While the Venice Biennale and documenta 12 may be summer's biggest draws, we'd like to suggest some other equally pleasing gems.

1. No doubt some of the contemporary works at Art Basel owe a debt to Expressionism, but over at the Fondation Beyeler, "Edvard Munch: Signs of Modern Art" offers a sweeiping view of the original. See some 130 paintings and 80 works on paper by a painter who pioneered the style, through July 15.

2. In the years following Communism's collapse, Russian interior design tended toward a gaudy jumble of styles drawn from different places and eras. With "Desire for Space: New Interior Design in Russia," Berlin's Institut fur Auslandsbeziehungen proves that a new generation of designers has created more original—if still extravagant—spaces of late, through Aug. 12.

3. A legendary figure from New York's art scene gets a thorough retrospective at Paris's Palais de Tokyo. Through Aug. 26, "La Marque Noir: Steven Parrino, Retrospective, Prospective" gathers more than 100 of the artists paintings—including his famous crumpled canvases—that reference everything from punk music and American subcultures to Minimalism and land art.

4. The Nederlands Fotomuseum is breaking in its new, more spacious facility on the Rotterdam waterfront with two inaugural exhibitions. "Dutch Eyes: A Critical History of Photography in the Netherlands" runs through Aug. 26, while "Panorama Las Palmas" is on view through June 2008.

5. Two timely works by Gary Hill grapple with America's involvement in the Middle East at the Louise T. Blouin Institute in West London through the end of August. The large-scale video Frustrum (2006) shows a giant eagle shaking power lines above a pool of oil, while Guilt (2006) invites viewers to gaze into telescopes trained on gold coins emblazoned with a self-portrait of the artist as a torture victim.

6. The Irish Museum of Modern Art pays homage to arguably the most distinguished figurative painter working today. "Lucien Freud," an overview that spans five decades worth of biographical paintings of family, friends, and fellow artists, runs through Sept. 2

7. German artist John Bock first drew international attention with his bizarre and often-hilarious live performances staged as lectures or theater-style actions. His latest film and video work, however, has become increasingly narrative-complete with sets and actors. The Shirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt looks at this recent turn with "John Bock.Films," through Sept. 23.

8. Vienna's Museum Moderner Kunst is charting the trajectory of Sigmar Polke's career, beginning with the German painter's appropriations of Pop imagery and moving through decades of puzzling compositions and witty critiques to arrive at recent works that employ a miasma of chemicals, minerals, and paints. "Sigmar Polke: Retrospektive" runs through Oct. 7.

9. French billionaire Francois Pinault has put a new portion of his storied collection of contemporary art on display at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice. Through Nov. 11, "Sequence 1: Painting and Sculpture from the Francois Pinault Collection" shows work by 15 artists who have rethought these two traditions.

10. Before Joan Jonas created Organic Honey's Visual Telepathy (1972), it was almost unheard of to incorporate live cameras and video monitors into a performance, but its just one of the ways in which she's transformed the landscape. The Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona looks back at her most groundbreaking moments since the late 1960s, Sept. 20-Jan. 7.

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