Barbara Ramsay, chief conservator at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, recently met with me to explain how the institution is preparing a portrait of Philip IV painted by Diego Velázquez for shipping to the Grand Palais in Paris.

Susan Bee's Recalculating at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn examines all of art history through a postmodern lens: as if its most epic battles were appropriated then compressed onto a canvas in a style that is similar to the way that David Salle, Nicole Eisenman, and Cindy Sherman have created their compositions.

Still coping with life outside the city, artist Erin Bardwell continues to draw her inspiration from coffee, magazines, and her iPhone. Her work intimately depicts the fringes, or what she regards as the fringes, which ranges from the underground event scene to weddings.