Arts

“Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life,” the poet laureate Robert Southey informed Charlotte Bronte when she sent him her poems, along with her sibling Anne’s writing, to critique. The Brontes went on, quite efficiently, to make it their business.

Who better to consider the question “Is fashion art?” than Valerie Steele, a writer, fashion historian, and director and chief curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Dr. Steele will do so at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill tomorrow at 6 p.m. in a talk that will explore how the exhibition of fashion in museums has blurred the line between art and fashion and how fashion designers, curators, and critics weigh in on the subject. A question-and-answer session will follow the lecture. Tickets are $12, free for members and students.

Janice Friedman, a jazz pianist and vocalist, and Marco Panascia, a bassist, will perform a program of jazz standards and original songs in a free concert at the Montauk Library on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.

“An Evening With Lorna Luft,” a new show from the acclaimed stage, screen, and television actress and vocalist, will take place Monday evening at 8 at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor as part of its Music Mondays cabaret series.

The Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival kicks off its month-long, 13-concert series on July 30 with a program of music by Johannes Brahms, Clara Schumann, and Robert Schumann, in a composer portrait called “Love, Genius, Madness,” narrated by Alan Alda.

“Summer Roses: The Gypsy Girl and the Nightingale,” an hourlong concert of music by Spanish composers, will take place at the Southampton Cultural Center on Pond Lane on Sunday at 5 p.m.

The Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum will present “Long Island Landscapes,” a group show organized by Peter J. Marcelle, from Saturday through Aug. 1, with a reception set for Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. “The Girl Next Door” will open Saturday at the RJD Gallery in Bridgehampton with a reception from 6 to 8:30 p.m. A benefit for the Hetrick-Martin Institute, an organization dedicated to serving L.G.B.T.Q. youth, the show will run through Aug. 13.

By any measure Johannes Brahms was an “Old Master” and it was with his German Requiem, that musical salve for human suffering in the face of death that the Choral Society of the Hamptons, joined by the Greenwich Village Chamber Singers and the South Fork Chamber Orchestra, closed its 2016-2017 concert season on Saturday in the Parish Hall of Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton.

On Sunday at 7 p.m., Dennis Elsas will present “Rock ’n’ Roll Never Forgets,” a multimedia show featuring highlights from his interviews with rock ’n’ roll royals, at Guild Hall in East Hampton.

If you are among those who are frustrated by the crowds and noise of summer (and who isn’t?) the East Hampton Historical Society exhibition now at Clinton Academy offers a chance to reflect on simpler times.

Race and matrimony are at the heart of “Intimate Apparel,” a 2003 play by Lynn Nottage in revival now through July 30 at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor.

The Platform series at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill provides an occasion for individual artists to consider the entire museum over a period of months as a location for interdisciplinary artworks and installations.

Ashawagh Hall in Springs will be the site of the third Hamptons Plein Air invitational from tomorrow through July 23. Twenty-one artists will not only participate in the exhibition but also paint outdoors daily at locations in East Hampton and Springs. The East End Photographers Group’s summer exhibition will open at the Water Mill Museum with a reception next Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. and continue through Aug. 13.

Yung Jake Patterson is bringing his emoji.ink paintings to the Tripoli Gallery in Southampton.

Guild Hall has a lively week ahead, with performances by the internationally acclaimed Pilobolus Dance Theater, the Emmy and Tony Award-winning actress and vocalist Bebe Neuwirth, the classical musicians Boyd Meets Girl, and a talk by Misty Copeland, a principal dancer of the American Ballet Theater.

Via Brooklyn will present "The 39 Steps," which spoofs Hitchcock’s murder mystery with a cast of four playing more than 50 characters, along with fast changes, shadow puppets, fog machines, projections, questionable accents, and moustaches.

The Montauk Library will present “What’s All That Jazz About?” on Wednesday evening at 7:30.

Bay Street Theater will introduce the concert series “Music Mondays” on July 10 at 8 p.m. with a performance by the Tony Award-winner Betty Buckley, whose many credits include “Cats,” “Sunset Boulevard,” and the Bay Street production of “Grey Gardens.”

Strange, almost surreal forms are central to Deborah Buck's paintings, so they aren’t resolutely abstract. But, with a few exceptions, they are not figurative either--except perhaps in her head, where magic is the norm.

The Bridgehampton Antiques and Modern Design Show will take place at the Bridgehampton Community House through Sunday.

The third annual Southampton Jewish Film Festival offers an opportunity to explore a wide span of Jewish history and culture, with films ranging from a documentary about American delicatessens to a narrative feature that eerily foreshadows the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris.

As part of its “Music on the Terrace” series, the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill will host Mamalee Rose and Friends, a popular East End band that has mixed blues, gospel, and lively vocals for more than 20 years.

The Hamptons International Film Festival’s SummerDocs series will kick off its 2017 season with “Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press” on Saturday at 7 p.m. at Guild Hall in East Hampton. Alec Baldwin will host the screening.

“Intimate Apparel,” an early play by Lynn Nottage at Bay Street Theater, takes audiences back in time to 1905 New York, where Esther Mills, an African-American seamstress, has a successful business.

In an old Southampton power station, Jeff Lincoln's “The Organic Impulse in Contemporary Art and Design” celebrates how artists and designers look to nature and organic shapes and motifs to inform their work.

Paintings and works on paper by the East Hampton artist Susan Vecsey are on view at the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor though Sept. 4. The White Room Gallery in Bridgehampton will present “Out of Bounds,” a group exhibition, from Monday through July 31, with a reception set for July 15 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Outdoor film screenings will take place this summer from Montauk to Southampton and beyond.

In connection with its exhibition of American landscape paintings by Fairfield Porter, Neil Welliver, and Casey Chalem Anderson, Ille Arts in Amagansett will present a performance of folk and roots music by the Fairlane Family on Saturday night from 7 to 10.

The Southampton Cultural Center will kick off its annual Concerts in the Park series with a performance by Nancy Atlas on Monday at 6:30 p.m. at Agawam Park.

Jazz on the Terrace, an annual summer series at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, will open this year with “The Music of Burt Bacharach and Michael Jackson,” a performance by The Iris Ornig Group, tomorrow at 6 p.m.