18. See Nicola Tyson

Self-portraits. Petzel Gallery, 35 East 67th Street, through October 3.

Once upon a time in the 1990s, a teeny walk-up gallery opened in Soho. This was Trial Balloon, a women-only project space, co-run by excellent British-born painter Nicola Tyson, whose own semi-abstract, semi-figurative work predated by decades the very kind of paintings that so many are making today. Here, see Tyson, now 60, firing on all optical cylinders.