212-708-9400, moma.org

MILLENNIUM: LOWER MANHATTAN IN THE 1990S’ at the Skyscraper Museum (through April). This plucky Battery Park institution transports us back to the years of Rudy Giuliani, Lauryn Hill and 128-kilobit modems to reveal the enduring urban legacy of a decade bookended by recession and terror. In the wake of the 1987 stock-market crash, landlords in the financial district rezoned their old skyscrapers for residential occupancy, and more than 20 towers were landmarked, including the ornate Standard Oil building at 26 Broadway and the home of Delmonico’s at 56 Beaver Street. Battery Park City flowered; yuppies priced out of Tribeca came down to Wall Street; a new Guggenheim, designed by a fresh-out-of-Bilbao Frank Gehry, nearly arose by South Street Seaport. From this distance the 1990s can seem almost like a golden age, not least given that, 16 years after 9/11, construction at the underwhelming new World Trade Center is still not finished. (Farago)

212-945-6324, skyscraper.org

‘MICHELANGELO: DIVINE DRAFTSMAN AND DESIGNER,’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Feb. 12). A monument to a monument. With 133 drawings by the beyond-famous artist on loan from some 50 front-rank collections, this show is a curatorial coup and an art historical tour de force: a panoptic view of a titanic career as recorded in the most fragile of media: paper, chalk and ink. And it demands that you be fully present. Drawing is more than a graphic experience; it’s a textural one, about the pressure of crayon and pen on a page; the subliminal fade and focus of lines; the weave and shadow-creating swells of surfaces. These are effects that can’t be captured by a smartphone.

(Holland Cotter)

212-535-7710, metmuseum.org

‘THE VIETNAM WAR: 1945-1975’ at the New-York Historical Society (through April 22). In contrast to the PBS series “The Vietnam War,” this jammed exhibition delivers historical data, a lot of it, quick-and-dirty, through labels, film clips, audio bytes and objects, some of which fall under a broad definition of art. Along with paintings by contemporary Vietnamese artists, there’s graffiti-style drawing on combat helmets and Zippo lighters, and period design in album covers and protest posters. Words and images work together in murals labeled “Home Front” and “War Front” that put you in the middle of the war’s primary issues and events. (Cotter)

212-873-3400, nyhistory.org

Last Chance

NEW YORK CERAMICS AND GLASS FAIR AT THE BOHEMIAN NATIONAL HALL At the 19th annual fair, running through Sunday, both old and new works will be celebrated. Visitors can see a two-foot-tall “Monkey Jug,” representing the KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa, that was sculpted in 2017, and the recent “Pouring Pot With Green Spout” by the potter Mike Helke. But older pieces will also be on display, including tobacco leaf pattern plates from 18th-century China and porcelain chargers from the Dutch East India Company that date from 1670-1720. Some 30 exhibitors will be on hand. Among their displays will be 18th- and early 19th-century gold and paste jewelry, and works from the contemporary artists Martha Rieger and Katherine Houston. A lecture program is also part of the fair. (Peter Libbey)

nyceramicsandglass.com

‘TRIGGER: GENDER AS A TOOL AND A WEAPON’ at the New Museum (through Sunday). With transgender rights in the news, this big group show on the concepts of “trans” and “queer” in art is ideally timed. A difficulty is that queer, and to some extent trans, are hard to capture, institutionally. They don’t sit still. Trans is defined by the idea that the boundaries of gender (and race, and class) are porous, and that crossings in any direction are negotiable. Queer is even more category-averse. It’s not so much a personal identity as a political impulse, a strategy for thwarting assimilation and sowing constructive chaos. Still, some excellent artists are on hand to tackle the subjects, which venture into trans-species territory with the artist Nayland Blake’s bearlike “fursona” named Gnomen.