Louis Fratino studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art, in Baltimore, which put him within walking distance of the world’s largest public collection of works by Matisse—over 1,600 paintings, drawings, prints, and illustrated books. He spent a lot of time there, and the influence shows. Fratino’s paintings of warm domestic interiors, sleeping figures, still lifes, and intimate portraits of queer love share Matisse’s commitment to light, pattern, color, and the radical sufficiency of everyday life. Now the museum has made the connection explicit, pairing about 15 works by each artist—Matisse’s Nice-period odalisques and interiors alongside Fratino’s male figures in comparable poses—in a show that Fratino himself helped curate. It is his first major U.S. exhibition. —Elena Clavarino