Back in the 1950s, when the New York art industry was young and Leo Castelli was proudly displaying his latest downtown find in his Upper East Side townhouse, many galleries would be getting ready to close up for the summer, only to reopen again in late September or October. While gallerists still get a hearty summer break these days, they’re hard at work right now, offering up a choice selection of shows this week.

WEDNESDAY

Michael Asher, “Open All Day and Night,” at the Whitney Museum of American Art, from Wednesday, 12 a.m., to Friday at 11:59 p.m.

As Marina Abramovic enters the final weekend of her two-and-a-half month performance at MoMA, Michael Asher is forcing the Whitney to undergo an endurance test of its own. The museum balked at his request to keep itself open for a full week (his sole contribution to this year’s biennial), but it compensated him with its Bucksbaum Award and agreed to give him 72 hours of space. Danny Meyers Sandwiched restaurant, a carefully curated selection of sweets created by chefs at his award-winning restaurants, is staying open until 9 p.m. On Friday, Aki Sasamoto will stage performances, beginning at a crisp 6 a.m.

NineteenEightyFour,” at the Austrian Cultural Forum, 11 East 52nd Street, through September 5, opening Wednesday, May 26, 6–8 p.m.

It takes a remarkably permissive government to allow its cultural embassy in the United States to base an exhibition on George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. Who knew that Austria would be that government? The show, focused on art that addresses “our panoptic era,” includes Tris Vonna-Michell, Jordan Wolfson, and Cory Arcangel. The forum’s building is alone with the trip: a futurist skyscraper bunker that has been wedged into a narrow lot in Midtown, one of the few completed structures of the late architect Raimund Abraham and seems perfectly suited to the show’s theme.

THURSDAY

Jonathan Seliger, “Spoils,” at Jack Shainman Gallery, 513 West 20th Street, through July 16, opening Thursday, May 27, 6–8 p.m.

Viewed from afar, Jonathan Seliger’s enamel on bronze sculptures have the look of Minimalist sculptures: large cubes, cones, and totems. Up close, though, they’re revealed as milk cartons and grocery bags, enlarged to sometimes-gargantuan sizes. Like Robert Therrien, he seems determined to show us how strange and wonderful the objects we use every day just may be, though his objects are more specific than Therrien’s: the milk is America’s choice, the shopping bags Hermes. They’re crowd-pleasing sculptures, to put it another way, and perfect first stop when jumping off the High Line park (whose north end stops just outside Shainman’s gallery).

FRIDAY

Substance Abuse,” at Leo Koenig, Inc. (Projekte), 541 West 23rd Street, through July 3, opening Friday, May 28, 6–8 p.m.

It’s another great (if nonsensical) title to add to a list of stunners from Leo Koenig that has included “Self-Fulfilling Prophecies,” “In There, Out There,” and “Don’t Perish.” Artists include Ned Vena, J. Parker Valentine, Adam Morrie, and Carter (whose collaborator, actor James Franco, is unfortunately absent from the lineup). The show’s title, according to the press release, “is intended to suggest not only a mistreatment and breakdown of materiality, but also of the self and its relation to the world.” Heady stuff, it seems, that augurs a worthwhile show.

James Hyde, “Stuart Davis Group,” at the Boiler, 191 North 4th Street, through June 27, opening Friday, May 28, 7–10 p.m.

James Hyde picked up a heavy house-painting roller, coated it with the heavy acrylic used by sign painters, and reworked photographic prints of details of two works by the early American abstractionist Stuart Davis. The four resulting works push Davis’s 1939 and 1940 paintings closer to the hard-edge, geometric abstractions that he would venture into later in his career. The magisterial Boiler space (a towering, old boiler room) is also just a short walk from McCarren Park, a perfect place to lounge post-opening during these cool summer nights.