ANDREW M. GOLDSTEIN

"(Untitled) Portrait of Dad" walk through discussion with artist Diana Shpungin and essay author Rachel Gugelberger at Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, 29 Orchard Street, June 18, 4 p.m., stephanstoyanovgallery.com

Latvian-born artist Diana Shpungin has shaken up the summer's early doldrums with an elegiac and deeply moving show at the Lower East Side's Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, which has drawn accolades for its combination of drawings, video, and sculpture reflecting on the death of her father. Taking her title from a Felix Gonzales-Torres candy assemblage, Shpungin — a Parsons teacher who previously worked for nearly a decade as part of a collaborative duo with Nicole Engelmann — also evokes her dad's life, both before and after the family's flight from the USSR, through such personal touches as his potato salad recipe (free for viewers to take home) and rubbings from his gravestone. This Saturday, the artist will discuss her show (running through July 4) with catalogue author Rachel Gugelberger. In the show's spirit of generosity, the catalogue will be free to anyone who comes to the talk.

Crest Hardware Art Show presents Crest Fest '11 at 558 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, June 18, 1-7 p.m., cresthardwareartshow.com

Do you like art? Do you like music? Do you like Brooklyn? Do you like drinking for free? If you're reading ARTINFO, it's likely that the answer is yes to all of the above. One last question: Do you really, really like construction tools and hardware? Like, a lot? If the answer is yes then you're in luck this weekend, because it's time again for the annual Crest Hardware Art Show, a group exhibition held at Greenpoint's Crest Hardware store that is dedicated entirely to art "about/made with/or inspired by hardware." (Yes, that does allow for some latitude.) The work on view is always quirky and sometimes good — organizers like to bill themselves as a feeding pool for MoMA PS1 — and after checking it out there's the Crest Fest, offering a lineup of musical acts in an outdoor garden. Beverages, one might add, are courtesy of such find tipple purveyors as Vine Wine, Bomb Lager, Radeberger Pilsner, and Harpoon Brewery. After a few of those you might think you're at Basel's Kunsthalle beer garden with Naomi Campbell after all.

BEN DAVIS

The Chadwicks "Furling the Spanker: Masterworks from the Chadwicks' Nautical Collection" at Winkleman Gallery, 621 West 27th Street, opening June 16, 6-8 p.m., through July 29, winkleman.com

Have how heard the tale of the Chadwicks, the once-great British family who, at the height of their fame between the 17th and 19th centuries, cast a spell over New York with their wealth and formidable collection of nautical ephemera? Well, the tale of the magnificent Chadwicks — and the less magnificent modern day heirs of the clan — comes to Winkleman Gallery this Thursday, in an exhibition featuring such curiosities as the family's collection of "Shipwreck Memorials," small relief sculptures lovingly commemorating a variety of nautical tragedies. The centerpiece of the show is a "scale model" of Admiral Nelson's HMS Victory, the very boat he went down in at the legendary Battle of Trafalgar (the Chadwicks are of British stock, you know). These days the model has been repurposed as a functional bar and sometimes stage where scions of the Chadwick clan have been known to reenact Nelson's death speech. This baroque bit of whimsy is dreamed up, of course, by a pair of artists: Jimbo Blachly and Lytle Shaw, who style themselves as the keepers of the Chadwick family archives. The duo's inventions, however, are vivid enough to get real art attention, and the Chadwicks' "Golden-Age Microbrewery" diorama is featured in the Museum of Arts and Design's current "Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities" show.

"Mail Art Show" at Hyperallergic HQ, 181 North 11th Street, Suite 302, Brooklyn, opening June 17 6-9 p.m., through June 19, northsideopenstudios.org

As part of the four-day Northside Open Studios, which spotlights art in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, the lively Brooklyn "blogozine" Hyperallergic hosts this exhibition of "mail art" received from all over, via an open Web call (you can see some of the things they have received, here). Hyperallergic is great at weaving a sense of communion with its online followers, so this opening should be fun.

EMMA ALLEN

Fernando Bryce "El Mundo en Llamas" at Alexander and Bonin, 132 10th Avenue, through June 18, alexanderandbonin.com

"El Mundo en Llamas" ("The World in Flames") presents a collection of 92 of Bryce's fabulous, hand-drawn recreations of international newspaper front pages from World War II. I'm a little obsessed with print media from this era — from the slickly simplistic mass-produced propaganda, to the sadistically, satirically, and often sadly humorous publications that soldiers printed and circulated among themselves on the front lines. Here, the artist probes the veracity of the supposedly objective "news," of supposedly documentary photographs, of ads that for decades have manipulated our visceral reactions to global events to get us to consume commercial products. The result is art that is graphically stunning as well as thoroughly unsettling. Check the show out before it closes!

Simon Gray's "The Old Masters" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, 1000 5th Avenue, June 20 and 27, 7 p.m., metmuseum.org

Also, go see a staged readings of the late British playwright Simon Gray's drama, which had its American premiere at New Haven's Long Wharf Theater earlier this year and was first produced in 2004 in London under the direction of the great Harold Pinter. The play is set in 1937, in the Italian villa of the great Renaissance art historian Bernard Berenson (Sam Waterson), whose career is sputtering. His friend, preeminent art dealer Lord Joseph Duveen (Brian Murray), whose reputation also is imperiled, comes to visit. Under the looming shadow of an ascendant Mussolini (whom Berenson calls "the Duck"), the duo debate whether a painting, "The Adoration of the Shepherds," is attributable to Giorgione or Titian. And what better setting for such a theatrical query than the Met?

KATE DEIMLING

"Stone Sky Over Thingworld" at bitforms, 529 West 20th Street, through July 29, bitforms.com

Gotta love this title, even if I'm not sure what it means. The show brings together four young international digital media artists — Michelle Ceja, Brenna Murphy, Jon Rafman, and Artie Vierkant — who do intriguing things that I'm also not sure I understand, like nested tables housing digitally-crafted objects and mental landscape painting using an open-source cgi program. But I do know that curator Claudia Hart is onto something really interesting when she observes how a new generation of digital artists seems "free to exchange themes, iconography, and stylistic elements, creating an astonishingly strong inter-relatedness across an international geography."

"Coppélia" performed by American Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera House, June 16 and 17, 7:30 p.m., June 18 at 2 and 8 p.m., June 20 at 7:30 p.m., abt.org

Like "The Nutcracker," the ballet "Coppélia" is based on a tale by that crazily inventive German Romantic master E.T.A. Hoffmann. Life-sized dolls come alive in what ABT calls a "sweet and comedic" ballet staged and directed by Frederic Franklin.

JULIA HALPERIN

Secret Garden pARTy II silent auction to benefit Dumbo Arts Center, 30 Washington Street, Brooklyn, June 16, 6-10 p.m., dumboartscenter.org

The Dumbo Arts Center is holding its second annual fundraising party and silent auction. While the wisdom of holding a charity event during Art Basel — when most of the big spenders are out of town, is questionable — the roster of artists for sale is impressive. A well-heeled Brooklynite can snap up work by Alexander Calder, Lee Bontecou, and John Baldessari. Plus, organizers promise a "pleasurable garden themed environment" (complete with real grass!), sangria, and cupcakes. So even if you, like me, can't afford to bid on a masterpiece — the ticket price is enough — you'll at least get some freebies and a chance to look at interesting art you'll probably never see again, all for a good cause.

"Dawn Till Dusk" at Jen Bekman Projects, 6 Spring Street, opening June 17, 6-9 p.m., through July 30, jenbekman.com

Christian Marclay's award-winning video "The Clock" may be the hottest way to show time passing since the sundial, but Jen Bekman Gallery is going old school in its forthcoming group show "Dawn Till Dusk." The show arranges artworks by 26 established and emerging artists — all of which deal in some way with light, dark, and the passing of hours — to chronicle the course of a day. The eclectic mix of artists includes Ed Ruscha, Alec Soth, Sally Mann, and Rachel Barrett. Telling time with the sun is the new clock.

DANIEL KUNITZ

Leon Kossoff at Mitchell-Innes Nash, 534 West 26th Street, through June 18, miandn.com

Nothing suits the summer better than the slow pleasures of looking, slowly, at paintings from the brush of a master paint-handler: the British artist Leon Kossoff fits the bill perfectly. However, you'll have to rush to see the work because his show of paintings from the last decade closes on June 18. Kossoff himself looked long and lovingly — at, for instance, a cherry tree in his garden, which is represented here in multiple views; at a nearby church; at the faces of his portrait subjects. Especially when so much of even the best art is dematerialized, its concepts spread across multiple mediums, reveling in an artist like Kossoff, who captures his observations in mucky, meaty, toothsome paint, allows you to reboot your senses, refresh them. Kossoff is entering his ninth decade, and he can out-feel most people a quarter his age. Get down with him before the weekend comes.

JACLYN LORASO

Linda McCartney "Life in Photographs" at Bonni Benrubi Gallery, 41 East 57th Street, through July 29, bonnibenrubi.com

If you say you've never dreamed about being a rock star, or even about hanging out with one, you're lying. As a young photo undergrad who had seen "Almost Famous" way too many times, I idolized Linda McCartney: Photographer shoots rock stars, photographer marries rock star, photographer becomes rock star. McCartney's show at Bonni Benrubi covers the obvious (you know, that British band), but also features a few self-portrait outtakes, some still lifes, and portraits of rock stars of a non-musical bent, such as Allen Ginsberg, Kate Moss, and Willem de Kooning. Of course, if you're coming just for the Beatles, you won't be disappointed. These rare shots are intimate and touching — soak them in, put them together, and leave with a fuller picture of a life.