-708-9400, moma.org. (Smith)

★ Museum of Modern Art: ‘Marcel Broodthaers: A Retrospective’ (through May 15) The Belgian poet Marcel Broodthaers (1924-1976) supported himself for 40 years as a bookseller before deciding on a new career as an artist. In 1964, he turned some unsold poetry books into a sculpture, and instantly had a debut solo show. Four years later, he appointed himself director of a fictional art museum — his own. Now comes a belated and woozily perplexing first New York survey of one of Europe’s most influential 20th-century trickster-artist-poets, along with a complementary showcase, “Marcel Broodthaers: Ecriture,” at Michael Werner Gallery on the Upper East Side. 212-708-9400, moma.org. (Cotter)

Museum of Modern Art: ‘Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015’ (through March 20) To celebrate the 30th anniversary of its longstanding “New Photography” series, and perhaps to soften the news that the series will now change from annual to biennial, MoMA presents the largest and most cosmopolitan edition yet, with 19 artists and collectives, from 14 countries. The title refers to the infinite image blank called the Internet, and borrowed and manipulated images. So built-in delays in accessibility. Almost wherever you look you need to look twice, and consult a label, to fully understand what you’re seeing. The extra effort feels more fruitful in some cases than in others, with work by Yuki Kimura, Basim Magdy, Indre Serpytyte and Lieko Shiga particular worth lingering over. 212-708-9400, moma.org. (Cotter)

Museum of Modern Art: ‘Scenes for a New Heritage: Contemporary Art from the Collection’ (through April 10) MoMA’s latest installation of works from its permanent collection fills the second-floor contemporary galleries with videos, installations, sculptures, drawings, prints and photographs produced by more than 30 artists during the past three decades. It’s an uneven, haphazard selection, but leaving artistic quality aside, its unusually optimistic-sounding title inadvertently raises a large and intriguing question: At a time when contemporary art seems to be spinning its wheels, what could a new heritage be? 212-708-9400, moma.org. (Johnson)

★ Museum of Modern Art: ‘Soldier, Spectre, Shaman: The Figure and the Second World War’ (through March 20) MoMA usually stages the years after 1945 as a triumph of American abstraction, but this vital show affirms that the human figure never disappeared from art — especially not in battle-scarred Europe. With the end of the war, and the full revelation of the Holocaust, the human body became a sign of pathos and existential dread, notably in the fraught paintings of Francis Bacon and the spindly sculptures of Alberto Giacometti. The same was true of other European artists who received less American acclaim — such as Jean Fautrier, whose haunted “Otages” (“Hostages”) are far better known in his native France. The show is drawn entirely from the museum’s permanent collection, and its greatest surprise comes from Jan Müller, a German émigré in New York, whose ghoulish “Faust I” (1956) depicts the witches of Goethe’s epic as starved, traumatized wraiths. 212-708-9400, moma.org. (Farago)

★ Museum of Modern Art: ‘Take an Object’ (through Feb. 28) Installed next to the Modern’s Jackson Pollock exhibition, this show of 37 works from 1954 to the 1970s reflects how the finality of the Abstract Expressionist’s drip paintings deflected many artists from the medium toward found objects and a greater worldliness. Its title is from a famous notebook entry by Jasper Johns. 212-708-9400, moma.org. (Smith)

Museum of the City of New York: ‘Activist New York’ (continuing) With a focus on activist tactics from the 17th century to the present, this exhibition — designed by the firm Pentagram — is a room-size onslaught of sensory stimulation, complete with videos, graphics and text. Told through 14 “moments” in New York activism, it includes a facsimile of the Flushing Remonstrance (1657), a petition for religious tolerance given to Peter Stuyvesant, director-general of the settlement, as well as contemporaneous objects, like a Dutch tobacco box, a Bible and “Meet the Activists” kiosks adjacent to each display, which identify activist groups working in the present. Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street, 212-534-1672, mcny.org. (Schwendener)

Museum of the City of New York: ‘Jacob A. Riis: Revealing New York’s Other Half’ (through March 20) The Danish immigrant muckraker’s stark photographs, coupled with his documents from the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress, vividly portray the changing face of poverty since Riis exposed the poor to an oblivious public 125 years ago and remind viewers of the lingering challenges. Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street, 212-534-1672, mcny.org. (Sam Roberts)

★ New Museum: ‘Anri Sala: Answer Me’ (through April 10) This austere yet impassioned survey examines the work of an Albanian-born artist known for roiling explorations, mostly in video, of sound, color, history and architecture, as well as the politics of modern life. Brilliantly installed, the works here remarkably balance the sensuous and the social, exposing music to minute dissection, charged settings or uncharacteristic instruments, inspiring us to listen as deeply as we look. 235 Bowery, at Prince Street, Lower East Side, 212-219-1222, newmuseum.org. (Smith)

New-York Historical Society: ‘Maestà’: Gaddi’s Triptych Reunited’ (through March 20) This tiny but lovely exhibition focuses on three marvelous Italian Early Renaissance paintings from a collection given to the society by Thomas Jefferson Bryan, one of most discerning American collectors of the 19th century. The main attraction, by Taddeo Gaddi, is a triptych whose central panel depicting Mary enthroned — the Maestà — here is temporarily reunited with the folding shutters from which it had been separated long ago. The two other paintings are a poignant Crucifixion by a follower of Duccio di Buoninsegna and a lively, panoramic picture of an Ancient Roman procession by Giovanni di Ser Giovanni Guidi, Masaccio’s younger brother. 170 Central Park West, at 77th Street, 212-873-3400, nyhistory.org. (Johnson)

Studio Museum in Harlem: ‘A Constellation,’ ‘Black: Color, Material, Concept,’ ‘Lorraine O’Grady: Art Is …’ and ‘Marc Andre Robinson: Twice Told’ (through March 6) “A Constellation,” includes the work of 26 artists and focuses on themes of abstraction, the figure and the history of the African diaspora. “Black: Color, Material, Concept” continues the conversation around blackness initiated by Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the museum, who introduced the term “post-black” into the cultural conversation almost 15 years ago with the exhibition “Freestyle.” In the basement, a sculptural installation by Marc Andre Robinson weaves together formalism with black cultural history, while another, “Lorraine O’Grady: Art Is … ” offers a fantastic exhibition of photographs documenting Ms. O’Grady’s performance piece during Harlem’s 1983 African-American Day Parade, in which she skillfully weaves together art, activism and participation. 144 West 125th Street, 212-864-4500, studiomuseum.org. (Schwendener)

★ Whitney Museum of American Art: ‘Collected by Thea Westreich Wagner and Ethan Wagner’ (through March 6) Two of New York’s most dedicated explorers of new art set an important example by refusing the auction or private-museum route and giving almost all of their large collection to a museum. Their generous gift both signifies and adds to the Whitney’s growing stature, especially going forward, as it is integrated into the museum’s rich holdings. This first sampling is quite rewarding. 99 Gansevoort Street, at Washington Street, 212-570-3600, whitney.org. (Smith)

Whitney Museum of American Art: ‘Flatlands’ (through April 17) This engaging small show presents a dozen pieces by five young (all born since 1980) representational painters who work under the influences of Pop Art and Surrealism. Highlights include Matthew Cerletty’s hallucinogenic view into a fish tank; Orion Martin’s erotic depiction of a knee-high boot; Jamian Juliano-Villani’s funny-scary image of an apartment haunted by a black-clad figure with an animal-skull head; Caitlin Keogh’s anatomical meditations resembling pages from a morbid coloring book for grown-ups; and Nina Chanel Abney’s 18-foot-wide “Hothouse,” which updates Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” 99 Gansevoort Street, at Washington Street, 212-570-3600, whitney.org. (Johnson)

★ Whitney Museum of American Art: ‘Laura Poitras: Astro Noise’ (through May 1) An engrossing first solo museum show by an artist-activist known for films documenting the United States government’s post-Sept. 11 “war on terror,” notably the Oscar-winning “Citizenfour.” Here she pursues her forensic mediation on global surveillance with a suite of dimly lit installations made up of photographs, videos and texts that take us from ground zero to Baghdad, Washington and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and that conclude with a chilling little real-time surprise. 99 Gansevoort Street, at Washington Street, 212-570-3600, whitney.org. (Cotter)

Galleries: Uptown

★ ‘Swedish Wooden Toys’ (through Feb. 28) This presentation of more than 300 playthings from the late 16th to the early 21st centuries will be catnip for anyone into antique toys. The show features diminutive vehicles of all kinds from old-time wagons, trains and fully-rigged sailboats, to futuristic cars and a rocket ship. There are naturalistic and anthropomorphic animals, weapons, puzzles, games, dollhouses and architectural construction kits. While many of these items were produced by big manufacturers like BRIO and Playsam, many others are one-of-a-kind wonders like a miniature baking set from around 1900 that includes rolling pins, spatulas and other implements all lovingly carved from wood and fitting into a tray just eight inches long. Bard Graduate Center Gallery, 18 West 86th Street, Manhattan, 212-501-3011, bgc.bard.edu. (Johnson)

Galleries: Chelsea

Berlinde De Bruyckere: ‘No Life Lost’ (through April 2) This Belgian artist’s rousingly operatic exhibition casts an ominous, funereal spell. Most arresting is “No Life Lost II,” in which the bodies of three horses — made by the artist using real horse hides, hooves and all — lie on their sides, one on top of the other inside a big, old, wood-framed glass cabinet. Their legs jut out the front doors so that they look as if frozen in a dying struggle to get out. It’s like a nightmare had by Louise Bourgeois. Hauser & Wirth, 511 West 18th Street, Chelsea, 212-790-3900, hauserwirth.com. (Johnson)

★ Robert Ryman (through July 29) For nearly 60s years, the Minimalist painter Robert Ryman has had few equals when it comes to doing more with less. White has been his primary, if not quite his only, color, the square his typical format. And yet within these seeming limitations a remarkably fecund and resonant body of work has evolved as demonstrated with unusual clarity (and in natural light) by this small but comprehensive exhibition. Dia: Chelsea, 535 West 22nd Street, 212-989-5566, diaart.org. (Smith)

Mickalene Thomas (through March 17) Mickalene Thomas is best known for lavish, collagelike paintings, but the photographs on view in “Muse: Mickalene Thomas Photographs” often served as sketches or studies for those paintings. The “Tête-a-Tête” portion of the show makes explicit Ms. Thomas’s formal and spiritual kinship with other black photographers. Works by Lyle Ashton Harris, Derrick Adams, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Deana Lawson, Renée Cox, Zanele Muholi, Xaviera Simmons and Hank Willis Thomas hang alongside a photograph by the Malian master Malick Sidibé, linking contemporary practices and traditions of African portraiture, with its creative posing of subjects and juxtapositions of contrasting textile patterns. Aperture, 547 West 27th Street, Chelsea, 212-505-5555, aperture.org. (Schwendener)

Galleries: SoHo

Alex Bag: ‘The Van (Redux)*’ (through Feb. 28) Much has changed since Alex Bag made her video “Untitled (The Van)” for the 2001 Armory Show, where it was exhibited inside a customized Dodge cargo van. This is addressed, obliquely or otherwise, in “The Van (Redux)*” (2015), a nearly 30-minute mockumentary about a sleazy art entrepreneur named Leroy LeLoup, who has figured out a new method for discovering artists: He looks for kindergarten-age prodigies and nurtures their talent into the “crème de la crème of post-Internet art.” The work resonates powerfully with viewers who remember the art world in which Ms. Bag emerged — or who aspire to join the current one. Team Gallery, 47 Wooster Street, SoHo, 212-279-9219, teamgal.com. (Schwendener)

★ Giorgio Morandi (through June 25) The Italian master of modern still life, and closet abstractionist, is celebrated in a large show devoted foremost to his painting from the 1930s, which are not well known in this country. They reveal a period of struggle during which the artist had settled on what to paint, how to paint was still very much up for grabs. Joel Meyerowitz’s large color photographs of Morandi’s still life objects — which he sometimes altered — are also on view. Reservations are required. Center for Italian Modern Art, 421 Broome Street, near Crosby Street, SoHo, 646-370-3596, italianmodernart.org. (Smith)

★ Cameron Rowland: ‘91020000’ (through March 13) This remarkable show fuses history and aesthetics using carefully selected (and displayed) found objects accompanied by terse, illuminating captions. The subject is slavery as the primary through-line of the American saga, from the Middle Passage beyond the Emancipation Proclamation and into the present in the form of cheap inmate labor in state prisons, where the population is one-third African-American. It is a shameful, heartbreaking story and a continuing plague on the national house. Artists Space, 38 Greene Street, at Grand Street, SoHo, 212-226-3970, artistsspace.org. (Smith)

Galleries: Other

★ ‘Global/Local 1960–2015: Six Artists from Iran’ (through April 2) In the early 1960s, the American art patron Abby Weed Grey traveled to Iran, loved the new art she saw there, bought it and gave it to New York University, where she also founded Grey Art Gallery. For its current multigenerational show, the gallery joins two artists from its collection, Parviz Tanavoli and Faramarz Pilaram, with borrowed work by four younger figures. Of particular interest is an installation by Chohreh Feyzdjou (1955-1996) who, late in her career, recycled her only earlier paintings in installations that suggest the contents of Pharaonic tombs. She is well matched in the young Tehran Conceptualist Barbad Golshiri, who takes funerary monuments and history as his theme. Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 100 Washington Square East, Greenwich Village, 212-998-6780, nyu.edu/greyart. (Cotter)

★ Glenn Ligon: ‘We Need to Wake Up Cause That’s What Time It Is’ (through April 17) At some point in the 1982 film “Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip,” the politically trenchant comedian says that racism makes him so furious he can’t speak. Silence is the most immediately arresting feature of Mr. Ligon’s installation, for which the soundtrack of the film has been eliminated. What’s left is an entirely visual experience, and a radically fragmented one, projected on several screens ranged around the gallery. On one, Mr. Pryor appears, full length, on stage; On the others, he’s divided into close-ups: his mouth on one screen, his hands on another; his torso and groin isolated on a third; his shadow, cast by the spotlight on yet another. Luhring Augustine Bushwick, 25 Knickerbocker Avenue, at Ingraham Street, Brooklyn, 718-386-2746, luhringaugustine.com. (Cotter)

★ ‘Painting Tranquility: Masterworks by Vilhelm Hammershoi From SMK — The National Gallery of Denmark’ (through March 26) One of Denmark’s most celebrated artists, Hammershoi (1864-1916) was known as “the painter of tranquil rooms.” This beautiful show of 24 paintings includes pictures in severely muted colors of women in nearly empty rooms suffused by atmospheres of mystery and loneliness; misty, gray cityscapes, devoid of people, that are like anxiety dreams; and tenderly unflinching portraits of the artist’s wife, Ida. Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue, at 38th Street, 212-779-3587, scandinaviahouse.org. (Johnson)

Public Art

Jeppe Hein: ‘Please Touch the Art’ (through April 17) People with small children likely will enjoy Mr. Hein’s three-part show. If it’s a hot day, the kids will rush to be drenched by “Appearing Rooms,” which has water spouting up unpredictably from a square platform of metal grating. Youngsters as well as grown-ups also may be fascinating by the perceptually confounding “Mirror Labyrinth NY,” which consists of mirror-surfaced planks of stainless steel in varying heights planted in the grass in a spiral formation. Meanwhile, guardians can rest on one of 16 fanciful, shocking orange park benches while their young charges clamber about on the furniture’s surrealistically altered parts. Brooklyn Bridge Park, 334 Furman Street, Fulton Ferry, Brooklyn, publicartfund.org. (Johnson)

Out Of Town

Dia:Beacon: Robert Irwin: ‘Excursus: Homage to the Square³’ (through May 2017) A walk-in maze with walls of white scrim lit by color-filtered fluorescent tubes, Mr. Irwin’s “Excursus: Homage to the Square³” had its debut in 1998 at the Dia Center for the Arts in Chelsea. It was so popular that the curators elected to keep it on view a year longer than its originally planned run. It’s reincarnation here is similarly transporting, if not as thoroughly as the original was. But to experience it at Dia:Beacon along Minimalist works by other artists that encourage heightened perceptual attention to the here and now is as spiritually calming as it is historically illuminating. 3 Beekman Street, Beacon, 845-440-0100, diaart.org. (Johnson)

★ National Gallery of Art: ‘Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World’ (through March 20) One of the best sculpture surveys you’ll ever see, this one refutes the view that Hellenistic period was inferior to the idealized renderings of the Classical age. Its 40 outstanding figures and heads trace the introduction of an unprecedented realism visible in a combination of motion, emotion and physical detail that can still astound. On the National Mall, between Third and Seventh Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, 202-737-4215, nga.gov. (Smith)

Last Chance

★ ‘Concrete Cuba’ (closes on Saturday) The history of postwar abstraction expands with this riveting exhibition of nearly 40 works. All were made in Cuba during the 1950s by a group called Los Diez Pintores Concretos — the 10 Concrete Painters. Working small, they fruitfully extended the geometric vocabularies of Constructivism, Mondrian and late Kandinsky with local colors and repurposed materials. David Zwirner, 537 West 20th Street, Chelsea, 212-517-8677, davidzwirner.com. (Smith)

Louis Draper and ‘Timeless: Photographs by Kamoinge’ (closes on Saturday) The Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and ’70s included music, theater and literature, but also art collectives like Spiral and the photography group and workshop Kamoinge, founded in 1963. Kamoinge, which means “acting together” in Kikuyu, a Kenyan language, was dedicated to positive representations of African-Americans. Two shows currently in galleries examine Kamoinge’s legacy and coincide with the publication of recent books about the collectives. Steven Kasher Gallery, 515 West 26th Street, Chelsea, 212-966-3978, www.stevenkasher.com. Also at the Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba House, 214 East Second Street, at Avenue B, East Village, 212-674-3939, facebook.com/kenkeleba.house. (Schwendener)

Alex Hay: ‘Circumstance / Art’ (closes on Saturday) Further proof of art’s capacity for blissfully uninformed repetition, this show revisits some works from the 1960s that presage zombie abstraction, unpainted paintings as well as Fischli and Weiss’s trompe l’oeil sculptures. Don’t miss the funky balls of colored masking tape that resulted from making the nearby trompe l’oeil paintings of expanses of linoleum and woodgrain. Peter Freeman, 140 Grand Street, SoHo, 212-966-5154, peterfreemaninc.com. (Smith)

Ann Veronica Janssens (closes on Saturday) This Brussels-based British artist extends yet shows up the tradition of Southern California’s Light and Space movement. Mainly her strict yet playful economy of means avoids the usual fuss — built-out environments, computerized light shows and removal of footwear — that belies the movement’s less-is-more, dematerialized aesthetic. The results are as beautiful and more thought-provoking. Bortolami Gallery, 520 West 20th Street, Chelsea, 212-727-2050, bortolamigallery.com. (Smith)