Born and raised in Athens, the artist Chryssa Vardea-Mavromichali always maintained the unique perspective of an outsider. She moved to New York in 1954, at the age of 21, and met and married Jean “Yanko” Varda, a cousin of the filmmaker Agnès Varda. Chryssa, who went by her first name professionally, pioneered the use of neon in art, finding inspiration in the unfettered commercialism that flooded postwar America. Her best known work, The Gates to Times Square (1966), embodies her reaction to that dazzling locus of American commercialism. A 10-foot-tall sculpture in blue neon, shaped like an A, the work sat in storage for decades as Chryssa’s fame faded (she died in 2013). It has now been restored and will be on view alongside her canvases, reliefs, and other groundbreaking neon sculptures. —Paulina Prosnitz