The most anticipated museum event in New York this spring is the April 20 unveiling of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new Greek and Roman galleries, whose centerpiece is the Leon Levy and Shelby White Court. This is the completion of a three-stage renovation under way since 1999, and it more than doubles the space for the museum’s extensive holdings in this area. The repatriation last year of such treasures as the Euphronios krater — deemed to have been wrongfully acquired from Italy three decades earlier — still leaves plenty to fill the space. The new galleries occupy the southeast corner of the museum, formerly a cacophonous cafeteria — an apt metaphor for the restoration of due weight to the Greco-Roman underpinnings of the Renaissance and old master paintings and sculptures that fill much of the rest of the museum.

Not that ancient Italy was the only source of Renaissance civilization, which is made clear by what promises to be a riveting and timely investigative exhibition, “Venice and the Islamic World, 828-1797.” Not that modernism, either, is a stranger at the Met. It presents “Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings: The Clark Brothers Collect” (opening May 22), which brings together masterpieces formerly owned by rival brothers Stephen Carlton Clark, a trustee of the museum, and Robert Sterling Clark, who with his wife, Francine, formed the Institute that bears their name in Williamstown, Mass. Frank Stella will be on the roof when it gets warmer (May 1), while the hot-button young master from Leipzig, Germany, Neo Rauch, has created a series of works made especially for an indoor exhibition (May 22).

Other shows on Museum Mile this season include “Divisionism/Neo-Impressionism: Arcadia and Anarchy” at the Guggenheim (April 27), which explores the political idealism of such artists as Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, and their critic, civil servant and bomb-making anarchist Félix Fénéon. The Guggenheim also presents an exhibition charting their controversial (to some of us) restorations of Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiral museum (April 13).

The Whitney is to present “Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era” (May 24). The show complements in timely fashion the current National Academy reconsideration of 1960s abstract painting, “High Times, Hard Times” (through April 22). Also in a throwback to that era, the Brooklyn Museum launches its Center for Feminist Art tomorrow, showcasing Judy Chicago’s legendary 1979 sculptural installation “The Dinner Party.” While some might consider the whole idea of feminist art with nostalgia, the center itself seems committed to viewing it as an open inquiry.

Feminism is not the only old idea with renewed currency: Take the Apocalypse, for instance. The Morgan Library and Museum is to present a show from its great holdings with the punchy title “Apocalypse Then: Medieval Illuminations From the Morgan” (March 23). They also have “From Berlin to Broadway: The Ebb Bequest of Modern German and Austrian Drawings,” reflecting their newer area of collecting interest, the 20th century (April 20).

The Whitney also presents a small exhibition devoted to the centenary of the great cultural impresario best known for his work in ballet, Lincoln Kirstein (April 25), that focuses on his support of three visual artists: painter Pavel Tchelitchew, sculptor Elie Nadelman, and photographer Walker Evans. The show is part of a trend celebrating the men behind the scenes, following the Met’s blockbuster devoted to Ambroise Vollard last year, and the current show of work by a Los Angeles avatar of the avant garde, Wallace Berman (through March 31), at NYU’s Gray Art Gallery.

Scholarly exhibitions are not the exclusive preserve of museums: PaceWildenstein will be offering what promises to be an illuminating revisionist historical investigation, “Picasso, Braque, and Early Film in Cubism” (April 20).

James Cohan Gallery has a show of work by the late Nam June Paik, the pioneer video artist (March 24) and Betty Cuningham will present her second solo exhibition of Philip Pearlstein (March 29). Davis & Langdale present a reassesment of Dora Carrington, a painter on the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group (May 12). Deitch Projects is bringing together several contemporary masters of abjection, the British brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman, George Condo, and Paul McCarthy, in what promises to be a messy collaboration (March 29). The Dutch grotesque realist Philip Akkerman, meanwhile, opens at Bravin Lee on March 23.

Other shows of promise this season include Andrea Belag at Mike Weiss (March 24), Penny Kronengold at First Street (March 27), Gina Werfel at Prince Street (March 27), Jonathan Lasker at Cheim & Read (March 29), Dana Schultz at Zach Feuer (April 5), Josh Smith at Luhring Augustine (April 6), Pieter Schoolwerth at Elizabeth Dee (April 7), Gregory Amenoff at Alexandre (April 12), Sean Landers at Andrea Rosen and Mel Chin at Frederieke Taylor (April 13), Kathy Butterly at Tibor de Nagy (April 19), Tim Hawkinson at PaceWildenstein (April 27), Richard Tuttle at Sperone Westwater (May 3), Christopher Cook at Mary Ryan (May 10), and Richard Ballard at Robert Steele (May 17).