Pittsburgh has close to 90 active art galleries and museums with even more contemporary art and sculpture displays adorning restaurants, coffee shops, salons, tattoo parlors, libraries and office buildings across the city. The mix of local, national and international artists offers a constant flow of visual food for thought.   Each month NEXTpittsburgh will feature new openings and special art events in our new series, NEXT in the Gallery. Keep us posted on what’s new in your neighborhood — email me at [email protected] Freeman Center for Imagination 5006 Penn Ave., Garfield“Pittsburgh’s Avant-Garde” on view until March 7What is avant-garde visual art in Pittsburgh? Center Director Sheila Ali has assembled 60 works of painting, photography, sculpture, ceramics, collage and video that suggest 60 intriguing answers.The show is a preview of her upcoming book “Pittsburgh’s Avant-Garde: 60 Years Inside the Underground Art Scene,” a 400-page volume cataloguing 600+ images by 75 local artists along with art organization profiles and essays by art critics and collectors on the history of avant-garde art in Pittsburgh.“Puppet Master” by Tom Sarver. Photo courtesy of the Irma Freeman Center for the Imagination.“Artists in Pittsburgh don’t stay in one static category,” says Ali. “They keep trying new things, and that has enabled me to gather a very unique group of artists for this show.”The viewer likely won’t come away with a hard-and-fast definition of the Pittsburgh Avant-Garde but will get a provocative look at the roots of today’s diverse local art community.Exhibition-related events continue through February with an art panel discussion, card making and miniatures workshops, book release dance party and a March 7 closing reception with live music by Standing Wave.“ELIZA: House, Furnace, Skyline” by Mark Perrott. Photo courtesy of the Tomyako Foundation. Tomayko Foundation 5173 Liberty Ave., Bloomfield“Works from the Tomayko Foundation Collection” on view until Feb. 21“Works from the Tomayko Foundation Collection” spotlights 23 works by Pittsburgh artists newly acquired during the Foundation’s opening year, including Elizabeth Scutt, Barbara Weissberger, Gavin Benjamin, Elizabeth Myers Castonguay, Patricia Chiacu Apuzzo, Mia Tarducci, Chris McGinnis and Janese Hexon.The blend of traditional and contemporary styles spans photography, sculpture, painting, mixed media and collage, embodying what foundation President Jack Tomayko has cited as the gallery’s commitment to presenting “an eclectic array of works that offer the best representation of art in Western Pennsylvania.”“Untitled Fauna” by David Aschkenas. Photo courtesy of Postwar Gallery.Postwar Gallery 6901 Lynn Way, North Point Breeze“Flora & Fauna” by David Aschkenas on view until Feb. 5“Flora & Fauna” is the inaugural exhibit in the newly opened North Point Breeze gallery showcasing the extensive art, furniture and jewelry collections of Morris Grossman and his passion to uphold the legacy of 20th-century American Expressionism represented by the work of Julio Diego, Humbert Howard, Irving Amen, Gladys Rockmore Davis, Beni E. Kosh, Walter Sanford, Jon Corbino and others.The gallery also highlights living artists like Pittsburgh’s David Aschkenas and his mesmerizing photographs of exotic flowers from Hawaii placed alongside riveting landscape tableaux created by composite shots of taxidermied animals mounted in a big game hunter’s mansion.“Shoes” by Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes. Photo courtesy of april april. april april 409 S. Trenton Ave., WilkinsburgSolo exhibit by Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes on view Jan. 4 through Feb. 8Hong Kong-born, Vancouver-based photographer Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes will enjoy her Pittsburgh gallery debut at april april, a space operated by former New Yorkers Patrick Bova and Lucas Regazzi with a mission to foster connections between Pittsburgh and the wider contemporary art world.Formally trained in photography, Holmes’ collage style employs picture book excerpts, screenshots, fabric cutouts, scanned painted shapes, furniture encyclopedias, receipts, amateur stock photos, old band promo shots and sketchbook doodles — to cite a few of her most recent sources.The gallery’s next exhibit features CrossLypka (Feb. 21 through March 29), a collaboration by Tyler Cross and Kyle Lypka presenting ceramics and sculpture within a vernacular of painting and architectural relief.“Pennypacker” by Brittany Adeline King will be on view at ROMANCE this month. Photo by Chris Uhren.ROMANCE 5429 Howe St., Shadyside“silent disco encore” on view until Jan. 10 “Heaven Potato” by Emilia Wang on view until Jan. 10 “we know nothing about people who don’t cry” on view Jan. 17 through Feb. 16.Shadyside’s ROMANCE Gallery hosts three internationally flavored shows this month with artist connections to Switzerland, Libya, Korea, Italy, Taiwan, China, Germany, Japan, England and the U.S.“Optimist sees a Rose” by Tasneem Sarkez can be seen at ROMANCE. Photo by Rose Easton.“silent disco encore” features collage, painting and video from Raque Ford, Brittany Adeline King, Ingrid Yi-Chen Lu, Eric Veit, Liz Vitlin and Owen Westberg expressing themes of anti-minimalist cluttercore and the immersive Y2K silent disco experience of headsetted dancers grooving to their own music channel in the same space.Tokyo-based Emilia Wang’s “Heaven Potato” is her first U.S. solo show and combines sculpture, video and painting. “A goal of mine is to show artists like Emilia who haven’t yet had a major platform and will be new to viewers,” says ROMANCE curator Margaret Kross. “Her exhibit is about transcendence in relationship to the ordinary, measuring time, about transience and our smallness as humans — in dialogue with the seemingly ordinary and everyday.”“we know nothing about people who don’t cry” features new work by Gina Fischli, Naomi Hawksley, Tiziana La Melia, Craig Jun Li, Siyi Li, Tasneem Sarkez and Zelig Records recording artist Issy Wood.Inspired by a 2016 Time magazine article about crying, says Kross, the exhibit “looks at ways we protect feelings of sorrow or anxiety, alienation, dissociation through an outward appearance of humor, irony and cuteness, and the ways that ‘hiding’ helps us cope when museums and the art market are hungry for artists to be vulnerable or face trauma.”More January openings•  Pageant Queen: Works by Tara Fay Coleman (Bottom Feeder Books, Jan. 4)•  Collective Dreaming: An art exhibition of the Los Fantasmas Artist Collective & #notwhite collective (Artists Image Resource, Jan. 10, 6-9 p.m.) •  Karl Mullen: A Clarion Call (ZYNKA Gallery, Jan. 11) •  Tiffany Budzisz, Aster da Fonseca, Ellen Silberlicht: Material Matters (BoxHeart Gallery, Jan. 15) •  A Sweet Retrospective (Sweetwater Center for the Arts, Jan. 16) •  When the Lights Come On: Queer Nightlife as Emergent Space (Brew House, Jan. 23)And one closing A longtime champion of Pittsburgh artists, Maser Galleries, is closing this month at 5427 Walnut St. in Shadyside after 50 years as a major retailer for a wide range of contemporary art in canvas and posters. Brenda Maser, co-owner with husband Ron, anticipates the gallery will remain open through February and is offering storewide discounts up to 75%. “It’s been a privilege to be here,” says Brenda. “Our life revolved around our gallery. We always wanted to have something for everyone, art that reflected the people of Pittsburgh.”Maser Galleries exterior. Photo by RJ Ketcham.There is no word on what business might go in the space after the gallery officially departs, but Wick Monet up the block at 5404 could use a gallery buddy.“Fifty years ago people said we were crazy to start our gallery here,” recalls Brenda. “That was 50 years ago, and we still have a lot of art to offer.”The post NEXT in the Gallery: Pittsburgh’s art world welcomes 2025 with exciting new exhibits appeared first on NEXTpittsburgh.