The news that Yvon Lambert is closing his Paris gallery is hardly shocking. What is remarkable, however, is how long his run lasted. Fifty-plus years spent working with contemporary artists puts Lambert in the rare position of being both an art historical footnote and a current art market player. The first show he organized, in 1961 in his hometown of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, was a group exhibition titled “Modigliani to Picasso.” His final show, at the Paris gallery he has occupied since 1986, presents new work by Adel Abdessemed. The journey in between is a testament to Lambert’s longevity, adaptability, and influence. Built up over the course of five decades, Lambert’s artist roster is lengthy and diverse, ranging from French BMPT Minimalists Daniel Buren and Niele Toroni to flashy young Americans like Shinique Smith and Nick Van Woert. Having made a name for himself in the late 1960s by introducing Conceptual and Minimalist artists—Robert Ryman, Carl Andre, and On Kawara among others—to French audiences who were still hooked on Pop Art, Lambert remained committed to showing “artists of [his] own time.” This pursuit obliged the gallery to continually evolve according to changing tastes, new movements and media, and a fickle art market. In addition …

In 1967, a young Robert Barry spent six weeks on a former racehorse farm in Belmont, New York, as part of an artists-in-residence program sponsored by the Whitney Museum. The documentary photographs he shot during his summer on the farm—a medley of picket-fenced country roads, grazing horses, and artists convening in the converted barns that served as their temporary lodgings and studios—would become the foundation for two formative works: Scenes (1967), a 16mm film (notably included in the Museum of Modern Art’s landmark conceptual art exhibition “Information” in 1970) and Belmont 1967 (1977), a slide-projection combining text and images. Shown together for the first time—along with the seminal film, Red Seconds (1966–1967), and three word-only slide projections (from 1969–1971)—these works form a historic anchor for Barry’s current survey at Yvon Lambert. From an artist known for his conceptual explorations of time—how it is measured, received, visualized, and manipulated—this gathering of Barry’s earliest cinematic experiments combined with his more recent digital videos from the 2000s constitutes a meta-artwork of sorts. Like a time capsule, old and new works intermingle in the gallery evoking thematic and aesthetic connections. Barry’s characteristic non-narrative text and image juxtapositions are established in the first room with Belmont …