Andy Cohen (Getty Images)

El Museo del Barrio is New York’s leading Latino museum and cultural institution. Its yearly gala is a who’s who of Spanish-speaking society figures, thanks to gala chairs like Valentin Hernández, Fe Fendi, Marie Unanue and Valentino D. Carlotti. This year’s black-tie 20th-anniversary bash honors Raúl Esparza, the Cuban-American stage actor, singer and Broadway star, with the Excellence in the Arts Award. Dinner music is by the staid Bob Hardwick Sound, and then DJ Honey Redmond pumps up the volume so guests can cha cha cha.

Bravo’s funnyman Andy Cohen and fashion plate Allison Sarofim, along with the Hetrick-Martin Institute, present the Hero Fund, a scholarship founded by Hunter Hill in honor of the late author and filmmaker Perry Moore (who wrote the book Hero). The host committee includes many of Mr. Moore’s friends, like Paper’s Mickey Boardman and Kim Hastreiter, Maura Egan, Julianne Moore, Oberon Sinclair and Mary Alice Stephenson. There will also be a special performance by Angela McClusky.

El Museo del Barrio gala, Cipriani 42nd Street, 110 East 42nd Street, (212) 557-5088, cocktails 7pm, dinner 8pm, tickets from $1,250. Hero Fund fund-raiser, 60 Thompson Hotel, 60 Thompson Street, (212) 431-0400, 8-10pm, $100.

Julianne Moore and Onata Aprile in What Maisie Knew.

Acutely observed, subtly but sharply written and expertly acted, What Maisie Knew transports Henry James’s 1897 novel to contemporary Manhattan with warmth, intelligence and grace, thanks to Scott McGehee and David Siegel, the astute directing team responsible for the devastating 2001 film The Deep End. This one is just as good, and is equally unforgettable.

What Maisie Knew illuminates the heart of a confused 6-year-old, forced into reluctant maturity by the dysfunctional adults around her who behave like children. Maisie (played by a keenly affecting little girl named Onata Aprile with a quiet, understated depth of perception) seems to have it all—affluent parents, pretty clothes, all the toys she desires. But her life is impeded by her parents’ volatile relationship, compounded by violent fights, screaming arguments and growing animosity. Her mother Susanna (Julianne Moore, in one of her most nuanced performances to date) is a caring but irresponsible neurotic struggling (with only minimal success) to pursue a career as a rock singer, while her father Beale (Steve Coogan) is distracted from his duties as a provider by the demands of his job as an international art dealer. They are stressed out and perpetually traveling, and their marriage is loudly falling to pieces. “I’ve done my midlife crisis,” yells the husband to the distraught wife, “now it’s time for you to get on with yours!” When they land in divorce court, Maisie is the delicate camera that records their fury and anguish in a hostile custody battle for all the wrong reasons that divides their child between them like a cored apple.

Both parents remarry out of spite, pumping Maisie for information, indulging her whenever it’s convenient to win her affection but mostly leaving her in the care of their frustrated new spouses. Susanna’s new husband is a sweet, sensitive bartender named Lincoln (versatile, appealing Alexander Skarsgård) who shows Maisie the kind of sincere compassion she never had from her own dad, and Beale runs away with the nanny, a kind-hearted girl named Margo (Joanna Vanderham) whose maternal instincts seem genuine instead of the phony play-acting Maisie gets from her real mother. At first, these replacements fill tertiary positions, but eventually they do something Maisie has never experienced—they become real friends. One of the things Maisie learns is that loneliness is not restricted to only one age, gender or legal document. Both Lincoln and Margo are neglected and unloved. Maisie has always been the one left out of the equation, the lockbox where the grownups deposit their fears, tears and anxieties. Surprisingly, it is now up to a child to make the adults feel wanted. Unwillingly, they eventually become playmates, guardians and surrogate parents to the little girl who needs them, and the two most unconditionally devoted people Maisie knows are the two people who have landed in her life by accident.

Hearbreaking and real, What Maisie Knew addresses the question “How do children cope when they’re not a priority?” The answers are brutal but restorative. Julianne Moore plays this kind of self-involved, chain-smoking schizoid to perfection—too emotionally ill-equipped for parenthood, but too immature to go it alone. No matter how infuriating her roles are, she is never anything less than solid and alive. As Lincoln, hunk of the year Mr. Skarsgård gets the kind of tender, ingratiating role he rarely gets to play, while Ms. Vanderham is a real find as Margo. As Maisie, little Miss Aprile’s expressive face and swimming-pool eyes reflect the pain and bewilderment of a child without roots or security. Every element is needlepointed with enviable cohesion by writers Carroll Cartwright and Nancy Doyne and guided to perfection by co-directors Messrs. McGehee and Siegel. What Maisie Knew does Henry James proud, updating his timeless classicism with an unfussy modern style that is relevant to the way we live now. The year is still young, but poignant and exemplary, this is one of the best films of 2013.

rreed@observer.com

WHAT MAISIE KNEW

Written by Nancy Doyne and Carroll Cartwright

Directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel

Starring Julianne Moore, Steve Coogan and Alexander Skarsgård

Running time: 99 mins.

Rating: 4/4 Stars

2013 Golden Globes, Bill Murray

If you are too busy watching the Australian cycling thing and can't understand what the hell is going on with Twitter (honestly, we don't know who you follow, but no one on our feed actually bothers naming the winners of these things), here are the latest updates for the 2013 Golden Globe Awards.

Best Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER: Argo
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Best Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER: Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty

Best Motion Picture, Drama
WINNER:

Best Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Les Mis

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture- Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Hugh Jackman, Les Mis

Best TV Series, Comedy or Musical
WINNER: GIRLS

Best Director
WINNER: Ben Affleck, Argo

Cecil B. DeMille's Lifetime Achievement Award/Freestyle Portion of Evening
WINNER: Jodie Foster

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Lena Dunham, Girls

Best Animated Feature Film
WINNER: Brave

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama
WINNER: Claire Danes, Homeland

Best Foreign Film
WINNER: Amour

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Comedy or Musical
WINNER: Don Cheadle, House of Lies

Best Screenplay
WINNER: Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
WINNER: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

Best Performance by a Supporting Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Ed Harris, Game Change

Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Kevin Costner, Hatfields & McCoys
(RUNNER-UP: Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Julianne Moore - Game Change

Best Television Series - Drama
WINNER: Homeland

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture
WINNER: Christoph Waltz - Django Unchained

Best Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Mini-Series
WINNER: Maggie Smith - Downton Abbey

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama
WINNER: Damien Lewis - Homeland

Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
WINNER: Game Change

Best Original Song
WINNER: "Skyfall," Adele

Best Original Score - Motion Picture
WINNER: Life of Pi

Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
WINNER: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Lining Playbook (Also, best speech? Y/N?)

Julianne Moore (Getty Images)

Julianne Moore really can do it all, can’t she? The newly minted Emmy winner and perennial Oscar nominee takes a break from her low-key West Village lifestyle to host a benefit for Positive Exposure, an arts nonprofit designed to change public perception of genetic and cognitive differences. Her fellow hosts include designer Ralph Rucci and kiddie favorite Olivia illustrator Ian Falconer ... Meanwhile, the New York Academy of Art celebrates perception-shifting imagery in its own way, with the Take Home a Nude auction and dinner. Among those potentially bidding on work by Yoko Ono and Ryan McGinness are event co-chair Mary Boone and guests Daniel Boulud and Brooke Shields.

Positive Exposure event, Metropolitan Pavilion, The Gallery, 123 West 18th Street, 6pm, tickets and information can be found at positiveexposure.org/fundraiser.html; Take Home a Nude event, Sotheby’s, 1334 York Avenue, 6pm, tickets and information can be found at nyaa.edu.

Julianne Moore, with jewels. (Getty Images)

Did you know recent Emmy-winner Julianne Moore owns $127,000 worth of Cartier jewelry? Or at least she did, before her baubles were stolen earlier this summer from her five-story West 11th Street brownstone. According to police reports, between June 6 and Aug. 28, the actress's possessions were taken out of her possession, somehow without her noticing. (You know how hard it is to keep track of your designer duds when you are busy being super famous. Sometimes it takes months before you notice that someone's made a dent in your jewelry closet.)

There are no suspects thus far, but there were contractors working on Ms. Moore's home during that time. As one of them told The New York Times, "There’s a great deal of activity,” on the site, which Ms. Moore shares with her husband Bart Freundlich and their two children. As in, currently on the site. As in, if you want to try your luck again, go for it!

Everyone else in the neighborhood seemed hilariously clueless when told that a theft had occurred on their block. Ms. Moore's neighbors apparently included a documentary filmmaker whose dog is named Bodhi ("Like the tree"), a Bushwick student working at the coffee shop and a customer at the 11th Street Cafe who had a  "blueberry-size diamond on her ring," and had no idea that the famous star in her neighborhood had been robbed. "I feel faint, fetch me my smelling salts!" she went on to explain (no she didn't), before Charles Grodin's character from The Great Muppet Caper showed up to whisk her away.

So in case any burglars were considering casing out the Chelsea location, don't bother: The New York Times already did, and they said you're good to go.

Dano's off-screen stare was as sour as his on-screen presence.

Paul Weitz is a writer-director (About a Boy) with talent and imagination. I can’t imagine what lured him to Being Flynn, a depressing and downbeat rendering of a book called Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, the offbeat, commercially challenging 2004 memoir by writer Nick Flynn about his fractured relationship with his creepy father, Jonathan, a failed writer himself, but mostly a Bowery bum and bona fide loser, played by Robert De Niro. Too small and dark to appeal to a large audience, it’s not a movie to cherish.

Nick is played in the film by overrated, pickle-faced Paul Dano, who put the sour in the stagnant, sourpuss opus There Will Be Blood. He hardly knew his father, a nut case who abandoned his loving, hardscrabble mother (Julianne Moore) early to pursue his dream of living up to his self-anointed label of “living genius” (“Everything I write is a masterpiece,” he babbles, after everything he writes is rejected by everybody in publishing). Great legacy. After Dad deserted, he ended up in prison for cashing forged checks while Mom committed suicide. Released with his great novel under his arm, Flynn then became a cab driver, alcoholic and charter member of the unemployed homeless, living in a condemned building above a strip joint that was closed down by the FBI until he lost his license for falling asleep at the wheel and hitting a pedestrian. Except for an occasional phony letter professing true love, Nick hasn’t seen him for 19 years. He calls him “a nonperson, a face without a body.” “What I am,” says Flynn, “is an artist.” There’s no evidence anywhere, even though Mr. De Niro wears rotten teeth and picks lice off his body with convincing Actors Studio naturalism. Imagine the horror when a grown son, unfocused and without enough ambition to get a job outside of cleaning toilets in a homeless shelter, comes face to face with his missing father as a semipermanent “guest,” seeking a bug-free bed. It’s the stuff of stained, Gorky-influenced fiction, but not exactly what I’d call pleasant, memorable cinema.

I saw Being Flynn at 10 a.m. with no time for breakfast. I don’t recommend making the same mistake. How about watching a filthy bum, covered with scabs, mashing lice between his fingers? Mr. De Niro works hard to welcome redemption with the levity of sarcastic wit without groveling for sympathy, but there is just so much you can do with the role of a racist, homophobe, lawless reprobate and pathological liar. For the past few years, he’s snored his way through his own movies like a Valium addict. This time he gives it all he’s got, which is a lot, but not enough to make you care. I didn’t care what happened to the son, either. This is entirely the fault of the numbing Mr. Dano, a surly actor with the personality of road kill. The son is a worker, the father a resident, in a cesspool of misfortune, but what makes the old man a survivor is his sense of humor. He even regards a row of fellow tramps tied to their shoelaces to prevent their shoes from being stolen as “gathering material” for his next novel. Instead of a loafer and a bounder knocking on doors for a place to spend the night, Jonathan Flynn refers to himself as a “sought-after house guest.”  When he turns from a hapless hobo into a howling madman wrapped in a sheet, he makes us care about his downfall. The movie is also supposed make us care about how the son escapes his dead-end life and puts to good use what he learned from the father without repeating his mistakes. We know the real Nick Flynn wrote the book Paul Weitz spent seven years adapting for the screen, and I guess that’s the point of this whole father-son confessional. But Mr. De Niro is the only thing worth the effort. He wipes the floor with his costar so many times that I felt the movie would have been better balanced with a different cast. I found Mr. Dano so weak, lachrymose and emotionally blunted that I lost interest fast. By the time the father ends up sleeping on garbage cans in a vacant alley and the son lands in drug rehab, I was too zoned out to care. Being Flynn is the kind of Dante nightmare actors find fun to play, but it’s hell for an audience to watch.

rreed@observer.com

BEING FLYNN

Running Time 102 minutes

Written by Paul Weitz (screenplay) and Nick Flynn (book)

Directed by Paul Weitz

Starring Paul Dano, Robert De Niro and Julianne Moore

2/4

Sarah Palin at this year's CPAC (Getty Images)

Sarah Palin has evidently been wigging out over Julianne Moore's portrayal of her in the upcoming Game Change film on HBO. The TV movie shifts the focus of the campaign book from a panorama of the 2008 election to the aftermath of candidate John McCain picking Ms. Palin as his running mate. Ms. Palin published a series of photos intended to rebut the film in a Flickr album entitled "Game Change We Can Believe In." Let it never be said that Ms. Palin wouldn't destroy the Jeopardy! "Before and After" category.

The former Governor of Alaska will have a further chance to make her voice heard, as the little-seen documentary The Undefeated is to air on ReelzChannel (the network that broadcast The Kennedys miniseries, as well as reruns of Cheers, Becker, and Third Rock From the Sun) on March 11, the night after Game Change premieres on HBO.

The Undefeated features the commentary of Andrew Breitbart, played in 14 theaters last summer, and made $100,000.

Via Politico:

Needless to say, this will be a very, very fun watch.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Confirmed: Skarsgard is boring. (Photo via Getty)

Alexander Skarsgard was in town? Really? For something other than the Straw Dogs premiere? If the filming for What Maisie Knew was a little more conspicuous, we might have gone down to Chinatown and tried to talk to the True Blood star himself.

As it was, we just happened to stumble into the wrap party for the movie -- a Henry James novel adapted by way of The Squid and the Whale that costars Steve Coogan -- as it was winding down at a bar near 46th and 10th street last night.

"You just missed Julianne Moore!" one enthusiastically wasted crew member told us.

Ms. Moore is wonderful, but we needed to know: What was Alexander Skarsgard like? With Straw Dogs and Melancholia currently in theaters and two other films (Battleship and Disconnect) on the way in addition to Maisie, Mr. Skarsgard is quickly becoming the Eurotrash Ryan Gosling. He's everywhere. Except where we were, of course.

So: Was he as uninteresting as that GQ profile made him out to be? (He loves whales, is very tall, and his dad is very big in Sweden.)

"He was really...tall," confirmed our new best friend. "He seemed kind of boring. I stood next to him."

Earth to everyone: It's officially been confirmed that Alexander Skarsgard is a very tall, blonde, bland, banal guy. Who is secretly a vampire model. We guess those homoerotic thrash-metal days are behind him now that he's a big star.

Anna Wintour, Fashion's Night Out's hostess (Patrick McMullan)

Wednesday, September 7

Reever Madness

They’re making another Superman flick with some British gent—don’t they know that for screen magnetism as well as real-life heroism, the buck stopped with Christopher Reeve? The beloved screen icon, who became an advocate for the paralyzed after a horseback-riding accident, is remembered at the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation’s “Night for a Cure,” a fund-raising celebration of Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Month. (It snuck up on us again!) Guests are to include W’s party-bot Stefano Tonchi (apparently unthreatened by the Fashion Week storm looming on the horizon!), that crazy, stupidly lovable Julianne Moore and little-known local musician Moby. If your summer-long yen for charitable endeavors hasn’t been satisfied, stop by.

Mondrian Soho, 9 Crosby Street, 7 p.m.; visit christopherreeve.org for tickets and information.

Thursday, September 8

A Night of Torrid Fashion

Once again, it’s the night Anna Wintour devised for the hoi polloi to have a part, however small, in Fashion Week—while the even hoi polloi-er will see their evening’s progress interrupted by crowds mobbing boutiques to degrees unseen the other 364 evenings of the year. Gucci debuts its automotive collaboration with Fiat, providing silk scarves and sunglasses so that visitors may achieve that Lindsay Lohan-striving-to-be-Sophia Loren look; the polo star (is there more than one?) Nacho Figueras hosts a party at Ralph Lauren; chic lingerie boutique Agent Provocateur shows off its glamorous and scantily-clad models; and alice + olivia stage a so-called carnival (complete with Sno-cones and cotton candy, if you’d like to break your diet). The night out is spread across the city, so choose a neighborhood upon which to concentrate (may we suggest the meatpacking district, home to 63 events?).

Gucci, 725 Fifth Avenue, 6 p.m.-10 p.m.; Ralph Lauren, 109 Prince Street, 6 p.m.-10 p.m.; Agent Provocateur, 675 Madison Avenue, 7 p.m.-9 p.m.; alice + olivia, 755 Madison Avenue, 6 p.m.-10 p.m.; visit fashionsnightout.com/fno for information.

Friday, September 9

Showtime

Fashion’s big (fiscal) week began yesterday, but the more high-flying designers tend to make late entrances. (Ralph Lauren’s not showing until the 15th!) Today’s clotheshorses are still early enough that you won’t be jaded by the couture overflow—after a while, the fancy togs stop looking like art and go into the mental pile labeled “We couldn’t wear this to Starbucks.” Today’s shows include Tommy Hilfiger (we hope his delightful rebel-rapper son, Rich Hill, is in the front row!), cutesy schmatte-shaper Cynthia Rowley, and the finalists from Project Runway. Hint: don’t go if you’re a Project Runway obsessive and don’t want the ending spoiled—or if you stopped watching the show, as we did, two years ago. This fashion show is for die-hard Tim Gunn gawkers.

Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week—today’s events include Project Runway at the Theatre at Lincoln Center location, 9:30 a.m.; Tommy Hilfiger Men’s at the High Line Chelsea Market Passage, 14th Street and 10th Avenue, 5:30 p.m.; Cynthia Rowley at the Stage at Lincoln Center location, 7 p.m.; visit mbfashionweek.com for information.

Saturday, September 10

Big Papa

Tonight’s the final preview of Elevator Repair Service’s adaptation of The Sun Also Rises, entitled The Select, which opens tomorrow. The company  previously produced adaptations of The Great Gatsby (an eight-hour production, in which the book was read aloud, cover-to-cover) and The Sound and the Fury. In preparation for the exhilarated exhaustion we shall feel about halfway through the expatriate exegesis, we’re writing the rest of this blurb in the style of Hemingway. This will be a good show, and we will watch it. We will go to the theater and watch the actors reading and it will be good. They pretend to be in Europe and they drink and celebrate being young and strong. They are strong actors and they have studied their Hemingway. The book they read is a good book and it is not overly long. It is about men, and also women. There is a—okay, this is too exhausting. But if you’re hungry for the tale of an impotent man and a very potent lady, and you find it too early in the fall to devote yourself to actually sitting and reading the book (that’s what November’s for!), then check out the nonparody—or self-parody?—Hemingway rendition.

New York Theatre Workshop, 79 East Fourth Street, tomorrow’s opening at 7 p.m., tonight’s preview at 7 p.m.; visit elevator.org for tickets and information.

Sunday, September 11

Ten Years Hence

The National September 11 Memorial will be dedicated today. In a ceremony featuring Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Governor Andrew Cuomo and President Barack Obama, the name-inscribed reflecting pools officially become a part of our city. The memorial, part of a site that has, in many of its particulars, been an object of contention and debate over the past decade, is to open tomorrow, putting to rest a small part of the history of local politics. Another history—that of our processing a now-10-year-old catastrophe—remains, of course, ongoing.

The National September 11 Memorial is to be dedicated today and will be open tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; access is available from the northeast corner of Albany Street and Greenwich Street with a pass, available at 911memorial.org.

Monday, September 12

Gaga-a-gogo

We’ve had enough Gaga-on-TV for a while after her simply exhausting appearance on MTV’s Video Music Awards. (Hey, we had plenty of emergency liquor left after Irene and needed to commemorate not losing cable somehow.) The lady vamped as an unstyled New Jersey dude, Joe Pesci minus the rudimentary acting ability, for the benefit of the gossip blogs that can’t stop covering the pop star! Nevertheless, we’ll drag ourselves to the television for the special Gaga by Gaultier, not for Ms. Gaga, but rather for the chance to see the iconic designer Jean Paul Gaultier (who designed Madonna’s cone bra, back when she was the pop star testing boundaries of taste and patience) in a 75-minute special. Not to mention the fact that it’s airing on teenybopper mini-network the CW, which gives rise to more cognitive dissonance than any couture-donning chanteuse could ever hope to evoke by dressing in drag. The promotions would seem to indicate that Mr. Gaultier is interviewing Ms. Gaga, and we imagine his questions for her would be rather more perceptive than hers of him. But heaven help him if he tries to put the new, butch, dressed-down Ms. Gaga into a cone bra.

Gaga by Gaultier airs from 8 p.m. to 9:15 p.m. on the CW.

Tuesday, September 13

3D Movies With 2D Critic

Two events tonight indicate the values of storytelling in very different fashions. David Denby, the contemplative, chelonian New Yorker film critic addresses the future of movies in an address titled “Do Movies Have a Future?” (We vote yes! But then, we just loved the new Planet of the Apes.) It’s going down at the New York Psychoanalytic Society—the perfect spot for Mr. Denby to plop down on a couch after the speech and talk about all the issues he plumbed in his porn-and-bad-stocks memoir American Sucker … Meanwhile, Mr. Denby’s magazine colleague Adam Gopnik joins the heterogeneous crew of Bravo hostesses Padma Lakshmi and Gail Simmons, beloved-beyond-belief chef David Chang, and predictable insult-jock Lisa Lampanelli at an evening of storytelling about food. Each storyteller is to speak on the subject for 10 minutes, without notes—just broadly, anything that comes to mind! (Anyone seeking insight into what it’s like to force oneself to gorge on reality show contestants’ half-baked soufflés will enjoy the Lakshmi-Simmons double dose, we’d imagine.)

“Do Movies Have a Future?” The New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, 247 East 82nd Street, 8:15 p.m., R.S.V.P. recommended for limited space; email admdir@nypsi.org for RSVP or information; The Moth, Great Hall at Cooper Union, 7 East 7th Street, 6:30 p.m. doors open, 7:30 p.m. stories begin; visit themoth.org for tickets and information.

Wednesday, September 14

Museum of Modern Rock

We know we said we’d had enough of Lady Gaga, but we meant only that we couldn’t bear to listen to her speak about her theories of art and gender anymore. However, her conscription into a gallery show of pop-music-themed art—as the subject of a portrait by Bonnie Engelbardt Lautenberg, wife of New Jersey’s Senator Frank Lautenberg—allows her to do what pop stars do best: act as a muse. Tonight’s opening of RH Gallery’s “Melodymania” exhibit showcases artwork about pop music—including a new portrait of Nirvana rocker Kurt Cobain by Mark Seliger, a cleverly titled print called Violins/Violence by Bruce Nauman and a photograph by Matthew Barney inspired by Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song. (O.K., in that last one the tie to popular music may be a bit conceptual.) Other musical muses channeled by the visual artists on display at RH Gallery include Ennio Morricone and Joy Division—the first time those two have been landed in the same place since our iPod! The concept of pop-inspired art may seem a bit gimmicky to non-radio-listeners—but it’s at least in tune (get it?) with musicians’ tendencies to view themselves as artists and artists’ tendencies to tap into the more venal aspects of our cultural mosaic for inspiration.

Opens today (reception Sept. 13 at 7 p.m.), RH Gallery, 137 Duane Street; visit rhgallery.com for information.

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_