Interruption, displacement, spatial challenge, and scrounged street materials are just a few of the components of the New Museum’s fourth-floor sculpture installation by London artist Phyllida Barlow, which continues only for the remainder of this week.

Installation view of Phyllida Barlow’s “Siege” installation at The New Museum

Part of the post-minimalist generation of London sculptors (Eva Hesse contemporaries), Barlow surprises visitors with a completely monumental, low-tech exploration in what she calls a “very, very awkward” space, particularly for visitors confronted by her work as they step out of the elevator.

Barlow says that the first time she saw her project space, it was “shocking” in its directness, which provided her with an exciting challenge. “Stepping out of the elevator, it’s as though you’ve stepped on stage,” she says, hoping that visitors find a “performative element” to their experience.

 “Once you’re in there, there’s kind of no escape,” she says, calling it a “kind of a hostage space.” No fooling. You get to poke in, around, and about the work that she aptly names Siege.

The New Museum gives us several audio tracks in which Barlow explains her process, but go down to the Bowery to experience Siege first-hand and then listen in on what Barlow has to say. It’s like having your own, private Stonehenge experience inside a white cube.

Luke Jerram’s Virus Installation: E. Coli (2010)

The finest collectors in the world put a premium on exquisite Murano glass. Take a few minutes to see the new twist that’s on display at Columbus Circle at the Museum of Arts and Design in Glasstress New York, a show that’s a mix of installation, concept, and pedestal work.

Curator/entrepreneur Adriano Berengo paired the finest Venetian glassmakers with some of the world’s best contemporary artists (e.g. Vic Munoz, Thomas Schutte, the Starn twins) for an exhibition ranking at the top of fan favorites at the 2009 and 2011 Venice Biennales.

MAD is presenting the provocative show for a few more days. Luke Jerram’s Carroña crows-with-shatttered-chandelier installation is the most eye-catching, but there’s plenty to more to contemplate about how the Murano craftsmen made such exquisite fabrications of some pretty wild artistic notions (like Luke Jerram’s glass-blown virus reproductions.)

Javier Perez’s Carroña (2011) on display in Venice

There are only a few days left to go visit the Steins (Gertrude, Leo, and the rest of the family). They’re at the Met in The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde.

Instead of the tiny, little studio they inhabited in Paris, the Met has spread out all of the Matisses and Picassos they ever owned over nine galleries. Sure, there is a smattering of Cezannes, Renoirs, and a few others, but the show is really about the how the Steins kick-started the careers of Henri and Pablo.

If you’ve seen Woody Allen’s re-creation of Gertrude’s place in Midnight in Paris, you might be surprised that learn that it was only a 460 square-foot studio. But what a collection of paintings moved around on those walls! Take a look. The Met has produced a brief video comprised of old photos from the decades that the Steins lived, entertained, collected, and schmoozed in that miniscule space, which had such an outsized influence on the direction of the 20^th century avant-garde.

It took the Met eight years to pull all the works together (to raise money to buy more work, the Steins often sold off beloved favorites to the Cone sisters in Baltimore or Mr. Barnes in Philadelphia). If you want to know more, view the recording of the two-hour panel that the curator hosted back in April.

And go over and pay Gertrude and the family one last visit.