Abstract
The flame-colored hair that earned Charles Grooms the nickname [Red Grooms] has faded to a cool silver, but his art has lost none of its volcanic energy. More than 45 years after staging his madcap happening, ''The Burning Building,'' in a downtown Manhattan loft, Mr. Grooms's art still blazes with satiric inventiveness and formal exuberance.
The purpose of museums is to collect and display objects, and there are museums devoted to just about everything you can think of, from Botticellis to beer cans. This museum's founder, Samuel Longstreth Parrish, collected (among other things) Renaissance panel paintings; the stewards of his legacy have added canvases by William Merritt Chase, Fairfield Porter and other 19th- and 20th-century American artists, as well as significant collections of Japanese and American prints.
Far left, Tory Fair's ''The Competitive Mundane'' at the Islip Art Museum. At the Parrish Art Museum, left, ''Maximum Clusters'' by [Steve Miller]. ''Hot Dog Vendor'' is part of an exhibition of works by Red Grooms at the Nassau County Museum of Art.