New for Summer 2016: Must-See Museums and Galleries

The summer museum season begins with a grand exhibition at the re-designed Whitney, and inventive new spins on well-known material elsewhere. Here are a few of the art showcases you shouldn't miss.

America Is Hard to See at the Whitney Museum of American Art (Until September 27)

This summer, the Whitney's artworks move into a sweeping new home -- architect Renzo Piano's spacious and staggered Gansevoort Street museum -- and then step forward in an ambitious new showcase. America Is Hard to See features over 600 selections from the Whitney's permanent collection, including selections from Edward Hopper, Alexander Calder, Barnett Newman, and Eva Hesse. In sharp contrast to last summer's Jeff Koons retrospective, this isn't a firebrand exhibition. Rather, it's the ideal chance to see how well Whitney stalwarts like Georgia O'Keefe paintings, Louise Bourgeois sculptures, and more settle into their new home -- at least until this fall's solo shows take over the house Piano built.

Storylines: Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim (Until September 9)

There's a bit of an art theoretical slant to Storylines, which is being billed as an examination of the "narrative potential" that lies "in everyday objects and materials, and their embedded cultural associations." But it's a personable slant, too, an invitation to think about how art or something like it occurs where we least expect it and, just maybe, enables us to see the world a little more coherently. There are plenty of other ways to approach the lastest exhibition to grace the Guggeheim's atrium. While the Guggenheim's recent On Kawara--Silence showed how one artist reported the grand narrative of his life, this exhibition offers narrative dispatches from dozens of other modern masters. And while you may be busy making the acquaintance of the new Whitney, don't neglect the Guggeheim -- an old friend that, with a new exhibition that makes the most of its architecture, may also be up to a few new tricks.

Yoko Ono: One Woman Show at the Museum of Modern Art (Until September 7)

Who knew that Yoko Ono -- long characterized as the dour concept artist who "broke up the Beatles" -- had a sense of humor? And a good one, too. The latest big-name exhibition to set up shop in MoMA, Yoko Ono: One Woman Show is a follow-up to Ono's "unofficial" 1971 MoMA debut, a retrospective of her 1960-1971 output, a one-woman tourist trap, and a 125-item eye-opener. It falls short of the austere poetry that some of Ono's work seems bent on achieving, but it avoids easy questions about status and celebrity, too. On balance, this exhibition offers an entertainingly haphazard, reassuringly weird experience, inviting you to bond with other MoMA visitors over performances of Bag Piece and tracks from the Plastic Ono Band. The world according to Ono is a silly place. Have fun with it.

Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television at the Jewish Museum (Until September 27)

Visually striking, accessible, original -- Revolution of the Eye is a crowd-pleasing exhibition. How could it be otherwise, with a display that goes back the warmly-remembered and often-romanticized early days of television? The subject matter will get you in the door, but the evidence of pop culture genius -- whether from Rod Serling of The Twilight Zone, the set designers for Laugh-In, Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, or Andy Warhol yet again -- will keep your attention fixed. If only channel surfing normally led you to spectacles like this.