Visual art

BETWEEN WORLDS: THE ART AND DESIGN OF LEO LIONNI It’s about this time of year when I can’t help but think of Frederick, to me the most iconic of Leo Lionni’s countlessly iconic field mice, who lazed about all autumn while his family labored to gather provisions for winter. Frederick, it turned out, was busy gathering something else: sunshine, which he shared with warm thoughts deep in the family burrow as winter closed in. If there’s anything in common among the dozens of children’s books Lionni made over his career, it’s warmth — something much needed and, fortunately, on ample display at this exhibition, just in time for the cold. Through May 27. Norman Rockwell Museum, 9 Glendale Road, Stockbridge. 413-298-4100, www.nrm.org INVENTING ISABELLA Mild hagiography of its namesake is typically an at least marginal element in most of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s program; with this exhibition, any such facade drops. A full-throated celebration of its eccentric founder, “Inventing Isabella” isn’t mere hero worship (though it’s surely that): Through a wealth of images, objects, and articles of clothing, the museum sketches a broader portrait of a willfully enigmatic figure whose public persona was carefully crafted to mask her private self. Through Jan. 15. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 Evans Way. 617566-1401, www.isgm.org

E.J. HILL: BRAKE RUN HELIX A real, rideable roller coaster occupies Mass MoCA’s gargantuan Building 5, its ribbon of pink track snaking from a platform shrouded by two-story-high green velvet drapes. The theatricality adds a performative flair to the piece, by E.J. Hill, for whom roller coasters are a loaded symbol of the privilege of leisure and a history of segregation that denied Black Americans its simple thrills. Through Feb. 11. Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, 1040 Mass MoCA Way, North Adams. 413-662-2111, www.massmoca.org