Haber's Art Reviews: Browse by Artist (I-M)

Pick from More Artists

John Haber
in New York City

Iglesias

What does it mean for summer sculpture to be site specific? "Black Atlantic" turns its back on Liberty and Cristina Iglesias finds hidden waters, while Maren Hassinger and Wyatt Kahn turn modest objects into steel for urban parks.

Igwe

Can art wage a woman's war? Nigeria for Onyeka Igwe is dancing, while Barbad Golshiri in Iran is in mourning for life.

Indiana

Was there more to Robert Indiana than love? His text-driven Pop Art creates product logos for a transformation of America, but Christopher Wool is still looking for trouble.

Ingram

Is too much paint being flung around? Absolutely, but Scott Ingram, McArthur Binion, Keltie Ferris, Daniel Hesidence, Stephen Maine, and Jackie Saccoccio can still leave their physical trace and their shimmer.

Ingrisano

Urban systems and strata may call up excavations deep within New York. Yet they supply titles for abstract art by Tony Ingrisano, Christopher Astley, Colin Keefe, and Rebecca Smith.

Ingres

Heir to France's academic traditions, at home with rich surfaces and wealthy patrons, toady to the emperor, J. A. D. Ingres might stand for France's retreat from revolution. Could Ingres's portraits point the way to Romanticism—and beyond?

Inness

Sanford Robinson Gifford and George Inness gave the Hudson River School some of its most visionary landscapes. Did they really find that vision in Europe?

Irazu

Are Pello Irazu, Eugenio Espinoza, Paul Gabrielli, Lisa Kirk, Ted Larsen, and Sylvan Lionni born scavengers? They also know when to clear away the clutter and the dust.

Irwin

Can site-specific work look as good as new in a second incarnation? Robert Irwin says goodbye to the Whitney on Madison Avenue and to Dia:Chelsea by paring a museum back to light and space.

With Minimalism, does art surrender to experience, or does the viewer surrender to the art? With a factory redesign by Robert Irwin, 300,000 square feet, and big shows for Dan Flavin, Robert Ryman, Richard Serra, Andy Warhol, and many more, Dia:Beacon assumes control.

Jacir

Why should one trust a journalist more than an artist, when it comes to events as charged with political and human meaning as 9/11? Emily Jacir, Guy Richards Smit, and others know when to listen, even when the voices get a little crazed.

When political art goes wrong, it can get too didactic or too personal. With Emily Jacir, Marlene Dumas, and "The Labyrinth Wall," can it ever be both at once?

Jackson

Can "Making Knowing" make the case for craft as art, even apart from fabric? For Samuel Levi Jones and Suzanne Jackson, raw materials speak for African American voices.

Jacquette

What makes a city so faceless or familiar? Bernd and Hilla Becher multiply its towers, while Anthony Hernandez sets it behind a screen, and Yvonne Jacquette takes to the sky.

Should realism make the landscape look familiar? From above, Yvonne Jacquette, Domingo Milella, Levan Mindiashvili, Antonio Murado, and Rod Penner trace a strange evolution in New York City, cemeteries, and the open road.

Jaeger

John Dante Bianchi and Monika Zarzeczna make abstract art, Elizabeth Jaeger and Bruce M. Sherman ceramics, Lee Relvas wood craft, and Elaine Cameron-Weir lab equipment. So who do they all appear to fragment or to extend human flesh?

Jafa

Can a celebration of African Americans help overcome very real dangers? Arthur Jafa and "The Body Politic" (with Steve McQueen, David Hammons, and Mika Rottenberg) make the body in question a part of black history and culture.

What if the taxi driver in the film of that name targeted only blacks? Arthur Jafa has a recurring nightmare, while Alexander Brewington paints a brighter African American New York at night.

James

Could nineteenth-century art let its hair down? John Singer Sargent had more daring and reserve in portraits of artists and friends—including Henry James, who knew him and other American artists well.

Jankowski

Video art cannot imitate Mel Gibson, Federico Fellini, and Alfred Hitchcock all at the same time, can it? Christian Jankowski and Jon Routson give it a try.

Is London racing past New York or mired in tradition? Christian Jankowski, Ken Currie, Damien Hirst, Marilene Oliver, and Bridget Riley suggest the deep roots of a crazed arts scene and urban landscape.

Janssens

Amid all the noise and gestures, can art still think small? The Morgan Library displays contemporary drawings "By Any Means," while "Microwave" puts scale to the test, and Ann Veronica Janssens and Michel François imagine what is left when so much else has washed away.

Jaramillo

After Modernism, can one still pin down painting's hard edges? Virginia Jaramillo races across a canvas and Morgan Fisher challenges anyone to count to 6, as just the start of a tour of fall abstraction.

Jarry

Did Alfred Jarry spew nonsense or the avant-garde? Jarry and Ubu Roi made a scandal of modern art, and soon the artists in "Engineer, Agitator, Constructor" made it a matter of promotion.

Jaudon

Is Pattern and Decoration about discipline or excess? Valerie Jaudon patiently pursues her weave, while Peter Young works his way out of Minimalism, and John McAllister mixes ranting and radiance.

Jenkins

Should Michael Fried have meant "Art as Objecthood" as a compliment to Minimalism? Bill Jenkins, Hu Bing, Ted Victoria, and Bill Walton look to ordinary objects for drama and realism.

Lygia Clark titled her most extravagant installation A Casa é o Corpo, or the house is the body, in that dangerously dark space that Bill Jenkins has explored as well. Did it take her a lifetime to find her way home?

Jemison

Can an African American artist claim succession? Steffani Jemison looks at once to the black community and white conceptual artists, while Joseph E. Yoakum moves mountains, and the artists in residence in "(Never) as I Was" stick, at first glance, closer to home.

Can art create an ecosystem? Steffani Jemison, Cullen Washington, Jr., and Jennifer Packer hold the fort after Hurrican Sandy, while Dionisio Gonzáles and Mary Mattingly haul out the waste of globalization, and "Un/Natural Occurrences" seeks a climate for art.

Jensen

Nature is a harsh discipline, but is it also vanishing? Matthew Jensen, James Benning, Peter Hutton, and Zoe Leonard cross continents by film, photography, and Google Street View.

Joannou

Is art trapped in a vicious circle of celebrity artists, curators, and collectors? Jeff Koons curates "Skin Fruit," the Dakis Joannou Collection.

Joe

Is folk art, Caribbean art, or African art obsessed with dying? John Dunkley works between day and night and Paa Joe between coffins and castles, while "Race, Myth, Art, and Justice" shares secrets.

Johanna

Should still life aim for the moment or the thing itself? For Susan Jane Walp, it is first and foremost paint, but Tim Wilson finds it in a haunted house, Kyle Dunn and Martine Johanna in something close to love.

Johns

What can maps, flags, numbers, and targets conceivably say about an artist or, for that matter, the United States? With Jasper Johns, art does not resemble anything, but rather it is.

The Cold War did not do nuance, and Jasper Johns appropriated at least two of its symbols. How could he have worked so often in shades of gray?

Somehow, Jasper Johns evolved from the front-and-center imagery of maps, flags, and targets to rich, hidden clues toward a private past. With his latest Catenary, is he falling down on the job?

Is contemporary art no longer at home? "Home Is a Foreign Place" finds Jasper Johns and his flag still flying, while Louise Nevelson on paper finds dark closets of the imagination.

When did a global art take over New York? As "Ambassador to the New," Ileana Sonnabend found room for both Andy Warhol and European painting, but Jasper Johns, whose solo show opened her Paris gallery in 1960, still sends his regrets.

Is art text—and, if not, why do people keep wanting to censor it? Jenny Holzer integrates both text and its censorship into paintings, while a flag-burning amendment could reduce treats Jasper Johns to a sign.

How did Picasso get to America without leaving Europe? "Picasso and American Art" traces his influence on Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, and others.

D. L. Johnson

Is it mourning or morning in America? The African American artists in "Grief and Grievance," with help from Glenn Ligon, riff on Jean-Michel Basquiat, Daniel LaRue Johnson, and Jack Whitten.

Ken Johnson

Would it take a Teabagger to shock the art world? Ken Johnson sees a liberal hegemony beneath pluralism, while Americans embrace Robert Mapplethorpe.

Kysa Johnson

Can digital art, for all its reliance on data and random access, still tell tales—and even lie? Computers and their metaphors help connect the dots for Kysa Johnson, Sol LeWitt, and Casey Reas.

Rashid Johnson

Has Rashid Johnson uncovered a shared history or just his own? He claims multiple identities for the wealth of African American experience.

Can a sophisticated New York artist speak for the black community in the south? Beverly Buchanan draws on Minimalism with her slab works and folk art with her shacks, while Rashid Johnson stands between the present and his father.

Ray Johnson

How did a modern painter in Paris become a street photographer, fashion photographer, and filmmaker in New York. For William Klein, it was all just motion pictures, while Ray Johnson turned to movie stars and disposable cameras.

Rindon Johnson

Where were those voices? "In Practice" for 2021 makes them and the way home hard to find—like an ocean crossing and a way out of climate change for Rindon Johnson and digital displays of the perfect storm for Rachel Rosheger.

Jonas

Is Joan Jonas observing motion with no pattern or telling stories, in installation, video, and performance? Either way, she is flying against the wind.

C. Jones

Is there more to art and language than an artist's book? Chris Jones, Erica Baum, John Fyfe, and Jeanne Silverthorne bring literature to installations and painting.

J. C. Jones

Is Minimalism or sound art often a little too quiet? Jennie C. Jones and Tomás Saraceno have you listening to your fears.

R. Jones

Postmodernism calls practically everything text, including casual words and creative acts. Can Maureen Conner, Ronald Jones, Anselm Kiefer, Peter Sarkisian, Mark Sheinkman, and others avoid reprint corrections with a hand-made book?

S. Jones

Can photography find its subject slipping away? Sarah Jones, Wijnanda Deroo, Andrew Moore, and Joe Pflieger look from museums to movie houses and from the open road to a shadowy garden.

S. L. Jones

Can "Making Knowing" make the case for craft as art, even apart from fabric? For Samuel Levi Jones and Suzanne Jackson, raw materials speak for African American voices.

Joos van Cleve

Who painted that Madonna, and why does an attribution turn on everything from botany to religious beliefs in Europe and the conquest of Mexico? Joos van Cleve shared a passion for the Renaissance, but not a passion flower.

So which will it be, the word of god in the study or the desert? For Joos van Cleve and Fra Angelico at Princeton, Saint Jerome could embody neither or both, while Guido Cagnacci takes even repentence to excess.

Jordan

Does photography still have an inferiority complex? Chris Jordan, Vera Lutter, "The End Is Nigh," and "Colour Before Color" try extra hard to make an impression.

Jordaens

Is that an aristocrat or an artist? For Anthony van Dyck, portraiture was an image of society unconcerned for mere detail, and he, Peter Paul Rubens, and Jacob Jordaens shine in Flemish Baroque drawing.

Joseph

Is New York vanishing before your eyes? Herman Leonard and Kahlil Joseph track its jazz rhythms, while Petrit Halilaj brings a perspective from war-torn Europe and Dan and Sandra Weiner from another vintage New York.

Joskowicz

Remember when art took time? Claudia Joskowicz, Simone Bailey, Janaye Brown, Jorge Macchi, James Nares, Joseph Zito, and "Long Takes" experience the gallery and the brink of revolution in real time.

Julien

Do the global elite have their own playground? Isaac Julien finds sleek surfaces and untrammeled vistas, Liz Magic Laser a politician's disco ball, and Martin Adolfsson suburbia gone wild.

Judd

For a Minimalist, Donald Judd had maximal ambitions for his art. What could Minimalism mean after all?

Did Minimalism ever get off the ground? François Morellet may have you looking up, and so will Fred Sandback in a show with Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, and John McCracken.

Jungerman

Can diversity require a deeper and more personal history? Remy Jungerman, David Alekhuogie, and Guadalupe Maravilla find themselves in Africa, Suriname, Mayan civilization, Modernism, and anthropology.

Just

Does male desire play better in a lonely villa or in East London, with frontal nudity or in suit and tie? Gilbert & George play it as camp, Jesper Just as existential crisis.

Terence Koh floods a museum with light and Jesper Just sets off fireworks, while Doug Aitken and Anthony McCall illuminate three sides of a museum tower and the darkness of a gallery. Have they located new media in sensual experience or the multiplex?

Kabakov

Ilya and Emily Kabakov experienced the Soviet Union, and they recreate galleries as empty hospital wards and museums. Have they seen through art's powerful institutions or dissolved them entirely?

Kahlo

Was there more to Frida Kahlo than her appearance? Maybe not, but others shared her obsession and her "Art of Defiance."

L. I. Kahn

Was the architecture of Louis I. Kahn about concrete and stone or light, space, and sky? Years after his death, FDR Four Freedoms Park and the expanded Yale University Art Gallery speak to both.

W. Kahn

Kahraman

If one could read the calligraphy in "Iran Modern," would its message be modern? As with Hayv Kahraman, an art of indirection weaves between abstraction, politics, and tradition.

Kamoinge

Can photographers and printmakers leave their mark amid collectives and questions of racial identity? The Kamoinge Workshop and Taller Boricua grapple with both.

Kandinsky

"The spiritual life, to which art belongs and of which she is one of the mightiest elements, wrote Wassily Kandinsky, "is a complicated but definite and easily definable movement forwards and upwards." What makes it so hard to keep up with his pioneering art?

Does it take a woman to discover abstraction or a vision? For Hilma af Klint it took listening to unseen messengers and building a temple, but then Wassily Kandinsky embraced the spiritual and abstract art as well.

Is the Guggenheim's vision gone for good? "Visionaries" looks back to Wassily Kandinsky, Hilla Rebay, and creating a modern Guggenheim, while Maurizio Cattelan brings a tawdrier gold toilet.

The protagonists of Jacob Lawrence and Wassily Kandinsky were each on a journey to freedom—for a black person and for the spiritual in art. When a museum sets the journeys two side by side, which road would you choose?

If Wassily Kandinsky hesitated and Pablo Picasso backed off, who gets credit for abstraction? "Inventing Abstraction" describes not movements but networks and connections, including dance and music.

How German was German Expressionism? With Wassily Kandinsky and Otto Dix, "German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse" aims to shift the center of Modernism from Paris.

E. Kane

Willa Nasatir opens with swirls of color and black crashing into white, Everett Kane with half-remembered technology and films, Lori Nix and Kathleen Gerber with the fall of imagined cities. When photography penetrates familiar surfaces, is it safe to enter?

G. Kane

When artists bring nature into the gallery, is it alive? Garret Kane fishes in the Prow, Cosima von Bonin at the beach, and Aki Sasamoto in the wash, and the 2016 Governors Island Art Fair washes onshore.

Kant

Imagine Immanuel Kant writing weekly reviews for ordinary readers. Rare among philosophers, Arthur C. Danto loves art and says so—enough to take his time getting to artists?

Kaoru

When art aspires to ritual, must it mistake art for religion? Izima Kaoru, Terence Koh, William Lamson, and Ursula von Rydingsvard trace the path of the sun.

Kaphar

What is the price of justice? Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts plead for African Americans in prison without trial, Simone Leigh remembers black women in confinement, and Purvis Young takes it to the streets.

Who owns history, including art history? The question takes on special urgency in black America—and for Titus Kaphar, Keris Salmon, and Kehinde Wiley.

Kapoor

Anish Kapoor likes dark interiors and sweeping curves, Mark di Suvero builds wide-open towers, and Joel Shapiro started small, spare, and evocative. Do any of them deserve the label post-Minimalism?

Has New York found its backyard swimming pool? For summer sculpture, Anish Kapoor takes his whirlpool to Brooklyn Bridge Park, Adrián Villar Rojas his banquet to the Met roof, and Nari Ward his goats to Socrates Sculpture Park.

Karver

Is it painting or photography, staged or observed? Sherry Karver, Gregory Crewdson, Ron Diorio, and Anne Hardy all have one guessing.

Kasey

Are women from another planet? Jordan Kasey finds them in other worlds, Rita Lundqvist in a Nordic landscape, and Dana Schutz in the clouds but still as familiar as planet earth.

Kassay

What happened to the flatness of abstract art? Jacob Kassay, Cordy Ryman, and "Organic Geometries" subject Modernism to slash and burn.

Kasten

Remember when photography was a science experiment? For Barbara Kasten, Harold Edgerton, László Moholy-Nagy, and Sheila Pinkel, Modernism was itself an experiment.

Katchadourian

Want your own history of art, with echoes of Modernism and family? Make it a work of art, like Nina Katchadourian, Dotty Attie, and Mark van Yetter with wide-ranging, colliding art histories.

Katz

Andy Warhol put a price tag on the Sistine Madonna. Did he find or lose the true church and popular culture in his art, and did Alex Katz make portraits, Pop Art, or Abstract Expressionism?

Kaufman

When did painting move beyond black? Betty Kaufman, Henrik Eiben, and Pierre Soulages tell the story of the red and the black.

Kawamata

What marks the edge between city and country? Like suburbia and sprawltown, Tadashi Kawamata, James Bleecker, Patrick O'Hare, and "Degrees of Freedom" are learning to forget.

Kawara

With his date paintings and ephemera, On Kawara takes a long time to get to today. Like the "Storylines" that follow him at the Guggenheim, was he in search of painting, his time, or himself?

KAWS

Can KAWS (or Brian Donnelly) and Alex Da Corte get away with merchandising cartoons as art? Maybe so, but Niki de Saint Phalle was there before the bad boys, with playgrounds for very adult children.

Keefe

Urban systems and strata may call up excavations deep within New York. Yet they supply titles for abstract art by Colin Keefe, Christopher Astley, Tony Ingrisano, and Rebecca Smith.

Kelleher

Can the art world can be open to African Americans—and can African American art be open to almost anything? Maureen Kelleher, Willie Cole, and Deborah Grant all riff on folk art and black history, but one also invokes Judaism and one is white.

M. Kelley

Mike Kelley takes over what was once P.S. 1, but did he ever outgrow high school? For Kelley, repression and shame compete with obsession and rebellion.

Is art devolving into a scary, macho remake of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll? Mike Kelley and Michael Smith take Baby IKKI to Burning Man, "The Horror Show" plays on, and Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman convert a huge gallery into Black-Acid Co-op.

E. Kelly

Dan Flavin collects the Hudson River School, Ellsworth Kelly draws plants, and Storm King Art Center explores its Hudson River landscape. Guess which show is called "Light and Landscape"?

Symmetry is back, but are artists opening or shutting doors? Ellsworth Kelly, Ron Gorchov, Mark Grotjahn, Fred Sandback, and Catherine Yass start knocking.

When Paul Klee and Ellsworth Kelly step back from vision, have they put the abstract in abstraction? Artists today can still draw back from "The Edge."

At the end of 1996, did "in" New Yorkers still never travel north of 14th Street? I check out the new Chelsea galleries and dear old 57th Street, with the most space to Leonardo Drew, Christian Haub, Garry Hill, Jodi Manasevit, Sue Williams, and Ellsworth Kelly—with his first solo show since a triumphant career retrospective.

K. Kelly

Does the Lower East Side merely extend Chelsea? Khalif Kelly, Do Ho Suh, Pieter Schoolwerth, and the video artists in "Closer Now" might agree to disagree.

Kenny

Think struggling artists have it bad? After gentrification and displacement, Devin Kenny, Nicole Awai, Julie Becker, Ebony G. Patterson, and the artists in residence in Harlem in "MOOD" seek a place to call home.

Kerr

Can art still aspire to a window onto nature? Mary Obering and Patrick Wilson treat abstraction as a window, to which Peter Halley adds his customary bars, while Pádraig Timoney and Claire Kerr multiply the languages of art.

Kessel

Is the future of painting in breaking boundaries or the scraps of art's past, and do they even differ? Jeffrey Kessel, El Anatsui, Mark Bradford, Lia Halloran, and more are recycling abstraction.

Kessler

Art seems to collapse right out from under Jon Kessler, James Hopkins, Diana Kingsley, Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley, Daniel Rozin, and Catherine Sullivan. Are they just hyperactive or shaking things up?

Keys

Is there more to African American art than portraiture and pride? Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys add celebrity, Marcus Leslie Singleton a study in relationships.

Khan

Are east and west only a stone's throw away? Lee Ufan bridges Minimalism and the garden, while Stefana McClure and Idris Khan mix Minimalism, polish, and text.

Khomenko

"In the end lies prevail." Barbara Kruger may seem to say so, but just who is speaking, and would Henrike Naumann confronting the "radical center" or Lesia Khomenko in Ukraine agree?

Kiefer

Can a single work hold centuries of political art? If Robert Longo goes head to head with Francisco de Goya and Sergei Eisenstein, Anselm Kiefer thinks even bigger.

Kilcollin

Dwyer Kilcollin, Annette Lemieux, and Joseph Zito make sculpture from spare forms, household items, post-industrial materials, and bitter memories. Is it Minimalism or excess?

B. Kim

Does painting still have room for bathers, bedrooms, and Sundays off along with irony? Michael Hurson, Laura Owens, and Byron Kim have their pleasures.

C. J. H. Kim

Shahzia Sikander sees her life and her future as a painting in miniature. How do she, Asal Peirovi, and Cindy Ji Hye Kim reconcile contemporary art and tradition?

L. Kim

Judy Pfaff and Lucy Kim raise painting off the wall, in every sense of the term. Was Sari Dienes there first, between Pop Art and Surrealism?

Kimball

Has the avant-garde fallen to academics, politics, celebrities, or niche markets? Roger Kimball roots out liberalism at the CCS Hessel Museum, but Banks Violette just wants to rock and roll.

Are artists rising to the challenge of 9/11? If Anna Somers Cocks misses political art, Roger Kimball finds it everywhere—but perhaps neither knows where to look.

Kimmelman

Who owns Manhattan's west side? Thomas Heatherwick asks questions about architecture and a pier in the Meatpacking District, while Michael Kimmelman envisions the future of Penn Station.

For most people, a day in museums feels like hard work, so imagine what a professional arts writer must feel. Is Michael Kimmelman right, then, to await his epiphany?

Does architecture still matter? Michael Kimmelman trashes the design of One World Trade Center, by David Childs, but only as an aside in a call for mixed use and public spaces.

Robert Hughes and Ada Louise Huxtable set standards, and Michael Kimmelman pays tribute. What does that leave for a critic of art and architecture today?

Has art become a product of museum advertising, one-of-a-kind genius, or just a lucky accident? For Michael Kimmelman, they all add up to star power, and Hal Foster wants to know why.

What kind of art criticism belongs online—or anywhere else? I take my online aims out of hiding and into Camille Corot's landscape, with a contrast to how Michael Kimmelman sees it.

Kingelez

Are we there yet? A utopia is literally a no place, but postwar architecture in Yugoslavia moved "Toward a Concrete Utopia"—much as Bodys Isek Kingelez had city dreams in Central Africa.

Kingsley

Art seems to collapse right out from under Diana Kingsley, James Hopkins, Jon Kessler, Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley, Daniel Rozin, and Catherine Sullivan. Are they just hyperactive or shaking things up?

Kippenberger

Futurism found beauty in "the hood ornament of a speeding automobile," but only before a collision. Must art's bad boys, from Martin Kippenberger to Luca Buvoli, always crash the party?

Kirschenbaum

Phyllida Barlow plays the Post-Minimalist, Anna Maria Maiolino the global traveler, Bernard Kirschenbaum the mad geometrician, Jim Osman the modernist, and Mateo López the designer and architect. Whose world, then, is still under construction?

Kirchner

No movement in early modern art was as cosmopolitan as Die Brücke. So why did Ernst Ludwig Kirchner move from Dresden and Berlin to the Alps?

How German was German Expressionism? With Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Otto Dix, "German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse" aims to shift the center of Modernism from Paris.

What made people line up to see Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and the Bauhaus? Rather than relying solely on censorship, the Nazis put on display "Degenerate Art."

Kirk

Which will do in art first, gentrification or trashy installations? Jonathan Schipper wants you to drive carefully in Brooklyn, while Lisa Kirk and Sarah Baley look for change to the Brooklyn Naval Yard.

Are Lisa Kirk, Eugenio Espinoza, Paul Gabrielli, Pello Irazu, Ted Larsen, and Sylvan Lionni born scavengers? They also know when to clear away the clutter and the dust.

Kirkegaard

Is the earth a disaster area—or the gallery? Jacob Kirkegaard dives into dirty places, while Bat-Ami Rivlin offers the means of escape, and Madeline Hollander finds just that in a cricket's wings.

Kitaj

Was R. B. Kitaj at home or in exile in London and America? Like Stéphane Mandelbaum in Belgium, he could always laugh and punch back.

Kiwanga

Is there more to Robert Colescott than a stereotype twice over? He and Kapwani Kiwanga in Minimalism take sharply contrasting approaches to racism.

Klee

When Paul Klee and Ellsworth Kelly step back from vision, have they put the abstract in abstraction? Artists today can still draw back from "The Edge."

S. Klein

Madonna and Steven Klein try to create a satanic fashion show. Does this leave video art in decent shape—or only the model?

Y. Klein

Were things looking dark for painting in the 1960s? While Mark Rothko pushed to black, and Yves Klein trademarked his blue, Robert Ryman like Richard Pousette-Dart before them choose white.

W. Klein

Klima

Does computer art offer anything at all new, and is anyone buying? After a gallery tour and panel discussion, John Klima, Kirsten Geisler, Mark Napier, and John F. Simon suggest that old news from art and software can still create strange new bedfellows.

Klimt

Gustav Klimt needed a vacation from portraiture. Was it to take him into the landscape, like Ferdinand Hodler from day into night?

What color is a striped dress? Even after a thorough cleaning, Edouard Manet piles on brushstrokes and enigmas, while Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Pablo Picasso pick up portrayals of women and the origins of Modernism.

Kline

Can art confront climate change, contagion, AI, and sex, in politics and economics? For Josh Kline, Stephanie Dinkins, and Suzanne Lacy, new media must keep up with it all.

G. Knight

Is American history about the land of the free or a nation founded on slavery? For Jacob Lawrence, it was both, as part of the American struggle, while his wife, Gwen Knight, stuck to people, paint, and the facts.

K. Knight

Who are you calling naive? Hayley Barker and Karla Knight know their way around Modernism and outsider art, Melvin "Milky" Way around biochemistry, while Eugene Von Bruenchenhein before them knew Abstract Expressionism and madness.

Knobkerry

Knobkerry had a community store to match its East Village styles. Did Virgil Abloh abandon the street?

Knowlton

Can Minimalism abandon industrial precision for earth? Grace Knowlton crafts shattered orbs and dirt piles, while Derek Franklin, Anya Gallaccio, and Erin Shirreff look to sculpture for revitalization.

Koester

"Be not afeard," Caliban assures himself, though "the isle is full of noises." Why is Susan Philipsz singing, Barbara Kruger shouting, Joachim Koester in a drug-induced trance, Alix Pearlstein auditioning, and Christian Boltanski hearing hearts pounding?

Koh

When art aspires to ritual, must it mistake art for religion? Terence Koh, Izima Kaoru, William Lamson, and Ursula von Rydingsvard trace the path of the sun.

Kohlmeyer

Was Ida Kohlmeyer looking to painting's future with her symbols or for a way out? She, Ana Tiscornia, and Kate Shepherd apply minimal means to a maximal case for women in abstract art.

Kollwitz

Käthe Kollwitz made German Expressionism for the people, while Johann Bossard may have a swastika his legacy. Could an art of love stand up to the Nazis and death?

Koolhaas

Where did the cows go? Rem Koolhaas looks into "Countryside, the Future," while Marina Zurkow and Sarah Rothberg explore the limits to growth in plain old water.

de Kooning

Between abstraction and his women, was Willem de Kooning Abstract Expressionism's second banana or its model for the next century? A retrospective goes about unerasing de Kooning.

What happened to Modernism when it ran into America? In a centenary mini-retrospective, Willem de Kooning gives formal, gestural abstraction the charge, wit, and sly vulgarity of Pop Art and Postmodernism.

Poignantly, a show of Willem de Kooning coincided with his passing. Was the museum's memorial to his decline into Alzheimer's, to his greatness as Abstract Expressionist, or to his sharp eye for art today?

MoMA has rooms for Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko but not for Willem de Kooning. What defines "Abstract Expressionist New York"?

How many critics does it take to screw up Abstract Expressionism? In "Action/Abstraction," Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg face off, but Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning get along just fine.

I lived five years over a topless bar and never once went in. What does that say about going into the Museum of Sex—or into the Cedar Bar with Willem de Kooning?

It takes comparisons to Willem de Kooning to earn Chaim Soutine a retrospective. How many Modernisms are there?

Set side by side, Willem de Kooning and John Chamberlain look lovely, but what gets left out? Perhaps Modernism knew something about omissions (and party crashing) all along.

How did Picasso get to America without leaving Europe? "Picasso and American Art" traces his influence on Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, and others.

In The Tribute Money and in a young man, does Michelangelo see a growing mastery or a choice? He finds them both in "Dürer to de Kooning: 100 Master Drawings from Munich" and "From Mantegna to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Courtauld Gallery."

Koons

Jeff Koons moves happily between child toys and porn, James Lee Byars between gilded rooms and childlike questions. How can anyone so out to shock be so eager to please?

Is art trapped in a vicious circle of celebrity artists, curators, and collectors? Jeff Koons curates "Skin Fruit," the Dakis Joannou Collection.

Do summers bring out everyone's inner child or just some childish art? For 2008, Jeff Koons and Chris Burden play hard, while "Waste Not, Want Not" in Astoria and a version of "Between the Bridges" called "Relative Environment" teach one to recycle one's toys.

Korman

Could something as simple as a color chart keep formalism alive—or does it just add another layer of conceptual art? Harriet Korman, Tauba Auerbach, Jaq Chartier, Kathy Goodell, and Catherine Lee turn to dots and dashes for "Ecstatic Alphabets."

Kornblum

Do women in photography deserve a space to themselves? "Our Selves" from the Kornblum collection looks behind the partition, while the women of Magnum Photos in "Close Enough" are closing in.

Kos

When it came to fame and fortune in art, San Francisco long stood out of the loop. Did that allow Paul Kos to get too laid back, or did it help him see beyond us versus them?

Do images of Asia always amount to "orientalism"? From James McNeill Whistler to Ann Hamilton and Paul Kos, "The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia" looks to the East and finds only religion.

Kossoff

With people and paint, Leon Kossoff, Brenda Goodman, and Maja Lisa Engelhardt lay it on thick. Can it bring them closer to postwar England, a woman's body, and fertile clay?

Kosuth

Can art escape the prison house of language? Zen advertising from Matthew Brannon and a labyrinth of quotes from Joseph Kosuth lay a trap of words.

Must art as text always mean the impersonality of Joseph Kosuth? For Mickey Smith it means blood money, for R. Luke DuBois it means American politics, and for David Diao it means a life in painting.

Kotin

Abstract art may seem to belong to the past the more it asserts its authority. Can James Turrell, Ad Reinhardt, Michael West, Albert Kotin, and Lynne Drexler recover a neglected past and present?

Kounellis

As installation art takes over, can any sculpture garden bother with plants or a gallery with real life? Monica Bonvicini, "In Practice" for 2007, and Jannis Kounellis give it a try.

Is it painting or construction—and an object in space or in history? Jannis Kounellis, Christian Haub, Richard Nonas, Jim Osman, Marianne Vitale, and others are defining a Neo-Minimalism for today.

Krasner

Must Lee Krasner remain in the shadow of Jackson Pollock? A retrospective and a show of Krasner and Pollock together find her breaking free time and time again.

Back in the New York School, just who were the real New Yorkers? Lee Krasner and Norman Lewis emerge from the margins.

Kraus

Are Kitty Kraus and Urs Fischer minimal, conceptual, or just making a mess? Installations redolent of destruction run into recession austerity.

Krauss

Are Auguste Rodin's twisting bodies and multiple casts more like variations on a theme or Xerox copies? Arthur C. Danto, Nelson A. Goodman, and Rosalind E. Krauss—as critics and philosophers—each tackle the originality of the avant-garde.

What most hurts contemporary art, a lowering of standards in the name of critical theory—or a commodity culture that breeds amnesia about past experiments? A new textbook by Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin Buchloh upsets conservative critics by daring to ask.

Krens

As Thomas Krens departs the Guggenheim, he leaves behind Cai Guo-Qiang, some fireworks, and an auto wreck. Which most resembles a Cultural Revolution?

Kretschmer

Can architecture speak to art? Hariri & Hariri have visions of architecture, Dannielle Tegeder and Melissa Kretschmer use it to disrupt abstract painting, and Mateo López makes it a site for drawing, sculpture, and performance.

Kruger

"In the end lies prevail." Barbara Kruger may seem to say so, but just who is speaking, and would Henrike Naumann confronting the "radical center" or Lesia Khomenko in Ukraine agree?

Can art, as Dave Hickey demands, still "civilize us"? The enormous futon that Klaus Biesenbach and Wendall Walker call Volume, SHoP's manic sculpture garden by the name of Dunescape, and "Around 1984" with its look at the 1980s do their best, but Barbara Kruger wittily refuses to try.

Kubota

Do some women just refuse to shut up? "Born in Flames" opens with a torrent of words in search of a feminist future, but Shigeko Kubota found her voice in video and rushing waters, while Huguette Caland kept her silence in abstraction with awareness of a woman's body.

Kuitca

The Drawing Center returns to Soho, with architecture by Claire Weisz and the diaries, notebooks, or "assembly instructions" of Guillermo Kuitca, José Antonio Suárez Londoño, and Alexandre Singh. How modest (or ambitious) is that?

Kunoy

Now that painting is back from the dead, will New Yorkers go anywhere to see it live? Rannva Kunoy, Kellyann Burns, Ayn Choi, Jacqueline Humphries, and Robert Moskowitz explore the promise of abstraction.

Kurland

When Leo Marx wrote The Machine in the Garden, did he have in mind a camera—or a steam shovel preparing earthworks? Justine Kurland, David Brooks, and Erin Shirreff find America on the edge between nature and culture.

Kürten

Can there be a still point in a changing world? Rackstraw Downes finds turmoil and quiet from a dance floor in Texas to a cultural center in New York, Stefan Kürten in Modernism's glass house, Richard Artschwager in his final years in New Mexico.

Kusama

Was there more to Yayoi Kusama than the summer of love? A career retrospective finds paintings, phalluses, and photographs, most notably of herself.

Can public sculpture be neither inside nor out? From the Flatiron Building to the Rockaways, Yayoi Kusama, Heidi Lanino Bilezikian, Dream the Combine, and Urs Fischer find a space to call their own.

Is art a house built on sand? Katharina Grosse finds just that past Rockaway Beach, Yayoi Kusama builds on fancy real estate, and summer group shows move from sunlight into black.

Kushner

Has painting recovered its energy? Michael Goldberg takes Abstract Expressionism into the millenium, while Robert Kushner, Gianna Commito, and Gary Petersen turn up the heat.

Kwade

Was spring late in coming? Summer sculpture 2019 made up for it with Alicja Kwade, Carmen Herrera, and Leonardo Drew, by pointing to the earth and sky.

Labrouste

Is there a politics of postmodern architecture? "9 + 1 Ways of Being Political" finds mostly dystopias and unfinished business, but Henri Labrouste helped create modern Paris by opening architecture to the public long ago.

Lacan

In need of a primer on Jacques Lacan? He makes more sense to me in light of his and Jacques Derrida's brilliant essays on Poe.

Does all that theory raise "great expectations"? If my primer seemed confusing, try applying Jacques Lacan to Charles Dickens.

Was Sigmund Freud's greatest case study a lie? When a woman's dreams are put on the couch, free association, artistic freedom, and feminism turn out to have a lot in common, and Jacques Lacan helps explain why.

Lacombe

Gillian Wearing just wants to tell the truth about you, or does she? She and Tacita Dean, Brigitte Lacombe, and Catherine Opie in "Face to Face" suggest how much of women in photography lies behind a mask.

Lacy

Can art confront climate change, contagion, AI, and sex, in politics and economics? For Suzanne Lacy, Stephanie Dinkins, and Josh Kline, new media must keep up with it all.

Laib

Can an installation extend both painting and political art? Wolfgang Laib, El Anatsui, Xin Song, and Lin Yan add local and global color.

Lam

Did Philip Guston point his finger at himself, the KKK, or modern art? He and Wilfredo Lam insist on what Abstract Expressionism leaves out.

Lamson

When art aspires to ritual, must it mistake art for religion? William Lamson, Izima Kaoru, Terence Koh, and Ursula von Rydingsvard trace the path of the sun.

Landfield

Artists never truly paint like their influences, right? Yet the influence of Abstract Expressionism lingers on, not just with Jules Olitski and the late Neil Welliver, but in younger artists who seem almost to channel them—including Ronnie Landfield, Makoto Fujimura, Peter Reginato, Duston Spear, and Joseph Stashkevetch.

Can abstraction survive only by losing its rigor? Ronnie Landfield, Agnes Martin, Carrie Moyer, Milton Resnick, and Frank Stella have one working to tell the difference.

Landman

Can sculpture offer a place to play or to sit? Jeff Landman, Martha Clippinger, and Susana Solano and are rebuilding Minimalism.

Lange

Hands and faces speak volumes for Dorothea Lange. Did she look for types, like August Sander before her, only to find individuals?

Lansing-Dreiden

When photography meets abstraction, does the camera have designs on the viewer? Peter Halley haunts mixed media from Lansing-Dreiden, Rory Donaldson, and Raha Raissnia.

Larner

Liz Larner started her career with bacteria and a bang. Can sculpture after Modernism show signs of temptations, transience, and decay—or, with Carol Szymanski, a display of hands?

M. Larsen

Do Mernet Larsen, Joan Snyder, and Pat Steir exemplify abstract painting, natural imagery, a contorted humanity, or decorative patterning? Just do not dismiss it as feminine.

T. Larsen

Are Ted Larsen, Eugenio Espinoza, Paul Gabrielli, Pello Irazu, Lisa Kirk, and Sylvan Lionni born scavengers? They also know when to clear away the clutter and the dust.

Larson

Do you believe in magic? Laura Larson connects nineteenth-century spirit photography to empty hotel rooms and contemporary adolescence, while Scott Alario finds magic in a family portrait, but Christopher Williams cuts through the mystery.

Laser

Do the global elite have their own playground? Isaac Julien finds sleek surfaces and untrammeled vistas, Liz Magic Laser a politician's disco ball, and Martin Adolfsson suburbia gone wild.

When it comes to gun culture, is political art more about the guns or about culture? Sarah Frost creates a ghostly paper arsenal, while Liz Magic Laser, Henry Taylor, and Darren Bader feel your pain.

Lasker

Philip Taaffe erects totems, John Bauer ghostly architecture, Julian Lethbridge textbook Pollocks, and Jonathan Lasker abstraction as a kind of graphic novel. Has abstract art really gotten over irony?

Lassnig

Can the lessons of the Eastern Europe apply to the Bowery? Paweł Althamer calls his retrospective "The Neighbors," and this is not Mister Roger's neighborhood, but it has nothing on the anxious self-portraits of Maria Lassnig.

La Tour

Modern tastes had to rediscover Georges de La Tour. Which was more modern, his quietly modulated light or the duplicity of his card sharps?

Laub

What is it to be an American? The answers for Diana Markosian, Gillian Laub, Muriel Hasbun, and the black photographers in "Inward" play out on their smart phones, on TV, and in the streets of New York.

Lawler

Have time on your hands, like a flâneur in early modern Paris, and doubts about art? "The Arcades" pairs contemporary art and Walter Benjamin, while Louise Lawler takes one behind the scenes of a collection.

Lawrence

The protagonists of Jacob Lawrence and Wassily Kandinsky were each on a journey to freedom—for a black person and for the spiritual in art. When a museum sets the two journeys side by side, which road would you choose?

When Pieter Bruegel and Jacob Lawrence created work for reproduction, how seriously did they take themselves and all that moralizing? Perhaps it takes a little high seriousness to create a truly popular art.

Lawson

Joana Choumali rises at dawn, but not for a moment to herself alone. Can she, Deana Lawson, and Jamel Shabazz find a refuge and a place for black photography in the lives of others?

Lê

Photography goes global, and so does Queens. What memories will "New Photography 2023" preserve of Lagos, An-My Lê of Vietnam, Tracey Rose of South Africa, and Aliza Nisenbaum of Corona?

Lebenkoff

"Nothing," Georgia O'Keeffe promised, "is less real than realism." So what if abstraction for Ethel Lebenkoff, Laurel Farrin, or Cyrilla Mozenter includes a pizza box, a foot, or a chair?

Leckey

With The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, Nan Goldin will be trapped forever in the AIDS crisis and her own dark longings. So why do her memories speak so movingly to the present, while Mark Leckey is stuck in dance clubs of the past?

Le Corbusier

Was Le Corbusier a modernist? A retrospective sees his architecture as the International Style, but rooted in landscape.

Ledare

Learning to love photography after sex and the Web? Leigh Ledare, Donna Ferrato, and iheartphotograph.com state their case.

Does the Lower East Side merely extend Chelsea? Do Ho Suh, Khalif Kelly, Pieter Schoolwerth, and the video artists in "Closer Now," including Leigh Ledare, might agree to disagree.

LeDray

Do fabric and tapestry design still stand for multiculturalism, tradition, or women's work? Charles LeDray, "Rags to Richesse," and Banners of Persuasion range from the East Village to North Africa and from myth to a man's sexual coming of age.

A. Lee

Finished works of art command high prices. Why, then, do Andy Goldsworthy, avaf, Alexander Lee, and so many others seem intent on trashing the gallery?

C. Lee

Could something as simple as a color chart keep formalism alive—or does it just add another layer of conceptual art? Catherine Lee, Tauba Auerbach, Jaq Chartier, Kathy Goodell, and Harriet Korman turn to dots and dashes for "Ecstatic Alphabets."

C.-J. Lee

Should artists approaching "The Art of 9/11" feel angry, guilty, or both? Arthur C. Danto curates a measured response, and Chang-Jin Lee offers the comforts of a "Homeland Security Garden," but anger wells up with "A Knock at the Door. . . .

M. Lee

Is Mire Lee out to turn you away? Karyn Olivier and Dana Powell run into obstacles, in industrial landscapes and a road at night, but Marta Minujín puts out soft sculpture to welcome you in.

Simon Lee

Through words or photos, one can imagine oneself a traveler in exotic lands. Do Simon Lee, Michael Rakowitz, and Michael Waugh make one a tourist or a voyeur?

Does abstraction really have to stand for painting, as if meanings stood still apart from art and culture? Skip over the decades with Simon Lee, Nell Blaine, Milton Resnick, Anne Truitt, and Sean Scully, and see if the whole idea of abstraction is still standing.

Spike Lee

Who knew that Martin Luther King, Jr., and the New York Knicks are just regular guys? Henry Taylor and Spike Lee look to the black and white communities for local heroes, while "And Ever an Edge" finds the chill winds of home.

Leech

Can repetition become mere showmanship and magic tricks? Gwyneth Leech and Stephen G. Rhodes are still drinking coffee, while Noriko Ambe and Simryn Gill have more discretely layered obsessions.

Leener

Remember when hybrids were postmodern? Like Albert Oehlen before them, Zachary Leener, Jonathan Gardner, Vanessa Maltese, and Anne Neukamp ask when diversity and excess become academicism.

Léger

Fernand Léger transformed Cubism into a vision of human dignity. Could he have anticipated postmodern criticism of "humanism"?

Why did Cubism so love newsprint and the headlines? In the Leonard A. Lauder collection, Fernand Leger, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, and Pablo Picasso keep making news.

Lehun

"Art Fairs: An Irresistible Force in the Art World?" If the answer seems too obvious for words, Richard Lehun, Elizabeth Dee, Nicholas O'Donnell, and Ed Winkleman tally up the financial and ethical implications, while Dee looks for an answer in Independent Projects.

Do art advisors need regulation? A panel on "Art Advising 2.0" at Sotheby's featuring Sean Kelly, Megan Fox Kelly, Noah Horowitz, and Richard Lehun puzzled over ethics and the law.

Do art galleries have a future? A panel on "Letting Go of Brick and Mortar" at Christie's featuring Nicole Klagsbrun, Jay Gorney, Josh Baer, and Richard Lehun looks at the alternatives.

Has outsider art entered the mainstream? A panel on "Break on Through (from the Outside)" at Sotheby's featuring Andrew Edlin, Scott Ogden, Edward M. Gómez, Daniel Swanigan Snow, and Richard Lehun wonders if it should—while "History Refuses to Die" with Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, Ronald Lockett, and Gee's Bend quilts ponders the evidence.

Leibovitz

Did Carleton Watkins create the notion of Yosemite as an American Eden? Now Annie Leibovitz undertakes a pilgrimage in search of paradise.

Leigh

A work of art called Aphrodite's Lover can only be an act of love. For Jack Whitten as an African American whose sources still influence Simone Leigh today, was sculpture also a sword?

Richard Hunt takes his public sculpture indoors, while "inHarlem" for 2016 heads with Simone Leigh for the parks and Michael Richards for Governors Island. Which owes more to monumentality or community?

Leighton

Frederic Leighton and "Mystical Symbolism" had death on their mind. Could they bring a taste for high fashion, sex, and the spiritual to modern art?

Le Méléder

Does abstraction today keep asking for more? Big reds by Alix Le Méléder and installation and book art by Sara Garden Armstrong are bursting out and paring back.

Lemieux

Annette Lemieux, Dwyer Kilcollin, and Joseph Zito make sculpture from spare forms, household items, post-industrial materials, and bitter memories. Is it Minimalism or excess?

Lendvai

Has Minimalism come back as a lightweight? Kishio Suga mixes Chelsea architecture with a Japanese garden, Thomas Lendvai leaves it to a throw of the dice, and Barry Le Va sets meat cleavers dancing.

Leo

When does a therapy session, street photography, a police investigation, or a true confession become a fiction—or a lie? Jana Leo, Andrea Fraser, and Hannah Starkey seek the truth.

H. Leonard

Z. Leonard

Artists can step out of the here and now, but where does that leave them? Zoe Leonard packs her suitcase, while Marc Camille Chaimowicz makes himself at home.

Nature is a harsh discipline, but is it also vanishing? Zoe Leonard, James Benning, Peter Hutton, and Matthew Jensen cross continents by film, photography, and Google Street View.

Leonardo

What lies behind the Leonardo legend? The Met looks to drawings to capture Leonardo da Vinci's genius, but he keeps reinventing the myth.

Was Saint Jerome a scholar and teacher or an exile and a sinner? Leonardo da Vinci took the question personally.

Did Leonardo da Vinci and Paolo Veronese anticipate Beethoven, the discovery of Pluto, and Jean Baudrillard? With Peter Greenaway, the society of the spectacle has a hungering for the real.

Will high-res images replace paintings or just help sell art? Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper, and Tom Friedman meet Photoshop and globalization.

Can you connect the dots all the way from Leonardo da Vinci to Caravaggio and call it a regional style? With "Painters of Reality," painting in Lombardy turns out to look more eclectic than that innocent title lets on.

S. Leonardo

Must blackness be invisible? Shaun Leonardo finds it in the glare of police lights and Wardell Milan even in the Klan, while Kenny Dunkan puts it on display in front of the Eiffel Tower with a dance.

Leonhardt

How often can painting come back from the dead? Carrie Moyer and others are back in posher surroundings, now joined by Anna Leonhardt, R. J. Messineo, and Nathlie Provosty.

Leopold

Can an artist play at once abstract painter, architect, photographer, and voyeur? Susan Leopold, David Ersser, Christoph Morlinghaus, and Claire Seidl can, by going through the roof.

Lequeu

Was Jean-Jacques Lequeu a visionary architect or a "white savage"? Giuseppe Galli Bibiena and his family already blurred the lines between late Baroque architecture, theater, and fantasy.

Le Parc

Lucio Fontana had barely taken up painting when he began to leave it in shreds. So why did it take him so long—and how did he bring Julio Le Parc to Minimalism and motion?

Leslie

When Alfred Leslie abandoned Abstract Expressionism, did he leave behind the Zeitgeist? It might make a good movie—or even two or three.

Alfred Leslie set aside the brush for the computer and "the lives of some women." Had he, Echo Eggebrecht, Jan Müller, and Helen Verhoeven found male fantasies or acid girls?

Lethbridge

Letinsky

If Cubism arose today, would it be painting, sculpture, photography, or computer graphics? Laura Letinsky, Serge Alain Nitegeka, and Alyson Shotz explore the possibilities and then some.

Le Va

Has Minimalism come back as a lightweight? Kishio Suga mixes Chelsea architecture with a Japanese garden, Thomas Lendvai leaves it to a throw of the dice, and Barry Le Va sets meat cleavers dancing.

Levine

Sherrie Levine and "Crazy Lady" have no love or fear of a museum. Can she enter it all the same?

Can the work of art no longer be faked? Joseph Cornell parrots Juan Gris, while Martí Cormand draws on Sherrie Levine after Walker Evans.

For a time Sherrie Levine, Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Robert Longo, and Cindy Sherman shared a Soho gallery. Did they ignite "The Pictures Generation"?

H. Levitt

Can photography face matters of life and death? Eugene Richards sees them through individual histories, Fred Herzog a red-light district in living color, and Helen Levitt the masks of the Depression.

T. Levitt

Why is craft now looming over fine art? Elias Sime looks to African markets, Suzanne Goldenberg to Minimalism and the artist's hand, Julia Bland to Native American tradition, and Talia Levitt to the Yiddish for rags.

Lewis

Back in the New York School, just who were the real New Yorkers? Lee Krasner and Norman Lewis emerge from the margins.

LeWitt

Can digital art, for all its reliance on data and random access, still tell tales—and even lie? Computers and their metaphors help connect the dots Computers and their metaphors help connect the dots for Sol LeWitt, Kysa Johnson, and Casey Reas.

What happens when a conceptual artist takes leave of his senses? Sometimes even Sol LeWitt tries too hard for the sensual.

Louise Despont draws away from New York to a Pacific island, while Jennifer Bartlett returns to the city from the garden, and Sol LeWitt builds a collection. Which finds a greater stillness?

For once, can outdoor sculpture evoke the lazy months of summer? In 2005, Sol LeWitt, "Set and Drift" on Governors Island, "Sport" in Socrates Sculpture Park, and "Between the Bridges" all give it a try.

Li

Can Gauri Gill in India see behind the masks, can Kenneth Tam find hope after forced Chinese American labor in the American West, and can Zhang Huan and Li Binyuan in China still claim the land as their own? Here tradition is itself only a mask.

Libby

Can site-specific art look behind the wall? Anne Libby, Susan Philipsz, Philip Seibel, and Jan Tichy penetrate the gallery's light, sound, and infrastructure.

Libeskind

Can abstract photography capture the flow of experience? If not, Wolfgang Tillmans can always try portraiture, photocollage, or another experiment, while Rachel Libeskind continues to probe photocollage, truth, and transparency.

Lichtenstein

How could postmodern irony get so beautiful? Roy Lichtenstein has a brush with the past.

Liddell

Tired of tossing and turning? Siobhan Liddell, Elizabeth Glaessner, Linda Matalon, and Kathy Ruttenberg take a woman's body through times of crisis.

Lidén

Sharon Hayes and Klara Lidén keep coming at you in performance and on video. Why makes one more self-effacing, while also finding a woman's voice?

Ligon

In conceptual art, can an artist speak of himself? Glenn Ligon finds the text for blackness.

Is it mourning or morning in America? The African American artists in "Grief and Grievance," with help from Glenn Ligon, riff on Jean-Michel Basquiat, Daniel LaRue Johnson, and Jack Whitten.

Is jazz closer to abstraction or to African American identity? "Blues for Smoke," with help from Glenn Ligon, has room for both.

Lightner

Splat! Does that sound mean that abstraction lives on, thanks to Robert S. Neuman and Thomas Nozkowski, or that Kurt Lightner and Kelley Walker are using it to bury familiar images in paint and chocolate syrup?

Lihan

Can New York serve as a model? With Christina Lihan, Ben Boothby, Liene Bosquê, and Vivien Abrams Collens, painting and paper approach architecture in motion.

Limbourg

Where did the Renaissance begin in earnest? The Limbourg brothers illuminate the International Style, "Pages of Gold" follows progress across Europe, and "Icon Painting in Venetian Crete" takes El Greco from his origins to Italy.

M. Lin

The Museum of Chinese in America brings the past to light when it leaves the galleries to descend underground. Can Maya Lin bridge landscape, architecture, and community?

Has summer sculpture swooped in—or just a drone by Sam Durant? It encounters culture change and climate change with "The Musical Brain," Guadalupe Maravilla, Maya Lin, Melvin Edwards, and "Re:Growth."

Can art ride out the storm? Maya Lin, Tom Burckhardt, and Anicka Yi respond to climate change with their own ecosystems.

Lin Yan

Can an installation extend both painting and political art? Lin Yan, El Anatsui, Wolfgang Laib, and Xin Song add local and global color.

When does a work on paper become wallpaper? With Lin Yan, Dawn Clements, Wei Ja, and Claire Pentecost, it may well become the wall.

Lindquist

Remember flyover country? Greg Lindquist, Donna Dennis, Sam Falls, and Aspen Mays find a dark and not altogether distant beauty.

Lind-Ramos

Does Latin American art for Daniel Lind-Ramos all go back to an old storyteller? The Phelps de Cisneros collection has its "Chosen Memories."

Lionni

Are Sylvan Lionni, Eugenio Espinoza, Paul Gabrielli, Pello Irazu, Lisa Kirk, and Ted Larsen born scavengers? They also know when to clear away the clutter and the dust.

Liotard

Jean-Étienne Liotard played the Turkish painter, but what did the refined Swiss artist learn from the East? Earlier, Paolo Veronese serves Renaissance Venice's Mediterranean empire.

Lipke

Can an abstract artist still stand out in a crowded market? Meg Lipke puts down her smartphone, while John Mendelsohn picks up his dark color wheels, and Mary Dill Henry gets back to the garden.

Lippard

Can criticism cross over into art—or conceptual art into criticism? Lucy Lippard charts six years in the emergence of conceptual art, while Eric Doeringer would like to remake it.

Lippi

The Met has found a name to go with an architectural fantasy from the Italian Renaissance, Fra Carnevale. Has it also found a new course for painting from Filippo Lippi to Piero della Francesca?

If individualism came in with the Renaissance, what is one to make of the son of a greater artist and a lesser contemporary of Titian? The drawings of Filippino Lippi, Filippo Lippi's son, show a visionary style in the making.

Lissitzky

Was Modernism a determined movement or movements? With Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky, and Kazimir Malevich in Russia or Franz Marc and August Macke in Germany, make that a fatal encounter.

When did Modernism become propaganda? "The Power of Pictures" follows early Soviet photography, including including El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko, but earlier still Alfred Stieglitz joined photojournalism and experiment.

Livre da La Chasse

In "Illuminating the Medieval Hunt," is the Morgan Library illuminating the early Renaissance? Le Livre de la Chasse unbinds a rare manuscript.

Liu

If Dik F. Liu teaches studio art, does that make his art academic rather than modern? In four solo shows, often featuring still life under the blade of a palette knife, it comes to sound like a distinction ripe for deconstruction.

Lockett

Did outsider art inspire Abstract Expressionism? "Art Brut in America" recalls Jean Dubuffet in New York, while his drawings and Ronald Lockett remember the madness of modern art.

Lockhart

Summer and photography alike promise a window onto nature. How, then, do Dietmar Busse, Roger Ricco, and Sharon Lockhart present "Mutilated/Cultivated Environments"?

With Homage to the Square, Josef Albers showed how long a painter could persevere in his art. Did American Modernism need his European rigor, and can Sharon Lockhart find it in dance, tapestry, and Noa Eshkol?

Loeppky-Kolesnik

Has conceptual art made sculpture a thing of the past? Jordan Loeppky-Kolesnik, Edgar Calel, Tania Pérez Córdova, R. I. P. Germain, and Claudia Pagès bring earth and a sense of the neighborhood to Queens.

Logan

Can art get you looking at something other than your phone? Tim Gardner and Drift bring nature alive along with human distractions and high-tech solutions, while Ross Bleckner and Zachari Logan find shadows in the garden.

Londoño

Long

Identity is a matter of pride, but is it also a matter of "Grace"? Identity politics is anything but graceful in the art of Charles Long, Ina Archer, and Hannah Starkey.

Longacre-White

When did subjectivity become the new black? Andrea Longacre-White, John Divola, León Ferrari, and Kerstin Persson find depths where a group show insists on "Black."

Longo

Can a single work hold centuries of political art? If Robert Longo goes head to head with Francisco de Goya and Sergei Eisenstein, Anselm Kiefer thinks even bigger.

Is anything left of Modernism's daring except nudity and nostalgia? In the cold winter of 2001, I take a quick gallery tour, with most space to Robert Longo, Leonardo Drew, Nan Goldin, and Lisa Yuskavage, who also has a rather early retrospective.

For a time Robert Longo, Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, and Cindy Sherman shared a Soho gallery. Did they ignite "The Pictures Generation"?

Looking Glass

Did Nam June Paik invent video art? Charlotte Moorman and Carolee Schneemann had their hand in performance and Lillian Schwartz her computer art, but Looking Glass would rather invoke arcade games.

López

Lorenz

Can art recreate nature? Hilary Lorenz, David McQueen, John Newsom, Tom Pnini, "Recapturing the Scenic Wilds," and Wave Hill settle for museums of natural history.

Lotto

If individualism came in with the Renaissance, what is one to make of the son of a greater artist and a lesser contemporary of Titian? A retrospective of Lorenzo Lotto shows a visionary style in the making.

Could Renaissance art history lie off the beaten path, with a forgotten sculptor and a town in northern Italy? Antico rediscovers antiquity, while Bergamo holds painting by Giovanni Bellini, Titian, and Lorenzo Lotto.

Loughney

Who has the right to abstraction? "Searching the Sky for Rain" puts it in question, but Paul Loughney, Julia Rommel, and Richard Roth demonstrate its diversity.

Louis

Was Abstract Expressionism all about thinking big? "Epic Abstraction" extends its history to women and the present, while Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler step out from behind the veils.

Love

Can market models distinguish old masters from young geniuses? David W. Galenson applies economics to innovation, but Robyn Love knows the value of art as a gift.

LoVid

A quarter of a century ago, who knew that experimental film was turning into video art ? That may explain why a retrospective of the Experimental Television Center looks so old-fashioned—and why LoVid looks back.

How will climate remake a port city? "On the Waterfront," curated by Maddy Rosenberg, maps Brooklyn, while Wave Hill and Lovid see a more idyllic or high-tech Hudson.

Lovelace O'Neal

Must as outsider artist live outside? Anthony Dominguez did, while Mary Lovelace O'Neal took to New York in the dark of night, and Raymond Saunders borrows from and casts his shadow on the streets.

Loving

Who needs shaped canvas to reshape the rectangle? Don Voisine does it with geometry, Angelika Schori with both sides of the picture plane, and Al Loving with paint and paper.

Should shaped canvas stick to canvas—or the wall? Al Loving, Phyllida Barlow, Charles Hinman, and Artie Vierkant shape alternatives.

Lowe

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council

For once, can outdoor sculpture evoke the lazy months of summer? In 2005, Sol LeWitt, "Set and Drift" on Governors Island, "Sport" in Socrates Sculpture Park, and an incarnation of "Between the Bridges" called "Rapture" all give it a try.

Loy

Art after Covid-19 may retrench, but Lower East Side galleries spill over. Can Rosa Loy bring Surrealism to Chinatown?

Lozano

Art may or may not come out of fashion, but what makes it go out of fashion? Guess which applies to Lee Lozano and Dieter Roth.

Lozano-Hemmer

There may be no finer place for public art, but can art fully respond to New York if it does not have star quality? Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and T. J. Wilcox pick out a Voice Tunnel and the skyline.

Lucas

Can Martha Rosler keep bringing it all back home? She turns from combat to cooking and class, while Sarah Lucas cracks a few eggs.

Lucier

Mary Lucier reflects on her late husband's leaving earth in multichannel video, while Harold Cohen and AARON stake their art on AI. Cauleen Smith wanders LA, but is her's too the video a lifetime?

Ludlow

Are Sam Moyer and others in ". . ." haunted by abstraction, including their own? Trisha Brown remembers abstraction's collective dance, while Lilly Ludlow finds it a century ago on the Lower East Side.

Ludy

Paul Sharits uses raw film strips for shock treatments, while Janet Biggs subjects herself to shock therapy and Sara Ludy to her own subsurface hell. Which counts as experimental film?

Lum

Is New York scary at night and a country home ever so comfortable in sunlight? Mary Lum, Jane Dickson, Jessie Edelman, and Chris Hood make their way through the light.

Lundqvist

Are women from another planet? Jordan Kasey finds them in other worlds, Rita Lundqvist in a Nordic landscape, and Dana Schutz in the clouds, but still as familiar as planet earth.

Luster

Is the personal or political blowing off the Gulf? Deborah Luster, Carlos Amorales, Yoan Capote, and Thornton Dial look past the American South to murder, exile, and community.

Lutter

Does photography still have an inferiority complex? Vera Lutter, Chris Jordan, "The End Is Nigh," and "Colour Before Color" try extra hard to make an impression.

Lyall

Can Scott Lyall, Jason Tomme, and "American ReConstruction" find a space between painting, prints, models, and abstraction? Sara VanDerBeek reminds new and old media "To Think of Time."

D. Lyon

Did the 1960s have its legacy in activism and hope, racial divisions and overpopulated prisons, or life on the fringe? Danny Lyon photographed them all, as people, and Larry Burrows did the same for soldiers and civilians in Vietnam.

M. Lyon

What stands between text art and land art? With Michelle Stuart, Mark Lyon, and "Sight Reading," photography is reaching for the stars.

Macchi

Remember when art took time? Jorge Macchi, Simone Bailey, Janaye Brown, Claudia Joskowicz, James Nares, Joseph Zito, and "Long Takes" experience the gallery and the brink of revolution in real time.

Mack

Tired of art movements, and wish you could reset to Zero? Yet that, too, was a movement, including Heinz Mack and in a valuable parallel to Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian in Iran, with painting and kinetic art that recall all too well the 1960s and 1970s.

Macke

Was Modernism a determined movement or movements? With Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky, and Kazimir Malevich in Russia or Franz Marc and August Macke in Germany, make that a fatal encounter.

Mac Low

Should the combination of art and text push toward politics or confession? Raymond Pettibon has his obsessions, Jackson Mac Low a bridge to abstraction.

MacPhee

Does rigor still make sense in describing abstract art today? For Medrie MacPhee, David Humphrey, Altoon Sultan, and Juan Uslé, rigor can mean more than geometry.

Macuga

There are allegories, and then there are all-ugh-ories. Which describe art after AIDS and art after Eastern Europe by Goshka Macuga, Nicole Eisenman, Andra Ursuta, and Martin Wong?

Madonna

Madonna and Steven Klein try to create a satanic fashion show. Does this leave video art in decent shape—or only the model?

Magid

Art faces lots of traps, from Postmodernism to Sheetrock walls and from gender roles to acts of torture. Jill Magid and Kate Gilmore are breaking out of the box.

Magnuson

How long will Chelsea offer a mix of warehouses, idealism, chic, and big money? In late 1999 it at least has room for Postmodernism, laughter, and laser-cut tears, including Andreas Slominski, Gary Hill, Eric Magnuson, Diane Samuels, and Céleste Boursier-Mougenot.

Magnum Photos

Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson raised a champagne toast to Magnum Photos. So what if they could not agree to call it photojournalism?

Do women in photography deserve a space to themselves? "Our Selves" from the Kornblum collection looks behind the partition, while the women of Magnum Photos in "Close Enough" are closing in.

Magritte

Can one still believe in the obvious, and can one still make of point of not believing? René Magritte heads for Paris, Surrealism, and the mystery of the ordinary.

In The Seducer, René Magritte lets the sea take over a sailing ship, with a demon lover nowhere in sight. Has he seduced the sailors, the viewer, modern art, or even himself?

Mahalchick

Did Africa give birth to art? Lydia Ourahmane finds cave art in scorched earth, but Andy Coolquitt, Michael Mahalchick, and "In Practice" for 2022 insist that ruin need not mean collapse.

Maier

Does photography capture the truth or just a freak show? Ulrike Ottinger draws from the madness of her own movies, Vivian Maier has her eye-opener with people and color, and Ray K. Metzger finds a strange beauty in black and white.

Maine

Is too much paint being flung around? Absolutely, but Stephen Maine, McArthur Binion, Keltie Ferris, Daniel Hesidence, Scott Ingram, and Jackie Saccoccio can still leave their physical trace and their shimmer.

Maiolino

Maisel

Is art in a state of emergency? Nari Ward calls an ambulance to Harlem, Sterling Ruby parks a prison in Chelsea, Brian Conley stages war games in Brooklyn, and David Maisel photographs the ashes.

Malevich

If it took outsiders to create the European avant-garde, it took Europe to bring the avant-garde to Russia and America. Does that make Kazimir Malevich and Suprematism a model for political art today—or a disparate warning?

Was Modernism a determined movement or movements? With Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky, and Kazimir Malevich in Russia or Franz Marc and August Macke in Germany, make that a fatal encounter.

Maltese

Remember when hybrids were postmodern? Like Albert Oehlen before them, Vanessa Maltese, Jonathan Gardner, Zachary Leener, and Anne Neukamp ask when diversity and excess become academicism.

Manasevit

At the end of 1996, did "in" New Yorkers still never travel north of 14th Street? I check out the new Chelsea galleries and dear old 57th Street, with the most space to Leonardo Drew, Christian Haub, Garry Hill, Ellsworth Kelly, Sue Williams, and Jodi Manasevit—an abstract painter with an image in mind.

Mandelbaum

Was R. B. Kitaj at home or in exile in London and America? Like Stéphane Mandelbaum in Belgium, he could always laugh and punch back.

Manet

Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas met at the Louvre, and then Henri Matisse and André Derain met up in the south of France to found Fauvism. How does that accord with the painting of everyday life and the urge to make it new?

How does Edouard Manet keep you from looking away, whatever that says about you? John Singer Sargent was already bored, as he turned him to charcoal.

Who are these people? "Posing Modernity" spotlights the black model from Edouard Manet, Olympia, and Henri Matisse to today, while "African Americans Portraits" views the 1940s and 1950s in studio photography.

Edouard Manet took on a revolution, with The Execution of Maximilian, and "Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde," witnessed one, in his dealings with artists from Paul Cézanne to Pablo Picasso. Why, then, do "Americans in Paris" seem so tame?

When Napoleon turned his cannons on Spain, he also stirred up art, with a new taste for the Spanish Baroque. What happens when art history rolls out the canon, from Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Goya all the way to Edouard Manet and John Singer Sargent?

Théodore Géricault took Romanticism out to sea, and artists as late as Edouard Manet kept "Crossing the Channel." Did an era really set its differences aside, or has museum politics displaced artistic and national divisions?

Stung by Salon criticism, Edouard Manet did the editing that left a great painting or two. Was he less of a modern after all than John Singer Sargent, who gave up society portraits for landscape?

When change came to painting and to Paris, were the department stores there first? Berthe Morisot takes out her best dress and her art, Gustave Caillebotte and Pierre-Auguste Renoir their umbrellas, and Edouard Manet and Claude Monet their brush for "Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity."

Do Chelsea's once idealistic galleries now form a business district—or a theater district? Michael Fried argued that "theatricality" precedes and follows modern art; nd he could have been arguing with me as I took his hero, Edouard Manet, to check out such artists as Cindy Sherman, Richard Tsao, castaneda/reiman, Deborah Turville, and Scott Tunick.

An exhibition puts "The Origins of Impressionism" back in the Salon. Can it dispel the air of mystery and adventure around Edouard Manet and the birth of modern style?

What are Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse doing in the Met's nineteenth-century galleries along with Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh? Perhaps the Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman collection can fill their place.

Manford

What does it take for a landscape or still life to make you feel right at home? J. J. Manford, Anne Buckwalter, and Lois Dodd take painting out of interiors and into the familiar.

Mangold

If painting is dead, as critics used to say, it is having quite an afterlife. How do Robert Mangold, Eric Aho, Cecily Brown, Julian Schnabel, and Amy Sillman come by such abundance?

Mann

What do you do when someone insists on sharing her most intimate family secrets? If it is Sally Mann, you want to know more—and so, it turns out, does she.

Manna

Jumana Manna, Umar Rashid, and Frieda Toranzo Jaeger look to the past and future, the true revolutionaries for Christopher Myers are prophets and storytellers.

Mantegna

Mapplethorpe

Does Robert Mapplethorpe, even in a final self-portrait before dying, still have the power to shock? A retrospective balances the implicit tensions between formalism and desire, while six younger artists speak for Mapplethorpe today.

Would it take a Teabagger to shock the art world? Ken Johnson sees a liberal hegemony beneath pluralism, while Americans embrace Robert Mapplethorpe.

Cindy Sherman exposes Robert Mapplethorpe, and Lucas Samaras keeps exposing himself. Who does that leave for a photograph to discover?

Robert Mapplethorpe invited controversy all his life, but it took him to the third leg of a museum retrospective after his death to earn it. Should public funds simply keep their hands off the arts?

If Postmodernism wants to ground art historically, why does it keep riffing so wildly on the past? Consider what happens when Robert Mapplethorpe encounters Mannerism, contemporary painters create their own "Idols of Perversity," and—long before both—Goethe built a great drawing collection on his mistakes.

Maravilla

Can diversity require a deeper and more personal history? Guadalupe Maravilla, David Alekhuogie, and Remy Jungerman find themselves in Africa, Suriname, Mayan civilization, Modernism, and anthropology.

Marc

Was Modernism a determined movement or movements? With Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky, and Kazimir Malevich in Russia or Franz Marc and August Macke in Germany, make that a fatal encounter.

Marclay

Does sound art turn a gallery into a nightclub, a cathedral, or a wildlife preserve? While Céleste Boursier-Mougenot hears the buzz, Christian Marclay sees the score.

"What, then, is time?" Saint Augustine wondered, but for Christian Marclay in The Clock, Leslie Thornton, and Stephen Vitiello, time is on their side.

Marden

Sean Scully and Brice Marden still treat a painting as both an object and a study in studio light. Why, then, does their abstraction cherish the cracks in a wall of light?

If painting is not dead, has abstraction survived as mere recitation? Brice Marden, Suzan Frecon, David Novros, Victor Pesce, and Clare Seidl try additions, overlays, and a heart of gold.

Margot

Mary Lee Bendolph at Gee's Bend helped make quilting an art form, while Christopher Stout calls his painted linen quilts, and Margot, Agatha Wojciechowsky, and Tamara Gonzales reach for beauty, horror, and the spirit world. Can their claims be reconciled?

Mariette

When did collecting become scholarship? Some might say with Pierre-Jean Mariette in drawings, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in posters and prints for MoMA, or the founding of the Met's print department and "The Power of Prints."

Marinetti

Can a movement devoted to speed have stumbled so slowly to an ending? "Futurism: Reconstructing the Universe" looks beyond Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and fascism to set design, such women as Benedetta Cappa, and a thirty-five year history.

Mark

Where have all the people gone? Catherine Opie photographs the emptiness of American cities, Mary Ellen Mark the hidden life of Bombay and the slow return to a ravaged New Orleans.

Markosian

Marlantes

Should the goal of preventing war and the experience of Vietnam lead to the return of the draft? For all his good intentions, Karl Marlantes invites the flawed dream of winning by losing and a nostalgia for murder.

Marsh

What distinguishes American Surrealism, and does it come down to Edward Hopper, Reginald Marsh, or neither one? The Whitney calls it "Real/Surreal."

Marshall

Kerry James Marshall got his start by painting an invisible man. How did he or, in photography and video, "Black Cowboy" find community, in black and white America and in art?

Marten

Now that anything goes, where can it stop? Helen Marten and, at a gallery with Kathy Ruttenberg, Lily Wong reach beyond conceptual art and fantasy to painting, while Elizabeth Schwaiger all but paints herself out of her studio.

A. Martin

Agnes Martin and Carmen Herrera stuck with abstract art for decades. Why did it take so long for two remarkable women to find recognition—and themselves?

Can abstraction survive only by losing its rigor? Agnes Martin, Ronnie Landfield, Carrie Moyer, Milton Resnick, and Frank Stella have one working to tell the difference.

E. J. Martin

Can a modernist be at home in the African American community? In painting and collage, Eugene J. Martin welcomes a stranger to "satirical abstraction."

Marville

What makes photography realism—and what makes it fine art? In the 1860s, Julia Margaret Cameron treats portrait photography as theater, while Charles Marville documents the creation of the city of lights.

L. Marx

When Leo Marx wrote The Machine in the Garden, did he have in mind a camera—or a steam shovel preparing earthworks? David Brooks, Justine Kurland, and Erin Shirreff find America on the edge between nature and culture.

When art looks at disaster, can it see more than the picturesque? Diana Thater, Adriane Colburn, Cheryl Molnar, Ed Osborn, and Leonardo Silaghi find what Leo Marx called the machine in the garden and love among the ruins.

R. B. Marx

Roberto Burle Marx, SANAA, and "A Japanese Constellation" make design a collaboration with others and the garden. Is there more to modern architecture than the wow?

Masaccio

The Italian Renaissance is supposed to begin with Giotto and burst out with Masaccio, right? Art in Florence wants to prove me half wrong.

Masheck

When Joseph Masheck collects his Texts on (Texts on) Art, has art and criticism given way to an obsessive chain of influence? Not when Marcel Duchamp, Ad Reinhardt, Andy Warhol, Arthur C. Danto, and others embraced the dangers.

Masley

Is there a deconstructive architecture of the gallery? Caitlin Masley, Allyson Vieira, Ishmael Randall Weeks, and Kevin Zucker hint at its politics but barely find the architecture.

Mason

When abstract painting was out of fashion, what other than gender held Emily Mason and Deborah Remington back? Jill Nathanson and Rebecca Purdum answer for today.

Matalon

Tired of tossing and turning? Linda Matalon, Elizabeth Glaessner, Siobhan Liddell, and Kathy Ruttenberg take a woman's body through times of crisis.

Materson

Are blacks and felons the "Unnamed Figures" of American folk art? Not for "Marvels of My Own Inventiveness," Ray Materson, and Joe Coleman.

Mather

Must a museum expansion extend to the art? Rick Mather at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts stresses civic spaces, but Artemisia Gentileschi fights back.

Matisse

What did color mean to Henri Matisse? The Red Studio shows him bringing painting closer to nature and nature closer to art.

Could a turn to paper spark renewal? Henri Matisse points toward decorative arts and abstraction in his late coutouts and book art.

Henri Matisse worked on a single painting for ten years, until Fauvism's color had faded. Was it a "radical invention"?

"I never retouch," Henri Matisse boasted, but often he did—and hired someone to photograph every step of the way. Like the stained canvas of Helen Frankenthaler, he challenges myths of Modernism, spontaneity, and an artist in immediate touch with himself and nature.

Do Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse really stand for line and color, confrontation and guilty pleasure, or even modern art? A show of their rivalry and affection suggests double dealing.

With Tod Williams and Billie Tsien as architects, has the Barnes Foundation sold out or found itself? In Philadelphia now, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and a ton of Pierre-August Renoir are still getting the "hang" of modern art.

Gertrude and Leo Stein shared a Paris apartment and, with their brother and sister-in-law, a growing flock of artists. When the Steins collect Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, who is teaching whom?

Can one locate the origins of modern art in something other than painting? Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso may not have discovered Cubism in film, but Henri Matisse sure knew textiles, and Stuart Davis literally drew on New York.

Matta-Clark

A steam shovel and power saw sound like tools for Robert Smithson. But what remained of Minimalism and its "High Times, Hard Times" after Gordon Matta-Clark cut into it?

How did David Hammons get to the downtown New York of "Around Day's End" and Gordon Matta-Clark—and to his own "Day's End"? So elusive an artist began by leaving his mark in Body Prints.

How did art get from nonsites to Web sites? Christina McPhee moderates a discussion of Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark, and new media.

Mattern

Is photography more or less than an art? Andy Mattern and John Cyr consider the tools of the trade, Brian Conley puts it on the map, and the 2018 AIPAD Photography Show wants to keep it there.

Mattingly

How do you get from the pyramids to the parks? Start with summer sculpture by Lauren Halsey on the Met roof, but do not forget Mary Mattingly, Sheila Pepe, and Phyllida Barlow in the great outdoors.

Mauss

With American Gothic, Grant Wood had found his American myth. Did he enshrine it, satirize it, or fear it—and would he recognize American art and its communities through the lens of Nick Mauss and modern dance.

Mays

Remember flyover country? Aspen Mays, Donna Dennis, Sam Falls, and Greg Lindquist find a dark and not altogether distant beauty.

Mayton

In dreams, the city itself can seem hard to pin down. How do Charles Mayton, Martha Diamond, and Jane Freilicher make it at once vivid, familiar, and strange?

McAllister

Is Pattern and Decoration about discipline or excess? Valerie Jaudon patiently pursues her weave, while Peter Young works his way out of Minimalism, and John McAllister mixes ranting and radiance.

McCall

McCallum

Does realism in painting preserve the truth? Bradley McCallum, Alejandro Campins, Melanie Vote, and James White flaunt artifice and death.

C. McCarthy

Zaha Hadid gives a brusque welcome to Postmodern architecture, and Sarah Sze and Caroline McCarthy look everywhere at once. Which represents the future of New York City?

D. McCarthy

Doreen McCarthy loves plastics, Lisa Hoke recycles, and "Notes on 'Notes on Camp' " recalls Susan Sontag. For all the theater, can the art object still slip out from within quotes?

P. McCarthy

Can prefabricated homes remake modern living or just offer the same old parts? "Home Delivery" builds for speed, but Paul McCarthy slams the door.

What can sustain the Chelsea money machine, and what is it doing to the state of the art? With Aleksandra Mir, Paul McCarthy, and the Whitney "Undone," it is heading south.

McClodden

Can a black American into poetry, dance, and kinky sex take care of herself? Tiona Nekkia McClodden packs a gun, but Ella Walker, while not an African American, has her own theater of desire.

McClure

Are east and west only a stone's throw away? Lee Ufan bridges Minimalism and the garden, while Stefana McClure and Idris Khan mix Minimalism, polish, and text.

McCord

Was African American art caught up in the American struggle? Benny Andrews and Jake McCord see history through the faces, black and white, they knew best—and Emily Furr explains why only the latter remains an outsider.

McCoy

When the art scene blends into night life, does art become self-indulgence or directed dreaming? Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Cao Fei, Jessica Rankin, Jessica Stockholder, and Salla Tykka each walk the line between light and dark.

McCracken

Did Minimalism ever get off the ground? François Morellet may have you looking up, and so will Fred Sandback in a show with Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, and John McCracken.

McCullin

Has photography's decisive moment past? The National Gallery of Canada prefers "The Extended Moment," while the Morgan Library sees group portraits as "Among Others," and Don McCullin finds the ultimate group portrait of an age in wartime.

McElheny

When did modern architecture give way to colors and curves? Josiah McElheny, Charles Gwathmey, and Eero Saarinen each give the International Style a different terminus.

McGee

Has graffiti art returned to fashion? At an outpost of chic in Soho, Barry McGee and SWOON return to the streets and bring the action indoors.

McGill

When painting comes off the wall, does it become sculpture? Not necessarily in this hybrid age, and not for Charles McGill, Iva Gueorguieva, and Henry Rothman.

McGrath

After traditional representation and abstraction, can painters still map space? Tom McGrath, Corinne Wasmuht, and "Inside Out, Outside In" negotiate the panoramas of airports and cities at night.

McKim, Mead & White

Did Jan van Eyck have second thoughts? Works on paper from the Kupferstich-Kabinett in Dresden, from van Eyck to Piet Mondrian, find new beginnings, while the Morgan Library restores its McKim, Mead & White stone and adds a garden.

McMillian

Is there no rest for the weary, especially for an African American? Rodney McMillian sets himself up for failure, the artists in residence in "Tenses" ride the roller-coaster, and Larry Walker is still up against the wall.

What it mean to act African American? Rodney McMillian, Rico Gatson, and Clifford Owens mix media and performance.

McNeely

Are exhibitions recovering women artists? "Radical Women" in Latin American art, Juanita McNeely, and "Multiply Identify Her" took the initiative.

McPhee

How can color shine so deeply through a devastated coastal community? Christina McPhee in her digital landscapes finds a surfeit of traces after a mudslide.

How did art get from nonsites to Web sites? Christina McPhee moderates a discussion of Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark, and new media.

As moderator of an online panel on arts education, Christina McPhee asks "what is to be done." Who most demands change—the artist, the market, or the latest media?

D. McQueen

Can art recreate nature? David McQueen, Hilary Lorenz, John Newsom, Tom Pnini, "Recapturing the Scenic Wilds," and Wave Hill settle for museums of natural history.

S. McQueen

McRae

Can Soho recover memories of modernity? Wendell McRae, Stephen Westfall, Tim Hawkinson, and Donald Baechler take on the construction job—with everything from abstract painting and photography to machine parts.

Meatyard

Will no one ever see the man behind the masks? Probably not, but Ralph Eugene Meatyard and Morton Bartlett play with photography, light, and shadow as well as childhood, masks, and dolls.

The Medici

For a Renaissance artist, the sculpture garden of Lorenzo de' Medici? was the place to be. Could its curator, Bertoldo di Giovanni, have influenced Michelangelo

Did the Medici make Florence a cultural capital in the 1500s? Michelangelo and Sandro Botticelli might disagree, but Agnolo Bronzino, Jacobo da Pontormo, and Francesco Salviati show their influence on portraits and politics.

Mehretu

Has today's finest abstract painter gone political? Julie Mehretu deals with events, uprisings, urban architecture, her wild imagination.

What's Hecuba to him and she to Goldman Sachs? With Julie Mehretu and Elliott Hundley world finance meets Greek tragedy on a mural scale.

What happened to the Guggenheim Museum's collection? Julie Mehretu, Cai Guo-Qiang, Paul Chan, Jenny Holzer, Richard Prince, and Carrie Mae Weems are granted "Artistic License" to find out, but the Whitney's collection looks downright new as well.

The Whitney calls a show of abstract art "Remote Viewing: Invented Worlds in Painting and Drawing." With Julie Mehretu and, in the galleries, Ingrid Calame, and Jean-Paul Riopelle need one even think of abstract art as painting and drawing?

Mekas

Did Modernism begin with photography and film? MoMA's 2021 "fall reveal" sees them as a key to modern art's diversity, and Jonas Mekas at the Jewish Museum supplies the map.

Meko

Is there more to landscape than a moment in time and point in space? Jodi Hays and Michi Meko find change coming to the New South, while Jake Berthot carries his darkness from abstraction to landscape, and Emily Nelligan returns to Maine and impending darkness.

Melhus

Julianne Swartz, Sam Taylor-Wood, and Jane and Louise Wilson are back, Jonathan Cramer channels Jackson Pollock, and Bjorn Melhus changes the channels on Jerry Springer. Is Chelsea truly over the top?

Memling

Hans Memling casts the same eye on the men and women of Bruges, their aspirations, and their possessions. What can preserve such a worldly balance?

Did art spread the word for Martin Luther? He counted Lucas Cranach as a friend and collaborator, fifty years after a gentler piety in Hans Memling.

Could Hans Memling, Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, and Robert Campin have painted just for you? "Prayers and Portraits: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych" shows the private side of the Renaissance.

Mendel

Will people maintain their trust in photography, as a passive trace of real, in the digital age? Barbara Savedoff has her doubts, but Walker Evans and Sylvia Mendel may put that trust in question in the first place.

Mendelsohn

Can an abstract artist still stand out in a crowded market? Meg Lipke puts down her smartphone, while John Mendelsohn picks up his dark color wheels, and Mary Dill Henry gets back to the garden.

Mendieta

Traditionally, a man got to play the artist, finding his inspiration in a woman and in nature. What happens, then, when a young woman plays with art and images of nature, as in the work of Ana Mendieta and Phoebe Washburn?

How does a photographer capture the decisive moment? For Robert Frank, by taking enough pictures—and for Mark Steinmetz, by waiting for lightning to strike, while Hans Breder takes photography from Surrealism to body art and Ana Mendieta.

Mendive

Can a dead civilization live on in contemporary art? With "Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay," Manuel Mendive, and Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, the peoples of the Americas survive in a continuous chain of the living.

Merrick

An inflatable green dinosaur by Tom Merrick creates an emblem of the postmodern museum, alongside Mike Bidlo's turning Marcel Duchamp into bathroom wallpaper and Céleste Boursier-Mougenot's bird house. Do these look any different, now that MoMA has bought P.S. 1 lock, stock, and toilet?

Mario Merz

Mario Merz has laid a table with real fruit. Is it a postmodern installation or a modern still life?

Marisa Merz

Did it take a woman to guide painting through the 1980s? Elizabeth Murray did so more than anyone, as seen in her drawings, while Gladys Nilsson stayed closer to her roots in Chicago and Marisa Merz to the role of a woman in Arte Povera.

Mesa-Bains

Amalia Mesa-Bains and Chicana feminism look beyond domesticity, while Juan Francisco Elso in Cuba feels the pain of martyrdom and revolution and Latin American artists place "An Emphasis on Resistance."

Mesa-Pelly

High costs of living and the art-world carnival make postmodern artist and viewer alike pressed for time. For artists like John Coplans, Joao Onofre, Kara Walker, Hiro Yamagata, and Deborah Mesa-Pelly, does that mean more choices, more extravagance, or plainer tales?

Meshulam

Had enough of the war on terrorism and struggles over memorials to 9/11? M. Meshulam and Carl Andre lower the volume.

Messineo

How often can painting come back from the dead? Carrie Moyer and others are back in posher surroundings, now joined by Anna Leonhardt, R. J. Messineo, and Nathlie Provosty.

G. Metzger

Is there an art of Eastern Europe? Memories for Gustav Metzger run from the Holocaust to riots in London, but for "Ostalgie" art still lies behind the Berlin Wall.

R. K. Metzger

Meyer

Does abstraction still have room for expression and excess? With Melissa Meyer, Mike Childs, Anoka Faruqee, Angelina Gualdoni, and Wayne Herpich, it may even have room for lyricism, cross-hatching, and Op Art.

Meyerowitz

Does street photography seem made for black and white? While color for Lauren Greenfield exemplifies status and surfaces, it led Joel Meyerowitz out of the city and Raghubir Singh across India, but with deep roots in the street.

Meyohas

In Renaissance Italy, "Concinnitas" stood for beauty as a "skillful joining." Could that include the "Twisted Data" of art, mathematics, and science—or stock trades for Sarah Meyohas?

Michals

Does a portrait of the artist transcend ego? With Duane Michals and Shunk-Kender, an artist is on both sides of the camera.

Can a bustling city offer empty pleasures? Duane Michals, Christopher Culver, Katherine Newbegin, and Holly Zausner look to landmarks, subways, and fire escapes for a sense of home.

Mian

Can museums help with mental health after Covid-19? One experiments with Honoré Daumier as art therapy, while elsewhere Asif Mian looks for closure after losing his father.

Michelangelo

The Met subtitles its show of Michelangelo drawings "Divine Draftsman and Designer." Did even the divine have to struggle with the creation?

What were you doing at age twelve? If you were Michelangelo, says the Met, you were painting devils in the sky, while James Hall thinks you had a problem with your body.

Was it ever easy to take in the Sistine Chapel? Photographs and plates without prints by Andrew Witkin take one closer to Michelangelo.

Maryalice Huggins in Aesop's Mirror struggles to authenticate the object she loves, while the Met boasts of a newly discovered Michelangelo. What explains the politics of attribution?

For a Renaissance artist, the sculpture garden of Lorenzo de' Medici was the place to be. Could its curator, Bertoldo di Giovanni, have influenced Michelangelo?

Is your idea of real life Michelangelo or Duane Hanson? "Like Life" looks at seven hundred years of sculpture, color, and the body.

Michelson

Can art still see nature as comforting and awe inspiring? Alan Michelson and Mitch Epstein fear for Native American lands and their nation, while Kent Monkman reimagines the first incursions by European settlers.

Michie

What makes an official portrait official? Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald treat Barack and Michelle Obama to flora and fancy dress, while Troy Michie recalls the Zoot Suit Riots and Firelei Báez the fire of women in Harlem.

Mies

When Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy came to America, did they bring fine art, sound design, or more consumer products? "From the Bauhaus to the New World" has one asking, while "Bauhaus: Workshops for Modernity" shows how Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, and Marcel Breuer shaped modern art.

Mik

Can video art mean more than a dark, empty room? The X-Initiative strands Keren Cytter, Luke Fowler, and Tris Vonna-Michell in Chelsea, while Aernout Mik shoots up eight floors of a museum on video.

Milella

Should realism make the landscape look familiar? From above, Domingo Milella, Yvonne Jacquette, Levan Mindiashvili, Antonio Murado, and Rod Penner trace a strange evolution in New York City, cemeteries, and the open road.

Milewicz

What is more realistic—photography, illusion, or the plain sense of things? Ron Milewicz, Leslie Hewitt, John Houck, Michael St. John, and Mike Womack compare memory and realism.

Milan

Must blackness be invisible? Shaun Leonardo finds it in the glare of police lights and Wardell Milan even in the Klan, while Kenny Dunkan puts it on display in front of the Eiffel Tower with a dance.

Miller

Is "shock art" bad art? In The Crucible, Arthur Miller took on good and evil, leaving only the bad.

Mindiashvili

Should realism make the landscape look familiar? From above, Levan Mindiashvili, Yvonne Jacquette, Domingo Milella, Antonio Murado, and Rod Penner trace a strange evolution in New York City, cemeteries, and the open road.

Mingwei

When does drawing stop and calligraphy or weaving begin? Lee Mingwei, Cui Fei, Paul Glabicki, León Ferrari, and Mira Schendel leave art hanging by a thread.

Minter

Which supplies the most grisly erotic theory—high heels in the mud, Abu Ghraib, or gold chains? Marilyn Minter, Fernando Botero, and "The Gold Standard" know what is naughty and nice.

Can a woman reclaim her body and her autonomy from the male gaze? For Marilyn Minter, Leonor Fini in Surrealism, and Joan Semmel, the next step is to reclaim it from her own.

Minujín

Is Mire Lee out to turn you away? Karyn Olivier and Dana Powell run into obstacles, in industrial landscapes and a road at night, but Marta Minujín puts out soft sculpture to welcome you in.

Anne Katrine Senstad and Firelei Báez fill a room with blue, while Marta Minujín takes you from room to room through a neon tunnel, for what Zach Nader calls psychic pictures. Is just one installation about color and another about African American history?

Mir

What can sustain the Chelsea money machine, and what is it doing to the state of the art? With Aleksandra Mir, Paul McCarthy, and the Whitney "Undone," it is heading south.

Miró

From 1927 to 1939, Joan Miró vowed to assassinate painting. But did his "painting and anti-painting" instead keep bringing it back to life.

Was Birth of the World for Joan Miró a rebirth of his art? From his Dutch Interiors to his late work, he was never just born yesterday?

Misrach

Did Robert Adams find comfort in walking the night, and where are the clouds by day? He and Richard Misrach photograph a disturbing human presence in the American landscape.

J. Mitchell

Boys will be boys. But do Joan Mitchell and, in the galleries, Eileen Brady Nelson, Susan Rothenberg, and Kate Shepherd really just indulge in girl talk?

T. Mitchell

Can Tyler Mitchell make you feel good? He says so, but his black utopia, "Covid New York," "#ICPConcerned," and John Akomfrah know only loss.

Is the International Center of Photography home at last in the glitter and gentrification of the Lower East Side? Its Gensler design has room for billboards, but also Modernism, hip-hop, and a black utopia by Tyler Mitchell.

Miyamoto

Can abstract art accommodate diversity? "Making Space" looks at women in postwar abstraction, Kazuko Miyamoto looks back at Minimalism, and William T. Williams looks back as an African American.

Modigliani

Why did Amedeo Modigliani go to the Louvre, and why did Auguste Rodin admire more conservative art? One may never find Rodin behind the gestures and Modigliani unmasked.

Can a show that reclaims an avant-garde artist for Sephardic culture seriously pretend to go "beyond the myth"? Consider the case of Amedeo Modigliani and, a continent away, Elie Nadelman.

Moffatt

Can a feminist still laugh at fashion and celebrity? Tracey Moffatt, Carla Gannis, Rachel Harrison, and Shannon Plumb dress for success.

Mohaiemen

Toyin Ojih Odutola has American savvy and wealthy African protagonists, Naeem Mohaiemen the run of an airport, and Juan Antonio Olivares the comforts of childhood and a place in a wider universe. So why are they stuck between continents?

Mohamedi

Is the Met Breuer on Madison Avenue still the Whitney? It may look familiar, in architecture by Marcel Breuer, but it has such challenges to a canon of American art as Nasreen Mohamedi.

Mohassess

For Martha Rosler, Duston Spear, Ardeshir Mohassess, and Yael Bartana, political art after 9/11 conveys urgency, but counts as politics? The answer may differ for those who lived through other wars.

Moholy-Nagy

As László Moholy-Nagy traveled from the Bauhaus to America, he dreamed of a "new ordering of a new world." For him and for the artists in Dadaglobe, was rootlessness never far from the order?

When Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy came to America, did they bring fine art, sound design, or more consumer products? "From the Bauhaus to the New World" has one asking, while "Bauhaus: Workshops for Modernity" shows how Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Marcel Breuer shaped modern art.

Remember when photography was a science experiment? For László Moholy-Nagy, Harold Edgerton, Barbara Kasten, and Sheila Pinkel, Modernism was itself an experiment.

Molinier

Is there more to Surrealism than sex and violence? When Pierre Molinier manipulated photography and gender, his own life was on the line.

Molnar

When art looks at disaster, can it see more than the picturesque? Cheryl Molnar, Adriane Colburn, Ed Osborn, Leonardo Silaghi, and Diana Thater find what Leo Marx called the machine in the garden and love among the ruins.

Mondrian

Piet Mondrian gave each of his grids an obsessive balance, and yet the balance constantly shifts from painting to painting. Did his urge to vary himself drive a century of art?

Hanging Piet Mondrian and Ad Reinhardt side by side shows their parallel growth as painters. How many Modernisms are there?

Do "December" and the solstice stand for a promise or for dark nights? Marianne Vitale poses much the same question to Minimalism and Melissa Gordon to Piet Mondrian.

Monet

A retrospective traces Claude Monet, from leader of a movement to the center of his private garden world. Which makes him most a modern artist?

Claude Monet outlived Post-Impressionism and even Cubism. Does his late work belong most with Seurat's precision, Cézanne's struggle, or van Gogh's imagination.

With his Circus Sideshow, did Georges Seurat capture a tawdry spectacle or the theater of modern life? Unlike for Claude Monet and others in "Public Parks, Private Gardens," this is no Sunday walk in the park.

An exhibition puts the origins of Impressionism back in the Salon. Can it dispel the air of mystery and adventure around Claude Monet and the birth of modern style?

Monkman

Monogenis

Can fall in Chelsea start any sooner? Dean Monogenis, Jules de Balincourt, Liset Castillo, Jeff Shore and Jon Fisher, and others pack the city.

Moore

In 1927, Ford Motor Company welcomed Charles Sheeler. Should a critic still care decades later, when Andrew Moore finds Detroit in decay?

Can photography find its subject slipping away? Andrew Moore, Wijnanda Deroo, Sarah Jones, and Joe Pflieger look from museums to movie houses and from the open road to a shadowy garden.

Moorman

Did Nam June Paik invent video art? Charlotte Moorman and Carolee Schneemann had their hand in performance and Lillian Schwartz her computer art, but Looking Glass would rather invoke arcade games.

Moran

When a star performer enters a museum, is it a celebration or pandering to a hunger for celebrity? Leonard Cohen bring a touch of irony, anxiety, and sobriety even to a celebration, while Jason Moran comes as a fan, a collaborator, and an artist himself.

Morandi

For a lifetime, Giorgio Morandi lived with family and worked in the same room. Does his still life set him apart from Modernism or play out its psychic tensions?

Morellet

Did Minimalism ever get off the ground? François Morellet may have you looking up, and so will Fred Sandback in a show with Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, and John McCracken.

Morimura

Sturtevant did not make copies, but they sure look that way. Does that make a copy of a copy an original—and does that make a photographic reenactment of Diego Velázquez by Yasumasa Morimura a copy?

Morisot

Morlinghaus

Can an artist play at once abstract painter, architect, photographer, and voyeur? Christoph Morlinghaus, David Ersser, Susan Leopold, and Claire Seidl can, by going through the roof.

Can critics still judge art, and should they? Raphael Rubinstein points to "A Quiet Crisis in Art," but more critical noise might well drown out some seriously quiet art—including the photographs of Christoph Morlinghaus, Shelburne Thurber, and Catherine Opie.

Moroni

Did Giovanni Battista Moroni paint sitters "as they looked," and is that a bad thing? Maybe not, but "Early Italian Drawings" pair design and invention.

Morris

For Sarah Morris abstraction is political art, for Elliott Green it has the sweep and majesty of landscape, for Ian Cheng video gaming aspires to myth, and for Maureen Gallace landscape reflects a divided America. Do they come down to the same thing?

Moskowitz

Now that painting is back from the dead, will New Yorkers go anywhere to see it live? Robert Moskowitz, Kellyann Burns, Ayn Choi, Jacqueline Humphries, and Rannva Kunoy explore the promise of abstraction.

Mosse

How can Africa and the Third World be so achingly, unnervingly beautiful? Richard Mosse, Yoan Capote, and Juan Manuel Echavarría bring home the cost of the refugee crisis and war.

Motherwell

Was Ad Reinhardt most passionate in his cartoons and art comics or his black paintings? Meanwhile Robert Motherwell and Hans Hofmann had their own routes to Abstract Expressionism and austerity, the first through collage.

Motley

Could America's most overlooked folk artist have had serious academic training? For Archibald Motley and "Folk Art and American Modernism," it took those two terms to sustain each other.

Moulène

Is art on the scene of gentrification still closed for installation? Jean-Luc Moulène, Tony Cokes, Fiona Connor, Trisha Donnelly, and Oscar Murillo find a great reckoning in an empty room.

C. Moyer

How often can painting come back from the dead? Carrie Moyer and others are back in posher surroundings, now joined by Anna Leonhardt, R. J. Messineo, and Nathlie Provosty.

Can abstraction survive only by losing its rigor? Carrie Moyer, Ronnie Landfield, Agnes Martin, Milton Resnick, and Frank Stella have one working to tell the difference.

S. Moyer

Can art still floor you? Sam Moyer, Karla Black, Ann Shostrom, and Doug Wheeler look to marble, dust, fabric, and light to challenge the gallery floor and the weight of the art world.

Mozenter

"Nothing," Georgia O'Keeffe promised, "is less real than realism." So what if abstraction for Cyrilla Mozenter, Laurel Farrin, or Ethel Lebenkoff includes a pizza box, a foot, or a chair?

Mthethwa

Zwelethu Mthethwa confronts African migrant labor, while Rineke Dijkstra cherishes children on the verge of self-discovery. What, then, makes their photography so ruthless?

Mueck

How big can art get, and will it then outgrow its own myths? Ron Mueck, Dana Schutz, Neo Rauch, and Tom Thayer see art as a matter of life and death.

Mukherjee

Simone Fattal in Beirut, Mrinalini Mukherjee in India, and Tom Anholt and Chris Hammerlein today move casually between traditional art, Modernism, and myth. Are the myths entirely their own?

J. Müller

Alfred Leslie set aside the brush for the computer and "the lives of some women." Had he, Jan Müller, Echo Eggebrecht, and Helen Verhoeven found male fantasies or acid girls?

U. Müller

Is William Wegman cute to the point of animal cruelty? He and his dog emerge from the calendars and into California conceptualism, while Ulrike Müller uses household pets to find a path between children's art, Cubist prints, and gender identity.

Mulvey

Laura Mulvey took feminism to the movies, when she asked just who is stalking Alfred Hitchcock's women—the murderer, the hero, or the man in the movie house. But is someone else altogether stuck on a woman's image?

Munch

What could be more extreme than death? Edvard Munch and Peder Balke find a passage to the next world at the northern extreme of this one and between the clock and the bed.

When thieves stole The Scream, by Edvard Munch, in August 2004, did they really get the goods, or did they just miss the version from another museum in Oslo ten years before? A show of "The Unfinished Print" discovers how the same word—and the same art—can mean both raw and just one more step in a series.

Martha Rosler holds a garage sale, lines form for Edvard Munch, and Yoshio Taniguchi makes the permanent collection seem a thing of the past. So which one commercializes the Museum of Modern Art?

Muniz

Does art still have the power to shock or only to numb the senses? "Into Me / Out of Me," inspired by Susan Sontag on raw experience—along with subsequent shows of "Defamation of Character," "Silicone Valley," and Vic Muniz—can make one overlook the difference.

Munro

Are abstract artists abstracting away and, if so, from what? "Abstraction from Nature" takes a broad view of both its terms, while JP Munro turns them into myth and Ilana Savdie a carnival.

Murado

Should realism make the landscape look familiar? From above, Antonio Murado, Yvonne Jacquette, Domingo Milella, Levan Mindiashvili, and Rod Penner trace a strange evolution in New York City, cemeteries, and the open road.

Murakami

Is there a direct line from Expressionism to the graphic novel? Joyce Pensato, Katherine Bernhardt, and Takashi Murakami get graphic.

With 100 Famous Views of Edo, Utagawa Hiroshige kept up with a changing city. Is Takashi Murakami up to the job today?

B. E. Murillo

Did Spain in the Baroque find the promised land? Francisco de Zurbarán sent paintings to the Americas, while Bartolomé Esteban Murillo and his status could fool the eye.

How can five paintings from the Norton Simon Museum include three dogs, three mothers, and at least twice as many angels? Jacopo Bassano, Peter Paul Rubens, Guercino, Francisco de Zurbarán, and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo chart the parallel development of painting in oil and a new secularism.

O. Murillo

Is art on the scene of gentrification still closed for installation? Oscar Murillo, Tony Cokes, Fiona Connor, Trisha Donnelly, and Jean-Luc Moulène find a great reckoning in an empty room.

Is there a need for "slow art," and would it look any different from good art already? Jed Perl blames the need on Andy Warhol and "Warholism," but even the spectacle of Oscar Murillo can have serious intentions.

Murphy

When Lynda Benglis shares space with Louise Bourgeois, can one tell the good girl from the bad girl? Margaret Murphy and Anna Gaskell prefer not to say.

Murray

Do some painters nudge art toward the future, while some shape it? Elizabeth Murray and Joan Snyder may have chosen the first course, even with shaped canvas, but they dare one to overlook the influence of women artists.

Is there any art left in Soho? I offer a light, off-the-cuff spring 1997 tour, with the most space to Mark di Suvero, Mark Tansey, and Elizabeth Murray—a painter whose canvases try literally to explode onto the scene.

Muslimova

Is diversity in art always a cause for celebration? Curtis Talwst Santiago has it explode into carnival, while Gabrielle l'Hirondelle Hill indulges in Native American tobacco, and Ebecho Muslimova shows off her studio and her butt.

Mutu

Has Wangechi Mutu had a fantastic journey? Egotism and fantasy make an appealing but disturbing recipe for feminism or for art.

Can an Iranian be at home in America and an artist in architecture? When public art meant little more than monuments, Siah Armajani built a bridge, while Wangechi Mutu enters hundred-year-old niches on the façade of the Met.

Myers

Jumana Manna, Umar Rashid, and Frieda Toranzo Jaeger look to the past and future, the true revolutionaries for Christopher Myers are prophets and storytellers.

Still more names!

jhaber@haberarts.com