While the interpersonal intrigue is palpable, this is also very much a novel about place, full of alternately snide and affectionate commentary about the rapidly gentrifying town. At the dog park, Greta and Big Swiss (whose real name is Flavia) meet by chance, and romance between the two blossoms, complicated by the fact that Greta is privy to Big Swiss’s most private inner thoughts. Greta is working as a transcriptionist for a local sex therapist named Om when she is captivated by the voice of one of Om’s patients, a 30-something married woman whom she nicknames Big Swiss for her height and nationality, who used to live in Brooklyn. The protagonist, Greta, is in her 40s, living in a semi-derelict Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, N.Y., with her beloved dog, Piñón. (Opens July 21.Beagin ( Vacuum in the Dark) delivers a delightfully off-kilter romantic comedy set in a Hudson Valley increasingly transformed by transplants from New York City.

“Tree and Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE–400 CE,” at the Met, revisits the first six hundred years of artistic response to the tradition, through more than a hundred and twenty-five objects, including recent finds from ancient monastic sites. (Opens June 26.)Īges before the invention of mindfulness apps, Buddhism was born at the base of a tree, in northern India, where a prince sat down to meditate and-under the protection of a seven-headed snake-reached enlightenment. Working in cahoots with community volunteers, Pepe transforms Madison Square Park into an oasis of crocheted canopies that entwine with vining vegetation (long beans, bitter melon, morning glories) throughout the summer. “Sheila Pepe: My Neighbor’s Garden” is the first outdoor installation by the gifted American textile artist. An audio tour by Gadsby accompanies the proceedings.

Works by Picasso-who once said that “women are machines for suffering”-are seen in the company of an impressive roster of female artists, including Cecily Brown, Marilyn Minter, and Mickalene Thomas. Now comes “It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby,” inspired by the Australian comedian’s scathing feminist takedown, on Netflix, of the Cubist painter. Ask the winners of a short-lived reality show (think: “Top Chef” for artists) who had solo exhibitions there. The Brooklyn Museum is notoriously unshy when it comes to popular culture.

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