On a windswept and rainy Saturday evening, somewhere on the cusp of March and April, a moody and sometimes sinister show featuring water and the sea might be just the thing to pull one out of a funk, or draw one in more deeply. Either way, “On an Eastern Shore,” featuring the work of Peter Ngo and Ingrid Silva, is a show that remains with you, rain or not.

    Montauk’s Outeast Gallery, set between a small pond and Fort Pond Bay, offers water views from each room, from both front and rear windows. It is a perfect setting for works devoted to water. It makes them seem swept in from the last high tide and links interior to exterior both literally and in the subconscious.

    In the front room, Ms. Silva has two series on display, “Water Dreams” and “The Universe Within.” Both feature underwater photography. “Water Dreams” has a more straightforward, as-is approach. The backgrounds are dark and uncomplicated. The bodies may be posed in convoluted contortions and embellished with gossamer fabric, but what you see is what you see.

    On the other hand, “The Universe Within” carries more allusion and illusion. Multiple figures are posed together and a layering of backgrounds from different scenes comes into play. The figures are still underwater, but they might be superimposed with a facade from a Cambodian temple, mountains, or clouds. Because the figures are already floating, the transposition of these kinds of settings makes sense visually and the mind has no problem applying the filter that allows for a world where these images are believable, or at least relatable.

    This series also references Renaissance imagery, particularly Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel paintings. The hard-edged shadows that make precise outlines of Ms. Silva’s figures echo the strong linear style of fresco painting. Her choice to leave the figures faceless makes them timeless, too. They allow a contemplative space where anything is possible yet still feasible on some level.

    Ms. Silva’s paintings set the stage for the even more fantastical world of Mr. Ngo, where seas turned stormy and electric with multihued currents and sudden lightning flashes might give rise to spectral images from an alternate reality. Mr. Ngo, who is also a photographer, blends fantasy even into his realistic images. His female subjects tend to be playacting or posing as types borrowed from fashion: biker girl, rancher, shipwrecked damsel. The faces and poses of some of these women may cross over into the paintings as disembodied heads drifting over the horizon.

    Sometimes there is nothing but sea, or nothing but atmosphere. But even background is dramatic, color-soaked, otherworldly. The transformations of the figures from woman to snail, flame, or tree have allusions to the elements and classical mythology.

    In a few works just nature is suggested, as with a feather dancing over water or an inverted jellyfish hanging over the sky like some literal version of a constellation. Within the four walls the display can seem singular and insular, but with the backwaters of the infinite sea beckoning just beyond, the world depicted appears less strange, plausible even.

    The show is on view through April 27.

    On a recent chilly night the East Hampton Presbyterian Church loomed dark and uninviting. At 6:45 a man emerged from a car on Main Street, walked around to the side of the building, and unlocked a door. Within seconds the soaring space was awash with light, and Walter Klauss, the guest conductor of the Choral Society of the Hamptons’ upcoming spring concert, doffed his coat and settled into a front pew for a few moments of conversation before rehearsal.

    Thomas Bohlert, the group’s principal accompanist, arrived a few minutes later and rolled the piano front and center just as members of the group began to arrive, shed their coats, gloves, and scarves and take their places in the pews. “I’ve conducted this group several times,” Mr. Klauss explained. “We usually have 10 or 11 rehearsals. We started at the end of January, meeting Monday evenings from 7:30 to 10.”

    Approximately 60 singers are participating in “Viva Vivaldi!” the spring concert that will take place at the church Sunday at 5 p.m. The program will include Bach’s Cantata 71, “Gott ist mein Konig,” Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “Five Mystical Songs,” and Vivaldi’s “Gloria.” “As guest conductor, I design the program,” said Mr. Klauss. “I’m given a budget and pick the music accordingly. I try to find pieces that involve some instruments — but not too many.”

    Mr. Klauss, who has had a house in East Hampton since 1987, is the founder and conductor of the Musica Viva concert series and since 1976 has been minister of music at All Souls Unitarian Church in New York City. He is also an organist who has performed internationally, most recently with the Zurich Symphony Orchestra. He was named professor emeritus after his retirement from the C.W. Post campus of Long Island University, where he served as chairman of the music department.

    The rehearsal began with a warm-up, the vocalists singing notes and scales. After a few minutes of vocal stretching, Mr. Klauss asked the group to open the music for the “Five Mystical Songs” and directed them to a particular section, which they sang several times until the conductor was satisfied. The rehearsal continued with the repetition of short passages, reminding one observer of an athletic practice, where a shortstop might field 50 ground balls in succession.

    “It took a while to get all the notes to these pieces,” Mr. Klauss explained. “The Bach is particularly difficult. Learning the notes is like a drawing that’s the first step for a painting. Once they got the notes, I broke the news that we were about 5 percent there. The hard work — the other 95 percent — is making music out of those specks on the paper.”

    Mr. Klauss began studying piano when he was 4 years old. He took up the organ at 12. “I was always interested in sacred choral music, because that’s the great body of choral literature in the world. As a kid I grew up in the church and I loved the sound of the organ.” He has also studied orchestral conducting, which he compared to conducting vocalists.

    “You have to understand to a certain degree what an instrument can do, just as you have to do with singers. In both cases you need to know how far you can go with them, what their ranges are, and their endurance. And you try to keep rehearsal interesting and maintain the energy level. You don’t talk too much, and you don’t spend too much time with any one vocal group while everybody else is standing around.”

    After working on the Vaughan Williams pieces, Mr. Klauss asked the group to turn to Vivaldi’s “Gloria” and start from the beginning. Rehearsing is a strenuous workout for both the vocalists and the conductor. “Conducting is more than waving your arms,” Mr. Klauss explained. “It’s facial, vocal, it can involve a flick of the wrist or your entire body. It’s not always easy for people in a group to realize they have to become one instrument, but that’s the goal.”

    It was apparent to an observer that Mr. Klauss had an easy rapport with the group. He was clear about the results he was after, but not autocratic, and he brought a sense of humor to bear when appropriate. He could be encouraging — “Keep the energy going through page eight. It’s not easy, there are a lot of long notes there.” He would shout “Bravo!” when a passage was done properly. Critiques were gentle: “The first B sharp was great, the second one was low” and “That was a little flabby” were two examples.

    In addition to the Choral Society, the concert will include four soloists, all of whom are members of Musica Viva in New York — Mary Hubbell, soprano, Barbara Fusco, mezzo-soprano, Nathan Siler, tenor, and Michael Maliakel, baritone. Neither the soloists nor the musical ensemble participate in the rehearsals, with the exception of the dress rehearsal the day before the concert.

    On the subject of guest conducting, Mr. Klauss said that each group has its own sound. “In choosing the literature you have to select what’s attainable for each group. There are certain pieces you can’t do with a volunteer group that can be done with a professional group. You want something that’s reasonable for the group, yet challenging at the same time. It needs to be a stretch.”

    The vocalists took a break after almost two hours. David M. Brandenburg, the society’s executive director, discussed some of the practical issues related to the concert, from soliciting ushers to finding housing for the visiting soloists. Cookies and snacks followed in the church’s entrance foyer. At 9 p.m. the work resumed with Bach’s Cantata 71.

    “For the Bach I’m not using all the instruments originally used, but I’m using strings, organ, and trumpet,” Mr. Klauss explained. The “Five Mystical Songs” were written between 1906 and 1911 by Ralph Vaughan Williams, an English composer. Set to the poetry of George Herbert, a 17th century metaphysical poet, orator, and Anglican priest, “It’s a beautiful text, for baritone solo, chorus, and full orchestra, but there’s an organ adaptation, which is what we’re using.” “Gloria” will feature strings, trumpet, oboe, and piano.

    In addition to Mr. Klauss’s appearances as guest conductor of various choral and orchestral groups in the United States and abroad, Musica Viva has performed in Paris, Leipzig, Dresden, Polditz, Prague, Florence, and Venice, to name just a few. “Music really is the international language,” Mr. Klauss said. “I do a lot of concerts around the world, and it’s a great way to meet people and get to know other cultures. I’m especially interested in music from other periods of history — what the music meant then and why it was composed.”

    The rehearsal ended at 10. Despite the intensity of the practice, the members of the Choral Society sounded as fresh at the end as at the beginning, if not more so. Their energy and commitment portend a lively and stirring concert. At one point, Mr. Klauss offered the group a few reassuring, or perhaps cautionary, words: “The one thing about live music is we only do it once!”

    Tickets to “Viva Vivaldi!” are $30 in advance, $35 at the door. For those 18 and under, the cost is $10, $15 at the door. Preferred seating is available for $75. Sponsors and benefactors, for $300 and $500 respectively, are invited to dinner at c/o the Maidstone after the concert.

New at Halsey Mckay

    Two new exhibitions will open at Halsey Mckay in East Hampton Saturday with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. “Still Life With Woodpecker” is an interdisciplinary group show that looks beyond traditional definitions of still life to find new meanings in the specific and ordinary. Participating artists are Sarah Dornner, Paul Gagner, Ugo Rondinone, David B. Smith, Ryan Steadman, Torey Thornton, Lisa Williamson, and Kevin Zucker.

    “As the Crow Flies” is a solo exhibition of paintings by An Hoang, an artist based in Brooklyn. Using various techniques, Ms. Hoang’s abstract paintings evoke the spirit and atmosphere of primordial landscapes. Both shows will remain on view through April 30.

Matt Vega at Ille Arts

    Matt Vega, a longtime photographer who has returned to painting, will have a solo show of recent work at Ille Arts in Amagansett from Saturday through April 21. Mr. Vega, who lives in Amagansett, has a B.F.A. in painting from Boston University and an M.F.A. in photography from the Yale School of Art.

    Mr. Vega has concentrated on photography for almost 30 years, focusing, in both black and white and color, on people and places, including the East End. The graffiti-covered subways of New York, where he grew up, have inspired his new paintings. They consider letters as line and shape, symbol, and meaning. An opening reception will be held Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m.

Art and Furniture

    “The Art and Furniture of Mark Larson and Dan Cramer” will open tomorrow at Pritam & Eames in East Hampton and remain on view until July 8. Both based in Minnesota, Mr. Larson, a furniture designer, and Mr. Cramer, a figurative painter, began collaborating on furniture pieces three years ago.

    “This is not simply painted furniture,” according to Bebe Pritam Johnson, a partner in the gallery, “but rather paintings on furniture.” Mr. Cramer, who studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, designed all the furniture, while Mr. Larson, who has an M.F.A. in studio art and art history, created the artwork. In addition to the furniture, the show will include paintings and bowls by Mr. Larson.

Lambrecht in the Jungle

    Those familiar with Laurie Lambrecht’s photographs of Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Wilson, and Esteban Vicente in their studios might be surprised by the images in “Jungle Road,” an exhibition that opens today at Rick Wester Fine Art in Chelsea and will remain on view through May 31.

    In 2012, Ms. Lambrecht, who lives in New York and Bridgehampton, was invited by Christopher Rauschenberg, whose father was Robert Rauschenberg, to photograph at the Rauschenberg Artist Residency program on Captiva Island, Fla., where his father had a studio compound that became an artists’ retreat after his death.

    In addition to fulfilling the commission, Ms. Lambrecht turned her camera on the light, color, and texture of the vegetation surrounding the compound, resulting in images of the brilliantly colored hanging vines and greenery that bring to mind her earlier career as a designer of hand-knit sweaters.

Li-lan Retrospective

    “Li-lan: Five Decades” opens today at the Jason McCoy Gallery in Manhattan with a reception from 5:30 to 8 p.m. The retrospective coincides with the Hudson Hills Press publication of “The Art of Li-lan: A World Achieved,” a monograph by Carter Ratcliff, a poet, art critic, and lecturer.

    Over the years, Li-lan, who lives in New York and East Hampton, has depicted letters, envelopes, postcards, and stamps to express her personal voyage and growth, as well as everyday objects, animals, and ghost-like creatures drawn from Japanese folktales of the Edo period.

    Li-lan has exhibited worldwide, and her work is included in numerous public and private collections in the United States and abroad, among them the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Ohara Museum of Art in Kurashiki, Japan, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, N.C.

Alice Hope’s Pull Tabs

    Last year Alice Hope, an artist from East Hampton known for her compositions and installations utilizing magnets, metal chains, steel shot, and other materials, discovered 700 pounds of aluminum pull tabs in a recycling bin. Not surprisingly, her new exhibition, which opens today at Ricco Maresca in Chelsea, is titled “Tab.” A reception will take place today from 6 to 8 p.m.

    Ms. Hope’s own words hint at what visitors to the gallery might expect: “Since acquiring the collection, my studio has been a tab lab. I’ve been sorting and attaching hundreds of thousands of them, tributizing the hundreds of thousand plays of that one very specific quenching sound, exploiting its cultural and aesthetic references, and transforming its obsolescence into forms that weave in and out of tab’s iconic meaning.”

    The exhibition will be on view through May 24.

Early James Brooks

    “James Brooks: Paintings and Works on Paper, 1945-1949” is on view at Van Doren Waxter in New York City through April 25. Brooks, who lived on the East End with his wife, Charlotte Park, also a painter, from 1949 until his death in 1992, was a first-generation Abstract Expressionist.

    Brooks’s work from the mid-1940s reflects the evolution of his style from realism — he was a Works Progress Administration muralist before World War II — to abstraction. After the war, he renewed his friendships with Jackson Pollock and Philip Guston, whom he had met while working for the W.P.A., and developed an abstract style influenced by the synthetic cubism of Picasso and Braque. By 1948 his style had become more fluid, and he subsequently executed a series of stained and dripped canvases.

    Brooks’s work is in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and many more. Van Doren Waxter will contribute 5 percent of the profit from every sale from the exhibition to the Brooks Park Heritage Project, whose mission is to save the Springs house and studio shared by Brooks and Park and use the property for public art purposes.

Allan Wexler Breaks Ground

    “Breaking Ground,” an exhibition of work by Allan Wexler, is on view at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in SoHo through May 3. Mr. Wexler, who has studios in New York City and Southold, has worked in the fields of architecture, design, and fine art for 45 years. He makes buildings, furniture, vessels, and utensils as backdrops and props for his exploration of everyday, ordinary human activity and the built environment.

    The exhibition includes a series of hand-worked, photo-based digital prints of landscapes containing basic building shapes and “landscape interventions.” Two sculptures that include actual six-foot-tall trees explore how trees become architecture. Another work, from 1975 and never before exhibited, is a collection of tree twigs, catalogued and showcased, that undergo transformations from their natural forms.

    In collaboration with Ellen Wexler, his wife, he has received numerous public art commissions, including two permanent installations in New York City.

Quilts in Sag Harbor

    The Eastville Community Historical Society is presenting “Warmth,” an exhibition of quilts featuring Californian heritage, Southern, and regional quilters now through July 30 at the Heritage House in Sag Harbor. Patricia Turner, a folklorist and scholar from Long Island who is dean and vice provost for the Division of Undergraduate Education at U.C.L.A., has organized the show, which will have an opening reception Saturday from 2 to 5 p.m.

    The mission of the Eastville Community Historical Society is to preserve historic buildings and research, and collect and disseminate information about the history of the Eastville area of Sag Harbor, one of the earliest known working-class communities composed of African-Americans, Native Americans, and European immigrants.

    Those who thought the recent film version of “August: Osage County” was shrill might find the current production at the Southampton Cultural Center under Michael Disher’s direction more to their liking.

    The film boasted many pretty people and some titanic acting talent, but John Wells, its director, started his actors, and particularly Meryl Streep, who played Violet Weston as an outsized force of nature, at an Olympian-level 11. Mr. Disher and his Violet, Linda McKnight, show the same drug-addled mania and confusion with similar pathos but at an intensity befitting a mortal. Ms. Streep, of course, has earned the right to have fun being repellent. Ms. McKnight, however, displays a great deal more empathy in her interpretation. That is not to say she doesn’t crackle with bitterness and withering ripostes, but those moments are crescendoes, not a sustained wail.

    The overall light-handed approach also highlights Tracy Lett’s text, which is actually funny, something that doesn’t always come across in the film.

    Sam Shepard, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Dermot Mulroney were the key male roles in the film, which are mainly foils to the female characters, and are easy on the eyes, but Philip Reichert, John Leonard, Stephan Scheck, Joseph Marshall, and Paul Consiglio fulfill their roles ably.

    Mr. Reichert had the biggest shoes to fill as Beverly Weston. The patriarch of the family and award-winning poet is only seen onstage in the prologue interviewing a potential nurse and aide to Violet, played by Josephine Wallace. Violet has cancer and an addiction to pills, as well, which complements or clashes with Beverly’s alcoholism, depending on the hour. Beverly is a role that needs to be indelible, as the cast and plot meander around his disappearance in the next scene and the rest of the play.

    Mr. Shepard, a playwright who came from an alcoholic family with ties to the American West, played the role effortlessly, as if he were merely breathing. It may have been him that I was imagining as the play moved forward. Mr. Reich­ert had a similar poetic gentleness, but less ease with the text. It was probably due to it being the first night back from a performance break, and his relative distance from my section of the theater.

    The setting is the Weston house in Oklahoma, lacking air-conditioning in late summer. The set takes on various parts of the house, including the attic, an outdoor area, the living room, and dining room. The actors move from the center to extreme sides of the stage and even talk over each other in some scenes. It is a lot to take in and sometimes to decipher when one is seated at the opposite part of the theater from where the action is occurring.

    Beverly’s disappearance is quickly established, and by scene one much of the family has gathered at the house. There are various sources of tension and humor running through all of the relationships on display from siblings, husbands, cousins, parents, and children. Yet, the central drama is played out between Violet and her daughter Barbara, the heir apparent to her mother’s tart mouth and bitterness. As played by Bonnie Grice, Barbara is weary in the throes of menopause and deeply hurt by her husband’s infidelity. Julia Roberts in the film role hit every line hard, so that even the humor sounded like a screed. Ms. Grice is wan and quiet in her delivery, the sounds of a woman in the process of disappearing into middle age, which makes the more emotional moments stand out by comparison.

    As the play progresses, it seems as if Violet’s emotionally violent personality is taking possession of Barbara. These are deep fault lines that trace back generations to a rough-hewn settler survival instinct that called for a certain ruthlessness in tougher times. It’s a legacy that has driven many of the family members away to different counties, states, or regions. The house and Violet’s harsh and slurred truth-telling seem to bring those latent instincts back to those visiting, and a number of tense and extreme scenes follow from it. The cast takes us through those paces, making the scenes emotionally resonant.

    It may have been overkill to offer this production this year, so soon after the movie’s release, but its subtler interpretation of the Pulitizer Prize-winning text is worth seeing while the film still lingers in recent memory. The play will be presented tonight at 7:30, tomorrow and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Tickets cost $22, or $12 for students under 21. They are available in advance at southamptonculturalcenter.org.

    Chilling winds didn’t deter some 75 members of the local art community from attending the first public meeting of the East Hampton Arts Council last week at Ashawagh Hall in Springs. The organization, which is co-chaired by Jane Martin and Kate Mueth, aims to serve as a liaison to the Town of East Hampton on issues regarding the performing, literary, and visual arts and to make the arts a more integral part of the community.

    After welcoming the guests, Ms. Mueth handed the microphone to East Hampton Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, who credited Cindy Loewen and Ms. Mueth with bringing the idea of an arts council to her and Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc last year. “Arts are a local industry and a part of our local economy,” she said, summing up her talk with quotations from Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, and Charles Segars, C.E.O. of the Ovation arts network, both of whom have stressed the importance of the arts in developing vital communities.

    Ms. Martin, a multidisciplinary artist, said that one of her first priorities was affordable working space. “We’re here to gather information from you so we can help you in whatever ways you feel are important,” she said.

    She cited three properties that were of potential use as arts venues: Boys Harbor in East Hampton, the James Brooks-Charlotte Park property on Neck Path in Springs, and the Duck Creek/Edwards Farm off Three Mile Harbor Road, also in Springs, which was the site of Sydney Albertini’s Parrish Road Show project last summer.

    She explained to the group that commerce is not currently allowed on community preservation fund properties. “We need to go to Albany to convince them to change that,” she said. “Artists need to sell their work.”

    Council members, who introduced themselves after Ms. Martin spoke, are Carol Steinberg, an arts lawyer, Beth Meredith, administrator of the annual Springs Invitational exhibition, Loring Bolger, Springs Improvement Society board member, Coleen McGowan, arts coordinator at the Springs School, Janet Jennings, an artist and teacher, Melissa Mapes, an artist, Scott Bluedorn, artist and gallerist, and Ralph Carpentier, artist.

    Ms. Mueth, an actress, director, and founder of the Neo-Political Cowgirls dance company, stressed the importance of “showing up.” “We have to encourage the belief that all the arts are vital to our town, and if we can do that, our town will flourish and our children will flourish.”

    A question-and-answer session concluded the meeting. Questionnaires were distributed, accompanied by repeated injunctions to those in attendance to provide the council with input and to attend not only future council meetings but also town board meetings in order to make their needs known.

A Hip to Hip Theatre production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” will be presented tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. in Agawam Park in Southampton. It will be followed by “As You Like It” on Saturday at the same time. The free program is being offered by the Southampton Cultural Center.

The play will be preceded at 6:30 by “Kids and the Classics,” a 45-minute companion piece to the play designed to give children ages 4 to 14 a preview of the characters and situations and to create links between the text and their own lives.

   Classical music will return to the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill tomorrow at 6 p.m. with the first of four Salon Series concerts. Assaff Weisman, a pianist who has appeared at major venues in Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas, will perform works by Beethoven, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, and Messiaen in the inaugural program.

    Future concerts will feature the pianists Daria Rabotkina, on Friday, April 11; Tanya Gabrielian, on April 18, and Ching-Yun Hu, on April 25. Tickets are $20 per concert, $10 for Parrish members, and may be purchased at parrishart.org.

    The Parrish’s annual “spring fling” dance party and fund-raiser will take place Saturday from 7:30 to 11:30 p.m. The evening will feature live music by Noiz, hors d’oeuvres, an open bar, and a silent auction of goods and services offered by East End businesses and the professional community.

    New this year is an “art detective” scavenger hunt in the galleries, with prizes awarded to the winners. The museum’s education department benefits from the event. Tickets, at $225, are available through parrishart.org.

    The John Drew Theater Lab will present “The April Fool’s Show,” a free staged reading directed by Chloe Dirksen, on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. The program will include scenes from a range of comic plays, new work, and “a song or two,” according to Guild Hall.

    Alan Ceppos, Peter Connolly, Lydia Franco-Hodges, Josh Gladstone, Kate Mueth, Bobby Peterson on piano, and Liz Joyce of Goat on a Boat Puppet Theatre will perform along with Ms. Dirksen, who lives in Sag Harbor and has appeared at Bay Street Theatre in “The Crucible” and, most recently, “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

    The Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton will screen “The Sugar Connection: Holland, Barbados, Shelter Island,” a documentary directed by Gaynell Stone, on Monday at 5:30 p.m. The film follows an eight-year archeological dig at Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island.

    The Sylvesters, who were the first European settlers on Shelter Island,  used their property there to provision their sugar plantations in Barbados. The film examines the Dutch influence on Long Island, the trade networks of the 17th century, and the role played by slavery. Ms. Stone, executive director of the Suffolk County Archeological Association, will introduce the film.

    Fifteen years ago Julie Keyes, an artist, art dealer, art consultant, and real estate agent at Saunders and Associates in Bridgehampton, met Adam Tihany, an internationally renowned interior designer. The introduction, made by Ms. Keyes’s beau, Nathan Slate Joseph, an artist who works out of a barn in Bridgehampton and lives with Ms. Keyes in Sag Harbor and New York, changed her life.

    “Adam is the most talented interior designer out there. He’s as commanding a presence as any Hollywood star I have ever met and he’s as good at his job as it gets,” said Ms. Keyes, whose company, Keyes Art Projects, has offices in Sag Harbor and Williamsburg. “And he trusted me to make choices in a way that I cannot believe.”

    He obviously still trusts her as she continues to work with him to curate art on numerous high-profile global hotel projects around the world.

    In December, Ms. Keyes, who gave up her gallery on West 21st Street in New York two years ago, completed work at the Breakers in Palm Beach, Fla. She has several ongoing projects with Mr. Tihany from California to Dubai. For these latter-day palaces, Ms. Keyes sources many of the paintings, prints, and sculptural pieces to adorn lobbies, spas, bars, and rooms from South Fork artists. “I’ve lived in a lot of places and the East End has a huge number of really good artists,” she said. For one thing, “The legacy of what has occurred here historically looms over everybody’s easel.” For another, “It’s really expensive to live here. You can’t be a bad artist and live in Sag Harbor unless somebody else is paying your bills.”

    At the Breakers, Ms. Keyes provided art for the legendary hotel’s bar and its restaurant, Flagler Steakhouse, whose freshly renovated interior is described on the hotel’s website as “preppy-luxe red, white, and blue.”

    While Mr. Tihany renovates the Beverly Hills Hotel, which Ms. Keyes called “the signature hotel of the country,” she is finding the artwork for its rooms, suites, and halls. She used landscapes by Walter Us, a Sag Harbor artist, and abstract paintings by Elizabeth Barber Leventhal of Marietta, Ga., and Sag Harbor. Originals were placed in high-end suites while Joan Kraisky, an East Hampton artist and printer, made a numbered print run of the pieces for use elsewhere. To give the feel of grand Hollywood estates, Ms. Keyes hired a photographer to shoot some of the grand local gardens. Ms. Kraisky manipulated the images to give them a vintage ’50s feel.  

    For the Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas’s presidential suites, she used prints by Donald Sultan, a Sag Harbor artist, and Dan Christensen, who lived and worked in East Hampton before his death in 2007. For a dramatic backdrop to the hotel’s spa, whose atmosphere reflects “the exotic luxury of 1930s Shanghai,” according to its website, Josh Lehrer, a photographer with a house in Sagaponack, shot images of an Asian model in poses reminiscent of that period and place. The pictures were printed on watercolor paper in various sizes and hung throughout the spa, some taking up an entire wall. For around the pool, Ms. Keyes herself rendered surreal images of trees, which were then superimposed on cabana curtains. 

    In the “understated elegance” of the Armani Hotel in Dubai, located in the Burj Khalifa, which bills itself as the world’s tallest building, she installed a large sculptural piece composed of brass rods by Carol Bove, an artist represented by New York’s Maccarone gallery. “The rods were attached to the ceiling in a configuration of celestial bodies, a horoscope to mark the birthday of the hotel,” said Ms. Keyes. Ms. Bove represented the United States in last year’s Venice Biennale. 

    Her work with Mr. Tihany led her to collaborate with another world-renowned designer, David Rockwell. For this, her biggest project to date, she is in the process of sourcing all the art for the Andaz Maui at Wailea, a Hyatt hotel in Hawaii. In her approach she has been “very sensitive to the Hawaiian culture,” with each piece “embodying the spiritual, cultural, and historic significance” of the Pacific state. Among the local artists she featured there was Sag Harbor’s Brian O’Leary, whose bold abstract prints adorn the suites. An outdoor restaurant is the idyllic repository for a white ceramic jardiniere by Joseph Mitrani of Greenport Pottery. For the lobby,  Ms. Keyes shepherded a group of Springs women to handcraft hundreds of bowling-ball-size orbs strung with twine to hang from the ceiling.

    In February Ms. Keyes coordinated a Viennese art walk in New York as part of Carnegie Hall’s Vienna City of Dreams festival, and she organized four New York galleries to display works indicative of Vienna’s contemporary visual arts scene. A show for Walter Us, who hails from Vienna, was held at Mark Borghi Fine Art on March 16. The work of Erwin Wurm can be seen at the Lehmann Maupin Gallery on West 26th Street through April 26. 

    In keeping with her upscale projects, Ms. Keyes will be curating the art on a 180-foot yacht in Cannes from the fleet of Camper and Nicholsons, a luxury yacht brokerage, during an international boat show in September.

    Meanwhile, like last year, this summer Ms. Keyes will once again work with Scott Murphy of Shelter Island and Lucas Lai of Sagaponack to stage shows at Dirt Gallery, their pop-up space in Wainscott.