Opens March 15. 22-25 Jackson Ave., Queens (718-784-2084) - "Huma Bhabha: Unnatural Histories." Fifth Ave. at 92nd St. (212-423-3200) - "As It Were . . . So to Speak: A Museum Collection in Dialogue with Barbara Bloom. Open Saturdays through Tuesdays, 11 to 5:45, Thursdays, 11 to 8, and Fridays, 11 to 4. The rising young Romanian-born star has made a huge caged installation in which an active pitching machine displays fine velocity but iffy control, as evidenced in the battered tiles on a wall that it targets with concrete-encased balls. Hanks of human hair on the wall evoke barbaric juridical killing. There are also vaguely humanoid, coolly sinister sculptures of gleaming steel pipe on tiled bases that suggest athletic shower rooms. You may chafe at Ursuta's thematics - what does America's pastime have to do with stoning? - and yet relish her flair. Venus Over Manhattan, 980 Madison Ave., at 76th St. 212-980-0700. Anthony Barboza, Leroy Henderson, Chester Higgins, Jr., and Chuck Stewart show fine black-and-white work made primarily in the nineteen-sixties and seventies, when the civil-rights movement was focussing new attention on the range and vitality of black culture. Stewart's subjects are performers onstage and off, including Sarah Vaughan, James Brown, John Coltrane, and Gil Scott-Heron. Henderson's pictures of marches and demonstrations plug into the activist spirit of the times. Most engagingly, both Higgins and Barboza turn their attention to everyday life, the former in rural Alabama, little changed since the Depression, the latter in New York, where style is a declaration of independence. Through March 23. De Lellis, 1045 Madison Ave., at 80th St. 212-327-1482. A large group show, curated by Vito Schnabel (son of Julian), samples what some younger painters are up to these days: nonchalant messiness, for the most part. There are crude gray abstractions by Dan Colen and nugatory gestures by Joe Bradley (a heart with an arrow through it, grease-pencilled on a big, bare canvas, must have taken about twenty seconds to execute). Most arresting is a room crowded with more than two dozen slathery, faux-Expressionist paintings by Josh Smith, whose frank je-m'en-foutisme about the traditions that he evokes exudes the companionable humor of a joke understood only by him and by you. Through March 27. Acquavella, 18 E. 79th St. 212-734-6300. "ED RUSCHA: BOOKS & CO.": Gagosian, 980 Madison Ave., at 76th St. 212-744-2313. The British artist can't be pinned down to one medium, but his latest exhibition is almost entirely photographic: big color landscapes (the largest is about twelve feet across), taken during an extended period at night, by the light of the full moon. The views - of beaches, mountains, waterfalls, and green valleys on all seven continents - are at once remarkably detailed and dreamy, as if the focus had wavered during the long exposure time. As a result, Almond's sites appear both recorded and remembered, bathed in a soft haze that turns a river into molten lead or breaking waves into whipped cream. The South African photographer's U.S. solo début, twenty-nine black-and-white studio portraits of young black lesbians, is a knockout. Gender identity is clearly an issue in the series, but its expression is a matter of self-definition - a style and a stance that can be confrontational or casual. Whether Muholi's women meet our gaze with defiance, wariness, or warmth, they're asserting a presence that's even more powerful when viewed en masse, as if in a community center. They have strong support from a group of photographs in the back gallery that also play fast and loose with gender roles, including pictures by Peter Hujar, Nan Goldin, Collier Schorr, and Claude Cahun. Richardson, 535 W. 22nd St. 646-230-9610. Menace, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder in Smith's latest sculptures. Items of discarded clothing are lashed together in bunches, then suspended from the ceiling by ropes. Although the bulbous forms, covered in cheerful polka dots, patterns, and stripes, evoke bodies in bondage, they have a voluptuous appeal. Their taut vitality is heightened in the company of inert decorative paintings made by splashing bleach on denim or by spraying neon paint around the edges of blankets. ROBERT BORDO: Alexander and Bonin, 132 Tenth Ave., at 18th St. 212-367-7474. Opens March 16. Through April 13. AL HELD: Cheim & Read, 547 W. 25th St. 212-242-7727. The artist and performer may be best known to some as the founder of Exit Art, the pioneering New York nonprofit gallery that he ran with his late partner, Jeanette Ingberman, from 1982 to 2011. This small survey of works on paper spans almost forty years and includes a collage series from 1976 about the death of the dictator Franco, made when Colo, who is Puerto Rican, was living in Spain. But the heart of the show is a group of ink drawings made in 2012, which are small in scale but ferocious in their intensity. Dense black lines resolve into demonic creatures or biomorphic shapes that hover on the pages like storm clouds. Through April 30. Clocktower, 108 Leonard St. 212-233-1096. The titles of Lehr's unframed color photographs - "Office Door," "Phone Booth," "Plaque" - are descriptive in a way that his work isn't. His interest is surfaces, especially smeared or damaged glass, layered with remnants of adhesive tape, spray paint, and grime. A scratched-up window with no view looks like a Cy Twombly drawing, but Aaron Siskind's jazzy riffs on Abstract Expressionism would seem to be the key influence here. Although Lehr has an equally keen eye for found abstraction, his work isn't documentary. Digital tweaking alters the surfaces - and what lies beyond them - in subtle and unexpectedly seductive ways. Werble, 83 Vandam St. 212-352-9700. JON KESSLER: Swiss Institute, 18 Wooster St. 212-925-2035. Through March 31. Through March 24.