The Slocan Ramblers, a young bluegrass band from Canada, will perform two shows on Saturday at 6 and 8 p.m. at the Sylvester Manor Living Room on Shelter Island.

The four-member band, winners of the 2015 Edmonton Folk Fest Emerging Artist Award, has become an important part of Canada’s roots music scene, known for their energetic live shows and impeccable musicianship. Tickets are $25, and seating is limited.

Josh and Hannah Faye Huizing will present a free concert of Disney songs and anecdotes about the media giant on Sunday at 4 p.m. at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church. A married couple, they are both classically trained singers who performed as soloists with the Choral Society of the Hamptons in December. They will be accompanied by Jane Hastay on piano and Peter Martin Weiss on bass.

A permanent collection show that opened at the Museum of Modern Art last week reveals the result of several decades of commitment to acquiring art objects created by women. “Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction” spans the years following World War II through the late 1960s and underlines the primacy of those early female abstract painters who found their way to the South Fork in those decades.

Beckoning visitors to the exhibition from just outside its entrance, Grace Hartigan’s bold “Shinnecock Canal” from 1957 holds a large white expanse of wall with its bold greens, blues, and reds. The painting heralds the strong contributions by previous South Fork de­nizens such as Hed­da Sterne (in the entrance hall), Joan Mit­chell, Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, and Helen Fran­kenthaler in the first room of the exhibition. 

These are achievements notable for the time in which they were created. Having to hold their own in a medium and style defined by masculinity, female Abstract Expressionists had to fight for their work to be shown and considered on equal terms, as the curators, Starr Figura and Sarah Meister, noted in their wall text. “Efforts to recover and reconsider these artists’ works are still ongoing 60 years later,” they concluded.

These efforts can be seen in gallery shows, art fairs, and museum exhibitions over the past decade. Dealers are finding that superior works still in private hands can be had at prices reasonable by art market standards. But when MoMA unleashes its own collection for the purpose, it is astounding. 

Since the show chronicles some 30 years, the early period, with the strongest South Fork ties, is just a fraction of the other work by international artists in mediums such as photography, fiber art, collage, and sculpture. Yet, these early paintings overwhelm the space, with their commanding presence and demonstration of how pivotal their creators were in forging a path for those who followed.

Ms. Figura said at a press preview on Tuesday that Ms. Meister and she were asked to collaborate on some aspect of MoMA’s midcentury collection. They combed the collection’s database for every artwork made between 1940 and 1970. “What struck us both were how many really amazing works there were by women artists, and that many of them were acquired in the last 15 years or so and had not been on view.”

The Abstract Expressionist works here were mostly acquired near the time of their completion, and have been included in installations of the collection and in recent special exhibitions. Yet they, too, were often relegated to long periods in storage during the intervening years.

Ms. Figura said that after the war there was a return to established gender roles after women had taken on many of the jobs men had vacated to go fight. Women artists found that they, too, were expected to conform to the traditional duties of a wife in supporting the work of their artist husbands, who were typically more famous than they were. 

These women had “to make space for themselves in painting and sculpture, within a tradition that has been dominated by men for centuries, and in this particularly masculine movement,” she said at the press preview.

Ms. Meister added that it often took divorce or the death of their husbands for these artists “to step into the foreground of their own practices.”

With the social upheaval of the 1960s, many of the previous constraints were removed. According to Ms. Figura, women began “reclaiming notions of craft and the use of unorthodox materials and techniques as a way of finding another space outside of the traditional hierarchies that were difficult for women to navigate previously.”

Indeed, Ms. Meister said that by the last gallery of the show she and Ms. Figura realized that they did not even know whether those later artists were married and whether it even mattered or if they cared.

Lee Bontecou, who lived in East Hampton from 1971 and 1973, is one of these later artists. Her untitled sculpture from 1961 combines welded steel, canvas from discarded conveyer belts, fabric, rawhide, soot, and wire to create a three-dimensional, wall-mounted object that aggressively enters the viewers’ space and draws them in to the circular void she has positioned at the work’s center. 

The museum’s label for the object notes that the work was created the same year as the Bay of Pigs, the construction of the Berlin Wall, and the first commitment of United States troops to Vietnam. The artist wrote at the time that she wanted to build things to show “some of the fear, hope, ugliness, beauty, and mystery that exists in us all and which hangs over all the young people today.”

Lynda Benglis, a resident of East Hampton since 1985, also has a wall sculpture in the show. Her “Embryo II” from 1967 is one of several works the artist made from beeswax, resin, and gesso on Masonite scaled to the length of her arm. The result was a “craggy topography” that she then exaggerated with the use of a blowtorch. 

Both of these later artists found no difficulty in taking the prevailing artistic trend at the time, in their case Minimalism, and adapting it to their own aesthetic and aims. Ms. Benglis reacted to both the austerity of Minimalism and the seriousness and self-importance of Abstract Expressionism in her use of unusual materials, references to the body, and subversive wit, as the curators pointed out.

The show is on view through Aug. 13.

The Hamptons International Film Festival’s “25 Films in 25 Years” series will continue tomorrow at 6 p.m. at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill with a screening of “Embrace of the Serpent,” a 2015 entry that went on to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

Inspired by the real experiences of explorers in the Amazon, the Colombian film, directed by Ciro Guerra, follows the parallel stories over 40 years of Karamakate, a shaman of an extinct tribe, and two scientists in search of a sacred plant with healing powers. The film explores the thirst for knowledge and the ravages of colonialism that have destroyed indigenous cultures.

Tickets are $20, $5 for members.

A staged reading of “Venus in Fur,” David Ives’s darkly funny adaptation of Sacher-Masoch’s erotic novel “Venus in Furs,” will take place Tuesday night at 7:30 at Guild Hall as part of the JDTLab series.

Thomas (Tristan Vaughan) is a writer-director whose new play, “Venus in Furs,” is an adaptation of the 1870 novel about the relationship between a man and the mistress to whom he becomes enslaved. In the midst of auditions for the female lead, which are going badly, Vanda (Tina Jones) appears and convinces Thomas to let her try out.

As they perform scenes from the play-within-a-play, they become caught up in the characters they are reading, and the balance of power shifts, with the actress eventually dominating the director.

When the play opened in 2011, Charles Isherwood called it “as funny as any play currently on Broadway” in his New York Times review. The performance is free, but reservations are required.

The Irish struggle against England in mid-19th century and the failed rebellion of 1867 might seem far removed from contemporary East Hampton, but not to Williams and Rossa Cole, brothers and East Hampton natives. Their great-grandfather was Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood who continued the fight for independence even after he was released from prison in 1871 and forced to emigrate.

“Rebel Rossa,” an unusually personal documentary which is directed by Williams Cole and in which he and his brother are central characters, will be shown at the East Hampton Library on April 22 at 2:30 p.m. A question-and-answer session with the director will follow.

The film sets out to tell the story of Jeremiah Rossa and his wife, Mary Jane, and what they meant to the fight for Irish independence. Among other things, Rossa created the concept of bombing campaigns against England, and, once resettled to New York City, raised money to fund a late-19th-century terror campaign.

“Rebel Rossa” is also the story of the brothers’ quest to learn more about their great-grandfather and to understand the violent means he employed. They traveled to Ireland in 2015, where they participated in, and filmed, many commemorations of Rossa’s life held in connection with the centenary of his funeral in Dublin.

The film includes interviews with historians, scenes from a play based on Rossa’s life, and visits to significant sites, among them the cell in which Rossa was imprisoned. The brothers are seen being interviewed by news crews, meeting with the president of Ireland and some of the leaders of the Sinn Fein party, among them Gerry Adams. “Rebel Rossa” premiered in July at the Galway Film Festival.

The brothers grew up in East Hampton. Williams Rossa Cole has been producing, directing, and editing documentary films for over 15 years. His producing credits include “W.S. Merwin: To Plant a Tree,” “99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film,” and “Gun Fight.” Rossa Cole is an artist and photographer who served as second cameraman and co-producer on the project. 

When he first conceived of an art exhibition that would reflect the community, Paton Miller thought it would be “a one and done thing.” For most people, putting together a show of work by 50 artists even once would be daunting. But Mr. Miller, a painter who is also a surfer and world-traveler, isn’t most people.

Organized for the third time by Mr. Miller, “East End Collected 3” will open at the Southampton Arts Center tomorrow and continue through May 29. A reception will take place Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m.

Some five years ago, after the Parrish Art Museum had moved away from Southampton Village for Water Mill, a group of concerned citizens, including Mayor Mark Epley, decided the building it had occupied should remain an arts center. At a meeting at the home of David Bonnet, a collector, Mr. Miller proposed an exhibition the community could relate to.

“Over the 40-plus years I’ve lived here, it’s apparent that esoteric shows from who-knows-where, while they are really great and I love them, are not really as well received as shows that reflect this area,” he said during a telephone conversation last week, on the morning after he returned from Cuba, where two of his paintings are on view at the American Embassy. “I said we should do an exhibition of artists from the East End.”

While in itself the concept may not have been original, Mr. Miller decided that the works should be on loan from collectors in order to reflect the role they play in sustaining the East End art community. “The first year, we had 80 percent from collectors. The next year it was 50-50. This year I dropped it, because I realized a lot of artists don’t want to bother their collectors. But I asked the artists to be sure to invite them to the opening.”

  One sign of the vitality of the East End art scene is that Mr. Miller invites 50 different artists each year. “I never invite anybody back, including myself. When I was asked to do it again last year, I decided there are so many artists, why repeat?” His goals are to include work by artists who are engaged in the community while also including artists “who are almost reclusive and don’t exhibit much. One of the great things about this experience is that I get to meet artists I’ve never met before.”

The exhibition will include works by Stephanie Brody Lederman, Jennifer Cross, Josh Dayton, Laurie Lambrecht, Gerson Leiber, Judith Leiber, Gabrielle Raacke, and Frank Wimberley, among many others.

Sometimes you feel like color and sometimes you don’t. Tripoli Patterson, a dealer and collector, said that while color is the primary reason he himself is attracted to an art object, he also seeks to understand what artists and their audiences respond to in a muted or absent palette.

For the past few weeks, “Black and White,” currently on view at his Tripoli Gallery in Southampton, has explored that realm with a diverse cast of artists, both new and familiar to the gallery. Katherine Bernhardt, Ross Bleckner, Quentin Curry, Jamie dePasquale, Tracey Emin, Ryan Estep, Urs Fischer, April Gornik, Takesada Matsutani, Angelbert Metoyer, Ned Smyth, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Igor Vishnyakov, and Darius Yektai contribute works in several mediums, sometimes wildly divergent, yet when placed together, having clear visual relationships.

“The show basically hung itself,” Mr. Patterson said last weekend.

The effect is most apparent in the back gallery, where a transition from paired works by Mr. dePasquale to Mr. Bleckner to Mr. Yektai moves from geometric precision to more gestural work to fully free-form mark-making in cement (which sounds like an oxymoron, but it is indeed what Mr. Yektai achieves).

It is evident in the front room as well, with abstracted references to the human form in the mixed media of Mr. Matsutani, the paintings of Mr. Vishnyakov, and the 3-D prints of Mr. Smyth. “Wave 2004-01,” Mr. Matsutani’s sculptural work on canvas mounted on panel, refers to water yet looks more like skin folds or other bodily forms — a lip cut, or surgical incision. In deep moody gray tones, its finish is both matte and smooth enough to absorb and reflect light.

Mr. Vishnyakov’s “Black and White Nude (0407),” an acrylic on canvas, is more straightforward. It is clearly a painting, and the title encourages the eye to blend its loosely applied light and shadow — what might have been referred to as “sfumato” in another era — into a female torso.

Mr. Smyth’s 3-D prints of his familiar cast and carved sculptural forms all refer to his abstracted representations of the body in different guises throughout art history. In this piece he has gathered up his “Female Torso,” “Cubist Torso,” “Reclining” figure, and “Male Torso” and mounted them on a cement base. He references classical contrapposto nudes in the female torso, which undulates from side to side, much in the way of Botticelli’s “Venus.” The Cubist form looks cut out of a Picasso or Braque painting. The reclining form could refer to Henry Moore or any number of his predecessors. The hulking male torso seems an inheritor of other colossal statues or, more specifically, to the bulky sculptures of Rodin.

Ms. Emin’s sketchy lines, made by embroidery stitches on a wool blanket, resolve into a female form as well, with an uncomfortable exaggeration of splayed legs. Words, stitched at the bottom like an old-fashioned sampler, state plainly that “You made me feel like nothing.” The meaning of the words makes one wonder if the head, which appears to be cast to the side, is actually even there. Is it a face, a mask, or just a black void — i.e., nothing?

Also referencing the figure, in childlike line drawings in acrylic on aluminum, is Mr. Curry. “Always Fishing” includes cats, dogs, mice, birds, people, words, arrows, balloons, cans, peace signs, and much, much more. The elements of his composition emerge and gather into patchy, cloudlike forms created by white and lighter paint on the otherwise black surface. It is reminiscent of what one might see in the quick second before the eyes adjust in a darkened room suddenly illuminated by a lamp.

Except for the reference to a wave in Mr. Matsutani’s work, there is no other landscape, aside from Ms. Gornik’s 2016 “Incandescent. Executed in charcoal on paper, it stands out in moody graphite grayness, a seascape with a stormy sky so cloudy and dark that the sun radiates through, in dramatic fingers of light, down to the water and sand below.

In the same room, and hard to classify, is Mr. Metoyer’s “Portrait” in coal and paint on canvas. A diptych of sorts, the two canvases hang along their sides, so that they project into the gallery and face each other, mere inches apart. It is almost impossible to see what he has painted there; it looks at first like a universe of sorts, until other forms emerge. The stretchers that face outward are coated in black coal and embellished with face masks, one mounted on each, also coated in coal.

With the exception of Mr. dePasquale’s crossword grids, the back room’s abstraction is practically devoid of visual references, although some allude to an inspiration in their titles. Mr. Fischer’s cast bronze and oil paint “Scribbler” could be seen as two embracing forms or just a doodle in the round. Mr. Sugimoto’s “Joe” is a photographic abstraction, all light and shade. More overt in his intention, Mr. Estep’s “Tool P8v1” is his interpretation of a tool used in wheat-threshing. 

Mr. Bleckner uses a blowtorch to create the paintings he shows here, looking vaguely like the night sky but not specifically so.

Somewhat of an outlier, but looking correct across from Ms. Emin’s blanket, are Ms. Bernhardt’s simple drawings in acrylic on burlap coffee bags. The series is untitled, but the crude, thick lines portray objects such as a Sharpie ink pen or a watermelon.

Originally scheduled to close Sunday, the show has been extended to April 30.

Verdi’s “La Traviata,” translated as “The Fallen Woman,” is about a courtesan named Violetta and her tragic love story with the young bourgeois Alfredo. It’s worth noting that in the early 1800s, the time during which this story was written, women had few options. 

Marriage was generally undertaken as a matter of duty, family, and financial considerations and had little if anything to do with love. Single women, that is, those who were not lucky enough to be married off by their families and thus provided for by a man, or else refused to marry for such mercenary reasons, could either: 

1. Join a convent. 

2. Find a job in a shop or factory that offered a meager living and promised no social mobility.

Or 3. Become a whore. Or better, a professional mistress. Or even better, a courtesan — a position of the highest honor among those whom polite society considered “dishonorable.” “Polite society” meaning polite wives who, given the fact of their having married for money and social standing, might today earn the epithet of “gold digger.” Whores who? 

Their similarly respectable husbands, meanwhile, were, as the patrons of these ignobles, their devoted long-term lovers. They supported the courtesans lavishly, often fell deeply and exclusively in love with them, and many courtesans, under the financial protection of these men, lived glamorous, relatively liberated lives of high style.

Unlike prostitutes, courtesans were educated, bright, beautiful, and chic — living by their charm and wit, they had to be — and with that, they could have their pick of beaus. While a prostitute would be picked up off the street, a courtesan in her well-appointed rooms had suitors, dates, from among whom she could choose to enter into a relationship. In that sense, there was more possibility for a courtesan to attain the Western ideal of romantic love than a respectable wife whose marriage was likely arranged and whose role within that arrangement was tightly circumscribed by the laws of propriety. 

The character of Violetta in “La Traviata” is based on the real-life courtesan Marie Duplessis, whose benefactors included the composer Franz Liszt (he reportedly wished to live with her) and Alexandre Dumas fils, the illegitimate son of Alexandre Dumas, famed author of “The Three Musketeers,” and a lowly dressmaker. Notably, Duplessis, before becoming a courtesan, was a dressmaker as well.

By the time Duplessis was 20, the year Dumas met her, she had established herself in Paris as a much-admired courtesan and host of a popular salon where politicians, writers, and artists regularly gathered for stimulating conversation. Wives, respectably at home, were not permitted to enter these sophisticated salons of the demimonde. So, while courtesans were denied entry into polite society, they were unique among women of their day, in that they could go everywhere a wife couldn’t, could participate in conversations among the most intellectual, accomplished, and powerful men of their day. 

Congruently, the courtesans were prized, above all else, for their intelligence, their autodidactic education, their talents — musical skill, painting, or writing, etc. — their wit. If these women were looked down upon for their low social rank, a circumstance one was born into and had little hope to rise from, they were conversely appreciated for their high cultivation. 

And so Duplessis, while not permitted entry into the polite homes of married women, might be seen at the opera in grand dress or riding in the Bois de Boulogne. She even had her portrait painted by the esteemed Edouard Vienot. In sum, she was a celebrity, with all that word’s consequent glory and shame.

Dumas fils, meanwhile, born of ignoble origins himself — that is, out of wedlock to his father’s low-born mistress, though he would eventually be acknowledged by his father and so could be received in polite society — was 20 when he met and fell in love with Duplessis. The details of their affair are known only to them. What is known to us is that Duplessis remained on good terms with all of her boyfriends/benefactors after their relationships ended, as most relationships do. 

After her affair with Dumas fils, Duplessis would go on to marry a French nobleman, a count, but the marriage would prove brief, as she would succumb to tuberculosis at the age of 23, her new husband and one of her former lovers, another count, by her side when she expired. Her funeral, in Montmartre Cemetery, is said to have been attended by hundreds, which is, I think, a pretty good send-off for a whore. Would that we were all so well liked.

At 23 Dumas fils wrote his first novel, “The Lady of the Camellias,” about Duplessis. Published within a year of Duplessis’s death, the book was an immediate best seller. Commissioned shortly thereafter to adapt his book into a play, he thus began a long and prodigious career as a playwright, his fame even eclipsing that of his father. This play would go on to be adapted many times over, most notably perhaps into Verdi’s opera “La Traviata” in 1853, five years after Duplessis’s death. 

Verdi had wanted to give the opera a contemporary, realistic setting, but the authorities at that time insisted it be set deeper into the past, the 1700s, the patina of history perhaps making an impolite love story such as this one, about a celebrated if shunned figure, presentable to polite society. Husbands and wives thus could attend the opera together, taking in for their respectable pleasure the tragic life story of one of their world’s greatest celebrities and feigned secrets. 

It was not until the 1880s that the opera was finally set in the then-present. The current adaptation is set in an ambiguous now, which raises the question of its audience, who would Duplessis be were she born today? And would she or should she be an object of scorn, envy, pity, fascination, or love? 

It’s important to remember the true-life origins of “La Traviata” and with that acknowledge the societal traps set for women then and now, the hypocritical judgments and various barriers that every woman faces, whether she chooses to marry or remains alone, that work to keep her in her place.

From one whore to another, take it away, Violetta!

Iris Smyles, the fiction editor of The Star’s East magazine, is the author of “Iris Has Free Time” and “Dating Tips for the Unemployed.” She introduced “La Traviata” at Guild Hall on March 11 for its screening in the Met Live in HD series, which continues on April 22 at 1 p.m. with Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin.”

Emerging Artists at Malia Mills

“Icebox Tilt,” the final show in the Spring Salon at Malia Mills in East Hampton, will be on view today through Wednesday, with a reception set for tomorrow from 5 to 7 p.m.

The exhibition includes paintings, prints, textiles, sculpture, and video, ranging from the personal and autobiographical to more observational and abstracted explorations. The artists draw inspiration from the improvised and resourceful nature of an icebox “tilt — a meal,” made by tipping the fridge over and using what falls out.

Participating artists are Sara Salaway, Rosie Nalle, Sarah Madden, Morgana Tetherow-Keller, Soren Hope, and Maya Shengold. Five are recent graduates of Bennington College; Ms. Hope graduated from Carleton College in 2015.

Two Solos at Olko

The Monika Olko Gallery in Sag Harbor will open concurrent solo shows of work by Paton Miller and Brett Loving with a reception tomorrow from 6 to 8 p.m. The exhibitions will run through May 9.

Mr. Miller’s work draws on his early influences, his personal life, his travels, and his adventures in a style that amalgamates figuration, abstraction, expressionism, and a hint of art brut. Two of his paintings are on view at the United States Embassy in Havana.

Energy, intuition, and a sense of color inform Mr. Loving’s art. He uses modern machinery and self-designed pieces to create form and light through the manipulation of color. He works on canvas, wood, metal, and linen using skills and tools he has acquired as a designer.

Drawing Room Reopens

Having spent the winter months overseeing its projects at Victoria Munroe Fine Art in Manhattan and being open in East Hampton by appointment only, the Drawing Room is easing its way into the upcoming season with a group show of gallery artists.

The spring installation features work by John Alexander, Jennifer Bartlett, Mary Ellen Bartley, Christopher French, Mel Kendrick, Laurie Lambrecht, Kathryn Lynch, Aya Miyatake, Thomas Nozkowski, Dan Rizzie, and Jack Youngerman. During April the gallery will be open Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and by appointment. 

Grooving at Ashawagh

If it’s April, it must be time for Art Groove to take over Ashawagh Hall in Springs for the weekend. The seventh iteration of the multimedia event will include art, music, and video on Saturday from noon to 11 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

A reception, set for 6 to 11 Saturday night, will include a live performance by #9, a new indie rock group, and a set by the King Bees, an R&B band featuring Frank Latorre. In addition, “Reboot” and “Redressed,” mapped motion graphics videos by John Jinks, will be projected on the outside of the building at dusk.

The exhibition includes work in a variety of mediums by 14 East End artists, including the first showing of paintings by the sculptor Hans Van de Bovenkamp.