Simmons made a name for herself in the ‘70s and ‘80s by constructing dollhouse rooms and photographing them. They were a subversive reflection on the Marxist notion of the fetishizing commodity and were done through a feminist lens. She was not interested so much with creating a narrative in her photographs, though her subject matter may have reflected otherwise. Rather, she refers to the early works as “doll still life work” and they became as such after she stared at the created spaces until they became void of meaning and abstract to her. 

But the primary focus of the show is a far-reaching exploration of how such personal portraiture has been transformed over the decades.  It comprises not only choice works from Academy members, but entries from places as far-flung as Palestine, Lebanon, Iran and China.  Perhaps the biggest and most welcome surprise is the extent of entries from women—62 such artists represented from 30 different countries in all.  

Altina, a film by Peter Sanders, is a documentary valentine to his artist grandmother.  It may not solve the riddle about the woman behind the cat’s eye frames she invented, but it’s a lively enough pastiche of the turbulent 20^th century she inhabited.  Through newsreels, archival home videos and close-up glimpses from some of the people whose lives she touched, we can enjoy the journey.  

The Met’s own collection of El Greco’s religious paintings, portraits, and the incomparable rare landscape of the artist’s, The View of Toledo, is the finest outside of the Prado’s in Madrid.  Added to this, the generous loans of six other works from the Hispanic Society of America make this a special treat for the viewer. (Concurrently, three El Greco pictures which cannot be removed, are on view at The Frick Collection.) The comprehensive display can be seen in one room and if at first, it may not seem expansive enough for the jaded gallery-hopper, it is truly an embarrassment of riches.  

The approach of Seymour Boardman (1921-2005) to visual structure evolved from his earlier works which evidenced a concern with expressive painted surfaces. After losing the use of his left hand during World War II, Boardman resumed his art studies in France from 1946-1949. “Visual structure” played a major role in his approach. Boardman moved from the use of gestural paint strokes to formally composed canvases that are specific in the use of color, shape placement, and line. 

Brooklyn Museum’s long-term installation Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn brings objects from the museum’s extensive collection and unites them thematically. Rather than visit different galleries representing specific time periods and/or cultures, this singular space set on the main floor provides an intimate archive of works from across the globe that range from antiquity to the contemporary. 

The Paris of Toulouse Lautrec: Prints and Posters, the first Museum of Modern Art exhibition in 30 years dedicated solely to Lautrec, features over 100 examples of work created during the apex of his career.  It is a giddy but never glum celebration of the most colorful and notorious characters that inhabited his world and his genius at depicting them.  It’s primarily the dancers and aristocratic doyens, the prostitutes, publishers and pleasure-seekers of the night that captured his heart, and subsequently, his brush.  

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Seascapes brings together Sugimoto’s iconic seascapes, on loan from important collections and on view for the first time in Southampton since Time Exposed, his 1994-95 solo exhibition at the Parrish Art Museum. Among works on view are Mediterranean Sea, Crete (1990); Yellow Sea, Cheju (1992); Lake Superior, Cascade River (1995-2003); and Tyrrhenian Sea (1990).

If it’s true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the beholder happened to be Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich henchmen, then the likes of Kandinsky, Kirchner, Kokoschka, and Klee (and that’s just the early 20^th Century artistic giants whose names start with “K”) were in big trouble.  By the time the Nazi campaign to purge the world of modernist art ended, some 20,000 pieces were confiscated, hidden, sold, or destroyed.  

"Symbolic Abstraction" was the term Hagedorn used to reference his work, which spanned the 1950s to the 21st century. He employed the mediums of painting, drawing, watercolor and gouache. Through the decades the connective tissue throughout his output was his vivid colors, forms, and shapes. His work relates all these elements in the search  for a connection between the human  system, spirit, and the world it simultaneously reflects and creates.