E-Mail This Article to a Friend Rikki don’t lose that number "Infinite Possibilities" at Wellesley, plus Nathaniel Hawthorne and Harvey Loves Harvey BY RANDI HOPKINS

Seriality — with its connotations of scientific objectivity and rationally determined order — has meant many things to many artists since the 1950s and early 1960s. Composer John Cage began experimenting with the use of repetition and rules-based systems to create unorthodox music; dancer Trisha Brown explored defining space through seriality and repetition; and painter Jasper Johns turned his attention to numbers, finding visual and intellectual paradox in this 2-D system representing an abstract concept. "Infinite Possibilities: Serial Imagery in 20th-Century Drawings," opening at Wellesley’s Davis Museum on September 9, takes on the expansive topic with 200 drawings from the collection of Sally and Wynn Kramarsky, who have occupied the front lines of avant-garde art scouting for decades. The exhibit includes key early works like Jasper Johns’s positively canonical Numbers (1960) and part of Sol LeWitt’s 122-unit Incomplete Open Cubes (1974), and adventurous new work by artists Stefana McClure and Tatsuo Miyajima, examining the idea of seriality as it relates to math, the movies, poetry, philosophy, music, politics, and more.

Discussing the subject by phone from her Wellesley office, Davis Museum curator and exhibition co-organizer Anja Chavez admits, "It’s not easy to define ‘seriality’; no dictionary really helps. But you can juxtapose the many things that have happened, there’s such a variety. That’s what interested us — the breadth of the theme, plus the high quality of the Kramarskys’ collection. This show is all about trying to open one door, and making sure lots of others open, too." The exhibition also includes four drawings by pioneering conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner, known for his fascinating way with words. Weiner is artist-in-residence at Wellesley this fall, and has created a site-specific sculpture directly related to the museum called Primary Secondary Tertiary. Chavez points out that Weiner’s work reveals the boundary-crossing nature of work by artists interested in systems and their expression: "When you look at Lawrence’s sculpture, you will see the relationship between the architecture and his thinking — it’s language and it’s visual."

Any questions? Weiner and other exhibiting artists will be on hand to chat at the exhibition’s opening reception next week.

It’s been 200 years since Nathaniel Hawthorne’s birth, and to celebrate, the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts has invited 12 artists to run with the themes encountered in Hawthorne’s racy classic from 1850, The Scarlet Letter. "Exposing Scarlet," opening at the Mills on September 10, looks at issues including punishment through public spectacle (bring back the stockades? Or is that what Cops and Court TV are all about?), and those timeless topics: guilt, shame, and morality. This literary offering is sure to offer a new twist on the Puritan psyche . . . does it bear any resemblance to our own?

And catch the latest in the ongoing saga of "Harvey Loves Harvey" — nothing puritanical here — when "Your Harvey at Work" comes to the video room at Artists Foundation, opening September 11. Artists Matthew Nash and Jason Dean originally formed the collaborative team Harvey Loves Harvey in the mid ’90s to deal with communicative and creative challenges raised by years spent living in separate cities; their separation became their subject matter. Preview their newest video at www.harveylovesharvey.com, and catch the appealing, bloggy character of this charming team at work.

"Infinite Possibilities: Serial Imagery in 20th-Century Drawings" is at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, 106 Central Street in Wellesley, September 9 through December 12; the opening reception is September 9 at 5 p.m. Call (781) 283-2051. "Exposing Scarlet" is at the Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont Street in the South End, September 10 through October 31; the opening reception is September 10 from 6 to 8 p.m. Call (617) 426-8835. "Your Harvey at Work" is on view at Artists Foundation, 516 East Second Street #49 in South Boston, September 11 through October 16; the opening reception is September 11 from 3 to 5 p.m. Call (617) 464-3559.