This Week in Art Openings: Bill Owens, Buckminster Fuller and Mike O'Meally

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Bill Owens, 'Monument Valley, UT / AZ, 2004'

Bill Owens
This is the guy who made normal weird and weird normal with his cult-appeal photographs of American suburbia, the mundane and the lives of the herd (influencing later kings of this theme, like Wes Anderson). This exhibition features works from several collections spanning his career, including the 1970s photo series "Suburbia and Working -- I Do It for the Money." The subjects are all at once trite and mysterious, beautiful and perverse: just our neighbors and us.

James Cohan Gallery, 533 W. 26th St., (212) 714-9500. Opening reception June 26, 6-8 p.m. Through Aug. 1.

Buckminster Fuller, “Starting with the Universe”

Ah, Bucky, a man we wish were around today. A forward thinker with an emphasis on saving the planet -- who knows how he’d be tackling the deteriorating state of the earth in the 21st century, but we can bet he’d be thinking of something. His works go far beyond his celebrated soccer-ball shaped geodesic dome; this part-science, part-art, part-math, part-philosophy exhibition takes a look back at the life’s work of the man who dubbed our home “Spaceship Earth.”

Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Ave., (212) 570-3600. June 26–Sept. 21.

Mike O’Meally, “Far From Home”

With his latest photo exhibit, hosted by Quiksilver, Aussie-born skateboarder and photographer Mike O’Meally shows us that kids grind pipes in Cairo, Egypt, too, and in streets all over the world. His black and white prints document his travels around the world, from East L.A. to Giza, and include action shots of ’boarders catching air but also poignant ones, like the shot of skaters rolling down an empty Broadway on September 12, 2001.

Dactyl Foundation, 64 Grand St., (212) 274-0400. Opening reception, June 27, 6-8 p.m. Through July 18.