Summer has a kind of Jekyll/Hyde duality. As appealing as outdoor events might sound – concerts and plays in the park, hot dog eating contests on the boardwalk – I find myself seeking cool indoor places more often than not. Two major art shows currently on view – Henry Moore outside at the New York Botanical Garden , and Louise Bourgeois inside at the Guggenheim – reflect this kind of external/internal tension, and not simply because of the obvious settings.

Moore (1898 – 1986) is one of England’s most respected and widely seen modern artists. In “Moore in America,” the show at the New York Botanical Garden his large sculptures of bronze and fiberglass span a familiar array of reclining figures, mother and child, echoes of hillsides. There is no artist whose work looks more comfortable and – in a way that demonstrates his ubiquity and legacy to public art – predictable in a verdant setting. For a viewer, the work offers numerous pleasures, and many of them stem from these qualities. Yet Moore was also a master of mass, negative space, and form.

Bourgeois (born 1911) has produced a body of work, on the other hand, that’s anything but predictable. A stroll up the ramp at the (did I say cool?) Guggenheim, unspools the artist’s progression through forms and media. It also shows her voracious and fearless – even compulsive – exploration of the psyche, and it’s this total package that makes the air conditioned environment even more rewarding. read more