NEW YORK—Tonight, 65 galleries clustered around 57th Street (plus the Rizzoli bookstore) will keep their doors open after their usual closing times, inviting in the public until 8 as part of the area's first-ever "Gallery Night," which has been organized by the Nohra Haime Gallery. There is a lot to see. Here is ARTINFO’s plan of attack.

“Jackie Matisse – Heads and Tails: Homage to Merce”
Zone: Contemporary Art, 41 West 57th St., 2nd Floor
In the late ’50s, Marcel Duchamp was a midtown resident, secretly plotting his Étant donnés (1946-66) in an apartment at 327 East 58th. Just a few blocks away to the west, Zone: Contemporary Art is showing a complete stage set by his stepdaughter, Jackie Matisse, which she designed for the dance company of the late choreographer Merce Cunningham. The colorful banners and elegant kites that hang from the ceiling and glide through the space look like artisanal versions of Calder mobiles or miniature, more stable Tinguely machines. Matisse (granddaughter of Henri) is steeped in history but not confined by it. She’s offering art but also participation: painted fans that visitors can use to set her delicate sculptures in motion.

“Brassaï – Paris in the '30s: Early Prints”
Edwynn Houk Gallery, 745 Fifth Ave., 4th Floor
Just around the corner and across Fifth Avenue, the Edwynn Houk Gallery is showing photographs of Paris in the ’30s by the Transylvanian master Brassaï, who took up the art in the first year of that decade only to illustrate his journalism work. He learned quickly, earning the admiration of the Surrealists for the deadpan romance he found in the city’s seedy nightlife. Brassaï’s camera meets a smirking prostitute at Chez Suzy, catches couples laughing between cigarettes in bistro mirrors, and wanders the Tuileries at night. André Breton reportedly wanted to claim him as one of the Surrealists, but this show proves that his interests were too multifarious for easy co-optation.

“Fernando Botero: Madamoiselle Riviere #2”
Susan Aberbach Fine Art, 41 East 57th St., 14th Floor
Back on 57th Street and a few more steps to the east, Susan Aberbach is showing a large portrait by Fernando Botero — another artist who resists ready classification — from the late 1970s. Back then, some whispered that the drug lords of Colombia, the artist’s home country, were collectors of his portraits of balloon women, which commanded impressive prices despite the derision of high-minded New York critics. His topsy-turvy, curvilinear world may have been too lighthearted — too fun — for them. Botero recently responded to those concerns with a series of baffling Abu Ghraib paintings that suggest a forced attempt to convey gravitas. He’s at his best here, brazenly hunting for sublimity in unrepentant kitsch.

“Sol LeWitt: Forms Derived From a Cube”; "Sol LeWitt"; “Classical & Tribal Art: Important New Acquisitions”
PaceWildenstein, Pace Prints, Pace Primitive, 32 East 57th St., 2nd, 3rd, and 7th Floors
On the south side of the street, 32 East 57th is a solid first stop, home to four outposts of the mighty Pace empire. On the 2nd floor, PaceWildenstein, the jewel in the Glimcher crown, has classic wall drawings by Sol LeWitt. Viewers who need more of the Minimalist master’s work can venture up one floor to Pace Prints, which has his geometric works on paper (and in frames), all ready to be taken home. A final elevator ride to the 7th floor reveals the evening’s most unusual offering: recently acquired “tribal” and ancient art set alongside some of the modernist work it inspired at Pace Primitive.

“Tim Davis: The New Antiquity”
Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, 730 Fifth Ave., 7th Floor
Back on Fifth Avenue, Tim Davis is also looking for peculiar juxtapositions between the ancient and the modern world, photographing Rome, the eastern U.S., and China with an amused fascination. Khaki-clad executives golf next to a Roman aqueduct in one photo, and a crumbling sphinx statue guards a towering, concrete apartment building in another. His images of prostitutes outside Beijing’s Ring Road would have pleased Brassaï. Everyday life in disparate locations has never looked so uncannily familiar.