“Viewpoints @ 29th Street,” the Watermill Center’s series of talks at Robert Wilson’s loft in Manhattan, will open its 2017 series with a conversation between Katharina Otto-Bernstein, a filmmaker, producer, and screenwriter, and Annette Insdorf, a writer and film professor at Columbia University.

Ms. Otto-Bernstein will discuss her HBO documentary “Robert Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures” and “Absolute Wilson,” her portrait of the Watermill Center’s founder and artistic director. The event is free, but advance reservations have been suggested due to limited seating capacity.

“Barney’s Wall,” a film in the making for several years, celebrates Barney Rosset’s creativity and his fierce devotion to First Amendment rights. Although the film is still a few steps short of completion, a rough cut was shown last month in Manhattan at the Century Association.

Originally conceived as a document to save a mural that Rosset worked on until his death in 2012, it evolved into a fuller biography of the man behind the artifact and the clear impact he had on the arts and letters of the late 20th century.

Rosset, a longtime resident of East Hampton, fought tirelessly in court to ensure that previously banned and censored material such as Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” and D.H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” were made available to American audiences. He also published books and plays by Samuel Beckett, William Burroughs, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, and many others. Later, he branched out into film distribution and the screening of titles such as Vilgot Sjoman’s “I Am Curious (Yellow),” which had also been banned by censors.

“Barney represents so much the opposite of what we’ve been seeing in the last couple of weeks in this country, the inclusion of so many parts of this world and such a diversity of ideas and culture,” Williams Cole said before the screening. “I hope this film really gets out there and influences people and gets his name back out into the culture.”

Mr. Cole is part of the team that made the film, along with David Leitner and Sandy Gotham Meehan. They went ahead with the project when the building that Rosset and his wife, Astrid Myers Rosset, shared with the offices of two of his book imprints was sold and expected to be demolished and replaced by a high-rise.

They had hoped to attract an institution that might be interested in preserving the mural and keeping it in its collection. That has yet to happen, but they did manage to remove it from the wall themselves and have put it in storage. Now, they are in the process of completing the film, which still needs color correction, sound-mixing, licensing, and a bit more financing.

The documentary captures how people Rosset knew interacted with the mural, such as Lorin Stein of The Paris Review and David Amram, a composer and musician who came of age with the Beat poets. These interactions are interspersed with interviews about the man and footage of Rosset himself. 

Those who saw the wall were startled and impressed by its intricacies. They declared it “an epic novel on a wall” and “an art critic’s nightmare,” among other divergent comments. In the film, some touch the wall, others smell it. It’s a salute to creativity and the unbound mind.

The film has a website and a Kickstarter page for pledging funds, which can be found by referencing its title.

Helen Charash’s maiden name is Hesse, yet when she speaks of the life and art of her sister, Eva, she refers to the subject as “Hesse,” an entity separate from her family name and the little sister she knew so well. That she does so says much about Hesse’s legendary status in the art world and in the popular imagination.

In a recent conversation, Ms. Charash, who is a part-time East Hampton resident, said she was “a housewife with young children, and not in the art world,” when her sister died in 1970 of a brain tumor at the age of 34. At that time, Hesse was revered in the art world, channeling the best of Process and Minimalist art into her work. She left the job of managing her estate to Ms. Charash, who continues to do so with the help of advisers such as Barry Rosen, an independent art consultant, and Hauser & Wirth, a gallery that represents the estate.

Ms. Charash is featured in the documentary “Eva Hesse,” which will be screened at the Southampton Arts Center tomorrow. The release of the film last year coincided with the publication of Hesse’s diaries, which date from her early years through her struggle and success in finding her voice as an artist to the last few weeks of her life.

The sisters’ childhood was marked by a frightening escape from Nazi Germany to a Catholic children’s home in Holland when Eva was 3 and Helen was 5. It was months before they would be reunited with their parents. In 1939, they immigrated to the United States. Their mother committed suicide in 1946, when Eva was only 10.

Asked how she handled the tragic events of her past, Ms. Charash said, “You just have to live your daily life. Both Eva and I had our baggage, which for me has stretched into being a senior citizen. I still think about it and how our regular experience as kids is very different from life today.”

Hesse knew early that she wanted to be an artist. Her father was displeased, but it didn’t stop her. She attended Pratt, Cooper Union, and then Yale, where she studied with Josef Albers. She returned to New York City in 1960 and found herself at the center of a group of young artists who arrived there at the same time.

The filmmakers interviewed contemporaries such as Robert and Sylvia Mangold and Richard Serra. Letters to Hesse from Sol LeWitt, a close friend who died in 2007, are quoted. He was a fierce supporter and booster of her work, encouraging her through both blocks and breakthroughs throughout her life.

Although LeWitt loved her, she married Tom Doyle, a sculptor. Doyle, who died last year, became a drinker and womanizer, and they separated in 1966 after four years. “It was a mismatched intense love affair,” Ms. Charash said. There was a lot of bitterness, and Hesse wouldn’t grant him a divorce. But when she died, Doyle relinquished all claims to the estate and remarried. 

At a 1992 Hesse retrospective exhibition at Yale, Ms. Charash said, she reconnected with him, and they stayed on good terms; her kids always loved him. He is featured in the film in interviews and old film clips. The publication of Hesse’s diaries, while much sought by scholars and publishers, was delayed until after his death in deference to him.

Lucy Lippard, an art historian and critic who was an early advocate and author of a monograph on the artist, says in the film that Doyle “was part of a wild crowd,” but that “he gave her something that she needed.” In the early years of their relationship, he was very committed to her and even converted to Judaism to please her father. During their marriage, Doyle was invited to work and exhibit in Germany and Hesse joined him. Returning to Germany was traumatic for her, but it led to a big breakthrough in her work. 

They were given studio space in an old fabric factory, and the abandoned materials she found there began to make their way into her art. In the film, she is described as a post-Abstract Expressionist painter before Germany and a Surrealist when she returned to New York, where Minimalism was taking over. “I don’t mind being miles from everybody else,” she says in the film through a voiceover provided by Selma Blair. 

Michael Todd, a fellow artist, notes in the film that her new work referenced the figure, eroticism, and the body. Yet, she did not disengage from contemporary practice, incorporating the same industrial materials into her work. Ms. Lippard said she took “cold hard grids” of Minimalism “and messed with them, screwed them up a bit.”

Donald Droll, the director of the Fischbach Gallery, gave her a show in its main room in 1968. He was a champion of her work and would become the main adviser for the estate until his death in 1985.

Hesse was then introduced to Aegis Reinforced Plastics, a company working with artists to fabricate work. There, she discovered epoxies, polymers, and latex. In a piece called “Repetition 19,” she formed 19 cylinders in fabric and coated them with fiberglass. Her first effort was too perfect so she started over, this time deforming each cylinder slightly and getting her hands involved with the work.

In a journal entry read in the film she lists the new materials she is using: rubber, plastic, organic and inorganic polymers, rubberized fabric, and cheesecloth, and revels in her discovery of them. She was warned about the transitory nature of some of the materials, but that only added to their appeal.

In 1969, she began to have horrible headaches, which eventually caused hospitalization. Her doctors discovered and successfully removed a large tumor. Her friends wondered if the new materials were to blame for the illness. Those interviewed in the film discredit the theory, but Ms. Charash is not so sure. “I’d like to think it’s a piece of the puzzle,” she said in our interview.

Although Hesse painted for a time during her recovery, she went back to working at Aegis and began dipping cord and rope into latex. “Untitled (Rope Piece),” part of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s collection, was one of her final sculptures. She returned to the hospital in March 1970 and died that May. Ms. Charash noted that the circle drawings and window paintings she made while she was likely contemplating her mortality “have achieved great prominence. I think of them as sacred works.”

It’s not easy for her to revisit the past. She has a copy of the journals on her bedside table, but hasn’t read them all the way through, preferring to skip around when she is feeling up to it. Yet, she enjoyed making the film and marveled at the tenacity of the filmmakers, Marcie Begleiter, the director, and Karen Shapiro, the producer, in tracking everyone down, including Hesse’s doctor and her many friends and associates.

Through the years there have been several major traveling exhibitions of Hesse’s work and the publication of two volumes of a catalogue raisonné, one for the paintings and one for the sculpture. Two further volumes documenting her works on paper are expected soon. 

“Everyone who gets involved with one of these projects gets smitten by her personal connection to the art, her sensitivity, her life force, her strength.” She makes those who didn’t know her wish they had, Ms. Charash said.

The film will be shown at 7 p.m., and tickets are $8.

The text has been modified from the print version to correct an error made in editing the article. Helen Charash is not an artist.

The institutions David Mamet skewers in his new play, “The Penitent” — religion, the press, and the legal system — are all modern in their form. Yet, Chris Bauer, who has the starring role, said last week that the inherent conflicts in the play derive from classical sources.

“At the end of the day, it’s about people struggling with their sense of right and wrong as individuals, tracing their conscience and abiding their conscience, thrown together in a world where people have different views of conscience,” he said. “The characters’ struggle for solutions run into the obstacles of their agendas and other people’s agendas. That describes any drama since the Greeks.”

The play is being presented by the Atlantic Theater Company in Manhattan. It opened Monday after previews and will run through March 19.

Mr. Bauer, a part-time resident of Sag Harbor, is originating the role of Charles, a psychiatrist in a time of crisis. His patient has committed multiple homicides, and his defense lawyers want Charles to testify on his behalf. He says he is reluctant, based on his professional oath and reinforced by his rediscovery of religion. In an effort to coerce him, the defendant, who is gay, accuses him of prejudice against gay people.

Further complicating matters, a newspaper misprints the title of one of Charles’s old academic papers, changing it from “Homosexuality as an Adaptation” to “Homosexuality as an Aberration.” The gaffe leads his friends and associates to ostracize him and his wife. The pressure builds as his attorney suggests simple, yet morally repugnant, solutions to the problems, but Charles rejects them. 

Although it feels tied to this particular time in history, Mr. Bauer explained that this was a story the playwright “was chipping away at for a while and then was at it again in the last several months. But the ideas behind it date further back from that.”

This is not Mr. Bauer’s first time tackling the “athletic technical demands” of a Mamet play. He has previously played key roles in “Race” in Los Angeles and “Romance” at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor. 

That experience was helpful in “providing a tool kit . . . to get you through the play in the most efficient way,” he said, but “every piece of work demands starting with a clean slate and hoping you find your way through.”

At least no interpretation is necessary. “David’s aesthetic is really explicit; there are no multiple points of view” to consider. “On the page, there are possibilities and many ways through, but it’s a like a well-crafted car that should be driven a certain way. It’s better not to ignore the consistent technical groove. The formula is what is required.”

Mr. Bauer said that the only way to tell his story “and to suggest the emotional atmosphere, the emotional urgency, is to do it a certain way. If you don’t, you feel it.”

There is no room for improvising. “You have to know the text front and back, absolutely, especially with his plays,” he said. “It’s trite to say, but you do have to play it like music . . . to the degree that any ‘ums’ or ‘urs’ not on the page can’t come out of your mouth.” 

The usual actorly exercises to find the character aren’t really necessary, he said. “You’re pulling a lot of the character from the text rather than imagination.” Emotion is derived from the text as well. “Embellishing a scene with deep feeling is like putting a bucket in a well; it comes up and there it is. That’s always the sign of a great play. All you have to do is be available to it, and it will give you what you need.”

There’s preparation and then more work in rehearsal. “It’s a dossier you inject everything into. You make the critical inferences and decisions, solve the problems that exist, and then take it into rehearsal, tuning in to the signal at its sharpest point,” he said. “It’s meticulous work. You will know the difference between A-plus and A-minus work.”

The production is something of a family affair. Rebecca Pidgeon, Mr. Mamet’s wife, plays Charles’s wife. Laura Bauer, Mr. Bauer’s wife, designed the costumes and has been designing wardrobe for Mr. Mamet and other theater and film productions for many years.

Regarding Ms. Pidgeon, Mr. Bauer said she makes it look easy in striking a balance between being the “point of the spear, but supporting it with humanity and an open heart. But it’s a high-wire act of composition and proportion. I’ve learned an enormous amount of technical shortcuts from her.”

Ms. Bauer, who preceded her husband in the theater company, is a veteran of more than 10 of its productions. “She has a great way of supporting the iconography of the play with specificity,” Mr. Bauer said. “She’s always got something up her sleeve: a pair of glasses or a pair of socks that catch your eye and help you realize who a character is.” It had been a while since they had worked together, and it was great to “watch her do with clothes what is part of what an actor does,” he said.

After years in Sag Harbor, the family moved to Los Angeles to support Mr. Bauer’s work as Andy Bellefleur in the HBO series “True Blood,” which ended in 2014 after seven seasons. They had first split the school year in half, staying in Sag Harbor from the fall until January and then moving to Los Angeles from January to June. In recent years, they have spent only the summer on the South Fork. 

Now, Mr. Bauer is in a new HBO series, “The Deuce,” which will premiere this summer. About the rise of the pornography industry in New York City in the 1970s, it is a reunion of some of the creative team behind “The Wire,” including David Simon and George Pelecanos.

Shooting the series in New York will likely bring the family back east, which is fine by him. “My kids’ closest and deepest friendships are in Sag Harbor,” he said. The vagabond existence doesn’t bother him. “This is an actor’s life. I’m lucky I get to move to California for a job, and when that job ends I get a job in New York. It’s much better than no job.” 

His children each began their lives as part of the bicoastal nexus. His son was born at St. Luke’s Hospital in Manhattan and his daughter at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. “We stretch our lives from one side of the country to the other. My most exotic dream is to watch all four seasons out of one window.”

Five at Ashawagh

Denise Corley, Tom Fitzgibbon, Douglas Mulaire, Susan Taylor, and Steven Wright will display their paintings, works on paper, and constructions at Ashawagh Hall in Springs this weekend.

Ms. Corley works in painting, mixed media, and sculpture. Mr. Fitzgibbon tends toward constructions and multimedia. Mr. Mulaire’s work examines the interplay of color and light, and Ms. Taylor, an oil painter, is concerned with color and its movement and energy.

The show will be open Saturday and Sunday at 11 a.m. and will close at 5 p.m. both days. A reception will be held Saturday evening from 5 to 8.

Show and Tell

Erica-Lynn Huberty will display an installation of her artwork and read from her Sag Harbor-based novella, “Watchwork: A Tale in Time,” tonight at 6 in the Malia Mills pop-up gallery space in East Hampton.

Ms. Huberty recently installed art at an abandoned Bridgehampton house that was destined for the wrecking ball. These works, which will be displayed in the gallery, are a reflection on an earlier era’s more modest buildings and lifestyle.

The artist is the author of  “Dog Boy and Other Harrowing Tales,” a 2011 book considered for two fiction prizes. She has also written for The New York Times and The Washington Post, among other publications.

The evening will benefit the Nature Conservancy and Habitat for Humanity, with a portion of the sale of books and artwork going to both nonprofits.

Next at Folioeast

The latest edition of folioeast’s Winter Salon series will also be presented at Malia Mills, opening with a reception on Saturday. 

Coco Meyers has chosen four artists who work in a variety of mediums: Francine Fleischer, who will show new photographs; Saskia Fried­rich’s new work, made up of small abstract panels; an abstract installation piece by Jeremy Grosvenor, and Mark Webber’s new free-standing and wall sculpture.

The show will remain on view through March 12.

Bovenkamp in Dallas

Who says cowboys don’t love sculpture? Hans Van de Bovenkamp of Sagaponack will show his work at the Samuel Lynne Galleries in Dallas beginning Saturday through April 3. A reception will be held on Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m.

The exhibition is called “Through Time” and spans 30 years of the artist’s production of biomorphic and undulating forms, often reminiscent of sea life.

Tibor de Nagy

Works by John Ashbery, Rudy Burckhardt, and Larry Rivers, three artists with long associations with the South Fork, are included in a group show at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in Manhattan. The exhibition, which pairs older artists with a younger group, will remain on view through March 25.

The Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor will host ACCORD, a professional women’s choir from New York, as part of its Bach, Before, and Beyond series on Sunday at 3 p.m.

The concert will weave connections between Medieval European monasteries through the Baroque period and on to folk music and spirituals. 

Tickets are $20 at the door and can  be purchased at the Romany Kramoris Gallery in Sag Harbor.

Montauk will be the site on Saturday of this year’s ZIMA!, a theatrical scavenger hunt. For several years Kate Mueth and the Neo-Political Cowgirls have used different sites on the South Fork to mount a midwinter interactive theatrical journey to collect clues and solve a riddle. The event is suitable for all ages. Groups will leave from the Montauk Green at 2, 2:20, and 2:40 p.m. Participants can warm up at the Montauk Playhouse after the tour and find out the solution. The cost of $5 will be collected at the Green.

Jenno Topping’s career in the film industry has been defined by her work with women. In films such as “Spy,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “Heat,” “28 Days,” and many more, she has sought out female directors and fellow producers, writers, production staff, and plots driven by female characters. 

Her commitment to mentor and support women in film has led to one of her most noteworthy and lauded achievements to date: helping to bring “Hidden Figures” to the screen. The film, for which Ms. Topping was a producer, is about three African-American women who had pivotal roles as mathematicians and engineers at NASA during the 1960s space race. It has earned Academy Award nominations for best adapted screenplay, supporting actress, and best picture. Its full cast also recently won a Screen Actors Guild award.

Even to those not familiar with her film work, her name should sound familiar. She is the daughter of Tinka and the late Bud Topping of the Topping Riding Club in Sagaponack, and she was an award-winning equestrian in her younger years.

Now, she is the head of film and television at Chernin Entertainment, a company affiliated with 20th Century Fox, which was founded by Peter Chernin, who was once president and chief operating officer of News Corp, Fox’s parent company. Not long ago, she and Mr. Chernin were included in a Hollywood Reporter list of the 30 most powerful film producers in Hollywood.

Ms. Topping expects to be in the audience when the awards are announced on Feb. 26, capping off weeks of events and ceremonies, such as the Golden Globes, the Producers Guild Awards, and others. The last time she was part of this whirlwind season was when “Good Will Hunting,” a film produced by her husband, Chris Moore, was nominated for several awards in 1998. “I forgot the whole awards thing is a full-time job,” she said last week, involving the ceremonies themselves, red carpet and other interviews with press, and additional publicity. Mr. Moore has been nominated in the same category this year as a producer of “Manchester by the Sea.”

“When you already have a full-time job and a family, it can be overwhelming, but it is such a cool ride to be on. I’m so grateful the movie found an audience,” she said.

That the story for “Hidden Figures,” based on a nonfiction book by Margot Lee Shetterly, came to her attention can be seen as inevitable, given how women-centered films shaped her career. “Part of it is what you are drawn to, your inner passion, and then part of it is self-fulfilling prophecy,” she said. Given the natural tendency to pigeonhole, Ms. Topping said she has become known as a producer who “loves female-driven films and characters. It becomes an oeuvre.”

Producing is an amorphous term indicating a range of involvement in a film, from distant but significant financing to direct stewardship from idea to screenplay, selecting the director and casting, film crew supervision, securing funds for the production budget, and finding distribution. Ms. Topping’s involvement in “Hidden Figures” is on the fuller end of the spectrum. “It’s confusing. Producing means many different things. Even the same person can do very different things from movie to movie.”

Ever since she and the director Theodore Melfi made “St. Vincent,” a well-received 2014 film starring Bill Murray, they had been looking for another project to work on together. “You want to find people you love to work with and work with them again and again,” she said. 

They had been sending a lot of scripts back and forth. The “Hidden Figures” script came to her as a partially rewritten version of the book. When Mr. Melfi saw it, she said, his initial reaction was, “Am I crazy? I’m not African-American and I’m not a woman, but this script spoke to me and I would love to rewrite and direct it.” She said her thoughts quickly went from being happy to work with Mr. Melfi again to stunned excitement.

 “I thought ‘this story was never made into a film before? Are you kidding me?’ My boss read it and felt the same way. The movie had to be made right away.” She immediately called colleagues at Fox. “I said you have to read this right now. I’ve never made that call as urgently as I did then.” Mr. Melfi rewrote some of the script, by Allison Schroeder, and casting began early last year followed by production in March. Things on their end moved so quickly that Ms. Shetterly’s book was published only a couple of months before the film was released.

Even if “Hidden Figures” doesn’t take home the best picture award, it has already succeeded, striking a chord with world-weary audiences and taking in more that $120 million in box office receipts. “It does that thing that a film like it always does. But it occurs in a weird moment in time, when people were politically united in a higher purpose than ourselves.” Audiences are responding to that, and finding the positive message refreshing in this moment in time, she said.

Ms. Topping has been in Los Angeles almost exclusively since she graduated from Wesleyan University. She went there to join a boyfriend and find a job as a reporter. “I couldn’t get a job in journalism, so I took the first job I could get, which was being an assistant to a music manager and film producer. I spent half my time touring with rock bands and half working on movie sets.”

Eventually, Ms. Topping got a job as a reporter in Santa Fe, but realized she liked making films better. At MGM, she first became an assistant and then reader of scripts for Alan Ladd Jr., who was chairman at the time, and the legendary producer of films such as “Star Wars,” “Alien,” “Moonstruck,” and “Chariots of Fire,” among others. In 1993, she left MGM with him when he formed his own company. She worked on “The Brady Bunch Movie” while he produced “Braveheart.” 

It was through “Brady Bunch” that Ms. Topping met Betty Thomas, who would become her partner in a company that produced films such as “28 Days” and “Charlie’s Angels.” She then “had my own deal at Sony to make a bunch more movies.” When she met Mr. Chernin some seven years ago, “I hadn’t had a boss since I was 26, with Laddy. Except for one weird year at HBO I was on my own or partners with someone.” But, she said, “he’s the boss of bosses.” She was first hired as president of the film division and now oversees development and production of all films and television at the company.

Her latest projects include “Snatch­ed,” an action comedy with Goldie Hawn and Amy Schumer playing mother and daughter, to be released in May, a new “Planet of the Apes”  in June, and a “sexy thriller with Jennifer Lawrence filming in Budapest and due to be released this fall.” Also this fall will be the release of  “The Mountain Between Us,” a “plane-crash survivor romance movie” with Idris Elba and Kate Winslet. And for release next Christmas is “The Greatest Showman,” a musical treatment of P.T. Barnum’s life, starring Hugh Jackman.

All this doesn’t give her much free time, but what time she has, she spends with Mr. Moore and their three children, and on visits back home. “We Ping-Pong back and forth,” she said, which adds up to four to five weeks each year. She is in partnership with her family to preserve their Daniel’s Lane farmland through the next generations, but rarely rides anymore. “It was something I did so intensely, and once you stop, it’s very hard to start up again.”

Although the demands of her current work make leaving L.A. impossible, she hopes to return here full time in the future, even if it means waiting until retirement. “I’ve been trying to get back there since I left,” she said.

“Waterlines” at White Room

The White Room Gallery in Bridgehampton will present “Waterlines,” an exhibition of approximately 40 works by Michele Dragonetti from her “Boat Hulls” photography series, from tomorrow through March 5. An opening reception will be held Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Ms. Dragonetti, who lives and works in Amagansett and Manhattan, began photographing the hulls in the marinas of Montauk, where she was drawn to boats in need of repair and refurbishing. She has since expanded the series beyond its East End origins to include images taken elsewhere in the United States and abroad.

The photographs emphasize the contrast between the abstract patterns of the painted lines and color of the hulls, and the interplay of textures. According to the artist, “By focusing my compositions on the triangular patterns of the hulls in a square format, I am able to highlight the essential geometry of the images.”

Group Show at Tripoli

“Black and White,” a group exhibition of work by 14 artists, will open at the Tripoli Gallery in Southampton with a reception on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. and continue through April 16.

The gallery has observed that color is often relied upon to create a “sellable” work. “In ‘Black and White,’ color will not aid or inform, while the many various techniques, mediums, and textures used will instead,” according to a press release.

The show includes paintings, sculpture, photography, and mixed-media works by artists from the United States and abroad, including five from the East End. Participating artists are 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.

New at Roman Fine Art

Roman Fine Art in East Hampton will present “Repeat Offender,” its first solo exhibition of work by the Los Angeles artist Knowledge Bennett, from tomorrow through March 19. A reception will take place tomorrow from 6 to 8 p.m.

Mr. Bennett uses hand-pulled printmaking techniques to explore contemporary and historical subject matter, appropriating recognizable imagery to reveal the hidden histories of his subjects.

For example, his “Cojones” series — the word means testicles in Spanish — honors people who have advocated acceptance and equal rights. Among them are Jean-Michel Basquiat, John F. Kennedy, Prince, and Salvador Dali. His “Mao Trump” pieces superimpose Donald Trump’s face over that of Mao Zedong.

The exhibition “A Sense of Place,” which opens tomorrow at the Southampton Arts Center, has a very clear objective, according to the artist Bastienne Schmidt, who organized it: “I wanted to see how artists interpret the idea of place. Is it something spatial, something political, something social, something emotional? It can really manifest itself in multiple ways.”

The 10 artists in the exhibition, all of whom work on the South Fork, engage the idea of place with a diversity of approaches and mediums, including abstract painting, installation, sculpture, mixed media, and photography.

The idea for the show has been percolating for a long time, according to Ms. Schmidt. “It goes back to the sense of my own personal place, because I grew up in Germany, Greece, Italy, and America, and I’ve traveled extensively. I think some people need local roots in one place, and others are nomads. I always felt I was a nomad, but now the East End is the place I feel I belong in. It’s interesting to see it from both sides.”

Both Almond Zigmund and Toni Ross will be represented by installations. Ms. Zigmund’s work combines geometry, color, and patterns to subtly transform space and how it is perceived. While Ms. Ross’s stoneware has long consisted of individual pieces, more recently it has extended to installations. Her work has three parts, one an altarpiece inspired by different Renaissance sculptors.

The diffusion of light and process of layering in Christopher French’s recent abstract paintings suggest the East End metaphorically, while Philippe Cheng’s photographs of the landscape blur specific topographical elements to capture the region’s unique light and color.

Michelle Stuart will show her “Milkwood Seeds” and pieces from her “Extinct” series, which, like much of her work, reflect the physical imprint of the landscape. Mary Heilmann’s paintings, one of which consists of two joined canvases, engage painterly space. 

The landscape designer Edwina von Gal’s “Worlds Within Worlds” evokes the beauty and complexity of Long Island’s vistas through a series of circular dioramas. Saskia Friedrich is showing three canvases and colorful, Matisse-like shapes that function as a floating element between sculpture and painting. Louise Eastman, who works in weaving and ceramics, has printed marigolds on a textile in collaboration with Janis Stemmermann. 

Ms. Schmidt works in a variety of mediums. In “We the People,” local pumpkin seeds and the title phrase, which was inspired by her recent participation in the Women’s March in Washington, are sewn into a large but delicate swath of paper.

The exhibition came to fruition after several conversations between Ms. Schmidt and Amy Kirwin, the arts center’s director of programs. An opening reception will take place Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m., and the show will run through April 9.