GOINGS ON NOVEMBER 15 - 21, 2023

What we're watching, listening to, and doing this week.

The fiftieth anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death has inspired plenty of exhibitions that go big or go deep. The Pace gallery’s splendid contribution to the festivities, “Picasso: 14 Sketchbooks,” goes long, studying the evolution of the Master’s hand between 1900 and 1959. It’s a one-stop shop for motifs that even non-aficionados can rattle off (musical instruments, mistresses, jagged nudes, evil-eyed bulls) and, of course, for some of the best drawing of the last century. In the magnificent “Head of a Woman” (pictured), completed in 1924, wiggly, wayward India-ink lines coalesce into something hard and inevitable—if the rival cults of Picasso worship and Picasso hatred bore you, seek out images like this one and bask.—Jackson Arn (Pace; through Dec. 22.)

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