Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians, at the Aga Khan Museum, February 4 to June 4.
Continuing its vital work of debunking stereotypes and assumptions about Muslim countries and culture, the museum mounts a show of selections from private collector Mohammed Afkhami’s trove of contemporary Iranian art. Artists celebrate the irrepressible survival mechanisms Iranians have developed to cope with life in a restrictive and isolated society.
Katherine Knight: Clayton’s Punt Summer
Katherine Knight: Models And Mottos, at Richard Rhodes Dupont Projects, February 4 to 25.
Knight, known for her visual-arts-related documentary films (Annie Pootoogook, Spring & Arnaud), also works as a photographer. Her images in this show pay homage to the miniature boats and needlepoint samplers made by contemporary and 19th-century folk artists from the Maritimes.
Lawren S. Harris: Study For Painting No. 2
Higher States: Lawren Harris And His American Contemporaries, at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, February 4 to September 4.
Focusing on the abstractions Harris made during his sojourn in the U.S. in the 1930s (most agree that these are not his best work), curators Roald Nasgaard and Gwendolyn Owen situate the Canadian painter alongside American contemporaries like Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley and Arthur Dove.
