Contemporary art

Lehman College Art Gallery, at Bedford Park Boulevard West, will host “Beyond Appearances,” a contemporary portraiture exhibition that brings together a group of 36 artists whose work explores the individual beyond the exterior visage.

The exhibit runs through Tuesday, Dec. 1. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays.

The portraits touch on many issues — social, historical, political and ontological — with insight and sometimes humor. “Beyond Appearances” includes a broad range of approaches and media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, video and installation. The exhibition celebrates the gallery’s 25th anniversary and will be presented in both the Edith Altschul Lehman and the Robert Lehman exhibition spaces.

For more information, call 718-960-8731.

‘Plein air’

Elaine E. Drootin’s watercolors and sketches of outdoor scenes, including scenes from Wave Hill, will be on view through Jan. 15 at the Spuyten Duyvil Library, located at 650 W. 235th St.

Ms. Drootin’s paintings are done in the “plein air” tradition, which originated in 1860s France when artists left their studios in search of the kind of light only to be found outdoors.

For more information, call 718-796-1202.

Bronx “artifacts”

The Bronx Museum of the Arts, located at 1040 Grand Concourse, has opened a new exhibit featuring Bronx “artifacts” from 1971 through the present day.

“Urban Archives: That Was Then This Is Now,” draws primarily from the personal collections of a number of artists who have been working in and on the Bronx since the late 1970s. Conceived as a means to open up the museum to the public while also offering new possibilities of interpreting it, the Urban Archives series proposes to engage artists, writers, curators and other arts professionals in the greater New York area in an ongoing dialogue about contemporary issues. The exhibit runs through Monday, March 1.

For more information, call 718-681-6000 or go to www.bronxmuseum.org.

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