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The article previews art exhibitions held at art galleries in New York City from December 6, 2015 to February 27, 2016 including "The Secret Garden," featuring work of photographer David Gilbert and "Painting Tranquility: Masterworks by Vilhelm Hammershoi from SMK-The National Gallery of Denmark.

The article reviews the exhibitions "Zanele Muholi: Isibonelo/Evidence," "Doris Salcedo" and "Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television," held at the art museums in New York City through November 1, 2015.

''Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A., 1945-1980,'' an aggregation of dozens of exhibitions at museums and galleries that got under way in Southern California last fall, celebrates the emergence of Los Angeles as a contemporary art center after World War II. On the East Coast, meanwhile, a much more modest show, drawn from the collection of a single art patron, pays homage to the same phenomenon. That show, ''EST-3: Southern California in New York: Los Angeles Art From the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection,'' is at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton. It riffs on the same time-zone theme -- EST-3 refers to Eastern Standard Time minus three -- and includes more than 150 works arranged into three simple sections -- people, places and things -- by David Pagel, a Los Angeles-based adjunct curator for the museum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

''Museums are like the family sepulchers of works of art,'' wrote Theodor Adorno, the 20th-century German philosopher, who pointed out that ''museum'' and ''mausoleum'' even sound alike. ''Spies in the House of Art: Photography, Film and Video,'' a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition of 17 contemporary works inspired by museums, all from the Met's collection, doesn't mention Adorno by name. But it nods toward him in an introductory wall text telling us that although artists generally want to see their work in museums, ''they may joke among themselves with gallows humor that museums are mausoleums, places where art goes to die.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a 1965 essay on postwar science-fiction films Susan Sontag noted a common ingredient: a ''depersonalization'' of the characters, a kind of emotionless zombie state that occurred when their minds were taken over by aliens or robots. Some of this, she wrote, reflected the basic conditions of modern life. But it also pointed toward something new in the nuclear era. Now humans had to contend not only with the fear of death but also the ''psychologically insupportable'' possibility of a ''collective incineration and extinction which could come at any time, virtually without warning.'' Art of the 1960s exhibited similar symptoms of depersonalization. Where anxiety and trauma sat on the surface of slashed, burned and dirt-crusted canvases from the 1940s and '50s, or in the emaciated forms of Giacometti's sculptures, by the late '50s the personal, existential and emotive were replaced by a new detachment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Last year was a big one for Fluxus, despite the fact that this international network of artists, composers and poetic pranksters has been defunct for several decades. Attention in art history is often bestowed posthumously, however, and because 2011 was the 50th anniversary of Fluxus's first New York project -- an exhibition in book form of performance-related materials -- half a dozen shows have been mounted locally to commemorate the group's existence. One of them is ''at/around/beyond: Fluxus at Rutgers University'' at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick. Rutgers played a special role in Fluxus. The artists Allan Kaprow, Geoffrey Hendricks and Robert Watts, described by their fellow artist Carolee Schneemann as a kind of ''Fluxus-seedbed,'' all taught there in the late 1950s or '60s. According to the brochure that accompanies the exhibition, George Brecht, a chemist at Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick, contacted Mr. Watts after seeing a faculty exhibition in 1957, and the two met for lunch every week at the local Howard Johnson's to discuss their common interest in art and science. Mr. Brecht became a core member of Fluxus. And George Maciunas, one of the driving forces behind the group, organized Flux-mass, a mock-religious action performance at Rutgers in 1970. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The title ''Ripped: The Allure of Collage'' hinges on a bit of clever wordplay, suggesting gym-toned bodies and six-pack abs. Of course, collage originally involved torn paper rather than taut muscles. But the hint of sexiness is appropriate, since collage is one of modern art's most seductive mediums, in which cast-off and non-art materials are assembled into avant-garde objects. The exhibition at the Heckscher Museum in Huntington gets part of this narrative right, showcasing early collage works that resonate with the excitement of the new and slightly forbidden. The show is far weaker, however, when looking at contemporary art. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Portraits were not just a popular genre in the early days of this nation; they were among the only art that patrons would pay for. As a result, many American artists went abroad, hoping to test their abilities on juicier subjects, like allegorical or historical epics. But portraiture has remained an important American genre, something that can serve as a springboard to larger ideas. This is evident in some of the works in ''American Portraits: Treasures From the Parrish Art Museum'' in Southampton. Rather than proceeding chronologically, the exhibition moves through the human life cycle, a tack that feels appropriate for portraiture. The show also emphasizes the importance of a sense of place -- something that can get lost in the white-wall art space of a museum or gallery -- by featuring lots of local landscapes and East End artists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Art can, at times, have a bit of an audience problem. On the one hand, it wants to speak to the largest population. On the other, it wants to participate in conversations that only a handful of people are knowledgeable about -- philosophy, say, or politics, or art itself. Betsabee Romero, an artist born in 1963, who was educated in Mexico and Paris and now lives in Mexico City, has hit upon a solution. ''The car is by far the object that attracts the greatest aesthetic attention among people of all ages and social classes,'' Ms. Romero says in a statement printed on the wall in her current exhibition, ''Betsabee Romero: Lagrimas Negras,'' at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a collectors' show. Nothing wrong with that. After all, collectors are people, too -- very important people. They are the ones who keep the lights on and the curators running. Without patrons like the Medici, Pope Pius IV and the kings of France, we would not have Michelangelo, Leonardo or Versailles. But in the same way museum exhibitions dedicated to one artist can distort the collective, network-based nature of art history, exhibitions based on a single patron's collection can misrepresent the career of the artists in them. Such is the case with ''The Independent Eye: Contemporary British Art From the Collection of Samuel and Gabrielle Lurie'' at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faith Ringgold, who turned 80 this year, is best known for the story quilts that she began making in the 1980s. But her paintings on canvas from the 1960s are also rather extraordinary. So it's surprising that a comprehensive exhibition of these works is happening for the first time, with ''American People, Black Light: Faith Ringgold's Paintings of the 1960s,'' at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase. And yet, maybe it's not so surprising. After all, Ms. Ringgold was working against the grain of '60s New York art by making figurative paintings. Her work pulled from European Modernism, but also from African design motifs and American folk art. And, of course, Ms. Ringgold was a black woman attempting to insert herself into a tradition dominated by white men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews several exhibitions held in New York which include the "Gulu Real Art Studio"by Martina Bacigalupo at the Walter Collection Project Space, "Hooray For Hollywood!" at Mixed Greens Gallery, and "The Emily Dickinson Series" by Janet Malcolm at Lori Bookstein Fine Art.