It was a time of spiky hair and experimental fashion, set to the beat of disco, hip-hop, punk, and glam. New York City was dirty, gritty, and even dangerous, after dark and in neighborhoods like Times Square, now gentrified into its own version of Disneyland. The exuberance of the sexual revolution in previous years waned and then evaporated as AIDS emerged and a multitude of creative voices were extinguished while waiting for a cure.

This world and the convergence of art and fashion that was possible during that time are being celebrated through the photography of Peter Hujar, who is having a moment in New York City.

At the Morgan Library there is “Peter Hujar: Speed of Life,” a celebration of his achievements and the Morgan’s own sizable archive, on view through May 20. Hujar was a portraitist and chronicler of downtown life in the period between the Stonewall uprising in 1969 and the AIDS crisis before the disease took his own life in 1987. His images, the Morgan said, “come across as more empathetic than those of an older artist, Diane Arbus, and more soulful and psychological than those of a younger one, Robert Mapplethorpe.”

Included in that exhibition is an image of the artist Malcolm Morley that Hujar took on the beach in East Hampton around Christmas in 1976.

In addition, several of the artist’s photographs in the collection of Dianne Benson made up the entire sale of his work in Christie’s photography auction on Friday. Some photos sold far above their estimates, while others did not sell at all.

At the Morgan is another work, “Blanket in the Famous Chair,” borrowed from Ms. Benson, who now lives in East Hampton. She collaborated with Hujar over several years for images for her Dianne B. stores in Manhattan, which she owned and operated in the 1970s and 1980s. At the Christie’s sale, “David Wojnarowicz in Bed,” a portrait of the artist and activist, who was a lover and then protégé and longtime friend of Hujar’s, features the same blanket. (Wojnarowicz died of AIDS in 1992.)

“Hujar was one of the most active and influential figures of the lively downtown New York art scene during the 1970s and 1980s,” Christie’s noted in its catalog. Ms. Benson’s store was “a cutting-edge boutique” credited with being the first to import designs by Issey Miyake and Jean-Paul Gaultier. 

“I was fortunate to be in the business of fashion when the mixing of it and art was noncommercial and combusted spontaneously,” Ms. Benson said recently. She first worked with Hujar in 1979, and “although he was particular and moody, he liked our exchange because, I think, he had total freedom.”

In the following years, “as a way of differentiating — now one would say branding — my Dianne B. stores, I worked with many great artists in the same sort of exchange.” She paid $500 to her artist collaborators and ran the ads in Interview (“when it was the real thing”). These included up-and-comers of the time such as Mapplethorpe and Cindy Sherman.

“Of course, not with Cindy, but with the others, sometimes I was the subject in the pictures, and other times they decided the scenario. But I always went back to Peter because his ideas excited me the most and I loved his unpredictability coupled with his sense of beauty, his rigor, and his insistence on quality.”

An image from her collection was on the Christie’s catalog cover and the lots were featured in a special “spotlight” section inside. Included were two photos of Ms. Benson in Miyake silks. Other images included portraits of her design assistant at the time and a number of notable people in the downtown creative fields of the day.

In addition to serving as magazine advertisements, five of the images in the sale were part of a set of postcards the store sent out for Christmas in 1983. Her “Twelve Perfect Christmas Gifts From Dianne B.” consisted of Hujar’s images and others featuring models in clothing and gift items. In “Forbidden Fruit,” part of the series and in the auction, Wojnarowicz eats an apple in a Miyake shirt. (The print sold for $18,750.)

In another photo in the auction, “Ethyl Eichelberger for Dianne B. in Jean-Paul Gaultier,” from 1981, Hujar chose the drag performer to wear the outfit Ms. Benson wanted to feature in an Interview ad. “I said, ‘Peter, this is the outfit. Put it with my ivory bracelets. Put it on anyone you wish in any way.’ This was Gaultier’s early early career, notice the printed legs, etc. This was not the norm in 1979.” (That image sold for $15,000.)

“I loved it. He loved it. At that time no one knew how famous or iconic these artists would become. It’s nice to think I put myself in the right place at the right time. I call them the great old days.”

Art for Earth Day

The third annual “EarthHamptons,” an exhibition of work by artists and designers organized by Anahi DeCanio in celebration of Earth Day, will take place on Saturday and Sunday at Ashawagh Hall in Springs. A reception will be held Saturday from 5 to 9 p.m.

The show will include glass art by Mary Milne, photographs by Donna Renna, sculpture by Phyllis Hammond and Aurelio Torres, custom furniture by Angel Naula, and paintings by Ms. DeCanio.

Four at Grenning

“Fresh Virtuosity,” a show of work by Victor Butko, Kelly Carmody, Rachel Personett, and John Morfis, will open at the Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor tomorrow and remain on view through May 14. A reception will be held on Saturday from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

Mr. Butko, a Russian impressionist painter, will show scenes painted during the past month around Sag Harbor. Ms. Carmody’s recent work recalls that of Mary Cassatt in its look at domestic American life. Ms. Personett will show four floral paintings, while Mr. Morfis will be represented by trompe l’oeil paintings with a nautical theme.

Call for Submissions

The Lucille Khornak Gallery in Bridgehampton is accepting submissions for “True Independence,” a juried exhibition that will be on view from June 23 through July 6. Submissions will be accepted until May 17. Detailed information is at lucillekhornakgallery.com.

At Bridge Gardens

Bridge Gardens, a five-acre garden in Bridgehampton operated by the Peconic Land Trust, will offer Expressive Abstract Painting, a three-session workshop led by Suzzanne Fokine, on May 5, 12, and 26. A reception with light refreshments on Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m. will provide an opportunity to meet Ms. Fokine, see her art, and sign up for classes.

The renowned stride pianist and vocalist Judy Carmichael will host the launch of “Swinger! A Jazz Girl’s Adventures From Hollywood to Harlem” on Sunday in Sag Harbor. 

“Swinger!” is a collection of autobiographical essays that tell the story of “a California surfer girl who dreamed of being a spy” but instead became a jazz musician, with no small number of detours, or adventures, along the way. Beauty queen, actress, pool shark, quarterback — Ms. Carmichael, who lives in Sag Harbor, has been all of these. 

“I had been asked by an editor about 20 years ago to write a book,” the musician said last week. “She’d seen me in concert. I tell funny stories, and she said if I can be as funny in print as onstage she’d publish me.”

The idea was planted then, she said, but “Over the years, I started thinking I wanted to write a book that isn’t just funny, but has more meaning to me.” Funny or not — and it often can be — the life of a working musician is a unique experience. “I wanted to give insight into those of us who just keep doing it,” she said, “who aren’t rich and famous but aren’t just a bar band. Jazz is very sophisticated music that’s difficult to play. It takes experience and hard work. There’s a lot of us who are playing at a high level, and we just keep doing it.” The book, she said, “is very funny, but also has serious bits.”

Ms. Carmichael recalls performing for the likes of Richard Gere, Rod Stewart, and Robert Redford; a long lunch with another Long Island pianist — Billy Joel — and hors d’oeuvres with Yoko Ono. “Swinger!” also includes tales of trudging through a Hawaiian rainforest with the late jazz singer Sarah Vaughan, auditions as a rodeo rider, and getting a kiss from Paul Newman. She discusses “Jazz Inspired,” her National Public Radio program and podcast, too. 

She admires the work of the travel writer Bill Bryson, who “really writes about culture around the different places he visits. I wanted to give a sense of the culture of jazz that existed when I was coming up,” in the late 1970s and ’80s, “my early years in jazz. What existed and how different it is now. I wanted to give a sense of the culture of California that I grew up in, and how different it was from the New York of that time, when I went there. How that journey informed me and contemporaries of mine.”

The launch party for “Swinger!” will be a first for the artist. “I’ve never done a book reading or party,” she said. “I’ll read a little bit, talk about the book, why I wrote it, what I was hoping to accomplish, and play a tune or two. And we’ll all drink champagne and have hors d’oeuvres.”

Ms. Carmichael said that creating “Swinger!” was great fun, and led to the discovery of a new passion. “A lot of people say it’s a huge catharsis, and they discover all these things about themselves,” she said of new authors. “For me, it was how much I love writing, how I want to continue writing. My place as a woman in the world, and specifically the jazz world, is something I hadn’t thought about as much, because I was looking back on a long career, so far. I was always the only woman. Now, there are many more women playing jazz. That journey, I hope, is interesting for people to read about as well.”

Reservations are required to attend the launch party for “Swinger! A Jazz Girl’s Adventures from Hollywood to Harlem,” Sunday at 4 p.m. at the American Hotel, and can be made by calling 631-725-3535.

It has been awfully hard to be excited about spring in these parts. Although the calendar says April, the wind says otherwise. Nevertheless, the Drawing Room gallery in East Hampton is celebrating the vernal equinox with a show of works loosely or directly related to the season. 

The gallery’s window sets the scene, with a bouquet of outdoor scenes by Kathryn Lynch, John Alexander’s trio of mackerel, John Torreano’s column of colorful gems, a pretty alabaster sculpture by Aya Miyatake, and a single watercolor bloom by Gustavo Bonevardi.

Mr. Bonevardi’s blooms, looking like abstracted lilies and called “Compositions” with the date of their creation, seem hopeful, as their minimal color brightens up the broad expanse of the paper. There is something Asian in their modest yet perfect simplicity.

A much larger column (more than six feet high) by Mr. Torreano, with large gaudy gems, matches some of the colors in the watercolors nearby. It’s hard to tell what Hector Leonardi might be painting in his nonrepresentational canvases that still offer a hint of nature in the strips of color he collages into his work. In “Gennaio” it looks like trees in dappled sunlight with that stronger blue sky of spring.

Rounding out the front room are paintings by Robert Harms in his best spring colors in oil on linen and canvas. There are gentle blue washes and then pops of reds, yellows, and greens. But they’re a bit muddy too, very much like spring. In the largest piece, a three-foot-square canvas called “In Spring,” the dots of color with tails look like tadpoles in the water.

Laurie Lambrecht shows a set of her photo prints on linen that she hand embroiders. The subjects are tree bark, and she titles them with the location where she found them, such as “Sagg Swamp” or “Bari, Italy.” They are hung with magnets in a way that allows them to float just off the wall, giving them a satisfying presence as objects.

Another alabaster piece by Ms. Miyatake is the finishing touch. “Danmen” means cross section, and the piece has one side bluntly cut and yet perfectly polished. She finds her rough blocks in stone yards or salvages them and then grinds and polishes them to achieve their stunning surfaces. Through this she gives them a kind of rebirth, the theme heightened by their ovate shapes.

In the hallway are pieces by Ms. Lynch, Jean Pagliuso, and Fiona Waterstreet. Ms. Pagliuso’s chicken photograph, titled “White #11,” and her “Owl XV” feature her treatment of bird subjects as fashion models. Also unusual is her printing technique, which involves handmade paper brushed with silver gelatin emulsion that is both shimmering and painterly, particularly at the edges.

Ms. Waterstreet shows a suite of her porcelain bird subjects, recognizable as such but unique as well to her vision and hand. With beaks and small heads they begin to morph into abstractions in their bodies and perches. No more than six inches in height, they are pleasingly bird-sized and fascinating to behold in their various shapes and glazes.

The back room finishes off with a suite of Ms. Lynch’s window paintings, simple views out to an urban landscape with strong blue day and night skies. The loose geometry of the buildings and other structures are matched and balanced by the rectangles of window. There is something crudely satisfying about the simple blockiness of these oil-on-board paintings, like drinking something warm and comforting out of a rough stoneware mug.

By the stairs is Mr. Alexander’s “Big Rooster (Hobe Sound)” caught in midstride and looking like he might be trying to escape his frame. The pastel and watercolor-on-paper work is frank and unadorned, and the subject is set in the same kind of neutral background as Ms. Pagliuso’s birds. It’s a fitting end to a show offering all the hints of spring’s fecundity. 

The exhibition will stay on view through May 7.

The Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival will celebrate Earth Day with a double feature of two nature films on Sunday afternoon at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor.

“Mission Blue,” the Emmy Award-winning documentary directed by Fisher Stevens and Robert Nixon, follows the marine biologist and activist Sylvia Earle over a three-year period while she traveled the world’s oceans to draw attention to and challenge their degradation by overfishing, dumping, and drilling.

The free screening of “Mission Blue” will take place at and 2 and be followed by a question-and-answer session with Carl Safina, the founding president of Stony Brook University’s Blue Ocean Institute.

“Bird of Prey,” a documentary from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, focuses on the Philippine eagle, the world’s largest and rarest, and the expedition to the Philippines by a group of environmentalists and the wildlife cinematographer Neil Rettig to focus on the habitat loss and hunting and trapping that threaten it with extinction.

Tickets to “Bird of Prey,” which will be shown at 4, are $20 and available at the Bay Street box office and ht2ff.com.

Comedy and rock ’n’ roll are on tap at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor this weekend, starting tomorrow night at 8 with a new All Star Comedy show hosted by Joseph Vecsey of Optimum’s “The Un-Movers” and Netflix’s “Sandy Wexler.” 

Mr. Vecsey’s guests will be Dante Nero (“Beige Phillip” podcast and Colin Quinn’s “Cop Show”), Erica Spera (TBS’s “Comics to Watch” and “Gotham Comedy Live”), and Max May, who was named best comedian at the Winter Laughs competition. Tickets are $30 in advance, $40 tomorrow.

Tusk, a Fleetwood Mac tribute band, will bring its note-for-note renditions of the legendary and sometimes embattled band’s hits to Bay Street on Saturday at 8 p.m. The musicians, who have been working together for more than 25 years, will cover such hits as “Landslide,” “Rhiannon,” “Go Your Own Way,” and many more. Tickets are $35 in advance, $45 the day of the show.

“Flattened Space,” a discussion centered on movement, memory, and the peripheral vision in architectural photography, will take place at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill Friday at 6 p.m.

Presented in conjunction with the museum’s current exhibition, “Image Building: How Photography Transforms Architecture,” the program will include Ralph Gibson, whose photographs are in more than 100 prominent public collections, Lee H. Skolnick, an award-winning architect known for his designs of museums, schools, residences, and exhibits, and Therese Lichtenstein, an art historian and curator of “Image Building.” Tickets are $12, free for members and students.

The Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett will host Rock the Retreat, a benefit for the nonprofit agency that provides domestic violence and sexual assault services on Eastern Long Island, tonight at 7. Booga Sugar, a New York City party band, will provide high-energy dance music with its repertoire of rock, pop, R&B, funk, and disco. Tickets are $40 at the door.

The handbell choirs from the Bridgehampton and Southampton Presbyterian Churches and the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor will combine for the annual Spring Ring, a food pantry benefit concert on Saturday at 5 p.m. at the Southampton church. The melodies of more than 150 bells and 50 chimes will be followed by dinner in the church’s dining room. The donation of nonperishable food items has been suggested.

A classical recital featuring Allison Bourquin O’Reilly on flute and Daniel Koontz on piano will take place on Sunday afternoon at 2 at Christ Episcopal Church in Sag Harbor. In addition to two classics of the flute repertoire, Aaron Copland’s “Duo for Flute and Piano” and Paul Hindemith’s Sonate, the program will feature the world premiere of Sonatina No. 2 by Mr. Koontz, who is the church’s organist as well as a composer.

Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door, and proceeds will benefit the church’s pipe organ restoration fund. Tickets are available at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor.