Coal smoke as muse? This exhibition in Baltimore suggests just that. With works by Monet, Whistler, Matisse, and others, curator Kevin Tervala traces how the rise of pollution in 19th-century London and Paris—the result of industrial advances—altered vision and atmosphere, nudging modernism into being. For these artists, shrouded skylines and moody atmospheres became catalysts for abstraction, and for new ways of capturing mood and impermanence. Part of the Baltimore Museum of Art’s “Turn Again to the Earth” initiative, this compact, quietly radical show invites viewers to look again—at the air, the art, and the uneasy relationship between the two. —Charlie St John