We were up in New York City for another Saturday, mostly to look at a bunch of painting shows up for the season:

• The Age of Rembrandt, an exhibit of The Met’s entire collection of Dutch paintings. The show, just as much a history of the museum as it is a Duch paintings exhibit, is arranged as a timeline of acquisitions, gifts, and bequests, from the 1871 Purchase right up to just a few years ago.
• NYAA 2007 Postgrad Fellows Exhibition, featuring art by Thomas Carlson, Veronica Obermeyer, and William Bolton. Carlson’s series of autobiographical paintings depict figurative scenes of domestic small-apartment living, culminating in a lonely portrait of himself following what must have been a sad break up. Obermeyer focuses on breasts, often detached from their owners and presented in dissociated contexts of barrenness or religious symbolism. Bolton’s dinosaur work makes me think of Qwantz.com.
• In Chelsea, Julie Heffernan’s “Booty,” a surrealistic series of paintings with themes drawn from Old Master and Dutch traditions — wild game and flowers decontextualized into clothing on a serene nude figure, surrounded by medallions hinting at political commentary.
• Elsewhere in Chelsea, we stumbled across the American Mural Project in production, a Janet Biggs video installation, and Hans Aichinger’s “Impossible Germany.”

I didn’t bring out my camera, so not many photos from today other than the few from my phone, but click on the links above for some fascinating art.