[Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead.]

‘THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ALVIN BALTROP’ at the Bronx Museum of the Arts (through Feb. 9). New York City is a gateway for new talent. It’s also an archive of art careers past. Some come to light only after artists have departed, as is the case with Baltrop, an American photographer who was unknown to the mainstream art world when he died in 2004 at 55, and who now has a bright monument of a retrospective at this Bronx museum. That he was black, gay and working class accounts in part for his invisibility, but so does the subject matter he chose: a string of derelict Hudson River shipping piers that, in the 1970s and ’80s, became a preserve for gay sex and communion. In assiduously recording both the architecture of the piers and the amorous action they housed, Baltrop created a monument to the city itself at the time when it was both falling apart and radiating liberationist energy. (Cotter)

718-681-6000, bronxmuseum.org

★ ‘MAKING MARVELS: SCIENCE & SPLENDOR AT THE COURTS OF EUROPE’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through March 1). This exhibition brings together nearly 170 elaborately crafted objects, many never seen in the United States: the mesmerizing 41-carat “Dresden Green,” an ornate silver table decorated with sea nymphs, a clock with Copernicus depicted in gilded brass. Some, like a chariot carrying the wine god Bacchus, are spectacularly inventive — Bacchus can raise a toast, roll his eyes and even stick out his tongue. Some, like a charming rhinoceros, a collage created from tortoiseshell, pearls and shells, are merely lovely. The show could have been simply a display of ornamental wealth for the one percent of long ago, an abundance of gold and silver that was meant to be shown off in any way possible. But “Making Marvels” is about more than that. (James Barron)

212-535-7710, metmuseum.org

MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK at various locations (Jan. 25-Feb. 1). Painting and sculpture often overshadow drawing, or what Roberta Smith, the co-chief art critic of The New York Times, has called “the most intimate of art mediums.” But this annual showcase on the Upper East Side, which takes place at more than 20 locations clustered around Madison Avenue (as well as at Sotheby’s and Christie’s), spotlights works of paper and ink, charcoal or graphite. Among the highlights are Moeller Fine Art’s “The Enchanted World of Lyonel Feininger,” a collection of drawings and painted wooden pieces by that German-American artist, and the reunion of Guercino’s recently rediscovered “Aurora” with its preparatory drawing at Christopher Bishop Fine Art. (Libbey)

masterdrawingsnewyork.com

★ ‘CHARLES RAY AND THE HILL COLLECTION’ at the Hill Art Foundation (through Feb. 15). This Los Angeles-based sculptor is one of the most painstaking artists working today; he’s certainly among the slowest, taking years to finish a single statue of silver or aluminum, and that makes every exhibition of his an event. This knife-sharp show, which Ray has installed himself with his habitual exactitude, contrasts five bronzes of the 15th and 16th centuries (of a lion, of Bacchus, of Christ on the cross) with his own sculptures of a sleeping mime reclining on a daybed, or a mountain lion tearing into a stray dog in the Hollywood Hills. Where his Renaissance and Baroque predecessors used molds and wax to cast their sculptures, Ray relies on 3-D scanning and CNC machining: highly precise technologies that translate objects into data that can be output to a robotic mill. But his concerns are the same as artists 500 years gone — how bodies can be transubstantiated into precious metal, and take on new meaning and value. (Farago)

212-337-4455, hillartfoundation.org

‘T. REX: THE ULTIMATE PREDATOR’ at the American Museum of Natural History (through Aug. 9). Everyone’s favorite 18,000-pound prehistoric killer gets the star treatment in this eye-opening exhibition, which presents the latest scientific research on T. rex and also introduces many other tyrannosaurs, some discovered only in this century in China and Mongolia. T. rex evolved mainly during the Cretaceous period to have keen eyes, spindly arms and massive conical teeth, which packed a punch that has never been matched by any other creature; the dinosaur could even swallow whole bones, as affirmed here by a kid-friendly display of fossilized excrement. The show mixes 66-million-year-old teeth with the latest 3-D prints of dino bones, and also presents new models of T. rex as a baby, a juvenile and a full-grown annihilator. Turns out this most savage beast was covered with — believe it! — a soft coat of beige or white feathers. (Farago)

212-769-5100, amnh.org