Since the Rose Art Museum’s fall exhibits closed on Dec. 22, museumgoers have awaited the day the Rose would reopen to present its spring art selections. The museum’s four new exhibits span several different disciplines, bringing deserving artists into the spotlight this semester.

The four exhibits are Pretty Raw: After and Around Helen Frankenthaler, New Acquisitions, Painting Blind and also include the latest installment from the Rose’s Collection in Focus series.

Sponsored in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Pretty Raw centers around artist Helen Frankenthaler. The exhibit uses Frankenthaler’s work as a lens to analyze the past 50 years of modernist art. In an email to the Justice, Henry and Lois Foster Director of the Rose Art Museum Chris Bedford noted that “in Pretty Raw Helen Frankenthaler is posited as an alternate origin point for a new history of modern painting.” The exhibition uses Frankenthaler as a focal point, but also showcases work from Mark Bradford, Marie Menken, Andy Warhol, Kara Walker, Christopher Wool and Judy Chicago. Bedford emphasized that “the show proceeds by decade from the beginning of [Frankenthaler’s] career through artists she has influenced, culminating in an exciting view of the present.”

According to the Rose Art Museum’s website, Pretty Raw emphasizes decoration, humor, gender roles, daily life, pleasure and control. When asked how the exhibit relates to past collections and their themes, Bedford commented, “For me, Pretty Raw… is an investment in careful scholarship as productive of new meaning.” Rose Curator-at-Large Katy Siegel curated the exhibit, which will be on view in the Lois Foster Gallery.

Siegel also curated the upcoming exhibit Painting Blind, on view in theLower Rose Gallery. Painting Blind strings together pieces from four different artists: Willem de Kooning, Maria Lassnig, Frank Auerbach and Georg Baselitz. The exhibit brings these artists together, Bedford said, “by a shared investment in touch and bodily experience as a means of producing images that are as much about the recognizable world as they are about the way we feel and perceive that world.” The artists’ paintings feature a new method of abstraction and representation. The paintings blur the lines between human senses, seeking to explore the different ways one’s senses can perceive and relate to images. The exhibit marks the final installment of Rose Projects 1, a series of three research-based exhibitions. The Rose will display both its newer and older pieces this semester through the final two exhibits. In New Acquisitions, Bedford will draw attention to pieces that the Rose has bought over the past 18 months. The exhibit is meant to emphasize works from artists who deserve more acclaim than they currently hold, at least in the curator’s view. It will feature historical works by artists including Howardena Pindell, Sam Gilliam and Melvin Edwards, as well as focus on abstract painting and sculpture by African Americans in the 1970s.

In contrast to New Acquisitions, Collection in Focus will highlight the museum’s older pieces. The Collection in Focus series makes an effort to showcase Rose pieces that that have been understudied or that connect well with other works of art. New Acquisitions will be in the Gerald S. and Sandra Fineberg Gallery, while Collection in Focus will hang in the Mildred S. Lee Gallery.

The wide range of subject matter promises an exhibit for every viewer’s tastes. When asked what viewers should hope to gain from the new exhibitions, Bedford wrote that, “the exhibitions are as much about … formal invention as they are about social engagement. [Ideally, I] would like viewers to take with them the sense that art can produce wonder and be a central aspect of the way they perceive and process the world around them.”

The new exhibits will open on Wednesday, Feb. 10 at 5 p.m., and the museum’s regular hours will go into effect the following day. The exhibits will be on view until June 7.