Photo courtesy of Hiroshi Sugimoto / Private collection

Hiroshi Sugimoto, "Union City Drive-In, Union City" (1993). On view at the de Young Museum, San Francisco through September 23

Dan Flavin, "Dan Flavin: A Retrospective" (installation view). On view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art through August 12

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1. Her first solo U.S. museum show is also a homecoming for Philadelphia-born artist Karen Kilimnik. Taking over the entire Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, 15 years of her paintings, videos, photography, and installations evoke dramatic and mysterious worlds where contemporary lifestyles mix with antiquated aesthetics, through Aug. 5.

2. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts celebrates the 400th anniversary of Jamestown with an exhibition of 16th- and 17th-century portraits and seascapes chronicling Britain's colonial endeavors. "Rule Brittania! Art, Royalty & Power in the Age of Jamestown" includes several major loans from Queen Elizabeth II herself, through Aug. 12.

3. Last year Michael Govan left the Dia Art Foundation to head the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and now the celebrated touring exhibition "Dan Flavin: A Retrospective" that he co-curated while at Dia is following suit. The show features over 40 of the groundbreaking Minimalist's signature fluorescent light installations, through Aug. 12.

4. "Phantasmania" at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri, explores the currently popular theme of fantasy and escapism in the work of 17 emerging artists through the lens of war, globalization, and other pervasive anxieties in contemporary culture, through Aug. 19.

5. While Joseph Beuys coined the term "social sculpture" in the 1960s, an exhibition at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art uses the notion to describe a new talent brigade in Mexico City. "Escultura Social: A New Generation of Art from Mexico City" surveys the lively and socially engaged work of over 20 emerging artists, through Sept. 2.

6. Given its natural beauty, it's no surprise that the Nordic countries produced so many significant landscape artists in the late 19th century. "A Mirror of Nature: Nordic Landscape Painting, 1840-1910" follows the development of the genre at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, through Sept. 2.

7. Castro's regime has fostered artists whose work unabashedly engages in economic and social critique. "Cuba Avant-Garde: Contemporary Cuban Art from the Farber Collection" at the University of Florida's Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville looks at key influentials like Jose Bedia, Magdalena Campos Pons, and 40 other contemporary Cuban artists, through Sept. 9.

8. While under renovation, the Rijksmuseum is keeping some of its best-known works in the public eye with the touring show "Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art." Through Sept. 16, masterworks by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Jan Steen, and Jacob van Ruisdael, among other big names, make a stop at Oregon's Portland Art Museum.

9. Hauntingly still and rich in detail, for three decades Hiroshi Sugimoto's large-format photography has conferred his signature sense of timelessness and monumentality on everything from movie theaters to seascapes to Buddhist sculptures. The survey "Hiroshi Sugimoto" brings the full scope of his output to the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco's de Young museum, through Sept. 23.

10. Design exhibitions tend to salute creations that reflect the dominant taste of an era, but "Going Out of Style: 400 Years of Changing Tastes in Furniture" presents works that typify styles in decline, telling stories of aesthetics in transition. At the Milwaukee Art Museum, through Sept. 30.

This article was originally published in the summer 2007 issue of Museums New York magazine.