This Nigerian Artist Reimagines the Playground

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New York, “Temitayo Ogunbiyi: You will wonder if we would have been friends” (Opens June 18)
It began with a surprisingly difficult search for a playground in Lagos. Raising her two children in a city of over 20 million, Temitayo Ogunbiyi sought more than the standard Western-imported designs. Using local materials like rebar, rope, and concrete, she started designing sculptural playgrounds to climb, swing, and explore. The American-born, Nigerian artist has long been interested in Isamu Noguchi, whose own playground concepts united sculpture and civic design. Now, in her first U.S. solo show, her old and new works are installed in the museum’s garden and gallery—invitations for children and adults alike to play. noguchi.org

London, “Edward Burra” (Until Oct. 19)
In 1973, three years before his death, the Tate presented a retrospective on Edward Burra. The English painter begrudgingly attended, walking past his work with hardly a pause. Perhaps his distaste for self-promotion, or his refusal to align with an art movement, hampered his fame. Burra’s intense watercolors, which look more like oils than sentimental washes, offer some of the most stirring depictions of the ’20s and ’30s. Despite suffering from poor health, he traveled widely—to France, Spain, Mexico—and returned home to East Sussex to paint the grit and glamour he had witnessed in cafés, bars, clubs, and cabarets. Later, his palette mellowed as he produced English landscapes haunted by postwar anxiety. This long-overdue London retrospective is Burra’s sharp-eyed portrait of the undercurrents of his time. tate.org.uk

New York, “Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration” (Opens June 19)
Born in 1955 in a Canadian factory town, Edward Burtynsky has spent much of his life photographing what most of us prefer not to see: marble quarries, shipping lanes, polluted rivers, barren landscapes. The images are vast—Burtynsky often shoots from helicopters—showing the destruction made by industry. This is his first institutional solo show in New York in over twenty years, featuring more than 70 photographs, including rarely seen portraits of industrial workers and new panoramic murals. icp.org

New York, “Vermeer’s Love Letters” (Opens June 18)
Again and again, Vermeer painted women reading and writing letters—out of his three dozen surviving works, six dwell on this theme. The Dutch painter was, it seems, captivated by its intimate mystery: what is she thinking? Who is she writing to? This summer, Mistress and Maid, The Love Letter and Woman Writing a Letter, with Her Maid are presented together for the first time ever in a concentrated, one-room installation—the first in the Frick’s new special exhibition gallery. frick.org

Paris, “Wolfgang Tillmans: Nothing could have prepared us – Everything could have prepared us” (Until Sept. 22)
Born in West Germany, Wolfgang Tillmans started photographing friends and parties as a teenager, experimenting with Xerox machines before picking up a 35mm camera. His candid, casual, sometimes explicit photographs capture London’s nightlife, queer intimacy, and unremarkable moments. By 2000, he had become the first photographer to win the Turner Prize. Over the past three decades, he’s had solo shows at Tate, MoMA, and the Palais de Tokyo. Now, the Pompidou has given the photographer free rein of its 64,000-square-foot library—the last show before it closes for a five-year renovation. centrepompidou.fr