Critics' picks - visual arts
Pop appetite
Gary Panter is an Emmy-winning designer and one of the most important cartoonists to emerge in the late 1970s and '80s. Yet his paintings have largely floated under the art world's radar. "Daydream Trap," at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, presents paintings populated by cartoony B-movie he-men, busty gals with guitars or guns, cute critters, monsters, and robots wandering through jungles, abstract backgrounds, or rotting industrial landscapes. There's something Whitmanesque in Panter's ravenous cataloging of our collective pop unconscious. At the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Conn., through Aug. 31. 203-438-4519, aldrichart.org
- Greg Cook
Form and function
Viktor Schreckengost, a dean of 20th-century American industrial design, died in January at 101. "Viktor Schreckengost Legacy Exhibition" celebrates his remarkable range of talents, from watercolor painting to ceramics. Schreckengost taught for 70 years at the Cleveland Institute of Art, and the show includes work by students who designed cellphones, coffee makers, toys, dishes, and automobiles. At the Attleboro Arts Museum, Attleboro, through May 16 (closed Sundays). 508-222-2644, attleboroartsmuseum.org
- Cate McQauid
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