★ American Folk Art Museum: `Self-Taught Genius: Treasures From the American Folk Art Museum` (through Aug. 17) This exhibition is not only an enthralling display of about 100 works from the museum`s permanent collection; it`s also an intellectually provocative effort to rethink the nature of artistic creativity. There are paintings and drawings, quilts, ceramics, handmade books, pieces of elaborately decorated furniture, duck decoys and weather vanes dating from the mid-18th to the early-21st centuries, all produced by people from many different walks of life who had no formal training in art. The inspirationally democratic message is that potential for creative genius is wired into the consciousness of everyone. 2 Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue at 66th Street, 212-595-9533,folkartmuseum.org. (Ken Johnson)
★ Brooklyn Museum: `Ai Weiwei: According to What?` (through Aug. 10) On the last stop of its tour, the 2012 survey of the courageous Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei is much improved by the addition of two new installation pieces, both of which prove that Mr. Ai is nothing without China and that the ready-made that serves him best is life itself. It`s a completely memorable show. 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, 718-638-5000,brooklynmuseum.org. (Roberta Smith)
Brooklyn Museum: `Chicago in L.A.: Judy Chicago`s Early Work 1963-74` (through Sept. 28) Love it or hate it, Judy Chicago`s [The Dinner Party" remains a great, enduringly provocative monument of feminist art. This exhibition tells the story of Ms. Chicago`s pre-[Dinner Party" career in Los Angeles, a period during which she evolved from an ambitious graduate student into a full-fledged feminist visionary. There are Minimalist sculptures at the start; glossy Finish Fetish paintings midway through; and, at the end, trippy paintings and drawings in which flowers, butterflies and female genitalia serve as metaphors of political and transcendental transformation. 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, 718-638-5000, brooklynmuseum.org. (Johnson)
Brooklyn Museum: `Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt` (through December) If your dream of heaven is eternity spent with the pets you love, this show is for you. All of its 30 objects, sifted from the museum`s renowned Egyptian collection, are of cats, big and little, feral and tame, celestial and not. Whether cast in bronze or carved in stone, their forms and personalities were meant to outlast time, and so they have. 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, 718-638-5000, brooklynmuseum.org. (Holland Cotter)
Guggenheim Museum: `Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe` (through Sept. 1) This epic, beautifully designed exhibition may be one of the more thorough examinations of modernism`s most obnoxious and conflicted art movement that you are likely to see. Awash in the manifestoes that its members regularly fired off, it follows Futurism through to its end with the death of its founder, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, in 1944. It covers the Futurist obsessions with speed, war, machines and, finally, flight and the aerial views it made possible. And the show highlights relatively unknown figures like the delightful Fortunato Depero and Benedetta Cappa, Marinetti`s wife. 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, 212-423-3500, guggenheim.org. (Smith)