July #PULSEPicks from our Cultural Partners

This summer, some of New York's most important cultural centers turn an eye towards fashion and design. In ANTONIO LOPEZ: Future Funk Fashion at El Museo del Barrio, visitors see how a fashion illustrator helped change the canon of beauty in the 1970s and 1980s by exploring and representing the ethnic or racialized body in his high fashion work. At Cooper Hewitt, designer Thom Browne curates more than 50 mirrors and frames from the museum's historic and contemporary collections, exploring the ideas of reflection and individuality.

Also not to be missed is The Bronx Museum's annual FLOW exhibition on Randall's Island, featuring site specific projects by participants in the museum’s Artists in the Marketplace program for emerging artists.

There is no shortage of compelling exhibitions to see in Miami this summer. Head outside The Bass Museum for tc: temporary contemporary, the institution's ongoing series of outdoor sculptures and installations in Collins Park, currently featuring two useable chess tables from artist Jim Drain.

At PAMM, visitors are treated to Beatris Santiago Munoz: A Universe of Fragile Mirrors, a solo show of the filmmaker and digital artist whose works blur the boundaries between what is real and imagined. Another solo show of a female artist can be found at ICA Miami where Laura Lima's Inverse wraps the museum's Atrium Gallery seemingly haphazardly with nylon industrial rope.

Two ambitious group exhibitions include Intersectionality at MoCA North Miami, which features artists from South Florida exploring the many faces, complexity and constraints of race, class and gender, and the student-curated exhibition, Blasted Allegories: Photography as Experience, at the University of Miami's Lowe Art Museum.

Interested in a day trip from Miami? The NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale has mounted the first survey of Chuck Close's photographic work and The Boca Raton Museum of Art is showing Looking Away: Portraits from the Collection, featuring works by the likes of Edward Steichen and Helmut Newtown.