Museums have a reputation for saving their “serious” exhibitions for the winter, spring, and fall—the Whitney Biennial, the Shchukin Collection at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the David Hockney retrospective at the Tate, for instance. Summer, when patrons and donors and critics are on vacation, is supposedly the time for low-budget follies.

But spared the spotlight of international scrutiny or the pressure of serving as a ticket-office bonanza, many museums make use of their excellent, often unseen permanent collections to create quiet, highly creative shows that are well worth a visit.

The following 10 exhibitions are all cases in point: They range in scope and scale and content, but each, in its own way, is proof that summer is still a season for art.

Eduardo Arroyo: Dans le Respect des Traditions at the Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul de Vence, France
The Fondation Maeght, a private exhibition space perched on a mountainside in the south of France, has been a destination since it was founded in 1964 by the art dealers Marguerite and Aimé Maeght. Its permanent collection, which includes a terrace full of sculptures by Giacometti and a “labyrinth” designed by Joan Miro, is always a draw, but its temporary shows are equally good.

This collection of work by the Spanish painter Eduardo Arroyo (b. 1937 in Madrid) showcases one of the giants of postwar painting who, for whatever reason (geography, and the fact that they can’t be easily categorized, most probably), has been undervalued by the art world for decades. That probably won’t last long.

Eduardo Arroyo up now through November 19.

The Henkin Brothers: A Discovery at the Hermitage, St. Petersburg
Rarely has an exhibition made more sense, or seemed more clever, than the juxtaposition of photographs by the brothers Evgeny and Yakov Henkin. Born in Rostov-on-Don, a port city in southern Russia on the border of Ukraine, in 1900 and 1903, respectively, the brothers split up after the October Revolution, one moving to Berlin, the other Moscow.

The Hermitage, a museum known for its unparalleled collection of old master paintings, has organized an exhibition that contrasts the trajectory (and parallels) of the two brothers’ lives as their respective cities transitioned from the comparatively ebullient 1920s to the increasingly despotic and bellicose 1930s.

The Henkin Brothers on view now through September 24.

China and Egypt: Cradles of the World at the Neues Museum, Berlin
In a very different example of contrasting timelines, this show comprises 250 objects spanning nearly 4,000 years and charts the development of the two earliest and most sophisticated societies on the planet. The exhibition’s objects include a full Chinese burial suit made out of jade blocks from about 200 B.C.E., a perfectly preserved polychrome Egyptian stella from about 1350 B.C.E., and a gorgeously filigreed 13th century B.C.E. Chinese wine vessel in the shape of an ox, on loan from the Shanghai Museum.

A bonus: the Neues Museum’s beautifully designed interiors by starchitect David Chipperfield.

China and Egypt on view now through December 3.

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